International Day Of Peasant’s Struggle

1.

The Glorious Bangladesh War of Liberation could have not been organized and waged had not the Bangladesh peasantry made the Liberation War part of their life. They were swayed by the call for liberation. It was the brave peasantry that dared to stand steadfastly by the Mujib Nagar Government, the provisional Bangladesh government, as it took oath in a rural vicinage in those days of fire and killing by the occupying Pakistan army. It was an April-day, April 17, 1971. The following crimson war-path is glorified with supreme sacrifices, overwhelming majority of which was made by the unvanquished Bangladesh peasantry. The Bangladesh peasantry sent its best sons and daughters to the war for liberation. Its flame of liberation-dream never gets extinguished.

2.

Dominating world economy presses peasants to dwell perpetually in an abode, where poverty is in plenty and happy life is scarce. The world economic arrangement needs a peasantry without head and eyes. Peasants across the world are dominated by antagonistic contradictions. Poverty, ignorance, insecurity, and a life without dignity are ensured for them by the dominating world system.

3.
History is replete with struggles for dignity, justice and security, and with martyrs. Peasants around the globe have relentlessly carried and are carrying on this struggle. Their struggles embolden and ennoble humanity’s endeavor for a dignified, decent life. But, peasantry in many lands is not allowed to reach their dreamed destination. This compels peasantry to unfurl its standard for struggle.

4.

The peasants in Brazil made notable sacrifices on April 17, 1996. A massacre took the toll. Nineteen peasants of the landless movement, MST-Brazil were killed while they were on a peaceful journey to make their appeal to get access to unplowed and unseeded land. At least 10 of the peasants were extrajudicially executed after they had been overpowered. Sixty-nine peasants were severely wounded. The journey was part of their peaceful struggle for land and dignity.

Since 1996, April 17 has been declared International Day of Peasant’s Struggles. People around the world take oath for struggle to survive with dignity.

Those Brazilian peasants were evicted from their land more than two years ago. Their all peaceful attempts to get the right to settle down on an unproductive, fallow land had failed. Consequently, about 1,500 landless peasants and members of their families, all members of the Landless Peasants Movement (MST), started their peaceful march to the state capital of Pará, to present their demands. The march stopped on the highway as pregnant women and children needed rest. At around afternoon, two police contingents arrived there from opposite sides and started firing on the resting peasants and their family members. Many of them dispersed. The first to fall was Amâncio Dos Santos Silva, known as “Surdo-Mudo” (“deaf-mute”). Unable to hear the shots, he took longer time than the others to perceive the police action.

5.

In countries, more than hundred, the day is observed as the International Day of Peasant’s Struggle. The day is observed by organizing marches, rallies, cultural programs, debates, exchange of opinions with allies of peasantry, exhibition of organic products, publicity work, and many other types of activities.

Peasantry is increasingly finding it in perilous position with the onslaught by neoliberalism and MNCs. In many countries, peasant organizations are virtually being deactivated and made apathetic to peasant problems. Burning problems of peasant life go unnoticed as neoliberal ideas dominate peasant leadership, as peasant leadership accepts premises forwarded by neoliberalism. The concept of Food, A Basic Human Right is pushed to nowhere, and is being replaced by some other pseudo right like turning debtor. Discourse on poverty does not identify the source of poverty. Instead it is being sustained within a limit safe to status quo. Interesting part of the episode involves section of peasant leadership that does not effectively contest the concepts being sold. A vacuum thus gets created and the vacuum is being overtaken by individuals and organizations having stakes in neoliberalism. Their agenda turns peasant leadership’s agenda, and peasant issues retreat. In cases, peasant issues are sold by NGOs with “different aims, purposes, interests, organizational cultures and structures, and mechanisms for decision making and accountability than peasant organizations”. (Annette Aurélie Desmarais, La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants)

Consequently, the vital issue of food sovereignty gets lost as food sovereignty covers the issues of food as a basic human right, sustainable management of natural resources by peasantry, and agrarian reform, which is not only redistribution of land. Even, the concept of cooperative is neglected as peasantry is increasingly made dependent on loan capital.

6.

The day, April 17, is not meant to get engaged into adventurous or terrorist acts as those play no role in making social advancement or achieving food security for country. Rather, exposing hollowness of neoliberal ideas and its effects on peasantry can be a way to observe the day. Highlighting plights of peasants turns important aspect of the observance as intellects standing by status quo ignore plights of peasants’ and broadly of the poor, and express observations, which are not related to reality.

Peasants around the world, working on cotton, coffee or cocoa fields, in the Nile Delta or in Iraq, blacks in the US farms, on the verge of committing suicides in India, in the terraced rice fields in the Philippines, today face the same fate, a fate of uncertainty, haunting hunger, encroached areas of public education and health care, and indignity. The world force of accumulation have united them, and made them international.

Libya Lumbers

Naked Imperialism is making Libya lumber. Intervention by petro-imperialism is poised to send Libya’s democratic struggle with seldom shown monarchist flag to limbo. France’s overt intervention and the Empire’s covert maneuvers under the shadow of an imperialism fuelled civil war are making Libya’s move to democracy difficult.

