SAMIR AMIN
From
Bandung (1955) to 2014 ; Old and new challenges for the States, the
Nations and the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America
A-
The global frame, the longer view
1. Bandung and the Movement of
Non Aligned Countries (NAM)
The
Conference of Bandung declared the will of the Asian and African nations to
reconquer their sovereignty and complete their independence through a process
of authentic independent consistent development to the benefit of all labouring
classes. In 1955 most of the Asian and Middle East countries had reconquerred
their sovereignty in the aftermath of World War II, while movements of
liberation were in struggle elsewhere, in Africa in particular to achieve that
goal.
As
recalled by the leaders of Bandung the conference was the first international
meeting of « non European » (so called « coloured »)
nations whose rights had been denied by historical colonialism/imperialism of
Europe, the US and Japan. In spite of the differences in size, cultural and
religious backgrounds and historical trajectories, these nations rejected
together the pattern of colonial and semi colonial globalisation that the
Western powers had built to their exclusive benefit. But Bandung also declared
the will of Asian and African nations to complete the reconquest of their
sovereignty by moving into a process of authentic and accelerated inward
looking development which is the condition for their participating to the
shaping of the world system on eaqual footing with the States of the historic
imperialist centres.
As
President Soekarno said in his address, the conference associated countries
which had made different choices with respect to the ways and means to achieve
their developmental targets. Some (China, North Vietnam, North Korea) had
chosen what they named « the socialist road », inspired by Marxism.
Other conceived national and popular specific ways combined with social
progressive reforms (what could be named « national/ popular »
projects ; Soekarno’s Indonesia, Nehru’s India, Nasser’s Egypt and later
many other countries are exemples). All these countries gave priority to the
diversification and industrialisation of their economies, moving out of their
confinement to remain producers/exporters of agricultural and mining
commodities. All of them considered that the State had to assume a major
responsability in the control of the process. They also considered that their
targets (in particular their moving into the industrial era) could eventually
conflict with the dominant logics of the global system ; but that they
were in a position which allowed them to succesfully compel the global system
to adjust to their demands. Yet a number
of countries which joined NAM did not adopt a definite position with respect to
that matter, and considered possible pursuing development in the frame of the deployment
of the global system.
What
ought to be recalled here is that all the countries of Asia and Africa
benefited from the very existence of NAM, whatever had been their choices. Political
solidarity initiated by Bandung paid, in economic terms. A country like Gabon
for instance would not have been able to capture a good part of the oil rent if
not OPEC and NAM which made it possible. The stress was therefore put on that
political solidarity and NAM countries supported unanimously the struggles
(including armed struggles) of the peoples of remaining colonies (Portuguese
colonies, Zimbabwe), and against apartheid in South Africa and occupied
Palestine.
The
history of NAM until the 1980s has been the history of internal political and
social struggles within each country
precisely around the axis as defined above : what is an alternative
efficient strategy for political, social and economic meaningful development ?
These struggles combined with the conflicts operating in the international
arena, mainly the East/West conflict. Yet in no way should the initiatives
taken in Bandung and their deployment by NAM be considered as a misadventure of
the Cold War, as presented by the Western medias, yesterday and to day. The Soviet
Union sided with NAM and to various degrees supported the struggles conducted
in Asia and Africa, particularly in response to the Western economic and
sometimes military agressions. The reason for that is simply that Soviet Union
and China were also excluded from the eventual benefit of participating to a
truly balanced pluricentric pattern of global system. In contrast the Western
powers fought NAM by all means. Therefore the view expressed by the Western
medias that NAM has lost its meaning with the end of the cold war, the
breakdown of Soviet Union in 1990 and the move of China out of the Maosit road,
is meaningless : the challenge that unequal globalisation represents
remains. Bandung and NAM were fought by the imperialist countries. Coups d’Etat
were organised by local reactionnary forces, supported by foreign interventions
that put an end to a number of Bandung inspired State systems and national
popular experiences (in Indonesia, Egypt, Mali, Ghana and many other countries).
The growing internal contradictions specific to the concept of historical
soviet and maoist socialisms, as well as the contradictions specific to each of
the various national popular experiences prepared the ground for the counter
offensive of the imperialist Triad.
