Marxism International

I had started to blog the Live8 concert over the weekend (I had watched most of it courtesy of CNN.com and Chase Bank), but things had become so silly half-way through the London shindig that I went down to the farm and cut some pastures instead.   I mean, come on, did Bob Geldof really mean it when he announced that he and his gaggle of aging, cadaverous rock stars had “liberated” a quarter of a billion debt-ridden souls?   It would have been nice, for the sake of balance, to see some real-live Africans critical of this Celebrity Do-Gooder Extravaganza right up there on stage with Snow Patrol and Dave Matthews.   At least it would have added a little color to the proceedings, if you get my drift.   Michael Stipe was worth tuning in for, at least, with his elegant, sober and judicious performance.

In fact, things are turning sour fast for the whole G8 entourage.   Even the capitalist press is noting the shorter-than-usual shelf-life of the Bush/Blair African initiative.   This morning’s Financial Times had a good piece by Alan Beattie detailing the bloom-is-off-the-rose relationship that is developing between western governments and their NGOs.  Even Oxfam, long a slavering and reliable cheerleader for Downing Street and the UK Treasury, is starting to butt the cow, its complaints of government parsimony (while announcing splashy new initiatives around foreign aid) growing louder.  Rumor is that the heads of Oxfam and Make Poverty History, among others, were recently called on the carpet by the Blair regime to explain some public statements by the organizations’ leaders.  Things are pretty bad when even the most craven recipients of official largesse have to be bullied into acquiescence.

What happens now?   Well, every one knows that the promises of Bush, Blair and Chirac don’t mean squat beyond public relations.   First of all, the west does not have the kind of money for debt relief that is being demanded by the 45 heavily-indebted (mostly African) nations under scrutiny (the worst-cases, known as the Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries, or HIPC, number at this point 18).   Secondly, most of these same nations don’t have anything like the money to pay even a portion of what they still owe.   Of course, they have already repaid the original loans many times over, but the unpaid interest in some cases amounts to one hundred times what these countries borrowed in the first place.

It’s all been pretty much settled, though.   Yes, there is “debt forgiveness”, but it comes with the nearly total loss of national sovereignty for most of these 18 nations.   That is, every decision affecting the civil and economic and political life of their people will now be dictated by the officials of the World Bank and a handful of other US-dominated financial institutions.  

So what, you say?   The nation-state as a sovereign, autonomous entity has been passe almost since Bretton Woods.   And, who knows?   Perhaps a bureaucracy in Brussels, or London or New York would not misrule as badly as some African leaders.   Local politics and familial relationships have wrecked many a development project and have helped plunge nation after nation into the depths of chaos and civil war.   Perhaps Africa needs a tenure of “stewardship” by the wealthy nations, ruling in a benign but firm determination to put sub-Saharan continent on its feet.

But, of course we know that will not happen.   And, besides what is needed above all is a United Africa, free from both the clutches of a cruelly unfair economic system and the constant meddling of nations grown fat off of their suffering.    The West owes the African much, much more than they can ever repay.   It is the West which is indebted to the hundreds of millions it has pillaged and exploited over the past five centuries.    A simple acknowledgement of that fact would be a good start in dealing with questions of foreign aid.