Economie et Politique - Revue marxiste d'économie

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ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL SYSTEM FOR NORTH AND SOUTH

THE GLOBAL CRISIS AND AFRICA : STRUGGLES FOR ALTERNATIVES.

Rosa Luxembourg Foundation Conference, Johannesburg,
November 2009

Paul BOCCARA

Maître de Conférences Honoraire en Sciences Economiques
University of Picardie, France
Member of the Economic Committee of the French Communist Party

 

ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL SYSTEM FOR NORTH AND SOUTH

AND STRUGGLES TO MASTER THE MARKET, AND FOR COMMON AND PUBLIC SERVICES OR GOODS, FROM LOCAL TO GLOBAL LEVELS

(With special mentions on Africa and food)

 

The financial crisis of 2008 and the global recession in 2009 express a turning moment in the world evolution. They show a rise of the antagonisms of the globalisation of capitalism and of free market policies so strongly that their domination is to be questioned as never. That has brought very massive interventions from states, public funds, central banks at the national and international levels, as with the recent G20 summits, to attempt to master the failures and blockings of the system, under the pretence of its moralization.

However, those very important interventions essentially aimed to sustain banks, capitals and their activities based on financial profitability and not to respond to the immense and new needs of the populations of the entire world. But it is the exacerbated search of financial profitability which has led to the present situation. Thus, the persistence of the new social difficulties, in despite of the temporary recovery of growth. But there is also the rise of new risks, with the prospects of a very more serious relapse. This should concern especially the risk of speculative rises of securities and more particularly of the immense quantities of public bonds recently issued by the different states. According to The Economist, the world public debt is yet more 35 000 billions dollars at the end of 2008. The enormous bubble of the bonds of the public debt and of their prices would be followed by the slump of their prices. That would bring rise of long interest rate (the inverse of bonds’ prices) and above all serious threats on bonds’ currencies and especially the US dollar. That will very notably amplify social difficulties and clashes at the world scale. Yet in October 2009, after the publication of the public deficit record figure, Timothy Geithner, the US Treasure Secretary, has underlined the particular responsibilities of the status of dollar as a reserve currency and the need to keep a low level of inflation in the long term through reorganizing the public finances.

Thus, the needs of alternative social constructions, especially to transform the financial and monetary system at the world level, but also at the regional and continental, national and local levels. That concerns other efficiency criteria of funds, for another economic and social regulation, another type of growth and development, to make predominating the progress of populations. That concerns the populations of all humanity, not only those of dominating and emerging countries, but of developing countries, including the least advanced ones as in Africa.

The question of efficiency criteria of funds is at the heart of the systemic analysis of Marx. It concerns profit-earning capacity of capitals, linked with the type of productivity progress of the industrial revolution replacing hands of workers by machine-tools. This leads to periodical crisis of overaccumulation, till crisis and transformations of the system itself.

That does not concern only inequalities and social injustices or sharing of added-value in favour of profits against wages, or insufficiency of aggregated demand as in Keynesian economics. It concerns, linked with exploitation of wage-earners, wastes and crisis, with unemployment and pressures against social expenditures, brought by searching profit earning and accumulations of capitals against the needs of population’s life.

The main question, according our neo-marxist analysis, is that, along with very big technical progress, industrialization of the world, and the globalization of capitalism, these wastes and crisis are exacerbated nowadays. They are exacerbated with the crisis of Social State Monopoly Capitalism and privatizations. That is expressed by major oppositions between predominant private financial accumulation and profits, on one hand, and nevertheless, the incompressible rise of public and social levies for social expenditures and public services, on the other hand. That mainly refers to the beginning of revolutions of the technical operations of the system, as informational revolution, monetary revolution, ecological revolution. They exacerbate the contradictions of the social relations and of the regulation of our globalized capitalism (BOCCARA, 2009).

The informational revolution enables and even requires sharings. It replaces by material means not just hands by machine-tools as in the industrial revolution, but some functions of the brain as by computers. And thus, what predominates is information as research or access to data, more than machines, in production and all through life. But, unlike a machine which is in a particular place either here or there, an information as a research result may be shared even on a world scale.

