Pope Scolds Capitalism in Cuba
(January 25, AAS)
HAVANA (AP) - This communist island is not exactly on the verge of a free-market explosion, but there was Pope John Paul II, warning against "capitalist neoliberalism" and "blind market forces."
The pope - best-known as a critic of communism, but long wary of unfettered capitalism - chose his final Mass in Cuba on Sunday to issue one of his harshest attacks yet on Western market economies and their influence worldwide.
President Fidel Castro, who views the pope as sympathetic to the Cuban revolution's socialist agenda, sat in the front row, just 20 yards from the papal altar.
Since arriving in Cuba, John Paul has prodded the Cuban government on its human rights record, but has also cautioned Cubans against Western lifestyles and consumer tastes, and issued a series of attacks on the 36-year U.S. economic embargo and on Western aid policies.
"From its centers of power, such neoliberalism often places unbearable burdens upon less-favored countries," the pope said to ringing applause. "Hence, at times, unsustainable economic programs are imposed on nations as a condition for further assistance."
The pope lamented that a small number of countries were growing "exceedingly rich at the cost of the increasing impoverishment of a great number of other countries."
While Cuba has made a limited opening to private enterprise over the past five years, permitting about 160,000 self-employed workers, Castro has kept a tight leash on all private economic activity.
Since the early days of his papacy, John Paul has warned against what he has called "savage" capitalism and has lately expressed worry about what globalization means to developing countries.
He also has been prodding Western countries to help ease the debts of poor nations.
John Paul's attacks on the U.S. embargo have come as no surprise - he fiercely opposes such methods on the grounds that they punish only the poorest.
President Clinton said this past week that Washington would maintain the embargo, and it was up to Castro to open Cuban society before the U.S. will change its stance.
Clinton acknowledged that the issue divided the United States from most other countries and said "only time will tell whether they were right or we were."
In welcoming the pope Wednesday, Castro said the pontiff's calls for an equitable distribution of wealth were "so similar to what we preach." (End)
Henry C.K. Liu
Chris Burford wrote:
> Coalitions of Christians and other activists have issued press releases
> claiming that thousands will be demonstrating in the City of London, and in
> other European financial centres today against "the evils of capitalism".
> This phrase is now apparently not one that has to be censored out of news
> reports, and the demonstrators are not yet being denounced as communists.
>
> Gordon Brown, whose Financial Services Authority is criticised strongly in
> the Daily Telegraph today for the extensive powers of the inspector, has
> been keen to talk up his position about global financial reform and in
> particular the debt relief agenda.
>
> Yesterday he gave a news conference with an elaborate satellite connection
> to enable him to talk to a woman in a village in Africa.
>
> At the weekend ahead of the G8 foreign secretaries meeting, he went on
> record praising the Jubilee 2000 campaign for increasing pressure on
> politicians, and allowed others to voice his fear that he was experiencing
> opposition (from the USA???) to proposals to go much deeper than 50 billion
> pounds of debt relief for the poorest countries. His arguments went beyond
> giving charity to the minority of helpless beggar countries.
>
> "Debt relief brings the global economy together as part of one moral
> universe. If we don't take poverty relief in Africa seriously we will pay a
> heavy price in the next century. We must leave behind in the old century
> the injustices that have no place in the new century".
>
> He argued that debt relief was necessary to demonstrate that globalisation
> works for more than the "wealthy few".
>
> But as the west, particularly the USA, complacently comes out of the
> financial fears of 1998 (see Greenspans latest signal against overheating)
> the momentum for really structural change at G8 is much diminished. How big
> the charitable gesture to the indigent of the world, is the question on the
> table.
>
> Whether such campaigns can really expose "the evils of capitalism" may
> depend on the ability of would be marxists to abandon dogmatism and work
> with others to show the relevance of the fundamental critique of Capital.
>
> Chris Burford
>
> London