Maravi

The history of conquest won’t be repeated

The history of conquest won’t be repeated
By Editor
Sunday March 04, 2007 [02:00]

THE highest level of political thought was reached when some men became aware that no people and no man had the right to exploit others, and that the fruits of the efforts and intelligence of each human being should reach all others; that man really had no need to be a wolf, but could be a brother to man. And history, or rather experience, has taught us the laws that govern the development of human society and the paths that lead to the final triumph of our species over all forms of slavery, exploitation, discrimination and injustice among men.

We greet all those who, like British High Commissioner to Zambia Alistair Harrison, have arrived at these stimulating convictions and we also salute those who, although they do not share these ideas, are honest democrats and progressives, because consistently practised political honesty is a road that leads man’s mind and will to fairness and justice. For if someone once said that all roads led to Rome, today it can be stated that all roads of progressive thinking lead to a more just, fair and humane world.

It is not possible for us to create a more fair, just and humane world with inequalities, double standards and exploitative relations that dominate our economic dealings with each other. The economic injustices that exist in the world today are not the product of oversight nor are they unconscious, but rather they are deliberate and conscious. Those who lead the industrial countries know very well the consequences of their protectionist policies on our poor countries. They have simply allowed imperialist interest to blind them from our reality. And as a result of this, they have created a series of problems, in a word, they have created veritable chaos in the world.

And what we should not forget is that the neo-liberal policies which they are imposing on us and on the world are not simply an economic doctrine, or simply a political project that seeks to perpetuate the present economic order. They do not only seek to perpetuate it but to make it even more cruel and unfair and to so order the world that it serves the interests of the United States and other developed or industrialised countries.

Neo-liberalism is the ideology of imperialism in its face of world hegemony - it seeks to impose its ideas on other countries. Nevertheless, they themselves do not apply those ideas: they tell us that we shouldn’t have budgetary deficits, yet their own budgetary deficits are in some cases in hundreds of billions of dollars, which makes a country like the United States a machine sucking in hard currency from all over the world. They say we shouldn’t have any trade deficits, yet some of them have the largest trade deficits in the world. They say protectionist policies should be eliminated, yet some of them have more than anybody else. They say there shouldn’t be any subsidy for industry and agriculture, yet some of them are the first to subsidise their industry and agriculture. And they say there shouldn’t be any restrictions on free trade, yet some of them use free trade conditions to serve their own ends.

And they have turned these policies into conditionalities of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These are some of the things the IMF and the World Bank demand of us when we ask for their financial assistance. What do these policies of theirs amount to? It’s as if they held a soccer match - to speak of a well-known sport - between the world champions and a kindergarten team, with the same rules applying to both. They tell the kindergarten team that, to score, they have to get the ball to the other goal, 50 metres down the field from the centre line. And they tell the world champions the same thing: to score, they have to get the ball to the other goal, 50 metres down the field from the centre line. It would be fair to say that, if the kindergarten team got the ball 20 centimetres down the field, that would be equivalent to a goal, while the world champions would have to get it 50 metres down the field to score - that is, it would be more fair if they played with different rules. In this case, they are organising things with exactly the same rules applying to everybody: free trade and no protection for national industry.

That is, they say, “Apply all the economic measures that not even we apply consistently; clear away all the obstacles and limitations so you can become developed and receive capital.” They then plunder our countries with high interest rates and the profits they make on investments; with the flight of capital; with unequal terms of trade, buying their raw materials cheap and selling us their products at high prices; and through competition in which they have all the advantages through imposing their technology. The forms of plunder are multiplied to the extent to which they impose these formulas and our governments accept them.

The negotiating conditions are unequal, too. The powerful industrialised countries, have the powerful international economic institutions at their service discussing matters with countries plagued with problems and difficulties, countries that have already been undermined and weakened. Those are the absolute waste conditions for negotiating; the negotiating isn’t done in conditions of equality.

These are the policies that the industrialised countries are imposing on us. What kind of a future will our people have? It would be unbearable. Time will show that it is unbearable and will destroy the current prestige of those industrialised countries and neo-liberal ideas; countries with so many people, hundreds of millions of people cannot resign themselves to that fate. The lives of so many human beings cannot be sacrificed, ignored or exploited in that way. We see this wherever we go and whenever we talk to our brothers and sisters from this poor part of the world. It really breaks one’s heart to hear what they say about what is going on in the shanty compounds or the slums; what’s happening to the children, the women and the unemployed; what’s happening with education; the growing number of children who are homeless and have to try to survive in the streets; and what’s happening with the health situation in all those countries, that now have AIDS and other diseases from the developed countries, in addition to diseases such as cholera, malaria that the developed countries don’t have but which have scourged our countries in recent years.

Faced with that situation, our people are becoming truly desperate. We are talking not about political leaders but about professionals, intellectuals, writers, scientists, doctors, teachers and engineers. We have attended many meetings in which those people have spoken - meetings of doctors, teachers, mothers and women in general - and the situation they describe now is much more terrible, more desperate and hopeless, than the one they described 16 years ago when we started publishing our newspaper.

We can see this. It’s only a matter of time because this policy is creating an enormous time bomb in our poor world. Are we going to wait for it to explode before we start thinking about these problems? There is no future for us, and we think the politicians and all progressive and democrats in our poor world have a basic duty to pay it all the attention it requires, or we will all become slaves. The history of the discovery and conquest will be repeated. Perhaps 500 years from now, people will be recalling the moment when that neo-liberal policy was imposed.

We don’t think that will happen. So many hundreds of millions of people can’t be exterminated like flies - they can’t be killed or annihilated. The history of the discovery and the conquest won’t be repeated, with the hundreds of millions of us who are the new citizens of our poor world being ‘discovered’, conquered, taught and educated. And of course, it can’t be repeated with progressive and honest men like High Commissioner Harrison on our side and speaking for us.

Labels: EDITORIAL, GLOBALISATION, IMF, NEOLIBERALISM, World Bank

posted by MrK @ 4:14 AM