However, sharing of costs and operations of research has taken place, in the system, through the multinational private companies. Through privatization, they may share until a world wide scale, against the limits of public national companies sharing only at the national level. But they share in a monopolistic manner and they develop pressures against wages and employment with competition between wage-earners of the world and the growing global wage-earner population, by controlling a lot of companies by the mean of financial capital and with ferocious competition between the multinational firms. This is connected to tremendous economies not only of labour and wages but of material means, bringing the tendency to a reinforced insufficiency of the global aggregated demand, in face of the financial overaccumulation, with the worsening of the recent crisis. However, along with research, education and training of human being are becoming the principal source of wealth.

Then we have the monetary revolution, with the link broken of the money with gold. It has brought a formidable expansion of money creation. Although it may be utilized for another type of growth with a predominance of social goals, it is nowadays utilized in the system for the domination of speculative financial accumulation of banks on world scale and of the creation of dollars which command the global financial circuit. That predominates against the public and social expenditure growth.

We have also the ecological revolution. That concerns not only the intolerable pollutions and the terrible threats upon the climate, or the exhaustion of natural resources, but also the new fields as space, bio-technology or alternative sources of energy. It refers, as the two other revolutions, to excess of accumulations against human life and to the needs of global cooperation, to make predominating the development of human being everywhere. In this direction, we have also to consider the demographic, parental, migratory and armaments revolutions.

This radicality of the new challenges in the system exacerbates the contradictions between new potentials and social difficulties. That requires other thing than vague and generous talks for another world or even a series of useful little measures, aiming to tend wounds and to little progress and limited reforms, without radical transformations, without gradual but fundamental answers to the great vital problems, and changes of the system itself, with new institutions. Of course, we have to start from concrete situations and urging problems. But we need to link immediate proposals to prospects of fundamental transformations, on which I want to insist in this contribution.

Other regulation of the system may answer not only to the insufficiency of the aggregated demand but, through a better life for all populations, to new capabilities for another type of development. As never, human beings represent today needs but also wealth.

They pretend to durably restart global growth through a more important consumption of the emerging countries as China. But what we need is to develop all populations in the entire world, their consumption and their capabilities, with their contribution, in the emerging countries but also in all developing countries, including the least advanced ones as in Africa, and in the entire world.

That refers to the construction of new institutions connecting three sets of measures : new financial means and criteria, new democratic powers, and new social aims. In this transformation triangle, the basis is new financial means.

So, I’ll consider in three parts :

1st  An alternative monetary and financial system, from local to global levels

2nd  Mastering and beginning of passing beyond the markets with new institutions.

3rd  A democratic expansion of public services, promotion of common and public services or goods for humanity; new powers and values.

 

I-                 Other institutions, with new criteria, from local to global level, to construct an alternative monetary and financial system.

 

An alternative monetary and financial system may be constructed at several levels converging and linked between them.

At first, the question is a new credit for banks, with a new monetary creation. For that we need not phrases on socially useful credit, but precise and operational proposals for a selective credit. We propose very lowered rates of interest, till zero and even negative (with reduction of reimbursements) under social efficiency conditions. The rates of interests would be lowered, for long term credit, for real investments, material or research, the more as they are linked with programmed good jobs and trainings.

This alternative credit may be established from four levels.

On a local level : it may be set up local public Funds to take a part or the whole interests, under social condition, with powers of the workers to refer proposals for their enterprises.

On national level : it may be set up financial public pool, regrouping public institutions and banks including new nationalizations, mutual banks, saving banks, and so on, involving all the sector of credit including private banks, in connection with a new intervention of the central bank.

The multinational regional level is especially important. It is the level of the euro zone and of the Central European Bank, or that of the new South Bank, with its new regional currency in Latin America, or of the projected common currency for Arabs states of the Cooperation Council of the Gulf. It may concern other continents or sub-continents, as in Africa or in sub-saharan Africa ,beyond the reinforcement of cooperation between different African central banks. It may, perhaps, be connected with multinational organizations, as the Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa, or the Development Community of Austral Africa, or even the New Partnership for the Development of Africa. It may be linked to international cooperations between several banks, transforming the recent cooperations as, for instance, a credit of 151 million dollars by a consortium of African banks, for a pan-African telecommunication enterprise (ELUMELU 2009).

It concerns a common monetary creation to refinance banks for a credit under social efficiency conditions.

The world level, for a democratic new IMF and for a true global common money, against the domination of dollar, is nowadays of first importance.

Yet at the last two G20 summits in 2009, the question has been raised of an increase of the votes in the IMF for the emerging countries. But the decisive question for these votes is the USA minority to block votes for the important decisions, which of course has not been changed.