The
achievements during the Bandung and NAM era have been tremendous and
historically positive, whatever have been their limits and shortcomings. The
view that « Bandung failed », as expressed in the Western medias, is
simply non sense. Yet what ought to be said in this respect is that Bandung and
NAM’s systems, in spite of their achievements, were not able to move beyond
their limits and therefore gradually lost breath, eroded and finally lost their
content.
2.
A world without Bandung and NAM (1980-2010)
In
Algiers in 1974 NAM formulated a consistent and reasonable programme (the New
International Economic Order) that invited the countries of the North to adjust
to the needs requested for the pursuing of the development in the South. These
proposals were entirely rejected by the Western powers. The targets of the
counter offensive of the imperialist triad were formulated in 1981 at the
Cancun G7 meeting, when Reagan declared that « we know what they need
better than they do themselves ». He meant unilateral structural
adjustments, dismantling of the national productive systems, privatisations and
opening to financial plunder and pillage of natural resources, i.e. the
« Washington consensus ».
No need
to recall the tragic consequences associated to the deployment of the new
imperialist global order for the societies of the three continents : on
the one hand the super exploitation of cheap labour in delocalised industries
controlled by multinationals and sub contracting locally owned industries and
services, on the other hand the plunder of the local natural resources to the
exclusive benefit of maintaining affluence and waste in the societies of the North.
These resources do not consist only of oil, gas and minerals, but include
growingly agricultural land (« land grabing »), forest, water,
atmosphere and sun. In that respect the ecological dimention of the challenge
has now come to the forefront. Such a pattern of « lumpen
development » has generated a dramatic social disaster : growing
poverty and exclusion, transfer of rural disposessed to shanty towns and
miserable informal survival activities, unemployment, particularly of youth,
opression of women etc. National consistent productive systems which had
started to be constructed in the Bandung era are systematically dismantled,
embryos of reasonable public services (health, education, housing, transport)
destroyed.
Protest
against these miseries is not enough. The processes which have created these
regressions need to be understood ; and no efficient response to the
challege can be formulated without a rigorous analysis of the transformations of
capitalism in the centres of the system, i.e. the processes of concentration of
capital and centralisation of its control, of financialisation. In such
circumstances the conventional means of measuring development have lost meaning
: a society striken by this pattern of lumpen development can still enjoy in
some cases high rates of growth, based on plunder of resources, associated to a
trickle down effect restricted to the enrichment of a small minority.
Simultaneously the centralised control of the productive system by
financialised monopoly capital has resulted into its control of political life
by oligarchies, anihilating the meaning of representative democracy.
Yet, in
the frame of that global disaster, some societies of the South have been able
to take advantage of the new global order of deepened globalisation, and even
seem to be « emerging » in that frame as successfull exporters of
manufactured goods. These successes feed in their turn the illusion that such a
process, respectful of the fundamentals of capitalist accumulation and
globalised markets, can be maintained. An analysis of the growing conflicts
between these successful emerging economies and the imperialist triad (over the
the access to natural resources in particular) needs to be considered, as well
as an analysis of the internal imbalances associated to these processes.
The
social disaster produces a no less dramatic political disaster. NAM had
succeeded in the past to maintain a degree of polycentrism in the management of
international politics, which has been destroyed by globalised neo liberalism.
The legitimacy of the international community represented by the UN, NAM, G77
plus China, has been abolished to the benefit of a self appointed so called
“international community” restricted to the G7 and a small number of selected
“friends” (in particular Saudi Arabia and Qatar, not exactly models of
democratic republics!). Financial, economic and eventually military
interventions are orchestrated by this so called “international community”,
denying again the sovereign rights of all the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin
America.
3.
Towards a revival of the Bandung spirit and
reconstruction of a front of countries Non Aligned on globalisation
The first
wave of revival of States and nations of Asia and Afica which shaped major changes in the history of humankind
organised itself in the Bandung spirit in the frame of countries Non Aligned on
colonialism and neo colonialism, the pattern of globalisation at that time.
Now, the same nations, as well as those of Latin America and the Caribbean, are
challenged by neo liberal globalisation, which is no less imbalanced by nature.
Therefore they must unite to face the challenge successfully as they did in the
past. They will, in that perspective, feed a new wave of revival and progress
of the three continents.