Gadhafi’s tactical advances push back his opponents’ reported resolve to stand till his fall while it fans external actors’ lust for direct intervention. The Arab League that many a times failed to stand above disunity is now having a single song: get rid of Gadhafi. But, for Europe, it is still difficult: “[H]aving 27 conversations”, as Time quoted a European leader, “around the table.” This sign of European incoherence can provide Gadhafi minute’s tactical opportunity. Intervention plan is facing problem from within the interventionist camp, and from a section of Gadhafi opponents, a reality beyond the plan of the interventionists.

As the rebels gradually lose control of the portion of land they sliced away from the authoritarian ruler section of the rebels is asking for “humanitarian” help that carries elements of direct imperialist intervention. There is every possibility of sending soldiers to guarantee safe delivery of aid. No-fly zone is on interventionist agenda, which is confused by its conflicting interests. Sex-scandal ridden Berlusconi has made available Italian military facilities to future operation in the North African country. However, Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy’s desire to intervene is facing obstacle from their internal reality: economic and political, crisis and competition, and limits of over-stretched power. One of the leading US intelligence officials has angered a section of US interventionists by publicly telling a truth: Gadhafi shall prevail because of supremacy of his firepower. Moreover, Gadhafi, as his son told during an interview, knows the game with lucrative oil deal.

“The preparation for a military intervention in Libya”, writes Yoshie Furuhashi, editor, MRzine, “will test the revolutionaries in bordering Egypt and Tunisia. The armed forces of their countries, the backbones of the regimes in power there, will be requested to provide support for any such intervention . . . that is, if they have not already privately pledged their cooperation. (“Imperialists Prepare for Military Intervention in Libya” MRzine, Feb.28, 2011)

Gadhafi with cracked legitimacy is trying to thwart imperialist military intervention. He initially blamed Laden and hallucinogenic pill filled teenagers for the revolt against his ruling system of centralized decentralization. Then, he pointed his finger to machinations by imperialists, his just-yesterday’s friends. He was having warm relation with his Washington and NATO friends, and his friends were feeding him with sophisticated arms. Even, his state of the art repression equipments were supplied by his friends from both sides of the Atlantic.

Sections of Libyans under the leadership of Gadhafi-cohorts-turned-“conscientious” guys are waving monarchy’s tricolor. “The tricolour of King Idris, the monarch Mr Qaddafi overthrew in 1969 … flies across the east...” (The Economist, March 7, 2011) “[T]he faces of the old detested regime”, writes As'ad AbuKhalil, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, “are now leading the so-called opposition.” (“The Libyan Uprising”, Angry Arab News Service, March 4, 2011) The claimants of having a seal of governance in the breakaway portion are unelected and unselected, with whom “democracy” designers are entering into oil stained deals. “Delegates to the new assembly”, The Economist report said, “have decked Beida’s parliament building in portraits of King Idris and his tricolour. … A secret ten-man military committee has been formed. …Jihadist groups have kept a low profile. A lawyer claimed that there is effort to a separation of religion and state.”

To shed of the despised identity of quisling or Marshal Petain Gadhafi opponents had to get hold a band of Anglo SAS commandoes and a junior diplomat. But the “transparency”- and “accountable”-democracy failed to provide an explanation. The secret diplomatic mission, press reported, was to smoothen out path of contact by a senior diplomat. A would-be Lawrence of Libya? The virtually broken away significant part of Libya with oil port and refineries is a landing ground for intervention, and the crises-ridden, budget-deficit burdened Empire, as it claimed, reaches “out to many different Libyans who are attempting to organize”. And, sections of revolting elements have dubious identities. Although a section of the opposition is aware that the external “friends” prefer oil than protecting Libyan lives.

Gadhafi, with his bizarre posture and macabre rhetoric, is trying to regain control of the ruling machine that relies on a mixture of utopian and retrogressive ideas and practices, and sows seeds of discontent. He once took anti-imperialist stance, then made appeasements with imperialism, and successfully failed to mobilize people. Its current cost, the costs now being charged by “humanitarian”- or “democracy”-imperialism, is unknown number of deaths, suffering of and hatred among the people, the regime’s significant diplomatic isolation and reduced credibility, and a divided country. His actions have lent credibility to imperialist propaganda, although Libyan TV showed Egyptian passports, CDs and cell phones purportedly belonging to detainees who had allegedly confessed to plotting terrorist operations against the Libyan people. On the other hand, facts hidden by the mainstream media blitzkrieg will surface later as have come out in many cases including Iraq and Darfur.

Pogrom

In localities controlled by anti-Gadhafi forces, migrant workers fleeing to Egypt, a British project manager and an Egyptian accountant reported scenes of mayhem as looters stormed their compounds, and looted cars and computers. Glen Ford, executive editor, Black Agenda Report, writes: “A vicious, racist pogrom is raging against the 1.5 million sub-Saharan Black African migrant workers who do the hard jobs in Libya, work that is rejected by the relatively prosperous Libyans. Hundreds of Black migrant workers have already been killed by anti-Khadafi forces – yet the U.S. corporate media express absolutely no concern for their safety. One Western report noted that large numbers of Black Africans were seized in Benghazi and were assumed to have been hanged. That is a war crime, whether these men were soldiers or migrant workers, but the Western correspondent seemed unconcerned. One suspects there are many atrocities occurring in the rebel-held areas of Libya, especially against people that are not members of the locally dominant tribe.” (“No Tahrir in Benghazi: A Racist Pogrom Rages On Against Black Africans in Libya”, Black Agenda Report, March 2, 2011) There is, The Economist report said, resentment against migrant workers as a third of Libyans are jobless. Resentment is also there against Western contractors reaping the benefits of Libyan oil wealth to the tune of millions of dollars.