Moreover, at the G20 summit in April 2009, it has been decided to create 250 billion of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) of the IMF, and also big gifts for the Funds by developed countries. But these SDR, true monetary creation of the IMF, allowing a country to draw currencies from other countries, are nowadays allocated in function of the shares in the IMF of the countries. So, the major part has been for the big countries, a third for developing countries and 7,6 percent for the  50 poorest countries.

Above all, on the eve of the April G20 summit, the Governor of the Chinese central bank had proposed the creation of an international reserve currency, disconnected from the interest of one country, that is other than the dollar, from the SDR.(XIAOCHUAN, 2009). This idea is sustained by Russia and by Brazil, and it is evoked by the Stiglitz Commission of the UNO on the reform of the international financial system (UNO, 2009).

Among others, I have made the proposal of the creation of a true global common currency from the SDR, a long time ago, especially during a conference in New Delhi in 1983 (BOCCARA, 1983). The definition of the SDR would be changed with a diminution of the importance of the dollar and other dominant currencies. And the new global currency would be articulated to regional currencies, as the IMF itself to regional central banks, and also connected with a basket of goods.

For the rules of the IMF, it is not sufficient to propose, as the IMF recently did, in face of the catastrophic conditionality of the structural adjustments against social and public expenditures and against the public sector, a so-called stream-lined conditionality. It is not sufficient neither to allow some more money to the developing countries, as the twenty billion dollars promised by the IMF for Africa at the Dar es Salam Conference in March 2009.

What we need is a very big global monetary creation, first through SDR and second through the new global currency, for the co-development of peoples. But the decisive question is that of the criteria of allocation of these funds, connected to a democratization of the control with international concerted interventions. First, the global money created each year would be allocated in proportion of the importance of the populations and of their needs, relatively to an aim of development of welfare and capabilities.

Second, this money creation would contribute to finance  through central banks all the banks, for the alternative credit, for real investments, connected with employments and training of populations.

Third, this money creation would also contribute to purchase public bonds, with criteria favouring the expansion of public services for social progress and efficiency, according to certain estimated needs and aims of different countries.

This purchasing of public debt bonds may be done also by central banks. The Federal Reserve of USA and the Bank of England are doing this operation, but without social criteria.

Beyond a drastic reduction of debts burden of countries in difficulty and beyond an important increase of the international public aid levels for development, a more radical transformation would concern this purchasing of public bonds through monetary creations under social efficiency conditions.

Of course, along with the fundamental transformation of the IMF interventions, we need also big changes of the World Bank and the Development Banks as the African Bank. Beyond the low-rate of interest credit announced for the poor countries by the World Bank and the need of increase of its capital to borrow with low rates, it has to change its criteria to achieve a social co-development of peoples.  It has also to answer to the recent critics in October 2009 for giving more money to emergent countries than to poor countries and especially because it forsakes sub-Saharan Africa.

We have to work, about the strategies to implement these proposals. On this ground, we may underline the organization of contacts, conferences, discussions, to advance through new struggles, towards the construction of new institutions. That have to be sustained, through the claim for employment security and for good public services, by popular campaigns on the proposals and for democratic controls of their implementing. These constructions refer, as we have seen, to several levels.

- On the local and national level, we may organize encounters to establish new local public funds, here or there according to the political forces, to support new relations with banks and their credits for real investment with good employment and training,

And the same for national public and mixed banking pools, for this selective credit.

-These encounters would concern the political elected members, representatives of political parties, trade-unions, NGO’s, representatives of banks, including the Central Banks, of enterprise and producers.

-On the regional  or subcontinental level , we may have similar steps especially with the representatives of the different Central Banks as in sub-saharan Africa, to advance towards a multinational regional central Bank and a common currency , to sustain social efficiency development, as they try in Latin America.

- On the global levels, similar steps, especially with also representatives of Central Banks and of governments who have yet proposed a global common currency other than dollar, through S.D.R.,  to create it, and immediately for great demands for SDR for developing countries and social purposes from the IMF.

On this global level we have to underline the strategic importance of an alliance between emergent countries, developing countries and European Union countries, against the hegemony of the United States of America, and thus of encounters to elaborate and push in this direction

All the projects to solve the big vital problems in all continents are opposed by the importance of financial needs, while technical solutions are available. So we have to struggle not only for maxima of the evoked new means in official institutions, but also to advance towards radical transformations of financial means.

