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NAFTA, Capitalism and Alternatives: Debate, pt.2
Victor Story wrote:
> NAFTA is not the capitalist option,
And I (Harry Cleaver) respond:
Victor: Of course it is the capitalist option. It is not the only
capitalist option, obviously, the people just refered to have others. It
is just the option prefered by the most powerful capitalist forces in
North America and beyond.
> nor did NAFTA cause
> the ongoing integration of the two capitalist markets - that option and
> integration process began long before NAFTA was written - NAFTA is merely
> the attempt by the governments to manage what was occurring already.
Victor: Quite right. But it is not "merely" the attempt. It is a quite
serious effort by the state (both governments) to regulate a relation to
the benefit of both. But the regulators are those who will profit by it.
Let's not forget how NAFTA was drafted (in secret with no popular input)
and rammed through by precisely those capitalist corporate/state
interests who expected to profit from it. "Regulation" in capitalism has
almost always been done by the regulated, from the first anti-trust
legislation drafted by a Rockefeller crony onward. What they haven't
controlled they have fought like hell to elimiate, e.g.,
Reagan/Bush/Thatcher's "deregulation" movement. If the capitalist are for
it you can be damned certain that they control it in their own interests.
> Having no NAFTA is equivalent to pretending there is no illegal
> immigration.
Victor: How I wish they would pretend there were no illegal immigration.
then we wouldn't have the kind of rabid, racist militarization of the
border that is underway, from the Carter Plan in 1977 through
Simpson-Mazzoli to Prop. 187 and the Berlin Wall in El Paso. But your
parallel is overdrawn. Having no NAFTA would be like the situation before
it was passed. The integration you refer to would be proceeding and so
would the opposition against the way it has been used against folks on
both sides of the border.
> Now, if NAFTA and capitalist development in Mexico are
> inevitable, given the conditions of capitalism today, then the EZLN is
> also a positive influence. Capitalism has failed the people of Chiapas,
> but partly because capitalism is crippled there by impediments such as
> boss systems and inadequate infrastructure. If the Mexican government
> will face up to these things, and the US government will manage NAFTA
> better, then NAFTA will in the long run benefit even Chiapas.
>
Victor: Wrong. In the first place, capitalism is only inevitable in the
sense that we are presently saddled by it and it will take some time and
a lot of effort to get rid of it. Same with NAFTA. But then your
principle argument is that NAFTA is good, not that it is inevitable, so
why backpeddle to such a depressing argument? In the second place,
capitalism has failed the people of Chiapas just like it has failed
everyone. It has created a world of vast and growing poverty and
suffering in which we all live, even if some of us live higher on the hog
than others. Capitalism has not only failed the poor, it has failed the
rich as well, in the sense that it has been a world of alienation and
exploitation in which the few benefits (mostly material) that we have
been able to achieve have been despite it, not because of it.
"Capitalism" after all, does not produce wealth, we do. "Capitalism" is a
social system that subordinates our production of wealth (and its use for
the realization of human self-development) to the endless imposition of
work as a means of social control.
If the EZLN are a "positive influence" it is because they have given
voice to the desire to escape capitalism, to move in other directions,
not because they may provoke some minor reforms (like what? like temporary
welfare measures for the people of Chiapas while they are being squeezed
off their land and forced into cities and foreign lands?).
Capitalism is not "crippled" by boss systems and inadequate
infrastructure. Boss systems are inherent in capitalism. The capitalists
are the bosses. The bosses are the functionaries of capitalism, whether
they wear pin-stripped suits and carry portable computers or ride in
pickup trucks and carry shotguns. The infrastructure in Chiapas has been
perfectly adequate for extracting vast quantities of wealth. It's current
inadequacy lies in the lack of roads that can carry armoured
vehicles and tanks. Yes, I know that there are peasant communities which
would like to have roads to facilitate their coming and going. But that
is not "infrastructure" in the usual sense of the term. "Infrastructure"
--a common object of state and World Bank investment-- is usually
conceived of in terms of widening "development", i.e., facilitating the
exploitation of resources, both human and non-human.
Victor: "NAFTA will eventually benefit even Chiapas"? Who in Chiapas? As
argued above, the domestic changes engineered by Salinas to complement
NAFTA are designed to complete the enclosure of Chiapas, the expulsion
of the peasant/indigenous population from the land. Of those expelled
certainly some would benefit, as some always benefit (at least
materially) from capitalist development. But most will not and
communities and ways of life that people are now fighting to defend will
be destroyed. Take a look at George Collier's book BASTA! AT chapter 5
on "The Toll of Restructuring on Lives and Communities" where he
discusses the destruction in the wake of "development". Why accept such
destruction Victor? Why not listen to those speaking of another path
down which they want to have the right to travel, one where communities
survive and grow and change with considerable self-determination, rather
than being dismembered through "development" which profits only a few.
> Having made these two points, that the recent economic crisis is
> short term, and the prospects of NAFTA for the long-term remain bright,
> what about the real question asked that I am addressing - is it likely
> that the Mexican economy will recover in the mid-tern, that is, over the
> next year. Yes.