A Portion of Background

The rapidly changing Libyan incidents need a closer look to its background. “As opposed to the situation in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya occupies first place in the Human Development Index within Africa and has the highest life expectancy rate on the continent. Education and health receive special state attention. The cultural level of the population is without a doubt higher. Its problems are of another nature. The population is not in need of food or basic social services. The country requires many foreign workers to implement its ambitious production and social development plans. Therefore it offers employment to hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other nations. It has an enormous income and hard currency reserves deposited in the banks of rich countries, with which it acquires consumer goods and even sophisticated weapons, supplied by the very countries which now want to invade in the name of human rights. The colossal campaign of lies unleashed by the mass media has created much confusion in world public opinion.” (Fidel Castro, “NATO's inevitable war”)

Causes of indignation were there within the Libyan society, which has prepared ground for today’s civil war. Naked Imperialism (title of a book by John Bellamy Foster) could not miss the opportunity to take advantage of Libya’s internal conflict to advance its geostrategy. Libyan oil-industry operators, according to The Economist report, threatened to destroy pipelines, and cut supplies to Europe, if European states fail to intervene to end Gadhafi’s rule.

In the face of interventionist moves, Chávez, the Bolivarian leader of Venezuela, has taken a bold stand against intervention in Libya. Venezuela has proposed to “set up a Goodwill International Commission for the search for peace in Libya”, which has been accepted by the government of Libya, but has been rejected by the US, France, and the opposition Libyan National Council. Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, and Nicaragua support Venezuela’s initiative to seek a negotiated solution. But, Gadhafi’s Arab brethren have said nothing about the Venezuelan proposal.

One of the tasks of democratic movements worldwide is to create an international movement that defends democracy, peace, human rights, and territorial integrity so that imperialist powers cannot subvert the movements, and cannot use democratic movements and famous personalities as covers for their intervention and plan for subjugation.

There is possibility of a long battle with implications on the entire region and the peoples’ journey to democracy there. “[T]he fundamental concern of the United States and NATO”, Fidel wrote, “is not Libya, but the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which they wish to prevent at all costs.” (“NATO’s inevitable war”) A failure on the part of democratic forces to oppose intervention will charge a high price as forces standing against people are threatening that the next spring will be theirs. 
---------------------
This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 14^th March, 2011

The Great Financial Crisis: The Infallible Mainstream - Part I

The Great Financial Crisis has shown “higher” level of knowledge, wisdom and infallibility of the mainstream. Its democratic practices, accountability, etc. that it strives to teach the poor countries have also been confirmed by the crisis. These are the reasons behind its arrogance and feeling proud, its moral standing to sermon leaders of poor countries. Generous reference of the mainstream is enough to stay informed of its business.

At the center of the center

It has been claimed that the financial crisis was avoidable. But it was not avoided. That is the reason that it happened. What was the force that refrained all concerned from avoiding the crisis? The question haunts after the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, divided along partisan line, presented its report.

The commission concludes its report: The crisis, the result of “human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone haywire”, could have been avoided. It was led in large part by government mismanagement. The Bush and Clinton administrations, the current and previous Fed chairmen, and Geithner, the US treasury secretary, all bear some responsibility for allowing the crisis to descent on this material earth. It singled out former Fed Chairman Greenspan for backing “30 years of deregulation.”

The commission blamed “reckless” Wall Street firms, bankers, “weak” regulators, government officials and even homeowners for the crisis. Regulators “had ample power … and they chose not to use it”, said the report.

It sounds like the Time story that identified “top 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.” The 25 included everyone, from former Fed chairman Greenspan to former president George W. Bush to the former CEO of Merrill Lynch to the American consumers. Even one Chinese fellow was blamed.

Widespread failures, the report said, in financial regulation including Fed’s failure to halt the “tide of toxic mortgages”, and dramatic breakdowns in corporate governance, with too many firms taking on too much risk were two of the causes of the crisis that made giant banks collapse and shook the world economy. The report informs: 26 million Americans are out of work, and about $11trillion in household wealth has vanished. “The impacts of this crisis are likely to be felt for a generation.”

One can recollect Ferdinand Pecora’s, head of the commission set up to find out the causes behind the Great Depression, statement. About eight decades ago Pecora said that his investigation had shown the way “men of might – not because of principle but because of economic power and wealth – have by the waving of a hand and adoption of a resolution taken millions and millions of the hard-earned pennies of the people and turned them into gold for themselves.” (“Pecora Denounces Stock Manipulations,” The New York Times, Feb. 19, 1933)

The report mentioned other causes behind the crisis: excessive borrowing by households and Wall Street; policymakers’ ill-preparation to face such a crisis and lack of “full understanding of the financial system they” presided over; systemic breaches of accountability and ethics at all levels.

It, as appears from the report, was a mutually consented gambling. All turned accomplice to all: mortgage-holders borrowed with the intention of never paying it back while lenders lent knowing that the borrowers could not afford that.

