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NAFTA, Capitalism and Alternatives: Debate, pt.1
On Tue, 25 Apr 1995, Victor O. Story wrote:
> Hello,
>
> As a supporter of the EZLN I remain optimistic about NAFTA and
> the Mexican economy. I am no economic wizard though. My opinion on
> capitalism in Mexico usually inflames my comrades.
Victor; now, now, it usually doesn't inflame us. It merely saddens us
that you have given up imagining alternatives to the current system.
Having made this
> apology, may I argue that the crisis this winter was a result of
> short-term political failures on the part of the Mexican government and
> the short-sightedness of North American banks that tend to invest in
> speculative ventures instead of sound business ventures - the bankers
> failed to treat Mexico as a decent place to invest -
Victor: Short-term political failures? Yes, in the sense that Salinas
mortgaged the store in an unsustainable way in order to buy time to deal
with his political problems, especially the grassroots opposition whose
activities accelerated in the wake of the EZLN uprising, but also the
internal conflicts in the PRI, etc. No, in the sense that Salinas'
strategy strategy of selling Mexican assets to the highest bidder, i.e.,
neoliberalism, had been in place much longer and was no short-term
phenomena. That strategy assumed, on the basis of the government's
ability to impose austerity on the Mexican people during the 1980s, that
he could get away with the auction while keeping a lid on those being
screwed by it. He was wrong. He celebrated the wealth he and his friends
were making, the influx of multinational corporate investment, and
apparently remained blind, or uncaring, of the impact on most Mexicans.
They on the other hand were neither blind nor uncaring, and all during
the crisis of the 1980s were busy elaborating alternatives, from the bottom
up, to selling their land and their bodies to international capital.
> nevertheless, NAFTA
> is preferable to the old protectionist policies of the past, which have
> failed and faded into the past.
Victor: Here you mouth neo-liberal slogans but hardly make the
case. Failed for whom? In what sense? Don't answer! Those were
rhetorical questions. I'm not interested in defending the
way the PRI has done things in the past. They have always acted in their
own interests and not in those of the Mexican people, then and now. But
you set up a straw man to suggest that the only alternative to current
neo-liberalism is neo-protectionism, old style. In so doing you exclude
the consideration of new alternatives, the ones people have been
experimenting with these last years.
> NAFTA managed better is the path to a
> better Mexico, not because capitalism is a positive thing, but because
> friendlier business relations between Mexican and North American business
> interests, more open markets, less nationalist mistrust, all tend to
> promote development more than the old pattern of mistrust and nationalist
> protectionism.
Victor: "Development" is capitalist development, there has never been any
other kind. The very concept of development has been intimately wound up
in the elaboration of capitalism. Think of the literature. From at least
Rosenstein Rodan onward, economists have discussed development in terms
of achieving growth (more investment, more wage labor, more profits)
through the improvement in capitalist institutions (labor markets,
capital markets, government demand and supply management policies).
Political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists have discussed
development in terms of "modernization", i.e., the transformation of
pre-capitalist institutions, mindsets, behaviors, and other social
behaviors into those of "homoeconomicus" --that psychopathic construct
built by economists to found their models. Even so-called "socialist"
development, upon closer examination, turned out to be capitalist
development, only with a stronger role for the state and a gloss of
pro-worker revolutionary rhetoric (somewhat like that of the PRI).
You say you support NAFTA because it, and everything that goes with it,
will result in more "development". Well, that means you support more
capitalism. Look around the world Victor. What has more capitalism
gotten us? The world has suffered through 300 years or more of
"development" if you take the long view, a few PostWWII decades if you
take the short view of "development" as a Third World phenomena. And the
project has proven bankrupt. Everywhere "development" has meant the same
thing, the same thing capitalism has always meant: incredible wealth and
power for the few, poverty and suffering for the rest. And don't say,
well what about the US and Western Europe, haven't most people gotten
better off, at least in terms of life expectancy, calories of nutrition
etc, if not in happiness? Because the answer is this: capitalist
development is not a regional or national phenomena but a global one. It
always has been. And the improvements you would be speaking of (that
many of us enjoy) occurred as an integral part of a (development)
process that impoverished and enslaved the rest of the world, from
formal slavery through colonialism to neocolonialism. Go into Chiapas, go
into the barrios of Mexico City, go into those of Juarez and other border
towns and look around. The poverty that you see is an integral part of
development, just as that of the slums of New York, L.A., etc. In a very
real sense, Mexico has had just about all the "development" it can stand.
The poverty of Chiapas is not the poverty of a lack of development. It is
the poverty generated by development, by that of agribusiness, whose
bosses stole the land and exploit the people, by that of hydroelectric
power and oil which has stolen the wealth of the land and left little
behind except devastated and divided communities. That IS "development".
And you want MORE of it? If capitalism is NOT a "postive thing", then
don't desire more of it!