Victor: Recover to what? To the situation that obtained before the peso
crisis? To in unviable economic policy and a stagnation in which the
Mexican people had not even recuperated their loses of the 1980s? Recover
to the situation pre the onset of the debt crisis? The economy may
recover, speculative investment may flow again (irrational as it is), but
that hardly means the Mexican people will recover. And recover what?
Recover their income? Recover their land which is being sold off? Recover
their resources which are being sold off? Recover their dignity which is
being sold to the highest bidder along with everything else?
>Mexico has much to offer the international market, its
> own market is substantial, the Mexican people work like hell, and are
> incredibly flexible and enduring in hard times -
Victor: Yep, that is EXACTLY what Mexico has to offer (along with its
earth)international investors: the sweat and endurance of its people,
their lives. That is what you recommend: that the Mexican people
prostitute themselves to international corporate capital. And when the
market collapses because the peso falls(as it did in December 1994), or
when the Fed suddenly decides to jackup interest rates (as it did in
1979-81) and throws the Mexican economy (along with the rest of the
world) into depression, the good, hardworking Mexican people will once
again be "flexible" and "endure" in the hard times not of their making.
What a bunch! Hard working, contented slaves, willing to bear the costs
of the capitalist business cycle while the Salinases and the Zedillos and
the directors of Chase Manhattan Bank and the International Monetary
Fund continue to live off the fat of the land through thick and thin,
through bull markets and bear crashes. What a wonderful perspective for
the 21st Century: another hundred years of "development" with the
wretched of the earth producing the wealth and paying the price.
No thanks, Victor.
You know this vision of the Mexican people prostituting themselves and
their land to international business is exactly what the Zapatistas have
rejected. I don't understand how you can say that you support the
Zapatistas while embracing exactly the policies that they are laying down
their lives to change!!
> the Mexican economy will
> begin to recover over the next weeks and months, POSSIBLY, and better
> times lie ahead. Most Mexicans know this, that is why they do not
> support an armed uprising,
Victor: But they HAVE supported an armed uprising. Not the "seize the
winter palace" variety, but the Zapatista variety that used guns to
trigger a political debate that continues to rage, permanently
transforming Mexican politics. The hundreds of thousands who have
marched, the thousands who have come together to discuss alternatives to
the way things have been, and so on, have all "supported" the Zapatistas
and their uprising.
> voted for the PRI in large numbers in spite of
> knowledge of corruption - they desire stability and have faith in better
> times ahead, just like the people of Peru who voted for Fugimori.
Victor: Although I cannot fathom why, you seem to have bought the PRI
line on the Mexican elections hook-line-and-sinker, totally ignoring all
the evidence (more than ever inhistory) of the corruption of the whole
process, from information management to voting fraud. You sound like a
neo-classical economist who has moved from a model based on the
ASSUMPTION of complete information and free choice to the real world of
vastly inadquate information and very unfree choice and never notices the
incongruity! I can not believe you really think the Mexican people went
to the polls with full knowledge of their options, or that the PRI left
the votes against it untouched. Moreover, to interpret the "will" of
"most Mexicans" in terms of their voting patterns (to the degree that we
can tell what they were in the presence of widespread fraud) ignores the
infinitely more substantial political activities in which they are engaged
on a regular basis. You promulgate the usual capitaist ideology that
"politics" is defined mainly in terms of formal electoral activity,
ignoring the day-to-day politics of grassroots struggles whose real
content is NOT consistent with the politics of ANY of the political
parties offering tweedledum and tweedledee options at the polls.
> This
> analysis does not gratify my own left-leaning sentiments, but I am
> writing with my brain, not my heartstrings.
>
Victor: Ad hominem, comrade. What this statement sounds like is: "I wish
the world was otherwise, but all my own fond hopes of yesterday have
turned to dust, so I have abandoned those hopes (the vibrations of your
heartstrings) and have become a hard-nose realist (writing with your
rational mind), accepting the inevitable evil of humankind and
making the best of a bad situation. And those of you who refuse to
let me destroy your hopes and aspirations, are nothing but a bunch of
self-deluding romantics who are not to be taken seriously." Or maybe,
just maybe, there is a part of you which is playing devil's advocate,
giving voice and argumentative structure to your fears that things
are so bad they can only be changed in a marginal way, and hoping,
really hoping, to be convinced otherwise?
I don't know which interpretation is correct, or even if both are wrong.
What I am sure of is this: the path you say we must choose --that of
capitalist development-- has already demonstated over a period of
centuries its inability to lead us out of the valley of shadows and into
the light. Therefore, I say, let`s look around and see what other paths
are being opened by imaginative, creative people who still have the
energy to struggle for a better way, and let's support them, really
support them --not just say we support them while arguing that they are
wasting their time. Better, let's join them. Better to live our lives
struggling to create more fulfilling footpaths than to plod along the
highway to hell rationalizing to ourselves and others that there are no
options, and that we really have no other choice.
======================================
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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