The FCIC said: collapse of the housing bubble, trillions of dollars in risky, sub-prime mortgages, triggered the collapse. The impact of the bubble burst was magnified by complex financial derivatives based on those loans as its risks were woefully underestimated. The crisis, however, was years in the making.
It was increase everywhere, a bon voyage for the gamblers! From 1987 to 2007, debt held by financial sector increased from $3tn to $36tn; sub-prime mortgages increased from 5% of loans to 20% in 1994-2006; financial services firms emerged as an increasingly disproportionate part of the US economy: 27% of all corporate profits in the US during the same period compared with 15% in 1980.

Fed failed to set more prudent limits, a crucial role in creating the crisis, said the report. Firms, actually speculators, “made, bought and sold mortgage securities they never examined, invested blindly and did not care about defective investments.” Banks went to aggressive expansion that made the banks incapable of managing their assets.
All, AIG, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, were efficient. The commission found: Citigroup’s “too big to fail” turned into “too big to manage”. Goldman Sachs
multiplied the effects of the collapse of sub-prime loans by funding and creating billions of dollars of bets based on the back of the loans. Merrill Lynch’s $55bn investment in “super-safe” mortgage securities resulted in losses in billions of dollars. The AIG’s senior management was ignorant of the terms and risks of its $79bn derivatives exposure.
The findings weren’t endorsed by the commission’s four Republican members, who wrote two dissents and criticized decisions by Phil Angelides, the Democratic chairman. The commission entangled in infighting is now getting prepared for congressional investigations. The dissenting opinion and infighting are significant.

The six Democrat commissioners concluded that the financial crisis was triggered by a wide range of abuses, ranging from lax oversight of derivatives to poor decisions by credit rating firms to governance and risk management failures by large banks. The Republican commissioners detailed 10 causes topping by the credit bubble. The Democrat commissioners, as has been claimed by the Republican commissioners, looked “at individuals and policy or regulatory failures” and did not “talk about a credit bubble” while the Republicans placed “greater influence on economic forces”.

It now appears that accountability and ethics were there only to make as much profit as possible within the shortest possible time; similarly, ample power was used to manage and govern profit. A significant portion of capital, with its standard of ethics and level of management, has made it vulnerable with its vast power to gamble, and has proved its incapacity to secure it, it has generated that higher level of knowledge that is incapable of helping it. Other than generating catastrophe it cannot manage its profit making business. It has set its own standard of ethics, accountability, democracy, etc. Thus, it has mesmerized its die-hard followers only. “While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.” (Bob Herbert, “When Democracy Weakens”, The New York Times, Feb. 11, 2011) So, reasons behind the crisis, discussed by non-mainstream long ago, hide from searching eyes that declines to search facts.

The Great Financial Crisis: The Infallible Mainstream- Part II

International big brother

International Monetary Fund downplayed economic risks ahead of the crisis. It provided few clear warnings about the risks. The agency’s Independent Evaluation Office found these in an inquiry.

The inquiry report said: “Weak internal governance, lack of incentives to … raise contrarian views, and a review process that did not ‘connect the dots’ or ensure follow-up also played an important role while political constraints may have also had some impact.” It found that “several senior staff members felt that expressing strong contrarian views could ruin one’s career”, and “area department economists felt that there were strong disincentives to speak truth to power” as there was a perception that they might not be supported by management.

The report suggested encouraging alternative views and diverse opinions both within the agency and from outside experts so that IMF “speaks truth to power”. The report said: IMF staff “felt uncomfortable challenging the views of authorities in advanced economies on monetary and regulatory issues, given the authorities’ greater access to banking data and knowledge of their financial markets, and the large numbers of highly qualified economists working in their central banks. The IMF was overly influenced by (and sometimes in awe of) the authorities’ reputation and expertise.” IMF staff tend neither to share information nor to seek advice outside of their units.

Focusing on the IMF’s surveillance functions from 2004 to 2007 the report said: the fund’s ability to “correctly identify the mounting risks” was hamstrung by, among other things, “groupthink”, and a mindset that a major crisis involving advanced economies just wasn’t likely because markets were sophisticated enough to “thrive safely with minimal regulation.” The fund largely endorsed many of the types of policies and financial practices that help to precipitate the credit crunch, pronouncing that financial markets were fundamentally sound and large financial institutions could weather possible problems.

The IMF didn’t pay enough attention to risks of spillovers from a crisis in rich economies, such as the sovereign debt crisis that threatened to undo the euro zone and push Europe – and the rest of the world – into a double-dip recession. And, advanced economies were not included in the Vulnerability Exercise launched after the late 1990s Asian crisis.

The risks that the IMF did mention in its annual Global Financial Stability Report were presented only in general terms, without an accurate assessment of the scale of the problems. Critics have often focused on the way final reports touch politically sensitive issues: exchange rate policy is often muted from original drafts.

In 2006, IMF said, banks in UK were in good shape. The report blamed IMF’s incapability to spot Britain’s looming banking crash. IMF’s report on Iceland only a year before the country went bust, had not made the ballooning of the banking sector to 1,000% of GDP the focal point of discussions.

The international institution’s message was characterized by overconfidence on large financial institutions, and endorsement of the financial practices in the main financial centers. The risks associated with housing booms and financial innovations were downplayed.