NAM
united together nations of Asia and Africa only. States of Latin America, with
the exception of Cuba, abstained from joining the organisation. Reasons for
that failure have been recorded: 1) Latin American countries were formally
independent since the beginning of the 19 th century and did not share the
struggles of Asian and African nations to reconquer their sovereignty, 2) the
US domination of the continent through the Monroe doctrine was not challenged
by any of the State powers in office (except Cuba); the Organisation of American
States included the master (the US) and was qualified for that reason by Cuba
as “the Ministry of colonies of the US”, 3) the ruling classes, of “European
extract”, looked at Europe and the US as models to be copied. For those reasons
the attempt to build a “Tricontinental” did not succed: it was joined only by
movements in struggle (often armed struggle), but rejected by all State powers
on the continent at that time.
That has
changed: 1) the countries of Latin America and the Carribean have recently
established their own organisation (CELAC, Community of Latin American and
Caribbean States), excluding the US and
Canada, and therefore formally rejected the Monroe doctrine, 2) the new popular
movements have created a consciousness of the plurinational character of their
societies (Indian American, Eropean extract, African ancestors), 3) these
movements have also initiated strategies of liberation from the yoke of neo
liberalism, with some success that may surpass in some respects what has been
achieved elsewhere in the South. Therefore the revival of NAM must now include
them and become a Tricontinental front.
The axis
around which States and nations of the three continents should organise their
solidarity in struggle can be formulated as building a common front against neo
liberal unbalanced imperialist globalisation.
We have
seen that the States which met in Bandung hold different views with respect to
the ways and means to defeat imperialist domination and advance in the
construction of their societies; yet they were able to overcome those
differences in order to face successfully the common challenge. Same to day.
Ruling powers in the three continents as well as popular movements in struggle
differ to a wide extent on the ways and means to face the renewed same
challenge.
In some
countries “sovereign” projects are developed which associate active State
policies aiming at constructing systematically a national integrated consistent
modern industrial productive system, supported by an aggressive export
capacity. Views with respect to the degree, format and eventual regulation of
opening to foreign capital and financial flows of all kinds (foreign direct
investments, portfolio investments, speculative financial investments) differ
from country to country and from time to time. Policies pursued with respect to
the access to land and other natural resources also offer a wide spectrum of
different choices and priorities.
We find
similar differences in the programmes and actions of popular movements in struggle
against the power systems in office. Priorities cover a wide spectrum :
democratic rights, social rights, ecological care, gender, economic policies,
access of peasants to land etc. In some few cases attempts are made to bring
together those different demands into a common strategic plan of action. In
most cases little has been achieved in that perspective.
Such a
wide variety of situations and attitudes do create problems for all ; and may
even generate conflicts between States and /or between partners in struggle.
B. Some major issues related to the revival of a front
of countries Non Aligned on current globalisation
The
issues to be considered for the reconstruction of a front of countries non
aligned on neo liberal imperialist current pattern of globalisation cover a
wide range of questions. What follows is restricted to some major issues only.
Their discussion should consider relevant flash back to the era of Bandung and
benefit from lessons of the past. Nonetheless the focus should be on the status
of present challenges and possible responses contributing to moving ahead.
Attention should be given to the positions expressed at recent conferences of
NAM, Algiers may 2014 in particular. Issues are only mentioned without attempt
to articulate them into an integrated programme of action. Such exercise would
pre-empt the conclusions of the expected rich debates to come.
ISSUE 1: Constructing the political solidarity between
States, nations and peoples of Asia, Africa , Latin America and the Caribbean
1)History
of NAM has proved that the political solidarity deployed by countries of the
South had produced results. The colonial legacies denounced at Bandung have
been cleared, except for Palestine. An effort is therefore required to
reconstruct the front of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
2) The
major challenge to day is represented by the deployment of the US/NATO/Japan
strategy aiming at establishing their military control of the Planet, the
military menaces and interventions conducted to that effect, and the false “legitimacy”
given to these interventions by the so called “international community”, in
fact restricted to the imperialist powers. Beyond the analysis of the
disastrous results of these interventions, resulting into the destruction of
whole societies (Iraq, Lybia, Syria are sad exemples of such results), a debate
should be conducted to assess the responses (or lack of response) that the
community of States of the three continents have given to that central
challenge. Defeating that strategy of military control of the planet conditions
the success of an alternative reorganisation of the political world system,
guaranteeing the rights of nations to choose freely their own path of
development and ensuring peaceful coexistence among them. A number of problems
relate to that central question, such as the struggle for the dismantling of
the US military bases, an assessment of what is meant by “the struggle against
terrorism”, state terrorism etc.
