Poverty, consumerism and anti-imperialismby toni solo
Several responses are standard to criticism of ideologically bankrupt and morally schizophrenic initiatives like the
UK's Make Poverty History campaign. One is to rail at the impudence of calling into question the campaign organizers
sincerity and good intentions. Another is to pout, "well, what alternative do YOU offer...?" Or, more disingeuously,
critics will be accused of sneering at the genuine heartfelt desire among the millions of people who contribute
hard-earned money to projects and programmes meant to alleviate world poverty's all-too-numerous symptoms.
At the global elite's Davos summit in the last few days, leading representatives of corporate capitalism have made
superficially impressive commitments to fund health and other programmes in less developed countries. A phrase that
comes to mind is one used in Latin America in work with women in abusive relationships - no mas confites en el infierno,
no more chocolates in hell. When people ask why so many tens of millions of people lack decent health care and
education, one answer is clear. For over two decades the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the governments
that control those institutions have consistently told weak national governments in less developed countries to reduce
public social spending.
Blind faith-based economic policies of privatization of state resources, reduction in public spending and deregulation
in general have created a laissez-faire hell for the huge impoverished global majority. Occasionally, as Bill Gates did
last week with his declared initiative against TB, corporate multi-millionaires offer to use some of their wealth to
alleviate some of the suffering. But had their corporations been subject to equitable taxation and regulation and the
resulting revenues been applied to social spending on health and education, much untold suffering might have been
avoided in the first place.
One might also note that individual corporate initiatives backed by warmongers like George Bush, Tony Blair or Gordon
Brown can be regarded legitimately as public relations stunts that do nothing to change the fundamental causes of
poverty. Iraq has been plunged into inconceivable suffering and deprivation as a result of a criminally aggressive war.
The same people who are responsible for that unconscionable crime suggest they are concerned about global poverty. No
amount of sophisticated public relations and commonplace mainstream media collusion can cover up that grotesque
contradiction and the moral fraud it ultimately represents.
In any case, the United Nations, in its efforts to create consensus around the Right to Development, has already worked
out a legitimate framework for a sustainable and feasible response to global problems of poverty and social justice.
That initiative has consistently been thwarted by the United States and many of its allies. Rich countries resist moves
to create an international structure obliging them to promote equitable development based on a legally binding framework
for the redistribution of wealth. They detest the rights-based philosophy of such structures and their linkage between
the principle of self-determination and the obligation to cooperate for global development.
It is reasonable to reckon such a structure might finally lead towards an end to global poverty. The chances of
corporate capitalist policies achieving that objective are nil. Self-evidently, since equitable redistribution of wealth
is anathema to the proponents of those policies. Corporate capitalism is based on the principle of laissez-faire with
all that implies. The evidence of its utter failure as a framework for rational and equitable human development is
abundantly available around the world.
So when a huge public relations based campaign like Make Poverty History comes along and one sees that it is organized
by people wholly committed to collaborating with the structures of aggressive international corporate capitalism and
with leading individuals who promote that system, scepticism is a prerequisite. Like the large aid and development NGOs
and the humanitarian relief organizations who support it, the Make Poverty History campaign channels genuine longing on
the part of ordinary people for a better world into activities that seek to legtimize a fundamentally illegitimate
status quo.
Make Poverty History is a massive humanitarian effort. But its campaigners resist facing contradictions thrown up by
efforts in their consumer capitalist societies to address economic injustice caused by the imperialist policies of their
countries' governments. Essentially, they seek to provide the world's poor majority with neo-colonial confites en el
infierno, sweeties in hell, unsustainable palliatives that leave the status quo unchanged.
An obvious example of this is that such campaigns resolutely avoid the matter of solidarity with legitimate resistance
movements in occupìed countries like Iraq, Palestine or Haiti. But the fundamental demand in those countries is the very
equity and justice for impoverished and oppressed peoples that Make Poverty History campaigners say is their goal. Those
campaigners want the more awkward and embarrassing politics to go away while they engage in a technical focus on trade,
aid and debt and rake in the funding. But where did those problems come from if not as a result of unjust imperialist
domination and oppression?
To effect real change, the widespread goodwill apparent among so many people at grass roots in the world's rich
countries would be better channelled into direct practical solidarity. Donating small change to an intermediary class of
functionaries in development and aid NGOs changes nothing. Countries in Central America for example have received
billions of dollars of governmental and non-governmental aid over the last twenty years. Apart from Costa Rica, they all
still rank dozens of places below Cuba in the UN Human Development Index while Cuba has suffered forty five years of
criminal economic blockade.
The experience of a country like Nicaragua through its revolution and afterwards, demonstrates that surprisingly large
numbers of people at grass roots are prepared to act in really practical solidarity. Through the 1980s right up to the
present, thousands of people have changed their own lives, made contact at grass roots and cut out the parasitic
development managerial class represented by functionaries in the aid and development NGOs. That move makes it possible
to nurture direct relationships with people in less developed countries who are trying to build a better world for
themselves and the rest of us
If anything is going to change the current racist imperialist status quo it is a combination of international grass
roots solidarity and global normative structures obliging equitable redistribution of the world's resources. For the
moment, as the history of the UN Right to Development shows, powerful laissez-faire capitalist gangsters are in a
position to obstruct agreement on such policies. Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, Pascal Lamy at the World Trade
Organization and Rodrigo Rato at the International Monetary Fund are the current figureheads for that ideologically
driven class. But in some countries those ideologues are being passed by and rendered irrelevant.
In Latin America, for example, the next few years will see a decisive competition between global corporate capitalism
and continuing efforts towards economic justice by the peoples and governments of Cuba, Venezuela and perhaps Bolivia
and other countries, inspired by socialism. In that competition grass roots solidarity between peoples, public policies
committed to equitable redistribution of resources and regulation of corporate big business will be central motifs. In
comparison with the systematic determination of those peoples and governments to address their problems of poverty and
social justice, rich country consumerist humanitarian initiatives that ignore imperialist aggression, like the UK Make
Poverty History campaign, look self-serving and blinkered.
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toni solo is an activist based in Central America - contact via www.tonisolo.net