(Neoliberalism as a jigsaw puzzle: the useless world unity that fragments and destroys nations.)
June 20, 1997
Piece 1: The concentration of wealth and the distribution of poverty
Piece 2: The globalization of exploitation
Piece 3: Migration, the wandering nightmare
Piece 4: Financial globalization and the globalization of corruption and crime
Piece 5: The legitimate violence of an illegitimate power?
Piece 6: Megapolitics and the dwarves
Piece 7: The pockets of resistance
War is a matter of vital importance for the State, it is the province of life and of death, the path that leads to survival or annihilation. It is essential to study it in depth.
The Art of War. Sun Tzu.
Modern globalization, neoliberalism as a world system, must be understood as a new war of conquest of territories.
The end of World War III or the “Cold War” does not mean that the world has overcome bipolarity and is stable under the hegemony of the winner. At the end of this war there was, without a doubt, a loser (the socialist camp), but it is difficult to say who was the winner. Western Europe? USA? Japan? All of them? The fact is that the defeat of the “evil empire” (Reagan and Thatcher said) meant the opening of new markets without a new owner. It was necessary, therefore, to fight to take possession of them, to conquer them.
Not only that, the end of the “Cold War” brought with it a new framework of international relations in which the new fight for these new markets and territories produced a new world war, World War IV. This forced, as in all wars, a redefinition of Nation-States. And beyond the redefinition of Nation-States, the world order returned to the old times of the conquests of America, Africa and Oceania. This strange modernity that advances backwards, the twilight of the 20th century has more similarities with its brutal predecessor centuries than with the placid and rational future of some science fiction novels. In the Post-Cold War world, vast territories, wealth and, above all, qualified labor force, awaited a new master…
But one is the owner of the world, and there are several aspiring to be so. And to achieve this, another war breaks out, but now between those who called themselves the “empire of good.”
If World War III was between capitalism and socialism (led by the United States and the USSR respectively), with alternate scenarios and different degrees of intensity; World War IV is now taking place between the great financial centers, with total scenarios and with an acute and constant intensity.
From the end of World War II until 1992, 149 wars have been fought around the world. The result, 23 million dead, leaves no doubt about the intensity of this World War III. (UNICEF data).
From the catacombs of international espionage to the outer space of the so-called Strategic Defense Initiative (the “Star Wars” of the cowboy Ronald Reagan); from the beaches of Playa Girón, in Cuba, to the Mekong Delta, in Vietnam; from the unbridled nuclear arms race to the savage coups d’état in the painful Latin America; from the ominous maneuvers of the armies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the CIA agents in the Bolivia of Che Guevara’s assassination; the badly-named “Cold War” reached high temperatures that, despite the continuous change of scenario and the incessant up-and-down of the nuclear crisis (or precisely because of this), ended up melting the socialist camp as a world system, and diluted as a social alternative.
World War III showed the benefits of “total war” (everywhere and in all forms) for the victor: capitalism. But the post-war scenario was, in fact, outlined as a new world theater of operations: large extensions of “no man’s land” (due to the political, economic and social deprivation of Eastern Europe and the USSR), expanding powers (United States, Western Europe and Japan), global economic crisis, and a new technological revolution: computing. “In the same way that the industrial revolution had allowed the replacement of the muscle by the machine, the current information revolution aims to replace the brain (at least an increasingly important number of its functions) by the computer. This ‘general cerebralization’ of the means of production (in industry as well as in services) is accelerated by the explosion of new research in telecommunications and by the proliferation of cyberworlds.” (Ignacio Ramonet. “La planété des désordres” in “Géopolitique du Chaos.” Maniére de Voir 3. Le Monde Diplomatique (LMD). April 1997.)
The supreme king of capital, the financier, then began to develop his war strategy on the new world and on what was left standing of the old. Hand in hand with the technological revolution that put the entire world, through a computer, on their desks and at their discretion, the financial markets imposed their laws and precepts on the entire planet. The “globalization” of the new war is nothing more than the globalization of the logic of the financial markets. From guiding the economy, the Nation-States (and their rulers) became governed, rather remotely controlled, by the foundation of financial power: free commercial exchange. And not only that, the logic of the market took advantage of the “porosity” that, throughout the social spectrum of the world, caused the development of telecommunications, and penetrated and appropriated all aspects of social activity. Finally a totally total world war!
One of the first casualties of this new war is the national market. Like a bullet fired into an armored room, the war started by neoliberalism bounces from one side to the other and wounds whoever fired it. One of the fundamental bases of the power of the modern capitalist State, the national market, is liquidated by the cannon shot of the new era of the global financial economy. International capitalism claims some of its victims by expiring national capitalism and thinning public powers to the point of starvation. The blow has been so brutal and definitive that Nation-States do not have the necessary strength to oppose the action of international markets that transgresses the interests of citizens and governments.The careful and orderly showcase that was supposed to inherit the end of the “Cold War”, the “new world order”, is soon shattered by the neoliberal explosion. World capitalism mercilessly sacrifices that which gave it a future and a historical project: national capitalism. Companies and States collapse in minutes, but not because of the storms of proletarian revolutions, but because of the onslaught of financial hurricanes. The son (neoliberalism) devours the father (national capitalism), and in the process destroys all the discursive fallacies of capitalist ideology: in the new world order there is no democracy, no freedom, no equality, no fraternity.On the world stage, as a result of the end of the “Cold War”, only a new battlefield is perceived and on this, as on any battlefield, chaos reigns.
At the end of the “Cold War”, capitalism creates a new war horror: the neutron bomb. The “virtue” of this weapon is that it only destroys life and respects buildings. Entire cities (that is, their inhabitants) could now be destroyed without it being necessary to rebuild them (and pay for it). The arms industry congratulated itself, the “irrationality” of nuclear bombs was supplanted by the new “rationality” of the neutron bomb. But a new war “wonder” will be discovered at the same time as the birth of World War IV: the financial bomb.
