The presented transformatory projects in detail

 

Seminar: Acting for the Transformation of our Societies - Examples from different world regions
Time: 6. Oktober 2010, 9:00 - 18:30 h
Venue: International Auditorium, International Trade Union House (ETUC), Boulevard Roi Albert II-5, 1210 Brussels

 

1. The Transformation of the International Financial Regime,
the Bank of the South

The negotiations for a “Bank of the South”, today’s Banco del Sur (BANSUR), were initiated by Venezuela and Argentina in 2006. In 2007, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay joined, and the agreement to establish the Bank was signed on December 9 of that year. The conclusion of the official establishment of the bank followed almost two years later, on September 26, 2009.

The Foundations: The BANSUR has US$20 billion in initial capital, provided by the central banks of the member states. Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil have each contributed $4 billion; the remaining $8 billion have been contributed by the other countries, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay, in accordance with their possibilities. Like the currency system of the European Communities before the introduction of the euro, the “sucre”, the common clearing system of the ALBA countries, is to be used for trade between the participating countries of the BANSUR, so as to free the economies of Latin America from the dominance of the US dollar.

 

The goals of the Banco del Sur: The BANSUR is in close contact with another Latin American organization, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR/UNASOL), founded in 2008. In somewhat oversimplified terms, the BANSUR is UNASUR’s house bank. Venezuela’s Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas has identified three goals for the BANSUR:

1. Regional Integration
2. Reduction of asymmetries within and between the South American countries,
3. and financing of development projects.

The development priorities are:

1. Food sovereignty
2. Health sovereignty
3. Energy sovereignty

4. Sovereignty over natural resources

 

Accordingly, SMEs are to be supported and infrastructural projects which promote the integration of the continent funded, but social investments too are to be initiated. Thus, investments are to be provided for education, health systems and also sewage systems – more or less exactly the opposite of what the IMF demands. The “Gas Pipeline of the South” is to transport Venezuelan gas to Bolivia and Argentina. This project could become an important impetus for further regional development, since South America has traditionally been split between gas importers and exporters. Brazil and Chile, as importers, want to diversify their imports as much as possible, and hence want to get as independent as possible from deliveries from Latin America. Here, these projects could help strengthen the material foundations for regional cooperation. Another goal of is the expansion of the transport infrastructure, so as to facilitate the exchange of goods, and especially of people.

 

One country, one vote: The first major difference with the western-dominated institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, is that each country has one vote, i.e. the rights to vote is not measured in terms of capital contributions to the Bank. The goal is to implement the principle of consensus as much as possible. Not entirely by consensus, but still largely so, is the requirement that for projects costing more than $70 million, a two-thirds majority must be achieved, since for project amounts greater than this threshold, the “one country, one vote” principle is no longer applies. Nonetheless, there are major indications that the BANSUR constitutes a major step towards democratization, since there are from the start institutionalized possibilities for influence by civil society, such as the social audit mechanism.

No Conditionality! The second major difference between the IMF/World Bank and BASNUR is the slogan “no conditionality”. The BANSUR will not require any conditions beyond the payment of interest. There will thus be no disastrous conditions such as those imposed by the IMF, with which the EU and the USA can force open the markets of the Third World countries with compulsory privatization and the opening of markets.

Lender of last resort? The BANSUR is to become a counterweight to the IMF and the World Bank, where the western countries continue to have an enormous preponderance of the votes, and the management is clearly dominated by the goals of western capital. However, whether the BANSUR is to become the “lender of a last resort” is a matter of controversy – that, after all, is the role which the IMF had to assume once again during the financial crisis. Certainly, the good years just before the beginning of the world economic crisis, with their high export prices, were on the one hand the reason why many countries of Latin America were able to repay their loans to the IMF faster, and thus roll back its influence. On the other however, this success also led them to no longer see the need to build up a counter-organization to the IMF as overly urgent. Brazil in particular has its foot on the brake regarding the issue of whether the BANSUR should become a “lender of a last resort”, since that country feels increasingly able, thanks to its growing importance, to push through its interests at the global level even without allies. Brazil has an equally questionable position regarding the question as to whether the BANSUR should help heavily indebted countries. Like Germany in the euro-zone, Brazil declines any too far-reaching responsibility for other countries.

Intellectual hegemony: knowledge as a common good: The BANSUR can play an important role in credit and country evaluation, acting as an alternative supplier of market information, thus breaking the IMF’s monopoly on such information. This aspect cannot be underestimated, since the World Bank alone has 12,500 employees, making it the second largest employer in Washington, D.C., after the U.S. government. The academic output of the IMF and the World Bank are an important weapon in the battle for the hegemony of neo-liberal ideology. The BANSUR would be well advised to consider all its findings as common-good information, and to make them available in their entirety to the public – which would be in sharp contrast to the Bretton Woods organizations.