The failure of the critics of NAFTA and the Mexican
> economy is that they have no decent alternatives - the socialist rhetoric
> of much of the left on chiapas-l is impotent,
Victor: "Socialist rhetoric"? Whose? I'm having a hard time remembering
anyone arguing for socialism in Mexico. Certainly not me, you know my
views on the subject (see above). "Impotent"? Now, now Victor, let's not
use revealing psychological terms. How about "unable to offer anything
new"? Well, if there has been any "socialist rhetoric" then I would
probably agree with you, socialism (as a form of state capitalism) has
proven to be as bankrupt as other forms of capitalism, maybe even more
so, in some ways. However, the main issue is whether there ARE "decent
alternatives" to NAFTA/neo-liberal-capitalism/other-forms-of-capitalism?
And to that question I say yes, there are and you are either ignorant of
them (which I doubt) or just not wanting to address them.
What alternatives? Well, I've begun this discussion before, but no one
picks up on it to continue the discussion --perhaps because it is
daunting and difficult? In as much as you support the Zapatistas, we
might start with their demands for meaningful land reform, the
reorientation of agricultural production so as to subordinate export
production to the production of basic food crops, and the retention of
rights to natural resources such as lumber, hydroelectric power and oil
by the people of Chiapas. Or some subset. The neo-liberal, free trade
argument is based, in theory, on the notion of comparative advantage,
i.e., the idea that different countries/regions have different natural
endowments and if they specialize and trade both can be better off. The
theory of course is faulty in many ways, not least because few relevant
endowments are "natural" --most are constructed-- and because the costs
and benefits of specialization are not evenly distributed enough to
make meaningful sense out of the notion that the "country" benefits.
Rather, as in the case of Chiapas, and much of Mexico, the costs are
borne by all those displaced from the land by agribusiness and most of
the benefits are pocketed by the latter. Mexico City is crowded with
people expelled from the land by those who have converted their lands
into export crop production (i.e., agrarian "development"). GNP
accounting does not measure the costs they have paid. It is NOT
subtracted from the market value of the export crops produced --nor
could it be because it cannot (should not) be measured in purely
monetary terms.
The demand for land reform --the return of land to the ex-tillers--
and the dismantling of large scale agribusiness operations, that the
Zapatistas have demanded, is aimed at reversing this process, as I
understand it. Speaking for their largely landless constitutents, they
want land to be redistributed first and foremost as a guarantee of
survival, both physical (they can grow their own food if nothing else)
and spiritual (their connection to the cosmos has traditionally been,
at least in part, through the earth). The Zapatistas recognize that
NAFTA and everything that has gone with it (including the abrogation
of the Constitutional clause preventing the transferance of ejidal
lands in to private hands) is aimed at accomplishing the final
enclosure of the Mexican countryside and the expulsion of its people.
They want to stay. They want land to be able to stay. For better or
for worse as far as their GNP/capita goes. It is their choice and I
think their choice deserves more respect than that of
Salinas/Zedillo/Fed/IMF et al. who decided to expell them, as part of
the process of "development". Let's face it Victor, lots of
Chiapanecos, as well as lots of people elsewhere, are rejecting the
"development" that you think is desireable.
Well, we could go on, and examine all the various directions in which
the Zapatistas have pointed, explore the paths down which they want to
walk, as a means of discussing the "alternatives" which you have
suggested don't exist. Shall we do that? Or we could turn to the cities
and examine the alternatives being elaborated there. I think what we
find everywhere are lines of flight away from development. Directions
of movement which instead of subordinating life to the market (the
neo-liberal option), subordinates the market to life (perhaps
even with the goal of getting beyond the market all together). For a
sampling of the kind of thinking about alternatives that I am talking
about, you can read the Zapatistas, or, for a more academic treatment,
read Wolfgang Sachs(ed) THE DEVELOPMENT DICTIONARY, A Guide to
Knowledge as Power, New Jersey: Zed Press, 1992. The book was orginally
going to be called A DICTIONARY OF TOXIC WORDS and the first word is
"development" --critiqued in a nice essay by Gustavo Esteva. Esteva
calls himself a "deprofessionalized intellectual" because he abandoned
academic work and has been working with grassroots movements for quite
a while now. He now lives in Oaxaca and has been very much involved
with peasant movements there. In case you are wondering,
yes, I have an essay in the book. My word is "socialism" and in the
essay I argue that we should stop using it as a point of departure for
thinking about alternatives today.
> and the populists in
> Congress who want to reverse NAFTA are hateful anti-Mexican nationalists,
> by-and-large.
Victor: All too true, too often. And it is unpleasant to find people you
usually oppose fighting against the same thing you are, although for very
different reasons. But it happens, and is hardly a reason to reject an
argument.
======================================
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173
USA
Phone Numbers: (hm) (512) 442-5036
(off) (512) 471-3211
Fax: (512) 471-3510
E-mail: hmcleave@mundo.eco.utexas.edu
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