For the new neoliberal bomb, unlike its atomic predecessor in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not only destroys the polis (the Nation in this case) and imposes death, terror and misery on those who inhabit it; or, unlike the neutron bomb, it does not only destroy “selectively.” Neoliberalism, in addition, reorganizes and reorders what it attacks and remakes it as a piece within the jigsaw puzzle of economic globalization. After its destructive effect, the result is not a pile of smoking ruins, or tens of thousands of inert lives, but a neighborhood that is added to one of the commercial megapolises of the new world hypermarket and a workforce rearranged in the new market of global work.
The European Union, one of the megapolises product of neoliberalism, is a result of the present IV World War. Here, economic globalization managed to erase the borders between rival states, enemies of each other for a long time, and forced them to converge and consider political union. From the Nation-States to the European federation, the economistic path of the neoliberal war in the so-called “old continent” will be full of destruction and ruins, one of them will be European civilization.
Megapolises are reproduced all over the planet. Integrated commercial zones are the land where they are built. This is the case in North America, where the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”; “TLCAN” in Spanish) between Canada, the United States and Mexico is nothing more than the prelude to the fulfillment of an old aspiration of American conquest: “America for Americans.” In South America, Mercosur is moving in the same direction between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. In North Africa, with the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) between Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania; In South Africa, in the Near East, in the Black Sea, in Asia Pacific, etc., financial bombs explode all over the planet and territories are reconquered.
Do megapolises replace nations? No, or not only. They also include them and reassign them functions, limits and possibilities. Entire countries become departments of the neoliberal mega-company. Neoliberalism thus operates the DESTRUCTION / DEPOPULATION on the one hand, and the RECONSTRUCTION / REORDERING on the other, of regions and nations to open new markets and modernize existing ones.
If nuclear bombs had a deterrent, intimidating and coercive nature in World War III, in World War IV the same is not true of financial hyperbombs. These weapons serve to attack territories (Nation-States), destroying the material bases of their national sovereignty (ethical, legal, political, cultural and historical obstacle against economic globalization) and producing qualitative depopulation in their territories. This depopulation consists of getting rid of all those who are useless for the new market economy (for example, the Indigenous people).
But, in addition, financial centers simultaneously operate a reconstruction of Nation-States and reorder them according to the new logic of the world market (developed economic models are imposed on weak or non-existent social relations).
World War IV in the rural terrain, for example, has this effect. Rural modernization, demanded by financial markets, tries to increase agricultural productivity, but what it achieves is destroying traditional social and economic relations. Result: mass exodus from the countryside to the cities. Yes, like in a war. Meanwhile, in urban areas the labor market is saturated and the unequal distribution of income is the “justice” that awaits those seeking better living conditions.
The Indigenous world is full of examples that illustrate this strategy: Ian Chambers, director of the Office for Central America of the ILO (of the United Nations), declared that the world’s Indigenous population, estimated at 300 million, lives in areas that have 60 % of the planet’s natural resources. So “the multiple conflicts over the use and destiny of their lands around the interests of governments and companies are not surprising. (…) The exploitation of natural resources (oil and mining) and tourism are the main industries that threaten Indigenous territories in America” (interview by Martha García in “La Jornada”. May 28, 1997). Behind the investment projects come pollution, prostitution and drugs. That is, destruction/depopulation and reconstruction/reorganization of the area complement each other.
In this new world war, modern politics as organizer of the Nation-State no longer exists. Now politics is just an economic organizer and politicians are modern business managers. The new owners of the world are not a government, they do not need to be. “National” governments are in charge of managing businesses in different regions of the world.
This is the “new world order”, the unification of the entire world into a single market. Nations are department stores with managers like governments, and the new regional, economic and political alliances are closer to the model of a modern commercial “mall” than to a political federation. The “unification” that neoliberalism produces is economic, it is the unification of markets to facilitate the circulation of money and goods. In the gigantic global hypermarket, goods circulate freely, not people.
Like any business initiative (and war), this economic globalization is accompanied by a general model of thought. However, among so many new things, the ideological model that accompanies neoliberalism in its conquest of the planet is very old and moldy. The “American way of life” that accompanied North American troops in Europe during World War II, in Vietnam in the 60’s, and, more recently, in the Persian Gulf War, now goes hand in hand (or rather in the computers) of financial markets.
It is not only about a material destruction of the material bases of the Nation-States, it is also (and in a way that is as important as it is little studied) about a historical and cultural destruction. The dignified Indigenous past of the countries of the American continent, the brilliant European civilization, the wise history of the Asian nations, and the powerful and rich antiquity of Africa and Oceania, all the cultures and histories that forged nations are attacked by the American way of life. Neoliberalism thus imposes a total war: the destruction of nations and groups of nations to harmonize them with the North American capitalist model.
A war then, a world war, IV. The worst and most cruel. The one that neoliberalism unleashes everywhere and by all means against humanity.
But, as in any war, there are combats, there are winners and losers, and there are broken pieces of that destroyed reality. To try to put together the absurd jigsaw puzzle of the neoliberal world, many pieces are needed. Some can be found among the ruins that this world war has already left on the planetary surface. At least 7 of those pieces can be reconstructed and encourage hope that this global conflict does not end with the weakest rival: humanity.
7 pieces to draw, color, cut out, and try to put together, along with others, the world jigsaw puzzle.
One is the double accumulation, of wealth and poverty, at the two poles of world society. The other is the total exploitation of the entire world. The third is the nightmare of a wandering part of humanity. The fourth is the nauseating relationship between crime and Power. The fifth is state violence. The sixth is the mystery of megapolitics. The seventh is humanity’s multiform pocket of resistance against neoliberalism.
PIECE 1: The concentration of wealth and the distribution of poverty.
Figure 1 is constructed by drawing a monetary sign.