3)NAM,
along with the G77 plus China, had initiated successfully the adoption by the
UN of Charters formulating rights of peoples, as well as the right to development.
Suggesting proposals aiming at reinforcing the ways and means to have those
rights actually implemented is required.
4)NAM,
along with the G77 plus China should also consider deploying systematic efforts
to re-establish the legitimacy of UN as representative of the international
community.
5)NAM, G77
plus China, CELAC (The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) and
the African Union, should coordinate their efforts. Proposals to
institutionalise their cooperation (common secretariat? , task forces?) are
welcome.
6)Conflicts
between countries of the three continents with respect to their continental and
maritime boundaries cannot be ignored. Our debates should perhaps focus on
proposals to create institutional frames offering ways and means to clear these
conflicts and avoid their being manipulated by imperialist powers with a view
to destroying the solidarity among us.
ISSUE 2 : Advancing the construction of alternative
sovereign, popular and democratic projects in the three continents
1)We should start by drawing the lessons from the
historical experiences of NAM countries which attempted to build
national/popular inward looking economies as referred to in part A of this
document. The major shortcoming in all these experiences (as well as in the
socialist experiences of the 20 th century) lays in their disregard for the
fundamental importance of inventing ways ensuring the progressive advance of
higher forms of democracy which condition in their turn any meaningful
efficient management in both the economic and political fields. This
shortcoming generated depolitisation which was engulfed by the rise of passeist
illusions that constitute a major obstacle to the required alternative based on
a renewed concept of a “sovereign project” in keeping with the challenges of
our contemporary world.
2)The very notion of the
"sovereign project" must be a subject for discussion. Given the level
of
penetration of transnational investments in all sectors and in all countries,
one cannot avoid the question: what kind of sovereignty is being referred to?
The
global conflict for access to natural resources is one of the main determinants
of the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. The dependence of the North for
numerous resources and the growing demands of China constitute a challenge for
South America, Africa and the Middle East which are particularly well endowed
with resources and shaped by the history
of the pillage of those resources. Can we develop national and regional
policies in these domains as the beginning of a rational and equitable global
management of resources that would benefit all peoples? Can we develop new
relations between China and the countries of the South that subscribe to such a
perspective, linking access to these resources by China with support for
the industrialisation of the countries
concerned (that which the so-called "donors" of the OECD refuse to
do)?
An
independent national policy remains fragile and vulnerable if it does not have
real national and popular support, which requires it to be based on economic
and social policies that ensure that the popular classes are beneficiaries of
"development." That is the condition of the social stability required
for the success of the sovereign project against the political de-stabilization
of the imperialist project,. We must therefore examine the nature of
relationships between existing or potential sovereign projects and the social
bases of the system of power: a national, democratic and popular project, or an
illusory project of national capitalism?
Can
non-continental countries develop sovereign projects? What are their limits?
What forms of regional coming together could facilitate such progress ?
3)Preparations for the
future, even if far away, begin today. What model of society do we want?
Founded on what principles? The destructive competition between individuals or
the affirmation of the advantages of solidarity? The liberty that gives
legitimacy to inequality or the liberty associated with equality? The
exploitation of the planet's resources without regard for the future or by
taking into consideration the precise
measure of what is needed for the
reproduction of the conditions of life on the planet? The future must be seen
as the realization of a higher stage of universal human civilization, not
merely a more "fair" or more "efficient" model of
civilization as we know it (the "modern" civilization of capitalism).
In order to avoid the risk of staying on the ground of wishful thinking, a
remake of the utopian socialism of the 19th century, we should ensure answers
on the following topics: 1) What anthropological and sociological scientific
knowledge today interrogates the “utopias” formulated in the past? 2)What is
our new scientific knowledge about the conditions for the reproduction of life on the planet?
4)In summary: is the target
catching up with the affluent societies as they are to-day, such as the US
(target for China), Germany, Japan, or even small European rich countries
(targets for others)? Are such targets desirable and possible? Or is the target
more ambitious: create the conditions for our societies of the three continents
contributing to the invention of a higher stage of human civilisation?
