Thanks
>WORLD BANK IN WARNING ON SLOW PROGRESS ON POVERTY REDUCTION.
>
>The World Bank has warned in a new report that many developing countries
>are at risk of not achieving poverty goals established by the international
>community, writes the BBC Online. In response, the Bank is urging both rich
>and poor nations to recommit themselves to halving the number of people
>living in poverty, defined as living on less than $1 a day.
Poverty in the UK is defined as people below a certain percentage of the average wage.
It would be more instructive if the same principle was used for world poverty, (after agreement about how to translate wages into a world equivalent)
>IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler has called "unconscionable" the
>subsidies rich nations, such as the US, Japan and those of Europe, give to
>their farmers and manufacturers.
I think we should start attacking this sort of argument as reformist. While it is true that the developed world, which does so well out of relative free trade, is grossly hypocritical, and while activists for global justice often quote these sort of examples, they are perhaps a hed herring.
If no protectionism by the developed world existed, the implication is that the developing world could move into the shoes of uncompetitive workers in the developed world. Eg producing food, or articles of popular clothing.
However the implication of such a world is that the developing countries will always be on a treadmill of relative under-investment of capital, and lower value of their labour power.
Instead we should campaign for the direct transfer of capital from the developed to the developing countries.
Even Keynes was in favour of this in terms of evening out trade surpluses and trade deficits.
If we do not directly campaign against the inherently exploitative centripetal effects of the global economy, by demanding routine transfer of capital out to the periphery, the whole momentum of the campaign in ameliorative and reformist.
Such a demand also poses directly the question of the social management of the total world supply of capital, and focuses on the tendency of capitalism to recession.
Sometimes demands should be moderate. Sometimes not. On this occasion the balance of forces provides no arguments as to why the demands should be moderate. We will build a more confident movement if we articulate a more extreme demand. Once articulated it is not so strange.
Chris Burford
London