 

2. Right to Work: Job Creation Schemes for Rural Areas (NREGA) in India

 

Background: The implementation of the Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Acts (NREGA) began in 2005, in 200 select districts in India. Since 2008, there have been NREGA financed construction sites in each of India’s 604 districts. The basic idea of NEGRA is that the state should assure all rural households the right that one family member receive paid work for at least 100 days each year.

 

The concentration on the rural population is very important, since 56% of Indians live in the countryside, but account for only 20% of the GDP. In recent years, some 10,000 peasants have committed suicide, because they simply no longer saw any way to provide for their families.

 

Not only simple survival – NREGA also means strengthening democracy
The project is first and foremost a project for fighting poverty, and is often the only source of income for a family. Here, India can draw on the rich experience of previous regional programmes. However, this programme is the first to be extended to all of India, and as of mid-2009, had already reached 49 million families. Earlier projects were imposed top-down, and the people affected were usually only the objects of these policies. Civil society had hardly any influence on designing the programmes, and still less on their actual implementation locally. This is different in the case of the NREGA: here, work is only provided where it is needed. The ascertainment of the actual need and the supervision takes place at the lowest democratically legitimized level of government in India, the so-called panchayats, the village councils. They, not outsourced companies, are also responsible for implementation (so-called “social audits”). Strengthening the panchayats is also important because there, 33% of the seats are reserved for women, so that the role of the women in the villages is considerably enhanced through this strengthening of the institutions of self-administration.

 

The law was designed from the start to ensure that the political influence of the public be as great as possible. The hope here is not only that the political empowerment of the marginalized strata be realized, but also that corruption, which is rife, be reduced by radical public openness. Pay rates are above market levels, and thus have a corrective effect on the local labour market.

 

The sub-castes which often have no economic assets, and whose strength lies only in the numbers which they can bring to bear in the democratic process, can profit from this project.

 

In the course of the implementation of the NEGRA programme, a reduction of internal migration has been achieved, which not only tears families apart, but also drives millions of people into the growing slums. Moreover, in addition to providing income and strengthening of democratic participation, especially for women, NEGRA also makes further-reaching projects possible. In some districts for instance, there are literacy courses during work breaks.

Development of infrastructure and environmental protection: The villages can decide themselves whether funds are to be invested in environmental protection, village development or bringing land into cultivation. To date, 75% of paid worker-hours have gone into improving the water balance. This does not involve the building of gigantic dams, but rather the cleaning of small reservoirs, the installation of small irrigation systems, the repair of riverbank reinforcement and the construction of earthen walls for the storage of rainwater. Moreover, soil protection and the fight against the spread of deserts are carried out and drainage systems installed. In some parts of the Ganges Delta, illegal fishing stopped after irrigation channels made fish farming possible.

 

3. Basic Income Grant Coalition in Namibia (BIG Coalition)

 

Background: Namibia is the country with the highest Gini coefficient, i.e., in no other country worldwide is inequality more strongly evident. The glaring poverty in Namibia imposes a kind of regressive tax upon the poorest of the poor, which means that they even have to redistribute locally up to 23% of their meagre incomes. In real terms, this operates via neighbourhood aid, or aid within the extended family. And this in spite of the fact that 180,000 citizens of Namibia have practically no income whatever, and 62% live below the international standard for poverty of US$1, minimal as that is. Moreover, Namibia has been struck by an AIDS epidemic which hits particularly the poorest especially hard, since medicines, for those in the happy position of having access to them in the first place, do not work for hungry people! For the so-called anti-retroviral medicines work only when taken together with sufficient food.

Sponsor of the project: So it is no wonder that one of the most interesting development projects, the Basic Income Grant Project (BIG), is from Namibia. This project is sponsored by the BIG Coalition which consists of trade unions, churches, AIDS organizations and the Federation of NGOs. Every Namibian citizen is to get at least N$100 per month before reaching retirement age, which comes to approx. €11 or US$15. Net annual costs were N$0.8-1.4 billion (€90-160 million/US$117-206 million160).

Project already implemented very successfully in two villages: This programme has been tested and accompanied scientifically for two years in two villages in Namibia. It has been shown that the procedure of simply filling out a card at the post office results in hardly any corruption. The above-mentioned regressive poor people’s tax based on the forced solidarity of the poor, which leaves nothing for investment, no longer operates. Local production of the simplest consumer goods is starting up, and the self-employment rate has increased drastically in the two villages examined.
Resistance to exploitation has been greatly strengthened, since there is now a pay floor, so that local big landowners now have to offer the villagers better work opportunities.