In the history of humanity, different social models have competed to uphold the absurd as a symbol of world order. Surely neoliberalism will have a privileged place at the time of awards, because its “distribution” of social wealth does nothing more than distribute a double absurdity of accumulation: the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, and the accumulation of poverty in millions of human beings.
In today’s world, injustice and inequality are the distinctive signs. Planet Earth, the third in the solar planetary system, has 5 billion human beings. In it, only 500 million people live with comforts while 4.5 billion suffer poverty and try to survive.
A double absurdity is the balance between rich and poor: the rich are few and the poor are many. The quantitative difference is criminal, but the balance between the extremes is achieved with wealth: the rich supplement their numerical minority with billions of dollars.
The fortune of the 358 richest people in the world (billions of dollars) is greater than the annual income of the 45% of the poorest inhabitants, something like 2.6 billion people.
The gold fobs on financial watches become a heavy chain for millions of beings. While the “… turnover of General Motors is higher than the Gross National Product (GNP) of Denmark, that of Ford is more important than the GNP of South Africa, and that of Toyota exceeds the GNP of Norway.” (Ignacio Ramonet, in LMD I/1997 #15), for all workers, real wages have fallen, in addition to having to overcome personnel cuts in companies, the closure of factories and the relocation of their workplaces. In the so-called “advanced capitalist economies” the number of unemployed already reaches 41 million workers.
Gradually, the concentration of wealth in a few hands and the distribution of poverty in many, is delineating the sign of modern world society: the fragile balance of absurd inequalities.
The decline of the neoliberal economic system is a scandal: “The global debt (including those of companies, governments and administrations) has exceeded 33,100 billion dollars, that is, 130% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). , and grows at a rate of 6% to 8% per year, more than 4 times the growth of world GDP” (Frédéric F. Clairmont. “Ces deux cents sociétés qui controlent le monde”, in LMD. IV/1997).
The progress of large transnational companies does not imply the progress of developed nations. On the contrary, the more the financial giants earn, the more poverty worsens in the so-called “rich countries.”
The difference to be eliminated between rich and poor is brutal and there does not seem to be any tendency in that direction, quite the opposite. Far from being attenuated, let alone eliminated, social inequality is accentuated, especially in developed capitalist nations: In the United States, the richest 1% of Americans have obtained 61.6% of all national wealth of the country between 1983 and 1989. The 80% of the poorest Americans have not shared more than 1.2%. In Great Britain the number of homeless people has doubled; the number of children living only on social assistance has gone from 7% in 1979 to 26% in 1994; the number of Britons living in poverty (defined as less than half the minimum wage) has risen from 5 million to 13,700,000; 10% of the poorest have lost 13% of their purchasing power, while 10% of the richest have gained 65% and in the last five years the number of millionaires has doubled (data from LMD. IV/97).
At the beginning of the 90’s “… some 37,000 transnational firms enclosed, with their 170,000 subsidiaries, the international economy in their tentacles. However, the center of power is located in the most restricted circle of the top 200: since the beginning of the 1980s, they have had uninterrupted expansion through mergers and “rescue” purchases of companies. In this way, the share of transnational capital in world GDP has gone from 17% in the mid-1960s to 24% in 1982 and to more than 30% in 1995. The first 200 are conglomerates whose global activities cover the sectors without distinction. primary, secondary and tertiary: large agricultural holdings, manufacturing production, financial services, commerce, etc. Geographically they are distributed among 10 countries: Japan (62), United States (53), Germany (23), France (19), United Kingdom (11), Switzerland (8), South Korea (6), Italy (5 ) and Netherlands (4)”. (Frédéric F. Clairmont. Op.Cit.).
The “Top Two Hundred” in the World.
| Country | Number of Companies | Businesses | Earnings (MMD) | % of Global Business | % of Global Profit |
| Japan | 62 | 3,196 | 46 | 40.7% | 18.3% |
| EU | 52 | 1,198 | 98 | 25.4% | 39.2% |
| Germany | 23 | 786 | 24.5 | 10.0% | 9.8% |
| France | 19 | 572 | 16 | 7.3% | 6.3% |
| United Kingdom | 11 | 275 | 20 | 3.5% | 8.0% |
| Switzerland | 8 | 244 | 9.7 | 3.1% | 3.9% |
| South Korea | 6 | 183 | 3.5 | 2.3% | 1.4% |
| Italy | 5 | 171 | 6 | 2.2% | 2.5% |
| United Kingdom/ Netherlands | 2 | 159 | 9 | 2.0% | 3.7% |
| Netherlands | 4 | 118 | 5 | 1.5% | 2.0% |
| Venezuela | 1 | 26 | 3 | 0.3% | 1.2% |
| Sweden | 1 | 24 | 1.3 | 0.3% | 0.5% |
| Belgium/ Netherlands | 1 | 22 | 0.8 | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| Mexico | 1 | 22 | 1.5 | 0.3% | 0.6% |
| China | 1 | 19 | 0.8 | 0.2% | 0.3% |
| Brazil | 1 | 18 | 4.3 | 0.2% | 1.7% |
| Canada | 1 | 17 | 0.5 | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| Totals | 200 | 7,850 | 251 | 100% | 100% |
| Global GDP | 25,223 | 31.20% |
Here you have the symbol of economic power.
Now paint yourself dollar green.
Don’t worry about the nauseating smell,
the aroma of manure, mud and blood
comes from birth…
PIECE 2: The globalization of exploitation
Figure 2 is constructed by drawing a triangle.
One of the neoliberal fallacies is to say that the economic growth of companies brings with it a better distribution of wealth and growth in employment. But it’s not like that. In the same way that the growth of the political power of a king does not result in a growth of the political power of the subjects (quite the opposite), the absolutism of financial capital does not improve the distribution of wealth or create more jobs for the society. Poverty, unemployment and job insecurity are its structural consequences.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the population that was considered poor (with less than a dollar a day of income to meet their basic needs, according to the World Bank) numbered about 200 million people. By the beginning of the 90’s there were already 2,000 million human beings.