It said that when studying the policies of the US and the UK in the years leading up to the crash, the IMF had “largely endorsed policies and financial practices that were seen as fostering rapid innovation and growth”.

The report said: IMF did not sufficiently analyze the force making the housing bubble or the policies that might have played in this process. It failed to see the similarities between developments in the US and UK and the experience of other advanced economies and emerging markets that had previously faced financial crises. The IMF failed to spot looming crash and praised the US and the UK financial regulation.

The crisis, as the report provides evidence, has exposed the international big brother’s belief-, knowledge- and analysis-systems, level of governance and transparency, and market-blindness. The apolitical appearing institution is influenced by politics of masters, and there is no room for dissension. In fact, it serves the dominating capital that dictates the institution’s performance. Its speaking truth is dependent on power of its masters although it is master of poor countries: it is the dictatorial power of a dictated institution. The real face is shrouded with now-told-half-truths and denial to accept explanation by non-mainstream. Further questioning of already-told-half-facts will dig out reasons behind the agency’s failure.
-----------------
This article was published at countercurrents.org , on February 22, 2011

The Wisconsin Protest And A Few Questions

Increasing conflict and crises in today’s US are revealed by the Wisconsin protest. Thousands are protesting to oppose a bill that aims to narrow down labor rights. Protests spread from Wisconsin to Ohio. Rallies in support of the Wisconsin protest were held around the US, including in Minnesota and New York.

Massive demonstration, larger in number and more sustained than any in Madison in decades, shouted “Kill this bill!” and demanded recall of the governor. University of Wisconsin-Madison teaching assistants and students poured into the Capitol rotunda and spent night in sleeping bags on the floor of the rotunda. They raised slogans inside the Capitol, banged on drums, and waved signs comparing governor Walker to Mubarak. Public schools were closed for days after teachers continued to call in sick to protest. The “sickout” spread across the state as several other school districts including Milwaukee, the state's largest, canceled classes as a result of teacher absences.

Majority leader Fitzgerald termed the situation “a powder keg” while Obama termed the bill as “an assault on unions”. Danny Donohue, president of the Civil Service Employees Association, said: Walker “is waging one of the most vicious attacks on working people our nation has seen in generations.” Jesse Jackson led one of the marches. There was gathering of conservative supporters also, but few in numbers. It is a state politically torn apart.

At the center of the days of protest is a controversial bill that would strip most public employees of their collective bargaining rights which the governor, an outspoken conservative, said was needed to balance a $3.6 billion budget shortfall and avoid widespread layoffs. The plan would make workers pay half the costs of their pensions and at least 12.6% of their health care premiums. State employees’ costs would go up by an average of 8%. The changes would save the state $30 million by June 30 and $300 million over the next two years, and Unions could not seek pay increases above those pegged to the Consumer Price Index unless approved by a public referendum. Unions also could not ask employees to pay dues and would have to hold annual votes to stay organized. Walker has threatened to order layoffs of up to 6,000 state workers if the measure does not pass. While other states have proposed bills curtailing labor rights, Walker’s measure is the most aggressive anti-union move.

Wisconsin, the first US state to pass a comprehensive collective bargaining law in 1959, is the place the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the national union representing all non-federal public employees, was founded in 1936. The proposed bill, being imposed by the conservatives, is an irony!

Democratic practices saw there in Wisconsin moves showing limits of its accommodation. Senate Republicans met in secret to discuss the bill. Asked where Republicans stood on Walker’s proposal, Sen. Dan Kapanke told the Associated Press, “That's a really good question. I don't know.” Fitzgerald said: Sen. Miller, a Democrat, “shut down democracy” while Democrats said: the Republicans were undemocratic. “This is wrong! Desperately wrong!”, minority leader Barca shouted from the floor of the Assembly as Republicans left after turning off the microphones. The state’s Democratic senators left the state, effectively jamming any movement on the bill, the “boldest action Democrats have taken since midterm elections swept Republicans to power in statehouses” across the US. Democrats on the run in Wisconsin avoided state troopers and threatened to stay in hiding for weeks, potentially paralyzing a state government they no longer control. The state patrol was asked to go to Miller’s house, signaling the circumstances at the Capitol. Senate Sergeant-At-Arms said: Troopers knocked on Miller’s door and rang his doorbell, but no one answered. An advanced democracy is being practiced with hiding, halting quorum, using trooper! Should Third World learn from it?

The situation led Miles Mogulescu, an activist and writer, to say: “the first stirrings of American resistance to the corporate oligarchy since Wall Street greed and malfeasance brought the American and world economy to its knees in 2008 are coming from the organized labor … in the capital of Wisconsin. …It was one of the first shots across the bow in a 30-year long war by America’s corporate oligarchy to transfer wealth from the working and middle classes to the rich and to deregulate the economy in order to increase the wealth and power of the corporate and financial elite. …This one-sided class war by the corporate oligarchy against the middle and working class has, until now, been met by … little resistance ….[R]ight-wing Republicans may have woken a sleeping giant in organized labor that is just beginning to show its power in the streets of Wisconsin. It may be the beginning of a new mass movement of the middle and working class … to take power back from organized corporate oligarchs and to restore a measure of social and economic equality ….[W]hat started in Wisconsin may spread … across the country.” (“Wisconsin Is Ground Zero in America’s New Uprising Against the Corporate Oligarchy”, The Huffington Post, Feb. 18, 2011)

