By Marcelo Colussi: The recent popular revolts in various countries of the world could lead us to believe that the current neoliberal models are in crisis, are being defeated.
Recent popular revolts in various countries of the world (Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, France, Haiti, Honduras, Chile, Ecuador) could lead to believe that the current neoliberal models are in crisis, are being defeated. In reality, rather than being in crisis, they are producing immeasurable ravages in populations, but for those who implement them and benefit from them, they are not in any crisis. On the contrary, they are extremely healthy.
There is no doubt that the people who suffer from these policies are already fed up, hungry, impoverished as never before, fed up with the deceptions of politicians, lacking an alternative project. They are desperate, obviously, which makes them go out to protest viscerally. But that energy, that tremendous discontent, in addition to getting excited and making us believe that things are changing - we are waiting for that change anxiously - does not find the right channels to transform reality. The cacerolazos face real bullets, and without a revolutionary leadership with a clear project, there can be no revolution. There may be important changes from government houses with social content plans, such as those promoted by the MAS in Bolivia, or the PT in Brazil. But by way of formal democracies, transformations cannot be consolidated. With those two examples we can see how things end. But yes, as there is a lot of discomfort in people, there is definitely boiling, there are protests, there are mobilizations.
As Susana Merino says: “The planet has been transformed into a huge boiler where a stew is cooked for a few and in which, without order or proportion, the most unusual and unexpected ingredients created by human beings are mixed: currencies and others very various financial derivatives such as SWAPS, forward agreements (OTCs) (“over counter operations”), CDS (Credit Default Swaps, or credit default swaps), CFDs, futures contracts, state bonds, funds of investment and options, all qualified as weapons of mass destruction, instruments in sum purely speculative and in permanent boiling that according to the nobel prize of economy Maurice Allais have turned the world into a “huge casino” destined to support the “pleonexia”, as the Greeks called the insatiable appetite for riches that Plato described as a true "moral disease", generating a stew in permanent boiling of the service io of a very small nucleus of human beings. ”
To know where we stand and what proceeds accordingly, it is important not to lose sight of the real situation. "Concrete analysis of concrete reality," it could be said. That is, a very thorough analysis of how things are, how the world is going, and what can be done - or what should be done - to try to change its course.
For now, the neo-liberal globalization that has been imposed in recent decades, is definitely very much alive, it has not died. "The dead that you kill enjoy good health." The financial megacapitals that handle much of the world (excluding China and Russia, and some other countries that do not fall under its aegis: Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya when they tried) are increasingly robust. The monstrous, infamous and vile coup d'etat in Bolivia (the world's leading source of lithium, large iron, zinc, natural gas reserves, after which all those capitals go) proves it in a palmar way.
Let us be rational in the analysis and do not let ourselves be won by spontaneous passion: the protests that took place in much of the world were important rebellions that mark the road, no doubt, but that failed to move the foundations of the world capitalist structure. No president was removed from office (Evo Morales did), and the global megacapitals did not lose a penny (and now they will fall like vultures over the mineral reserves of the Plurinational State of Bolivia).
“Redistributive effects and increasing social inequality have in fact been such a persistent feature of neoliberalization"
What are those megacapitals that establish the neoliberal plans from which almost nothing can escape? They are the true owners of the planet, its natural resources and its populations. The world of the free market (the "free world" was called during the Cold War, as opposed to the "kingdom of darkness of socialist hell") moves around the dollar. Iraq, with Saddam Hussein in the lead, and Mohamed Khadafi's Libya (at the time, a country with the lowest poverty rate in all of Africa) tried to get out of the dollar sphere by selling its oil in another currency, and there are the results : dead they, their invaded countries and their societies in crisis.
The dollar is set by the so-called "Central Bank" of the United States, which is the country where that currency is officially printed. But in reality, that Central Bank is something else; It is called the Federal Reserve System (in English: Federal Reserve System, also known as the Federal Reserve or, more commonly, as the FED), although ... it is neither a reserve nor entirely federal. It is not a Reserve, because by law it does not hold any funds in reserve, and it is not strictly Federal, because it is a public-private bank, with the participation of the large private corporate bank.