Furthermore, the “… amount of the 200 most important companies on the planet represents more than a quarter of global economic activity; and yet, those 200 firms employ only 18.8 million employees, that is, less than 0.75% of the planet’s workforce” (Ignacio Ramonet in LMD. January 1997 #15).
More poor and more impoverished human beings, fewer rich and more enriched people, these are the lessons from the outline of piece 1 of the neoliberal jigsaw puzzle. To achieve this absurdity, the world capitalist system “modernizes” the production, circulation and consumption of goods. The new technological revolution (information technology) and the new political revolution (the emerging megapolises on the ruins of Nation-States) produce a new social “revolution.” This social “revolution” consists of nothing more than a rearrangement, a reordering of social forces, mainly of the labor force.
The world’s Economically Active Population (EAP) went from 1,376 million in 1960 to 2,374 million workers in 1990. More human beings with the capacity to work, that is, to generate wealth.
But the “new world order” not only accommodates this new workforce in geographical and productive spaces, it also reorganizes its place (or its non-place, as in the case of the unemployed and underemployed) in the globalizing plan of the economy.
The World Population Employed by Activity (PMEA) has changed substantially in the last 20 years. The PMEA in the agricultural and fishing sector went from 22% in 1970 to 12% in 1990; in manufacturing from 25% in 1970, to 22% in 1990; while in the tertiary sector (commerce, transportation, banking and services) it grew from 42% in 1970, to 56% in 1990. In the case of underdeveloped countries, the tertiary sector grew from 40% in 1970, to 57% in 1990; while its population employed in the agricultural and fishing sector fell from 30% in 1970 to 15% in 1990. (Data from “World Labor Force Market in Contemporary Capitalism”. Ochoa Chi, Juanita del Pilar. UNAM. Economy. Mexico, 1997).
This means that more and more workers are channeled into activities necessary to increase productivity or to accelerate the realization of goods. The neoliberal system thus operates as a mega-pattern, conceiving the world market as a unitary enterprise, managed with “modernizing” criteria.
But neoliberal “modernity” seems closer to the bestial birth of capitalism as a world system than to utopian “rationality.” “Modern” capitalist production continues to be based on the labor of children, women and migrant workers. Of the 1,148 million children in the world, at least 100 million literally live on the streets and 200 million work, and it is expected that there will be 400 million by the year 2000. It is also said that 146 million Asian children work in the production of auto parts, toys, clothing, food, blacksmithing and chemicals. But this exploitation of child labor does not only occur in underdeveloped countries, 40% of English children and 20% of French children work to complete family expenses or to survive. Also in the “industry” of pleasure there is a place for infants. The UN estimates that, every year, one million children enter the sex trade (data in Ochoa Chi, J. Op. Cit.).
The neoliberal beast invades the global social whole, homogenizing even eating patterns. “In global terms, although we observe that there are particularities in the food consumption of each region (and within it), the process of homogenization that is being imposed is still evident, even over the physiological-cultural differences of the various regions. zones.” (“World market for livelihoods. 1960-1990.” Ocampo Figueroa, Nashelly, and Flores Mondragón, Gonzalo. UNAM. Economía. 1994.)
This beast imposes a heavy burden on humanity. The unemployment and precariousness of millions of workers around the world is an acute reality that shows no signs of even attenuating. Unemployment in the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) went from 3.8% in 1966 to 6.3% in 1990. In Europe alone it went from 2.2% in 1966 to 6. 4% in 1990.
The imposition of the laws of the market throughout the world, the globalized market, has done nothing but destroy small and medium-sized businesses. As local and regional markets disappear, small and medium producers see themselves without protections and without any possibility of competing against transnational giants.
Result: massive bankruptcy of companies. Consequence: millions of workers unemployed.
The neoliberal absurdity reiterated: the growth of production does not generate employment, on the contrary, it destroys it. The United Nations (UN) names this stage as “jobless growth.”
But the nightmare doesn’t end there. In addition to the threat of unemployment, workers must face precarious employment conditions. Greater instability of employment, lengthening of working hours and salary disadvantage are consequences of globalization in general and of the “tertiarization” of the economy (the growth of the “services” sector) in particular. “In dominated countries, the workforce suffers from multiform precariousness: extreme mobility, jobs without a contract, irregular salaries and generally below the minimum living wage and hetical retirement regimes, undeclared independent activities, with random income, that is, servitude or performance of forced labor by supposedly protected sectors, such as children” (Alain Morice. “Foreign workers, vanguard of precariousness.” LMD. January 97).
The consequences of all this translate into a true globalized social crisis. The reordering of the processes of production and circulation of goods and the rearrangement of productive forces produce a peculiar surplus: surplus human beings, who are not necessary for the “new world order”, who do not produce, who do not consume, who They are not subjects of credit, in short, they are disposable.
Every day, large financial centers impose their laws on nations and groups of nations around the world. They reorder and rearrange their inhabitants. And, at the end of the operation, they find that there are “surplus” people. “Therefore, the volume of surplus population skyrockets, which is not only subject to the scourge of the most acute poverty, but also does not count for anything, which is unstructured and atomized, and whose only purpose is to wander the streets aimlessly. fixed, without housing or work, without family or social relationships – at least minimally stable -, with the only company of their cardboard or plastic bags” (Fernández Durán, Ramón. “Against the Europe of capital and economic globalization.” Talasa Madrid, 1996).
Economic globalization “… made necessary a decrease in real wages at the international level, which together with the decrease in social spending (health, education, housing and food) and an anti-union policy, came to constitute the fundamental part of the new neoliberal policies of capitalist reactivation” (Ocampo F. and Flores M. Op. Cit.).
Here you have the representation of
the pyramid of global exploitation.
Piece 3: Migration, the wandering nightmare.
Figure 3 is constructed by drawing a circle.