 

II- To master and even to begin to pass beyond the different markets, with new institutions.

 

The point 21 of the Official Statement of the London G20 summit in April 2009 mentions the proposal of a “Charter” for a global economy socially balanced, based on the market principles. On the contrary, we may think that a global economy for social progress will be warranted by mastering the markets, with new institutions mixing market and sharings.

We have yet considered the monetary and financial markets, we have also to master the labour market, the production market, the global market.

Let’s consider the labour market. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has forecasted 240 million unemployed in the world at the end of 2009, that is 51 million more than in 2007. And there is a billion of insecure jobs, on three billion for the active population. The ILO has proposed in 2009 a “Global Pact for Employment” and the International Trade-Union Confederation has launched the catch word “put the world at work” , for a decent work.

But the main question is the opposition between the multiplication of little measures, talks, promises and hopes, on one side, and the persistence of massive unemployment, insecure jobs, and their worsening even with a growth of the GDP, on the other side.

Thus, we propose to struggle to transform the actual but insufficient measures on employment, to develop them in direction of radical measures. This development would be built on 1st alternative financial means, for enterprises and for public interventions ; 2nd new powers and rights for the elected members, the trade-unions, the concerned persons; 3rd other social aims, as a mobile security for employment or paid-for training.

So, it is possible to generalize and to develop unemployment insurance and benefits, measures for vocational training with paid-for training, local, national, regional decent work programs. We may struggle to transform the actual dispositions, as those that will be discussed in the 5th Edition of the Pan-African Local Government Days, of the Africities Summit, in Marrakech, Morocco, in December 2009, with the central theme “African Regional and Local Governments’ response to the global crisis : promoting sustainable local development and employment” (AFRICITIES, 2009).

In France, with some books and articles, we plead for that we call a system of “Security for employment or training” for our country, for the European Union and for the entire world. That is very different of the so-called “flexsecurity” in Europe with big flexibility of insecure jobs and little social protections.

When achieved, an employment or training security system aims at assuring to everyone, women or men, a job or a training to return to a better employment, with a continuity of decent income and rights, and passages from one activity to the other mastered by the persons concerned. It aims at suppressing unemployment, in a security of activity and chosen mobility for promotion of all, with a rotation between employment and training and also from a job to another (BOCCARA, 2002).

Of course, we propose to build this system gradually, through many specific projects to be set up. In France the idea of a process to ensure security, with the catchword of “Securization” for jobs and career paths, has developed widely in all the trade-unions, in the left political parties and even in the right speeches. Our General Confederation of Labour has put forward what is called “ a professional social security”.

Full employment, in theory and in practice, has never meant abolition of unemployment. It means a high degree of employment, but it implies a rate of unemployment considered as incompressible, as 4% or 5% of the active population.

We aim to “go beyond” unemployment. To go beyond, from the German “aufheben”, Hegel’s concept then taken up by Marx, means to succeed to abolish some social phenomenon, because the problem to which the phenomenon was an answer is maintained, but another answer is given, with a basic step forward. Thus, unemployment is not only a terrible evil, but also a powerful force, with the incentives of technical change and change of activities by cutting employment. That will be conserved by the passage from employment to chosen training activity with decent income, returning to better employment. This project is opposed both to capitulating to the domination of market forces even in the socialists political forces, and to rigidity and waste of the authoritarian guarantee and allocation of employment by the statist regimes that claimed to be socialist, such as in Soviet Union (BOCCARA, 2006).

Let we now consider the production market. We have to struggle for social rights and aims, connected with efficiency. In the enterprises, we may promote the advance of new criteria of management of social efficiency, moving backwards the criteria of financial profitability. It would aim at economizing capital and all costs, by the predominance of the development of the workers’ abilities, with their training alongside the expansion of research-development.

In France, we have some books, articles and experiments about a new management and those new criteria. Two basic new criteria of management are :

-         “capital efficiency” : it is expressed by the ratio added-value (that is not only profit but also wages and social or public levies) on capital ;

-         “social efficiency” : on the basis of the growth of social efficiency, the growing “available added-value”, that is available for workers and all the population (BOCCARA, 1985).

These criteria are linked to reduction of labour time to increase training time. They included ecological and cultural implications of production, for social norms. They would act with powers of intervention in management decisions by the workers, the users and their organisations, and with a new credit. We may build a mixed and evolutionary economy, with the progress of new criteria of management beyond capitalist criteria.