The Fed is the one who sets the monetary policy of the United States and, by extension, of the world, issuing dollars to the mansalva, with the support, finally, of the armed forces (those of the United States and those of NATO).
The megacapitals that set the march of the world, that is to say: the global financial sphere, today has a terrifying, immeasurable power. While the world mass of goods has quadrupled in these last 30 years, the monetary mass has multiplied by 40. That is, banks, megabanks with world power, have excessive control of the planet. For several decades productive capitalism was leading to capitalism based increasingly on financial speculation. The world of speculative money was displacing industry in its development, just as the eighteenth-century industry displaced agricultural production - the main source of the feudal mode of production - as dominant in the socio-political scene.
Today these financial capitals have a defining preponderance, they mark the planetary course, they define the architecture of the global system. They are transnational, they move at vertigo speeds, they invest in what gives profits, they have no feelings or solidarity spirit (could capitalism have it?). They manage increasingly growing sectors of the world, investing many times in the productive apparatus of factual goods - industry, services, commerce - integrally controlling the capitalist circuits (raw materials, processing, distribution, marketing), being the one who contributes the large sums of money necessary to generate the production as a whole.
NATO is the world military instance (of the United States and Western Europe) that sustains the entire petrodollar system, forcing the various countries to trade in that currency under military threat. Those who leave that system are declared members of the "Axis of evil" (and eventually destroyed). It is for this reason that more than three million American soldiers are stationed in almost 1,500 military bases run by Washington across the globe, in 120 countries. For what? To take care of those megacapitals and the ostentatious privileges of their owners!
These immeasurable capitals have a name and surname: they are the powerful economic groups that manage world finances, and through their banks, with the so-called investment funds, they manage countless multinational companies dedicated to all areas: energy, armaments, food, communications, Transportation, chemical industry. Among the most noted are Goldman Sachs, Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Loeb Kuhn, Lehman, Du Pont, Rothschild, Warburg, Lazard, Israel Moses Seifs.
Managing the international finances of the capitalist world (now facing the great Chinese capitals), they have as operational agencies the technical arms of Bretton Woods: the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The dollar tries to continue sending, and the neoliberal policies that have been applied since the 70/80 of the last century, remain unmoved, beyond the protests we currently see. “Economic empires are interested in promoting government indebtedness. The larger the debt, the more expensive the interest. But they can also require the president on duty tax privileges, service monopolies, works contracts, etc. If this government does not accept, they will cause their downfall, promoting riots and strikes that, by impoverishing the nation, forces them to give up their demands ”, as the American historian Carroll Quigley perfectly said. They move with very finely studied steps, they know what they are doing and where they want to go and, for now, they seem to have almost the entire planet under control.
Neoliberalism, unfortunately, is not defeated, it is not out. The villages are decimated, no doubt; the capitals no. Although we fervently support every popular uprising, we cannot say that these policies are defeated, nor in the process of being so quickly. The natural resources of the world continue to be looted by that voracious capitalism, and when you try to defend them with a nationalist spirit: coup d'etat, like the one that has just happened in Bolivia, or unbearable drowning, as in Venezuela. With China and Russia they do not get involved because the military power of these powers prevents them. But you don't want to win.
When in 1963 the president of the United States John Kennedy, who was not precisely a socialist, tried to transform the Fed with a famous presidential decree (Executive order number 11110), avoiding that it was that bank who issued the dollars, to do so the central government (thus saving the interests that Washington must pay to that private bank when contracting credits), shortly after he was killed. And there was still no formally what we now call neoliberalism.
With all that said, one does not want to downplay the popular protests that have been ignited recently. On the contrary, that is the way: the popular insurgency, the uprising of the peoples. But without an organized project and accurate driving, the cacerolazos are not passed, the policies outlined are not moved. Neoliberalism, badly for us, is too firmly rooted. But the fight continues.
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