We spoke before about the existence of new territories, at the end of World War III, that were waiting to be conquered (the former socialist countries), and of others that had to be reconquered by the “new world order.” To achieve this, financial centers carry out a triple criminal and brutal strategy: “regional wars” and “internal conflicts” proliferate, capital follows atypical accumulation routes, and large masses of workers are mobilized.
The result of this global war of conquest is a great wheel of millions of migrants around the world. “Foreigners” in the “borderless” world that the victors of World War III promised, millions of people suffer xenophobic persecution, job insecurity, the loss of cultural identity, police repression, hunger, prison and death.
“From the American Rio Grande to the ‘European’ Schengen area, a double contradictory tendency is confirmed: on the one hand, borders are officially closed to migrations of workers, on the other, entire branches of the economy oscillate between instability and flexibility, which are the safest means to attract foreign labor” (Alain Morice. Op. Cit.).
With different names, under a legal differentiation, sharing a miserable equality, migrants or refugees or displaced people around the world are “foreigners” tolerated or rejected. The nightmare of migration, whatever the cause that provokes it, continues to roll and grow on the planetary surface. The number of people who would be within the scope of competence of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has grown disproportionately from just over 2 million in 1975 to more than 27 million in 1995.
With national borders destroyed (for commodities), the globalized market organizes the world economy: the research and design of goods and services, as well as their circulation and consumption, are thought of in intercontinental terms. For each part of the capitalist process, the “new world order” organizes the flow of labor power, specialized and otherwise, to where it is needed. Far from being subject to the “free competition” so vaunted by neoliberalism, employment markets are increasingly determined by migratory flows. In the case of specialized workers, although little compared to global migration, this “brain transfer” represents a lot in terms of economic power and knowledge. But, whether it is a qualified labor force or simple labor, neoliberalism’s immigration policy is more oriented toward destabilizing the global labor market than stopping immigration.
World War IV, with its process of destruction/depopulation and reconstruction/reorganization, causes the displacement of millions of people. Their destiny will be to continue wandering, with their nightmare on their backs, and offer workers with jobs in different nations a threat to their job stability, an enemy to replace the image of the boss, and a pretext to give meaning to racist unreason. that neoliberalism promotes.
This is the symbol of the wandering nightmare of global migration, a wheel of terror that spins around the world.
Piece 4: Financial globalization and the globalization of corruption and crime.
Figure 4 is constructed by drawing a rectangle
The mass media gifts us an image of the leaders of global crime: vulgar men and women, dressed outlandishly, living in ridiculous mansions or behind the bars of a prison. But this image hides more than it shows: neither the true leaders of the modern mafias, nor their organization, nor their real influences in the economic and political terrains are disclosed to the public.
If you think that the world of crime is synonymous with the afterlife and darkness, you are wrong. During the period of the so-called “Cold War”, organized crime acquired a more respectable image and not only began to function like any modern company, it also penetrated deeply into the political and economic systems of Nation-States. With the start of World War IV, the implementation of the “new world order”, and its consequent opening of markets, privatizations, the deregulation of international trade and finance, organized crime “globalized” its activities.
“According to the UN, the annual global income of transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) is on the order of 1000 billion dollars, an amount equivalent to the combined GNP of weak-income countries (according to the global banking categorization) and its 3 billion inhabitants. This estimate takes into account both the proceeds of drug trafficking, illicit sales of weapons, smuggling of nuclear materials, etc., and the profits from activities controlled by mafias (prostitution, gambling, black currency market…).
On the other hand, it does not measure the importance of the investments continually made by criminal organizations within the sphere of control of legitimate businesses, nor the domination that they exercise over the means of production within numerous sectors of the legal economy” (Michel Chossudovsky , “La Corruption mondialisée” in “Géopolitique du Chaos”. Op. Cit.).
Criminal organizations from the 5 continents have adopted the “spirit of global cooperation” and, together, participate in the conquest and reorganization of new markets. But not only in criminal activities, they also participate in legal businesses. Organized crime invests in legitimate businesses not only to “launder” dirty money, but also to obtain capital for their illegal activities. The preferred companies for this are luxury real estate, the leisure industry, the media, industry, agriculture, public services and… banking!
Ali Baba and the 40 bankers? No, something worse. The dirty money of organized crime is used by commercial banks for their activities: loans, investments in financial markets, purchase of foreign debt bonds, purchase and sale of gold and currencies. “In many countries, criminal organizations have become the creditors of the State and exercise, through their action on the markets, an influence on the macroeconomic policy of the governments. On the stock markets, they also invest in the speculative markets for derivative products and raw materials” (M. Chossudovsky, Op. Cit.).
As if that were not enough, organized crime has so-called tax havens. Throughout the world there are at least 55 tax havens (one of them, the Cayman Islands, is the fifth largest banking center in the world and has more banks and registered companies than inhabitants). The Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Saint Martin, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Mauritius, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Anglo-Norman Islands, Dublin, Monaco, Gibraltar, Malta are good places for organized crime relates to the world’s largest financial firms.
In addition to “laundering” dirty money, tax havens are used to evade taxes, which is why they are a point of contact between rulers, businessmen and organized crime bosses. High technology, applied to finance, allows the rapid circulation of money and the disappearance of illegal profits. “Legal and illegal businesses are increasingly intertwined, introducing a fundamental change in the structures of post-war capitalism. Mafias invest in legal businesses and, conversely, they channel financial resources towards the criminal economy, through the control of banks or commercial companies involved in laundering dirty money or that have relations with criminal organizations. The banks claim that the transactions are carried out in good faith and that their leaders are unaware of the origin of the deposited funds. The slogan of not asking anything, banking secrecy and the anonymity of transactions, everything is guaranteeing the interests of organized crime, protecting the banking institution from public investigations and accusations. Not only do the big banks agree to launder money, in view of their heavy commissions, but they also grant loans at high interest rates to the mafias, to the detriment of productive industrial or agricultural investments” (M. Chossudovsky, Op. Cit.).