Now, as an imaginary exercise, put the entire political scene onto a Third World country-political stage. What would have been described? Would it not be termed: an assault on labor, attempt to curtail rights, chaos in legislature, failure of legislature compelling people to show power, etc.? Were not all these signaled limits of practices in institutionalized politics, of accommodating and co-opting, of problems in spreading out burden fairly among constituents? When these limits and problems arise? Is it a proper functioning of a political system where stalling quorum is a way to resolve a dispute? When the need to stalling quorum arises? When troopers are sent to knock door of lawmakers’ homes? These are not, to put it softly, healthy signs in an advanced democracy. Similar political scene in case of a Third World country would have been termed by mainstream media and democracy watchdogs, by the so-called civil society as crumbling down of legislative process, symptom of a serious disease.

The symptom appears grave if the incidents are put on the backdrop of widening inequality, increasing poverty, and reckless gambling by significant part of capital. These may show first signs of rising tide of protest.

-------------------------

This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 21^th  February, 2011

The World At Risk

The world is at risk. “The world is in no position to face major, new shocks. The financial crisis has reduced global economic resilience,” and is increasing geopolitical tension and social concerns. “[G]governments and societies are less able than ever to cope with global challenges.” (Global Risks 2011, January 2011, World Economic Forum)

The mainstream is now admitting the reality its heart and head – capital – has created. The report mentions 37 selected global risks perceived by members of the Forum’s Global Agenda Councils and supported by a survey of 580 leaders and decision-makers around the world. It has found the “21st century paradox: as the world grows together, it is also growing apart.” The benefits of globalization, it said, are “unevenly spread – a minority is seen to have harvested a disproportionate amount of the fruits.” The so-called globalization worship, a vogue among a section of enlightened minds only a few years back, is now finding neither a deity nor alms. A brilliant crude propaganda only reigns there in the temple of capitalist globalization. Those minds cannot dare to ignore sermon from the Forum.

Interconnected two risks, the report said, are especially significant: economic disparity and global governance failures. These two influence other global risks. Economic disparity within countries is growing. Politically, there are signs of resurgent nationalism and populism as well as social fragmentation.

“Resurgent nationalism”, in mainstreamspeak, is asserting self interest by a number of countries in sectors of economy, especially in the area of hydrocarbon while “populism” is immediate essential steps by a number of countries for widening bare minimum living space of the people especially the wretched. The world capital is in trouble with these two.

The report expressed concern with the increasing economic disparity within advanced capitalist countries and emerging economies. Real income growth of the top income quintiles of the populations in Finland, Sweden, the UK, Germany, Italy, and the USA was twice as large as that of the bottom quintiles between the mid-1980s to mid-2000s. Similar facts have been cited in a number of ILO reports.

Economic disparity, according to the Global Risks Survey, is one of the most important risks in the coming decade. It is “tightly interconnected with corruption, demographic challenges, fragile states, global imbalances and asset-price collapse” and is influenced by global governance failures. It influences chronic and infectious diseases, illicit trade, migration, food insecurity, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The report does not tell that the present global governance and its failure are the products of the present world order, in essence the dominating capital.

In the present world, the report said, economic risks include macroeconomic imbalances and currency volatility, fiscal crises and asset price collapse, tension between the increasing wealth and influence of emerging economies and high levels of debt in advanced capitalist countries. The “macroeconomic imbalances nexus” is within countries and between countries. Internal imbalances are produced by factors that include government policies and private sector behavior. Global governance and regulatory failures, corruption and economic disparity are interconnected. These “create and exacerbate systemic global risks”, said the report.

Failure in global governance is the output of dominating capital’s incapacity while regulatory failure is that capital’s dominating power to unchain itself. Economic disparity is its product of inherent incapacity while corruption is its part of business.

The report’s “illegal economy” nexus examines risks that include state fragility, illicit trade, organized crime and corruption. It said: “A networked world, governance failures and economic disparity” boost illegal activities. In 2009, the value of illicit trade around the globe was estimated at US $1.3 trillion. These risks create high costs for legitimate economic activities while weaken states, threaten development opportunities, undermining the rule of law and keep countries trapped in cycles of poverty and instability.

Capital weakens states to smoothen its journey to the palace of maximizing profit although it needs state. An irreconcilable contradiction it generates. It engages with “illegal economy”, the economy that competes with, and hurts its “real” economy. A limitation it lives within. Illegal economy is its one of the modes to overflow its bags with profit. It circumvents legality while it creates legality to secure its appropriation and loot. It fights crime to secure its property created through crime while it invests in organized crime. A world dominated by jokers and hypocrites.

Illicit trades, now 7-10% of the global economy, corruption and organized crime, the report said, are fuelled by economic disparity. Advanced and emerging economies are experiencing these. Incomes from these “reinforce the power of the privileged” and increase inequalities within and between countries. These increase the costs of doing legitimate business.

Citing unsustainable pressures on resources the report said: Economic disparities undermine long-term sustainability. Demand for water, food and energy is expected to rise by 30-50% in the next two decades. “Shortages could cause social and political instability, geopolitical conflict and irreparable environmental damage.”