On the basis of these transformations, we may try to move backwards the social domination of the multinational firms, to muster and push common and public Services and Goods. We may even advance towards the socialization of firms and of their property not in a statist manner, but sharing the powers with the workers and the citizens, and through advances of new public, mixed and social enterprises, interconnected with close cooperations at national, regional and world level.

Let us consider the international and world market very briefly.

We have to master the competition against its exacerbation, with social and ecological dumping and beggar-my-neighbour policies, contradictory not only to social progress but also to the stability of a global sustainable growth.

We have to raise rules of cooperation, to promote new cooperations agreements, with social protection of the national developments, that is not protectionism, and especially employment.

Contrary to an unequal haggling about the opening of the North to agricultural products of the South and opening of the South to industrial products and to services from the North, without social control, we have to negotiate new agreements on reciprocal outlets, but for the growth of employment and standard of living on both sides. That supposes to promote in the South industrial transformation of natural resources through national and regional enterprises, with good added-value and skilled employment, and also all the needed services. That refers to cooperations, especially on research-development. The aim is a real co-development of peoples and to contribute to a durable growth, with social progress at the world scale.

Nowadays, some new cooperations, including co-development pretensions, are organized. That reveals new possibilities and needs. But, they are dominated by capitals’ financial profitability and rivalries, as for instance the Europe-Mediterranean Partnership or the recent agreements Brazil-France.

Contrary to the pressure of the World Trade Organisation to favour maximum competition and thus domination of the biggest, we may aim to gradually but radically transform the WTO in a“ world organisation for cooperation and to master international  trade”. It may favour new rules and agreements for co-development, with technological transfers and cooperations, reciprocity and social aims in the exchanges, guarantees about prices, and advances towards global public and common Goods and Services.

 

III-          A democratic expansion of the public services, the promotion of common and public Services or Goods of humanity, new powers and values for another civilisation.

 

From new financial means and new democratic powers, an extraordinary expansion of the public services is a decisive question, at the crossroads of the solutions to get out the global crisis.

Thus, the construction of new institutions to master the different markets corresponds to the construction of new public services, linked between them. The question is a public service of credit and monetary creation, another one to master labour market for securization of employment and training, another one to promote new management of enterprises for social efficiency and an inciting and strategic planification, or a public service to develop new international cooperations and mastering foreign trade.

For the classical public services as for education or health, as for the new services to be built, as for the ecological environment, two groups of fundamental transformations are nowadays possible and become everywhere necessary. It is, on one part, a radical democratization, with new powers of the users of the public services, for creative cooperation with all categories of the staff, themselves emancipated from directorial powers, moving backwards the bureaucratic domination of states and the pressures of private enterprises. For instance, a patient is not a passive thing, but he may participate to the medical aids, with the help of associations, informations and training. It is, on the other part, the advance of specific criteria of society efficiency, passing beyond the pressures of financial profitability, of privatizations and of the theory of agencies about management, while responding to the new exigencies on measuring efficiency.

A very crucial point is the challenges of building global common and public Services or Goods for humanity. They may be connected to the constructions of regional public Goods, as in Africa for instance.

While the question of public Goods do exist long time ago in economic literature, that of Global Public Goods has been principally put forward by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 1997 ( KAUL, GRUNBERG, STERN, 1999).

The relations between these works of the UNO with the problem of mastering and passing beyond the markets are contradictory. On one side, they admit that there is goods that the market cannot produce or cannot produce without modifications of its rules, on the contrary of the so-called private goods. But, on the other side, the works presented by the UNDP include in their list, besides environment, culture, health, water or peace, the market efficiency or also the financial stability. On the contrary, we may think that is the mastering of the market and even the passing beyond it by cooperations and sharings, especially for the financial market, that would allow to fully developed public goods for the common interest of the majority of the population in every country.

This frank opposition refers to proposals and struggles for radical transformations. It is very different of the simple consideration, in the works in question, that the globalization has a double aspect, on one side privatization, and free flow of private economic activity, and on the other side, concerted public policy actions.

We may underline that beyond the non-rivalry character of the goods and the externalities of their effects, as the economists say, pushing public expenditures of states, there is a more radical exigency of sharings for particular goods, services, activities, and conditions, having a common social character. Nevertheless, it has been noted, in one of the studies in question, “The basic principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and different capabilities for contributing” to the public Goods. (KAUL and others, 2003, p.280). Finally on this subject, it is not simply in question to combine efficiency with equity, for the development of capabilities and activities of each human being everywhere precisely contributes too efficiency.

