SAMIR AMIN
The concept of a national
sovereign project of development in the perspective of a negotiated
globalisation
1
A national sovereign
project implies the concept and implementation of a set of consistent national
policies aiming at “walking on two legs”, i.e. i) constructing an integrated
autocentered industrial productive system ; ii) moving into policies of revival
and modernization of a peasant agriculture; and iii) articulating the two goals
into a consistent comprehensive plan of action.
a) constructing an
integrated comprehensive industrial productive system implies that each
industry is conceived in order to become a major provider of inputs and/or a
major outlet for other industries. That concept conflicts with the neo liberal
dogma which is based on the exclusive criterion of profitability for each
industrial establishment considered separately from others. This concept leads
to dismantling the industrial systems constructed previously (in the former
Soviet Union, East Europe and some countries of the South) and subordinating
what remains of them to the status of sub-contractors subordinated to further
global expansion of major giant transnationals (operated by financial capital
of the US, some Western European countries and Japan). Our alternative concept
implies State intervention, i.e. State planning, managing an independent
national financial system with a view to financing in priority the construction
of industries, in the frame of budget constraints avoiding inflation and large
foreign debt growing. Systems of taxation should be conceived in order to
support the deployment of the project. Eventual foreign direct investments
associated should be submitted to negotiated conditions that reinforce the
national project, not annihilate it.
b) defining policies
aiming at revival of peasant agriculture, the target of which is to reduce the
out migration from rural areas at rates that cannot allow its being absorbed by
urban industrial development. The target implies that land is not considered as
a “merchandise”, but as a common
national good at the disposal of the whole peasantry. It therefore implies
ownership patterns which protect the access to land for all peasant families,
on as equal footing as possible. The target is also to ensure national food
sovereignty. Such a vision conflicts again with neo liberal dogmas and policies
of so called agricultural development based on massive dispossession of
peasants to the benefit of agribusiness, large land owners and a minority of
rich peasants. A number of priority industries should be conceived in order to
support the modernization of peasant agriculture by providing requested inputs
and offering consumption goods. Such plans for the revival of rural life should
be conceived for a large majority of countries of Asia and Africa, as well as
for Latin America, whenever the rural population still represent a significant
proportion of the total population (30 % or more) and adjusted to the
specificities of each national case.
2
A) Such a project should
provide an efficient basis for:
(i) Reaching targets
ensuring social progress for the vast majorities of working classes; reducing
inequalities. The concepts of neo liberal rule of an unregulated market which
is supposed to generate social justice through the windfall effects of the
expansion of the markets is denied in fact by the on-going continuous
inequality ruling to day.
(ii) Creating objective
favourable conditions for the invention of participatory democratic advances.
Electoral representative democracy (pluripartism and elections) associated to
social disaster as it is the case has already lost its credibility within wide
segments of the society.
(iii) Creating the ground
for global negotiations offering to countries of the South (and former East)
chances to becoming active equal partners in the reconstruction of a pattern of
globalization with no hegemony.
B) Recommendations:
Could be summarized in the
two following sentences:
(i)Opening channels for a
debate with citizens, the trade unions and other organizations of authentic
popular civil society, resulting into a plan of State support to a project of
comprehensive industrialization.
(ii) Opening channels with
peasant mass organizations with a view to defining a plan of action for the
revival of rural peasant agriculture.