But, capital will stick to its economy that gulps water, that devours soil, that breathes in energy, that speculates with food, and that produces hunger. That is the way for its ever-expansion, and it cannot live without expanding all the time. It will die if its expansion ceases.

The report mentioned “five risks to watch”: Cyber-security issues (cyber theft, all-out cyber warfare, etc.), demographic challenges creating fiscal pressures in advanced capitalist economies and severe risks to social stability in emerging economies, resource security causing extreme volatility and sustained increases in energy and commodity prices, retrenchment from globalization, and weapons of mass destruction and the possibility of nuclear proliferation.

While it owns WMD it asks others to turn Lord Buddha, to follow the ahimsa mantra. That is, me the lord you the subject. A section of its subjects that it created to fight a foe turn naughty and make it harassed.

The report said: The US National Intelligence Council and the EU’s Institute for Security Studies recently concluded that “current governance frameworks will be unable to keep pace with looming global challenges unless extensive reforms are implemented. Increasingly, emerging economies feel that unfairly they have insufficient influence in international institutions… Yet there is uncertainty over the ability and willingness of rising powers to shoulder a greater share of global responsibilities, as well as reluctance on the part of established powers to recognize the limits of their own power.” The conclusion reflects contradiction between competing capitals that carry all the seeds to turn hostile, and hostilities between capitals turn hot engagements at times.

Crises the present world order has generated are pushing the entire world into uncertain and unsafe future. Our posterity will step in a volatile and unsafe world if the present world order is not changed. The mainstream’s analysis cannot ignore the reality.
--------------------------
This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 19^th January, 2011

Manufactured Democracy: Seeds Of Crisis

The questions manufactured democracy doesn’t answer signify only a few of the fundamental questions related to a ruling system. Political processes, arrangements, and institutions are not static till their demise. These are not also contradiction-neutral.

Factors within and around these processes, arrangements, etc. act and react in a complex way. This lively character comes up because of its relationship with society and mode of production, and the relationship is relative, and antagonistic to some and non-antagonistic to others. The reason behind is: these are not production relation-neutral. Rather, the class content of these determines their actions, responses, etc. Failures to articulate the class content make these obsolete. These are rejected, not always instantly, but through relatively long process, and sometimes within a very short span of time, at historical moments and junctures, by the emerging social forces, are sent to the archives, and replaced by new ones with the domination of emerged social political force. The democracy now being handed over in the periphery as commodity contains no property that can act according to the needs of the people; rather, it has been designed to act according to the desire of the centre of the world system. This contradiction carries the seeds of crisis of the system.

Political systems claiming to serve majority are incompatible with inequality. Utility of the system gets lost when it fails to redress inequality. It is now difficult to find a single relevant literature of the mainstream that does not tell about inequality, does not warn about increasing inequality. Superstructure based on appropriation breeds inequality. The present global phenomenon of rapidly increasingly inequality is the product of, in very general term, the present world system.

More than a decade ago Brown and others found: “Worldwide, the richest fifth of the population now receives 60 times the income of the poorest fifth, up from 30 times in 1960. In the UK, the ratio between the top and bottom 20 percent went from 4:1 in 1977 to 7:1 in 1991. In the US, it went from 4:1 in 1970 to 13:1 in 1993” (State of the World 1997). Citing Edward N Wolff (“Changes in Household Wealth in the 1980s and 1990s in the U S” May, 2004) and New York Times (March 1, 2007) John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff write: “The gap between the top and the bottom of society in financial wealth and income has now reached astronomical proportions. In the United States in 2001 the top 1 percent holders of financial wealth … owned more than four times as much as the bottom 80 percent of the population. The nation’s richest 1 percent of the population holds $1.9 trillion in stocks, about equal to that of the other 99 percent. The income gap in the United States has widened so much in recent decades that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben S Bernanke … stated ‘the share of after-tax income garnered by the households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution increased from 8 percent in 1979 to 14 percent in 2004.’ In September 2006 the richest 60 Americans owned an estimated $630 billion worth of wealth, up almost 10 percent from the year before.”

What has happened in the “age of globalization” in the peripheral societies dominated by plunderocracy and lumpenocracy and dictated by MNCs and donors? Reports by the World Bank, UNDP, and ILO carry the evidence: increasing inequality and dispossession. Many of these societies are controlled by lumpens and coteries isolated from production process and many of these societies do not hesitate for a single moment to show the face of despotism by taking down the mask of petty democracy. In many of these societies workers have been demobilized, unions have been usurped by lumpens, criminalization has overwhelmed political institutions, media is controlled by local variety of mafia, and donors have purchased the dominant section of the academia. In many of these societies NGOs are increasingly filling in vacuums created by weaknesses of political parties and by lack of political forces that signify the weakness of social classes. But, it is only the social classes that can develop political process, institutions, etc.

The political scenario in many of the advanced capitalist countries is not hopeful: election dispute and reaching to its apex through the counting of type of perforated holes on the ballot paper, failings of the political institutions in resolving contradictions within the dominant class, exposure of responsible operative by top political leadership in retaliation of dissenting view, lies by top political leadership, and failure of the famous “check and balance” mechanism to identify manipulation before a blunder is committed, and blame game are a few of the signs of decay and of sharpening of unresolved contradictions in the body-politic. Signs of Nazism and racism, and signs of curtailing democratic rights are getting bolder on the political canvas in many advanced capitalist societies. These are the signs of decadence of democracy the dominant classes have established and nourished over centuries and these tell the historical limitations of the political system the world order has built up.