The global debt crisis in the 1980s provoked the price of raw materials to drop. This caused underdeveloped countries to see their income drastically reduced. The economic measures dictated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, supposedly to “recover” the economy of these countries, only worsened the crises of legal businesses. Consequently, the illegal economy has developed to fill the void left by the decline of national markets.
According to a United Nations report, “the intrusion of crime syndicates has been facilitated by the structural adjustment programs that indebted countries have been forced to accept in order to access loans from the International Monetary Fund” (United Nations “The Globalization of Crime” New York, 1995).
So here you have the rectangular mirror where legality and illegality exchange reflections.
Which side of the mirror is the criminal on?
Which one is chasing him?
Piece 5: The legitimate violence of an illegitimate power?
Figure 5 is constructed by drawing a pentagon
The State, in neoliberalism, tends to contract to the “indispensable minimum.” The so-called “Welfare State” not only becomes obsolete, it detaches itself from everything that made it such and remains naked.
In the cabaret of globalization, we have the State’s “show” through a “table dance” that strips itself of everything until it is left with its minimum essential garment: repressive force. With their material base destroyed, their possibilities of sovereignty and independence annulled, their political classes blurred, Nation-States become, more or less quickly, a mere “security” apparatus for the mega-companies that neoliberalism is erecting in the development of this World War IV.
Instead of directing public investment to social spending, Nation-States prefer to improve their equipment, weapons and preparation to effectively carry out the task that politics stopped fulfilling years ago: the control of society.
The “professionals of legitimate violence” call themselves the repressive apparatus of Modern States. But what to do if violence is already under the laws of the market? Where is the legitimate violence and where is the illegitimate? What monopoly on violence can the battered Nation-States claim if the free play of supply and demand challenges that monopoly? Didn’t piece 4 demonstrate that organized crime, governments and financial centers are more than well connected? Isn’t it palpable that organized crime has veritable armies with no other border than the firepower of the rival? So the “monopoly of violence” no longer belongs to the Nation-States. The modern market put it up for sale…
This is relevant because, beneath the controversy between legitimate and illegitimate violence, there is also the dispute (false, I think) between “rational” and “irrational” violence.
A certain sector of the world’s intelligentsia (I insist that its work is more complex than simply being “right or left”, “pro-government or opposition”, “etc. good or etc. bad”) claims that violence can be exercised in a “rational” way, administered selectively, (some even advance something like the “marketing of violence”), and applied with a “surgeon’s” skill against the evils of society. Something like this inspired the last weapons phase in the American Union: “surgical” weapons, precise, and military operations like a scalpel of the “new world order.” Thus were born the “smart bombs” (which, according to a reporter who covered “Desert Storm”, are not so “intelligent” and struggle to distinguish between a hospital and a missile depot, in doubt, the “smart bombs” they do not abstain, they destroy). In short, the Persian Gulf, as the compañeros of the Zapatista peoples said, is beyond the state capital of Chiapas (although the situation of the Kurds has eerie similarities with the Indigenous people of a country that prides itself on being “democratic” and “free”), so let’s not insist on “that” war when we have “ours.”
Well, the struggle between “rational” and “irrational” violence opens an interesting avenue of discussion and, unfortunately, is not useless in current times. We could take, for example, what is meant by “rational.” If the answer is that it is the “reason of the State” (assuming that this existed and, above all, that some reason could be recognized for the current neoliberal State), then it is worth asking if this “reason of State” corresponds to the “reason of society” (always assuming that today’s society retains some rationality) and, even more so, if the “rational” violence of the State is also “rational” to society. There is not much to discuss here (except idly), the “reason of State” in modernity is none other than “the reason of the financial markets.”
But how does the modern State administer its “rational violence”? And, look at history, how long does that “rationality” last? The time between one election or coup d’état (as the case may be)? How many state violences, which were applauded as “rational” in their time, are now “irrational”?
Lady Margaret Thatcher, of “fond” memory for the British people, took the trouble to preface the book “The Next War”, by Caspar Weinberg and Peter Schweizer. (Regnery Publishing, Inc. Washington, D.C. 1996).
In this text, Mrs. Thatcher advances some reflections on the 3 similarities between the world of the Cold War and that of the Post-Cold War: The first of them is that the “free world” will never lack potential aggressors. The second is the need for military superiority of “democratic states” over potential aggressors. The third similarity is that such military superiority must be, above all, technological.
To finish her prologue, the so-called “iron lady” defines the “violent rationality” of modern states by pointing out: “A war can happen in many different ways. But the worst usually happens because a power believes it can achieve its objectives without a war or at least with a limited war that can be won quickly – and, consequently, the calculations fail.”
For Misters Weinberg and Schweizer the scenarios of the “Future Wars” are: North Korea and China (April 6, 1998), Iran (April 4, 1999), Mexico (March 7, 2003), Russia (February 7, 2006), and Japan (August 19, 2007). There is, therefore, no doubt who the possible aggressors would be: Asians, Arabs, Latines and Europeans. Almost the entire world is considered a “possible aggressor” of modern “democracy”!
Logical (at least in liberal logic): in modernity, power (that is, financial power) knows that it can only “achieve its objectives” with a war, and not with a “limited war that can be won quickly,” but with a totally total war, global in every sense. And, if we believe the new Secretary of State of the United States, Madeleine Albright, when she says: “One of the priority objectives of our government is to ensure that the economic interests of the United States can extend on a planetary scale” (“The Wall Street Journal”. 1/21/1997), then we must understand that the whole world (and I mean “everything”) is the theater of operations of this war.
It is to be understood, then, that if the dispute over the “monopoly of violence” does not occur according to the laws of the market, but is challenged from below, world power will “discover” in that challenge a “possible aggressor.” ». This is one of the challenges (one of the least studied and most “condemned”, among the many that it represents) launched by the Indigenous people in arms and in rebellion of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) against neoliberalism and for humanity
This is the symbol of American military power, the pentagon. The new “world police” claims that the “national” army and police are only the “security body” that guarantees “order and progress” in the neoliberal megapolises.