So, a more complete list of common services and goods may comprise, beside those yet quoted, food, energy, transports, education, science, information, but also money and employment. They all necessitate today struggles for immediate social progress and public advances on national and international, regional and global levels, about financial means, powers, rules, norms, aims for these matters. On this basis, it is question to move backwards the pressure of the multinational firms and the public and social bads.  We have to not idealize the construction of the  “ commons” but to link the struggle for them, from local to global levels, whith hard battles against  the pressure of the multinational firms claiming to respond to the humanity needs. Nevertheless, we have also to  obtain  some transformations of their activities, and probably to agree certain compromises.

We may refer to the example of the challenge of food security, especially in the case of sub-Saharan Africa, in the framework of the global challenge. We may remind also that, connected with food, agriculture is a fundamental basis of the whole growth and social progress in the sub-continent in face of its population and urbanization growth.

Let us consider a recent text of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as “2050- Africa’s food challenge/ Prospects good, resources abundant, policy must improve” (FAO,2009). This text has been elaborated for the High Level Expert Forum of October 2009 and the World Summit on Food Security of November, these days, in Rome. What is remarkable is a fundamental contradiction. It is, on one part the exactness of the systemic character of the articulation between technical economic and political conditions. But, on the other part, in despite of the call to new public and international interventions, the predominance of market, private sector, and also existing institutions and state policies, on the contrary of gradual but radical transformations, with new financing and socialized powers, specific institutional advances to master the market, the productions and their distribution. Thus, the big risks of serious insufficiency of the results to be obtained, contrary to the showed optimism from technical capabilities.

So, on the technical field, are put forward :

-         The drought-resistant rice variety, New Rice for Africa (NERICA) ;

-         The potentialities and exigencies concerning water and irrigation, while only 3 percent of the region’s food crops are produced using irrigation compared to more than 20 percent globally ;

-         The needs and possibilities concerning fertilizers and yields, while fertilizer consumption was only 13 kg per hectare in sub-Saharan Africa in 2002, compared to 73 in North Africa and the Middle East, and 190 in East Asia and the Pacific;

-         The land underused, while FAO has estimated that the potential additional land area available for cultivation in sub-Saharan Africa amounts to more 700 million hectares, in particular in the Guinea Savannah region ;

-         The contribution of the research-development, transfers of know-how and technology.

But yet, on this ground, they don’t deal with the pressures of the multinational companies involved in the agro-business fields.  While they note the exigencies concerning training or health, especially HIV/AIDS, we have their big social and economics obstacles. And also, while they insist on the predominance of small holder farmers, the need of agrarian reforms is not discussed nor the need of special technical assistance.

On the economic field, they insist on the enormous investments required in infrastructure, technology and other means. Then, they evoke the contributions of the governments, of international donors and of the private sector. But, another text of the FAO for the entire world, underlining the needs of funds (83 billion dollars to invest a year in agriculture in the developing countries and about 11 billion a year for sub-Saharan Africa) affirms that “most of this investment would have to come from private investors”, even if important public investments are needed (KOVALYOVA, 2009). However, they do not deal with new devices to sustain the individual investments themselves, by mean of public finance and above all another credit and monetary creation including the international level. And for infrastructure and public expenditures, a big contribution of the IMF, especially with its SDR, beside a change of that of the World Bank is not in question.

And also, if the gifts of rich states and the support of the World Bank with a specific trust fund are evoked, they underline the importance, for the developing countries, of the foreign direct investment, in fact referring to profitability and not to social aims, in agriculture.

Still, they insist on the development of urban markets, but it is not connected to the exigencies of growth of employment, wages, and professional activities, with good incomes. Nevertheless, for the world, the Special Reporter of UNO on food right has said that the main question is not quantity of production but distribution, especially against hunger.

Concerning the crucial question of prices, the stimulus of higher world prices for food commodities and also the risk of food price rising shocks are evoked, but not the fundamental challenge of the tendency of pressures from developed countries, especially with the production of the USA and of Europe, for low international prices against the stimulation of production in developing countries. And, about prices, even if for sub-Saharan Africa the importance of transport costs are underlined, one does not deal with public policy to lower the cost of production in the developing countries, and also to sustain popular demand, and for international agreements to master the exchanged quantities and stabilize fair prices (MAZOYER, 2007).