Clearly, such issues as the dignity of work are now suddenly on the agenda, since the people no longer have to put up with everything. This may be the reason why the IMF is propagandizing against the BIG project with demonstrably false data.

 

5. The Network for Transformative Social Protection (NTSP)
in South-East Asia

 

Background: In the Western media, Asia has been highlighted for its economic success stories. Too often, it is forgotten that most poor people actually live in Asia, and that millions of them lack the most basic social rights. In many countries of South-East Asia, the development of recent decades has had a devastating effect on civil society. Many critical thinkers have been silenced, and increasing poverty has encouraged large sections of the people to organize. For that reason critical civil society in large parts of South-East Asia has built itself up under severe restrictions, such as those in the current economic crisis.

 

Goals and methods: In October 2009, civil society organizations and individuals from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam gathered to form the Network for Transformative Social Protection (NTSP), as a fundamental break with the past.

The goals of the NTSP are to secure decent employment and livelihoods, adequate food, universal healthcare, universal social insurance including old age pensions, education, water, electricity and, last but not least, decent housing for all. These rights should be included in the constitutions of the respected countries. The methods for achieving them are capacity building, and research, as well as lobby work with national, international and supranational governance structures. The long term goal is to develop an alternative regionalism.

The transformative aspect: The transformative aspect of this campaign can be seen in its approach towards reaching its goals. These are not abstract goals, but rather very concrete small steps to be achieved one after the other – housing projects in one region, and the struggle for more equal access to the health system in another. All projects are interconnected by the method of teaching the people their rights. The desired effect of the many single projects is that the people gain confidence in their ability to reach common goals, and that they acquire new knowledge about their political and social rights. “The path is the goal”, inasmuch as successful projects change power structures in favour of the common people through enhanced social capital.

 

5. The Transformation of the Mobility Sector

 

Capitalism and the automobile: Private motor transport is one of the most important symbolic, material supports of modern capitalist society. A car of one’s own is an important status symbol, and in large parts of the world, it is at the same time a necessity for being mobile, since governments neglect public transport in favour of private auto traffic. The preferential treatment for the industry which meets the private demand for motorized mobility is however not at all a result of the free forces of the market, but rather the result of the political economy of capitalism as it has emerged in and North America, particularly in the USA, since the beginning of the twentieth century.
The worldwide triumph of the western inspired mobility structure is implemented by the auto corporations, particularly in the USA, Japan and Germany, and the regional power elites in the emerging countries of the former Third World.

What about the alternatives to private motor traffic? First of all, there is the “false alternative” – the electric car alternative. Due to its intrinsically weak infrastructure, its costs and its limited range, the electric car is no alternative, but only an additional market, which will not replace today’s cars. It will bring about further economic and environmental crises, for even today, the motorcar industry in Europe is already sitting on unused capacities amounting to 30%.

The critique of motor transport can be summarized as follows:

a) Cars have a higher consumption per unit than other traffic systems
b) Utility drops with increasing traffic density
c) Cars score poorly in terms of the ratio of total load (i.e., the whole vehicle) to the weight of persons being carried
d) Private auto traffic uses more space than other modes
e) A stunningly high toll of lives is paid: in the 27 countries of the EU, 500,000 people died in motor traffic just within the period 1990 to 2008!
f) In German, for example, some 6-8% of the GDP is used for the external effects of the auto sector – noise damage, health effects, dead and injured, and environmental and climate damage.

 

Where do we go from here? Obviously, a restructuring of this societally so important sector is necessary. However, it is just as obvious that very stiff resistance can be expected from the “oil-auto-aeroplane” segment of capital. In order to restructure the auto industry in a progressive way, and to move as broad as possible a section of the population to go along with it, the immediately urgent questions have to be answered:

1. What happens to the jobs in the motor industry, which in fact provide relatively good pay?
2. The auto industry is very important for the technical ability to learn of the entire industry. Due to its high productivity, learning effects jump from there to the entire industry, so that higher overall productivity is achieved, which is in turn one of the preconditions for a higher quality of life.
3. How can economic democracy and high growth in productivity be linked? What about codetermination for workers in precarious jobs, and for the unemployed?
4. How can the desire for mobility be fulfilled if the private car is no longer the foundation, especially in rural areas?
5. How can one reduce the compulsion to mobility? How should our cities of the future look, so as to reduce the distances between places of work and of residence?
6. The “American way of life” even today seems to promise individual mobility; the German version, “freie Fahrt für freie Bürger” (free passage for free citizens) is still attractive, and this is especially true, too, for the upwardly mobile segments of the middle strata in the emerging countries, and for economically and culturally marginalized strata in the First World. How can we counteract such cultural consumption patterns, and what might a positive counterexample look like in the cultural area? The EU project “Shared Spaces” could be of interest here.

 

Roland Kulke, September 2010