Pieza 6: Megapolitics and the dwarves.
Figure 6 is constructed by drawing a scribble.
We said before that Nation-States are attacked by financial centers and “forced” to dissolve within megapolises. But neoliberalism does not only operate its war by “uniting” nations and regions. Its strategy of DESTRUCTION / DEPOPULATION and RECONSTRUCTION / REORDERING produces one or several fractures in the Nation-States.
This is the paradox of World War IV: made to eliminate borders and “unite” nations, what it leaves behind is a multiplication of borders and a pulverization of nations that perish in its clutches. Beyond the pretexts, ideologies or flags, the current GLOBAL dynamic of the breakdown of the unity of Nation-States responds to a policy, equally global, that knows that it can better exercise its power, and create the optimal conditions for its reproduction, above all the ruins of the Nation-States.
If anyone had any doubts about this characterization of the globalization process as a world war, they should discard it when considering the conflicts that caused and have been caused by the collapses of some Nation-States. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, the USSR, are examples of the depth of these crises that leave not only the political and economic foundations of the Nation-States shattered, but also the social structures. Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, in addition to the current war within the Russian federation with Chechnya as a stage, not only mark the destiny of the tragic fall of the socialist camp into the fateful arms of the “free world”, throughout the world this process of National fragmentation is repeated in varying scale and intensity. There are separatist tendencies in the Spanish State (Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia), in Italy (Padua), in Belgium (Flanders), in France (Corsica), in the United Kingdom (Scotland and Wales), and in Canada (Quebec). And there are more examples in the rest of the world.
We already referred to the process of construction of megapolises, now we talk about the fragmentation of countries. Both processes occur about the destruction of Nation-States. Are these two parallel, independent processes? Two facets of the globalization process? Are they symptoms of a megacrisis yet to break out? Mere isolated facts?
We think that this is an inherent contradiction of the globalization process, one of the essences of the neoliberal model. The elimination of commercial borders, the universality of telecommunications, the superhighways of information technology, the omnipresence of financial centers, international agreements of economic unity, in short, the globalization process as a whole produces, by liquidating Nation-States, a pulverization of internal markets. These do not disappear or become diluted in international markets, but rather consolidate their fragmentation and multiply.
It may sound contradictory, but globalization produces a fragmented world, full of pieces isolated from each other (and not infrequently confronted with each other). A world full of watertight compartments, connected only by fragile economic bridges (in any case as constant as the wind vane that is financial capital). A world of broken mirrors reflecting the useless global unity of the neoliberal jigsaw puzzle.
But neoliberalism not only fragments the world it is supposed to unite, it also produces the political-economic center that directs this war. And if, as we pointed out before, financial centers impose their law (that of the market) on nations and groups of nations, then we should redefine the limits and scope of politics, that is, of political activity. It is then convenient to talk about megapolitics, this would be where the “world order” would be decided.
And when we say “megapolitics” we are not referring to the number of those who move in it. There are few, very few, who are in this “megasphere.” Megapolitics globalizes national policies, that is, it subjects them to a direction that has global interests (which are usually contradictory to national interests) and whose logic is that of the market, that is, that of economic profit.
With this economistic (and criminal) criterion, decisions are made about wars, credits, the purchase and sale of merchandise, diplomatic recognitions, trade blockades, political support, migration laws, coups d’état, repressions, elections, international political units, intranational political ruptures, investments, that is, the survival of entire nations.
The global power of the financial centers is so great that they can dispense with concern about the political sign of whoever holds power in a nation, if it is guaranteed that the economic program (that is, the part that corresponds to the economic megaprogram worldwide) does not change. Financial disciplines are imposed on the different colors of the world political spectrum as soon as the government of a nation is reached.
The great world power can tolerate a left-wing government anywhere in the world, as long as that government does not take measures that go against the provisions of the global financial centers. But in no way will it tolerate the consolidation of an alternative economic, political and social organization. For megapolitics, national policies are made by dwarfs who must bend to the dictates of the financial giant. That’s how it will be, until the dwarves rebel…
Here you have the figure that represents “megapolitics.” You will understand that it is useless to try to find a rationality for it and that, by unraveling the skein, nothing will be clear.
Piece 7: The pockets of resistance.
Figure 7 is constructed by drawing a pocket
“To begin with, I beg you not to confuse the Resistance with the political opposition. The opposition does not oppose power but a government, and its achieved and complete form is that of an opposition party; while the resistance, by definition (now yes), cannot be a party: it is not made to govern in turn, but instead to… resist”
Tomás Segovia. “Allegation”. México, 1996.
The apparent infallibility of globalization collides with the stubborn disobedience of reality. At the same time that neoliberalism is carrying out its world war, groups of dissatisfied people, nuclei of rebels, are forming all over the planet. The empire of the financial exchanges faces the rebellion of the resistance exchanges.
Yes, pockets. Of all sizes, different colors, the most varied shapes. Their only similarity is their resistance to the “new world order” and the crime against humanity that neoliberal war entails.
By trying to impose its economic, political, social and cultural model, neoliberalism seeks to subjugate millions of beings, and get rid of all those who have no place in its new division of the world. But it turns out that these “expendable” ones rebel and resist against the power that wants to eliminate them. Women, children, the elderly, young people, Indigenous people, environmentalists, homosexuals, lesbians, HIV-positive people, workers and all those who are not only “excessive”, but also “bother” the world order and progress, rebel, organize and they fight. Knowing themselves to be equal and different, those excluded from “modernity” begin to weave resistance against the process of destruction/depopulation and reconstruction/reordering carried out, as a world war, by neoliberalism.