Lastly, on the political field, the FAO text essentially speaks on governments, experts, NGOs in face of the private sector. Even if they mention facilitating the creation of cooperatives and other forms of business associations to ensure a minimum optimal scale, they do not deal with the mobilization of citizen themselves, new powers and rights for peasants, women, workers all citizens and their organizations, to participate and give impulses to social and public interventions.

However, when General Secretary of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, has called in 2009 to a Global Partnership for agriculture and food security, while there is now more than a billion persons suffering underfeeding, he has pointed out the need of new financial means but not of new political powers and rights from local to regional and international level. Nevertheless, about the Global Partnership, while the USA propose that the World Bank leads the financial aspect, number of NGOs and South countries are opposed to that. And for the powers, there is a conflict between the FAO power and that of the new Food Security Committee directly under the authority of the General Secretary of the UNO. Have you not to organize a coordination between them, with participation of the states and of the civil societies and their organizations? From his part, Olivier De Shutter, special reporter of UNO on food rights, claims for political responsibility of governments with a mechanism to compel them to render accounts, and also for real participation of the persons concerned by food insecurity.

To finish, a few words on the construction of new direct powers, for intervention and participative democracy, and also on new sharing values. That is decisive to achieve fundamental social and economic transformations and thus advance towards a new civilization.

Concerning the powers and the political construction, it is question of a progress of the institutionalization of direct interventions for everybody, beside the representative delegations. That refers to decentralization of powers from local level and coordination to act in concert at the different levels, to cooperate with elected assemblies and governments and to push them. The response to the need of efficient political institutions and their emancipation from private pressures, especially in developing countries, may be based on the reinforcements of the controls by the elected members by the concerned persons themselves and their organizations, in the localities, enterprises and public services.

These new mixed institutions may be established from local and national, till international, regional and global levels. That aims especially to a progression of the global governance, with a profound democratization of UNO and the allied organisations in the different fields. It is possible to push the expansion of a World Council for economic, social, environmental and cultural Security and Promotion, with global debates and consultations.

The social forces concerned are the great dominated groups :

1st All the wage-earners, from the less to the most skilled.

2nd Women and gender domination, young and aged people, and generation domination.

3rd All peoples and nations, all civilisation areas and also minorities especially from immigration. (BOCCARA, 2009).

The organizations which may converge for those global transformations are not only political or trade-union organizations, but also cultural, spiritual and associative ones, as NGOs, and still certain states. This convergence refers especially to the bringing together of developing and emergent countries and also with European Union countries against the hegemony of the United States.

Eventually, all these changes are connected with an advance towards another civilization for all humanity. That refers to a new predominance of sharing values, sharing of resources, finance, powers, information, roles and social creativity for “intercreativity”.

This is nowadays possible and even necessary, on account of the economical revolutions, informational, monetary and ecological, and of anthroponomical revolutions, demographic, parental, migratory, military.

This civilization of all humanity may cross the contributions of the occidental civilization of the North and those of South and Asia civilizations, while emancipating from their insufficiencies or negative aspects :  individual liberties of Occident, without selfishness and monopolies, solidarities of South and Orient, without hierarchic dominations, for each human being development and bloom.

 

REFERENCES

 

AFRICACITIES SUMMITT [2009], “African Regional and Local Govermnents’ response to the global crisis” http://www.africities.org

BOCCARA Paul [1983], “End to Dollar’s rule urged”, interview to the Patriot, August 14th, 1983, New Delhi

BOCCARA Paul [1985], Intervenir dans les gestions avec de nouveaux critères, Editions Sociales, Paris

BOCCARA Paul [2002], Une sécurité d’emploi ou de formation, Le Temps des Cerises, Pantin

BOCCARA Paul [2006], ”The Labour Market, Employment and Unemployment Policies” , in Peter HERRMANN, ed., Human Beings, between the Individual and the Social, Nova Science Publishers, New York

BOCCARA Paul [2009], Transformations et crise du capitalisme mondialisé. Quelle alternative? 2ème édition, le Temps des Cerises, Pantin

ELUMELU Tony [2009], “Africa stands out”, The World Today, Vol. 65, n° 5, May 2009, London

FAO [2009] “2050- Africa’s food challenge/Prospects good, resources abundant, policy must improve” http://appablog.worldpress.com/2009/09/28/2050

KAUL Inge, GRUNBERG Isabelle, STERN Marc. A., [1999], Global Public Goods, Oxford University Press, New York

KAUL Inge, CONCEICAO Pedro, LE GOULVEN Katell, MENDOZA Ronald. U. [2003], Providing Global Public Goods, Oxford University Press, New York.