These signify nothing but crisis that, on the contrary, symbolize signals for change.

[This is a modified version of a part of a chapter from The Age of Crisis, Dhaka, 2009.]

 --------------------------

This article was published at countercurrents.org , on February 3, 2011

Unrequited Questions In Manufactured “Democracy”

Grand goal of manufactured “democracy” does not attend to one fundamental aspect of democracy: the economic question. It efficiently deceives people by silver-tongued slogans while ignores the essential part of democracy-equation: people’s interest and role in economy.

Political system of any age in any society develops from the economic base the society stands on at that time. Dominating political system is a necessity of dominating classes, even of dominating segments. Political organizations, organs, forms, etc. take shape on the basis of the needs and levels of the classes/ segments. These can not survive if they fail to serve the purposes of the classes/segments they belong to and these cannot outlive once the needs are fulfilled. Democracy thus developed.

Slave owners had full democracy in their society and slaves could not dream of having the rights enshrined in the “democratic charters” of those societies without making revolt against the system and succeeding. It was the political responsibility and duty of slave owners to develop and safeguard the political system that could serve their interests, not of slaves. Slaves’ duty was not the same. Even they were incapable to develop or to take part in developing the system that could serve the interest of slave owners. Those were the historic limitations of both the classes standing opposed to each other and the limitations could not be crossed by none of the classes because of the relations the owners had with property. So, the political system of slave owners failed to accommodate political, economic, etc. aspirations and demands of slaves. Whatever was “given” to slaves was for the sake of ensuring the safety of slave owners’ property, was under pressure from slaves, at some historic moments signifying cracks in the stone walls of the system and contradictions within the slave owning class. It was even not possible for the slave owning class to design a political system that could articulate the interests of the dominating class in a future feudal society or a system that could open door for slaves to become masters of the political system. All other societies and all other classes in all other societies have/had the same limitations imposed by the relations to property. Democracy follows the same flight without turning unfaithful to its masters, the dominating classes. That is because of economy, the economy controlled by dominating classes, as “the economic side … is more fundamental in history than the political” and as “all political power is originally based on an economic and social function…” (Engels, Anti-Duhring).

Then, who, to be specific, which class shall own, control and dictate the democratic mechanism, with its economic and political content, being build under the aegis of the donors and banks? Will it be possible to accommodate and safeguard all the competing, contending, and conflicting interests of the opposing classes in the mechanism? But, “no democracy in the world can eliminate class struggle and the omnipotence of money” (Lenin, collected works, vol.18). How shall the antagonistic contradictions generated by antagonistic classes be resolved in the political machine owned by a class that strives by all means, including political arrangements, deceptive sweet words, and violence to keep its economic interests? In that case, shall not the political edifice the donors are building breakdown? Where shall the political machine, the machine to apply force, stand when workers’ aspirations will stand opposed to the greed of factory owners, debtors’ to creditors, people’s aspiration to control their resources to the attempts by MNC and donors to exploit the resources? Shall the legislative body debate all the secret agreements? Will the judiciary act against the propertied class when the interests of the class will stand against the interest of the people? Whom shall education, the ideological subservient part of the political machine, serve? Should anyone imagine of a democracy void of ideology? And, ideology is not free from class. Then, what ideology shall the democracy designed in the centre of the world system carry? How shall the dialectical relation between oppression of majority by minority and aspiration of majority for liberation from the clutches of profit be resolved in the democracy machine being constructed? With these unanswered questions the democracy building project carries a hopeless future.

The questions, however, are not undecided. Rather, these have been decided long ago: serve the dominant interests, local, within state boundary, and globally. Abstractly posing the question of democracy is the way the ruling interests follow: “An abstract or formal posing of the problem of equality in general and national equality in particular is in the very nature of bourgeois democracy” (Lenin, CW, vol.31).

If Lenin is cast aside as he challenges status quo and asks to demolish it Jefferson can be heard: “Equal and exact justice to all men …” (First Inaugural Address, 1801). Although the “equal and exact justice to all men” ultimately turns equal justice to the dominant section of the democracy donors are trying to impose is not even that bourgeois democracy, the democracy dreamed by Jefferson, by any standard. In essence, it is a democracy of the donors’ and their compradors’ interests; even, in most cases, it turns worse than that as the classes/segments upon whom the job to operate the political arrangement under the guise of democracy is entrusted are, because of historic reasons, and because of the nature of the economic interests they are entangled with, worse than the bourgeois class, and as segment, they are incapable and immature.

Their immaturity sometimes goes to that extent where they fail to identify their own interests, and to act according to their interests, where their infighting endangers their own class/segment, where they cover their hands with blood of their class/segment brothers, where they expose the funny face of their ruling machine and perform a partial job of making the machine void of credibility and acceptability. On this class/segment base “democracy” machine being built up can not withstand the shocks and pulls of the following historical processes.

Manufactured “democracy” thus goes to its sterile possibility and fulfils its farce.

[This is a modified version of a part of a chapter from The Age of Crisis, 2009]

----------------

This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 1^th February, 2011