In Mexico, to give an example, the so-called “Isthmus of Tehuantepec Comprehensive Development Program” aims to build a modern international distribution and assembly center for goods. The development zone includes an industrial complex in which a third of Mexican crude oil is refined and 88% of petrochemical products are produced. The interoceanic transit routes will consist of roads, a river route taking advantage of the natural flow of the area (Coatzacoalcos River) and, as an articulating axis, the trans-isthmus railway line (run by 5 companies, 4 from the US and 1 from Canada). The project would be an assembly zone under the maquiladora regime. Two million local residents would become stevedores, passage controllers or maquiladores. (Ana Esther Ceceña. “The Isthmus of Tehuantepec: border of national sovereignty.” “La Jornada del Campo” May 28, 1997.) Also in the Mexican southeast, in the Lacandona jungle, the “Development Program” is launched. Sustainable Regional for the Lacandon Jungle. Its real objective is to make Indigenous lands available to capital, which, in addition to being rich in dignity and history, are also rich in oil and uranium.
The foreseeable result of these projects will be, among others, the fragmentation of Mexico (separating the southeast from the rest of the country). Furthermore, and since we are talking about wars, the projects have counterinsurgency implications. It is part of a clamp to liquidate the anti-neoliberal rebellion that exploded in 1994. In the middle are the Indigenous rebels of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN).
(Already on the issue of Indigenous rebels, a parenthesis is in order: the Zapatistas think that, in Mexico (note: in Mexico) the recovery and defense of national sovereignty is part of an anti-neoliberal revolution. Paradoxically, the EZLN is accused of seeking fragmentation of the Mexican nation. The reality is that the only ones who have spoken of separatism are the businessmen of the state of Tabasco (rich in oil) and the Chiapas federal deputies who belong to the PRI. The Zapatistas think that it is necessary to defend the National State against to globalization, and that the attempts to break Mexico into pieces come from the ruling group and not from the just demands for autonomy for the Indian peoples. The EZLN, and the best of the national Indigenous movement, do not want the Indian peoples to separate of Mexico, but to be recognized as part of the country with its specificities. Not only that, they want a Mexico with democracy, freedom and justice. The paradoxes continue, because while the EZLN fights for the defense of national sovereignty, the Mexican Federal Army fights against that defense and defends a government that has already destroyed the material bases of national sovereignty and has handed over the country, not only to large foreign capital, but also to drug trafficking).
But it is not only in the mountains of southeastern Mexico that neoliberalism is resisted and fought. In other parts of Mexico, in Latin America, in the United States and Canada, in the Europe of the Treaty of Masstrich, in Africa, in Asia, and in Oceania, pockets of resistance are multiplying. Each of them has its own history, its differences, its equalities, its demands, its struggles, its achievements. If humanity still has hope of survival, of being better, those hopes are in the pockets made up of the excluded, the leftovers, the disposable.
This is a resistance pocket model, but don’t pay too much attention to it. There are as many models as there are resistances and as many worlds in the world. So draw the model you like best. In this matter of stock markets, as in resistance, diversity is wealth.
There are, without a doubt, more pieces of the neoliberal jigsaw puzzle. For example: the media, culture, pollution, pandemics. Here we only wanted to show you the outline of 7 of them.
These 7 are enough for you, after drawing, coloring and cutting them out, to realize that it is impossible to put them together. And this is the problem of the world that globalization has sought to remake: the pieces do not fit together.
For this, and for other reasons that do not come within the scope of this text, it is necessary to make a new world. A world where many worlds fit, where all worlds fit…
From the mountains of the Mexican southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Mexico, June 1997.
P.S. THAT TELLS DREAMS THAT LOVE NESTS.- The sea rests at my side. She has shared anguish, uncertainties and many dreams for a long time, but now she sleeps with me the hot night of the jungle. I look at her agitated wheat in her dream and I marvel again at finding her as is the law: warm, fresh and at my side. Asphyxiation takes me out of bed and takes my hand and the pen to bring Old Antonio today, like years ago…
I have asked Old Antonio to accompany me on an exploration down the river. We only brought a little pozol to eat. For hours we follow the capricious course and hunger and heat are pressing. We spent the entire afternoon chasing a herd of wild boars. It’s almost dark when we catch up with it, but a huge census (mountain pig) breaks away from the group and attacks us. I bring out all my military knowledge, leave my weapon lying around and climb the nearest tree. Old Antonio is left defenseless before the attack, but instead of running, he runs behind a tangle of vines. The gigantic wild boar attacks head-on and with all its strength, but is trapped between the vines and thorns. Before he can escape, Old Antonio picks up his old chimba and, with a shot to the head, resolves that day’s dinner.
Already in the early morning, after cleaning my modern automatic rifle (an M-16, caliber 5.56 mm, with cadence selector and effective range of 460 meters, as well as telescopic sight, bipod and “drum” magazine with 90 shots), I write in my campaign diary and, omitting everything that happened, I only note: “We found pork and A. killed a piece. Height 350 meters above sea level. It did not rain.”
While we wait for the meat to cook, I tell Old Antonio that my share will be used for the festivals being prepared in the camp. “Parties?” he asks me as he stokes the fire. “Yes,” I say, “No matter the month, there is always something to celebrate.” Then I continue with what I assumed was a brilliant dissertation on the historical calendar and Zapatista celebrations. Old Antonio listens in silence and, assuming that he is not interested, I settle down to sleep.
In my dreams I watched Old Antonio take my notebook and write something. In the morning, we distribute the meat after breakfast and everyone goes their own way. Once in our camp, I report to command and show him the log so he knows what happened. “This is not your handwriting,” he tells me as he shows me the notebook page. There, at the end of what I wrote down that day, Old Antonio had written in large letters:
“If you cannot have reason and strength, always choose reason and let the enemy have strength. In many combats force can obtain victory, but in the entire fight only reason wins. The powerful will never be able to draw reason from his strength, but we can always draw strength from reason.”
And below, in very small print: “Happy Holidays.”
Needless to say, my hunger went away. The holidays, as always, were very happy. “The one with the red bow” was still, happily, very far from the “hit parade” of the Zapatistas…