KOVALYOVA Svetlana [2009], “World must invest $83 billion to be fed in 2050-FAO”, Reuters, http://news.uk.msn/world

MAZOYER Marcel [2007], « La situation agricole et alimentaire mondiale : causes, conséquences, perspectives », Recherches Internationales, N°80, Oct-Dec 2007.

UNO [2009], Financial Commission, http://www.un.org/ga/president/commission/financialcommission.shtml

XIAOCHUAN Z. [2009], « Reform the International Monetary System » http://www.pbc.gov.cn

 

Il y a actuellement 1 réactions

  • The Four Changes

    FOUR CHANGES’ MANIFESTO

    Points that Targeting Holistic Changes in Socio-Economics and Political’ General Systems

    Preface: These points are a simple contribution to the last 60 years worldwide discussions on basic subjects of internationally well known both socio-economics and political systems: the Working class ideology and programs of planned development in one hand, and in other hand the social and technical efficiency of Free-Markets system.

    The origin of these types of theorizing and discussions over goals and ways that are necessary for humanity to achieve goodness on Earth are start and taking different shapes from old times of Nubian civilization till recent times, but modern times' motto/s of Freedom, Fraternity, and Equality between all citizens/human’ public rights was fundamentally stroked by national Right of Independence, the class’ issues of Right for Ownership, and Technological advance determent.

    Many and wide range of many evolutionary reforms or revolutionary changes are one after another end in calamities and somehow these calamities are being a main issue of the late 60 years discussions about efficiency of socio-economic and political systems. These wide ranges of discussions are based on a key question about the best way to manage living resources within lines of 1-Types of Democracy, 2-Class issues, 3- National and/or Regional Right for Development, and 4- 'Positive Discrimination.

    The next paragraphs start points can be useful contribution in both intellectual or practical' process that aims to liberate energy, clean water, housing, education, health care, cultural services, communication, transportation, banks, industry, and agriculture resources and tools of living from all type nondemocratic minority control over majority living resources, and from commonly or capital control miss management.

    The Four Points:

    1- Democratically, all societies’ resources of living need to be totally free from commercial type of minority control, to end Free market’ dictatorship were few capitalist controlling majority of world resources and shapes of living. This renewable style of socialist and communist ideas/approaches aims to establish a type of socio-economic micro institutions and macro system that use democratic basics to sustain main resources of society and environment.

    2- Economic production and services units should be directed by elected persons, from primary mangers up to top sections leaders and ministerial position, in a total democratic process that reorganized all the State units.

    3- To harmonize both ''Work -Income'' and ''State-Society" types of Development, all production and service units should turned to co-operative style system based on three equal sections shares for : 1- Workers (sub-divided to main types of jobs), 2- Unit’ needs, 3- State/Society. It is a %33.33 each’ share system that collecting main shapes of Co-operative, Socialist, and Democratic systems.

    This type of working units’ organizing is based on equal interests' representation of all internal direct benefiters' units in all four processes of production: planning, management, working, and exchange. This fundamentally and structurally main change can re-link work-living costs of human and material resources and the main three production powers (Workers, Unit, and the State).

    4- Ending multi-crises money exchange’s calamities by new process of revaluing main socio-economic resources based on a positive discrimination type of equality. The center of distributing basic values and organizing main exchange prices will shift from traditionally foreign debt control' central banks to equal representation’ collective body of main socio-economic units ''National Monetary Fund’s Authority''.

    State’s National and International monetary body will manage and sustains by a dual banking system; one for internal production and services, and the other is for foreign exchanges and International trade affairs.

    Finally: Achieving these four wide co-ops changes needs wide ranges of synchronization and co-ordination between motions of main types of working class struggle and other social justice, sustainable development, and green movement’s … etc towards multi-shapes struggle against injustice and corrupted casino' capitalism' and its (Free) market.

    END

    المنصور جعفر .

    Par المنصور جعفر, le 19 juin 2014 à 18:37.

 

ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL SYSTEM FOR NORTH AND SOUTH

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