ISSUE 3 : Return to the agrarian question; facing the
challenge of growing unequality in the access to land
1)We consider that a special
attention must be given to the agrarian question in Asia, Africa and Latin
America. The reason is that neo liberal globalisation pursues a massive attack
on peasant agriculture on the three continents, in particular in Africa and Latin
America, the well known process of “land grabing”, now expanding also in East
European countries and Ukraine. Complying with this major component of current
globalisation leads nowhere but simply to the massive
pauperisation/exclusion/destitution of hundreds of millions of human beings
across the three continents. That would therefore put an end to any attempt of
our societies to move up in the global society of nations. Therefore any
meaningful alternative pattern of development must be based on the opposite
principle, the right of access to land to all peasants, as equally (or at least
as less unequally) as possible in order to be a component in building a
consistent sovereign productive modern system, associating industrial growth
and food sovereignty.
2)Modern capitalist agriculture,
represented by both rich family farming and/or by agribusiness corporations, is
now looking forward to a massive attack on third world peasant production.
Capitalist agriculture governed by the principle of return on capital,
localised in North America, in Europe, in the South cone of Latin America and
in Australia, employs only a few tens of millions of farmers, but their
productivity is the highest recorded at global level. On the other hand,
peasant-farming systems still constitute the occupation of nearly half of
humanity – i.e. three billion human beings. What would happen should
“agriculture and food production” be treated as any other form of production
submitted to the rules of competition in an open-deregulated market ? Would
such principles foster the accelerating of production ? Indeed one can imagine
some fifty million new additional modern farmers, producing whatever the three
billion present peasants can offer on the market beyond they ensuring their own
(poor) self-subsistence. The conditions for the success of such an alternative
would necessitate the transfer of important pieces of good land to the new
agriculturalists (and these lands have to be taken out of the hands of present
peasant societies), access to capital markets (to buy equipments) and access to
the consumers markets. Such agriculturalists would indeed “compete”
successfully with the billions of present peasants. But what would happen to
those? Billions of “non-competitive” producers would be eliminated within the
short historic time of a few decades.
The major argument presented to
legitimate the “competition” doctrine alternative is that such development did
happen in XIXth century Europe and finally produced a modern-wealthy
urban-industrial-post industrial society as well as a modern agriculture able
to feed the nation and even to export. Why should not this pattern be repeated
in the contemporary Third World countries ? The argument fails to consider two
major factors which make the reproduction of the pattern almost impossible now
in third world countries. The first is that the European model developed
throughout a century and a half along with industrial technologies which were
intensive labour using. Modern technologies are far less. And therefore if the
new comers of the third world have to be competitive on global markets for
their industrial exports they have to adopt them. The second is that Europe
benefited during that long transition from the possibility of massive out
migration of their “surplus” population to the Americas.
Can we imagine other alternatives based of the
access to land for all peasants ? In that frame it is implied that peasant
agriculture should be maintained and simultaneously engaged in a process of
continuous technological/social change and progress. At a rate which would
allow a progressive transfer to non rural employment in keeping with the
gradual building of a consistent modern industrial productive system. Such a
project, which could be named “a programme of revival of rural life and peasant
agriculture” , is the only acceptable alternative to the ongoing process of
destruction.
Such a strategic target implies
policies protecting peasant food production from the unequal competition of
modernised agriculturalists – agro-business local and international. It
questions the patterns of industrial – urban development, which should be less
based on export oriented priorities, themselves taking advantage of low wages
(implying in their turn low prices for food), and be more attentive to a
socially balanced internal market expansion. Simultaneously such a choice of
principle facilitates integrating in the overall scheme patterns of policies
ensuring national food sovereighnty, an indispensable condition for a country
to be an active member of the global community, enjoying the indispensable
margin of autonomy and negotiating capacity.
3)The record of the Bandung era
in this respect offers a mixed picture. In China and Vietnam access to land has
been guaranteed to all peasants in that spirit. But that has not been the case
elsewhere. Some more radical national/popular experiences have indeed
implemented land reforms which limited the processes of destruction of peasant
agricultural systems. But in general, and more particularly in Latin America,
this sad process continued.
July 2014
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