An uneven playing field

By Bukka Rennie
November 05, 2003

The world has never presented us with an even playing field. Rabid nationalism in all its forms, history indicates, is the best and fastest initial framework for the development and maturing of the capitalist market system in any one country or fatherland despite the artificial appearances and aberrations that may have appeared throughout the so-called underdeveloped or developing world.

National leaders like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, in the days of the Arusha Declaration, kept asking, for instance, how are we to compete? He was saying that any African entrepreneur wishing to start manufacturing automobiles, for example, could not start as Henry Ford did in a bicycle shop and in the garage of his home.

That such an entrepreneur in these times would by necessity have to begin with a multi-million dollar outlay to even enter the market, and therefore needed the protection of a nation State and a partnership with, or the conduit of, a global corporation or multinational to gain the required market access to raw material inputs and sales for the final product.

The iron and bamboo curtains and the Non-Aligned Movement were only different relative political strategies in attempts to deal with the economic problem identified by Nyerere. But for many a year these artificial appearances led many to the erroneous believe that there existed more than one international economy. Nothing was further from the truth.

The late Nyerere described capitalism "...as a fighting system (in which) each capitalist enterprise survives by successfully fighting other capitalist enterprises, and the capitalist system as a whole survives by expansion, that is, by extending its area of operations and, in the process, eradicating all restraints upon it and all weaker systems of society..."

How are we to compete? What is clear from all this is that countries like us in the Caribbean will have to aggressively negotiate our way in the world if we are to survive. The T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce in its commentary, "Global trade good for everyone", said the following:

"...Undeniably, disparities between rich and poor are still too great. However, it is just not true that economic growth benefits only the rich and leaves out the poor, as the opponents of globalisation and the market economy would have us believe... nobody expects developing countries to prosper without help... poverty reduction will be greatly assisted by external support for education, health programmes and basic social services that are taken for granted in the industrialised world... let us hope that (we) will benefit more fully from trade liberalisation in the next round of world trade negotiations..."

Well, we have seen what has emerged out of the last WTO talks in Cancun. The industrialised world is not budging. The actual evidence does not support any view that seems to suggest that somehow as a matter of course we will develop and thrive within the global market without aggression on our part to protect our nascent industrial activity.

Anyone who says otherwise is a fool. And the coming FTAA reality will prove that beyond any doubt.

Oxfam, a watch group of the UK, accused the rich, industrialised countries of robbing the world's poor countries of some US$100 billion annually through abuse of world trade rules and regulations. The Oxfam report exposed what they termed the "great trade robbery" through which global trade is being made "more unequal" than ever before.

The Oxfam report on "Rigged rules and double standards" explained how some 128 million people the world over can easily be lifted out of poverty if poor countries are allowed to increase their share of world exports by just one per cent..."

Unless there is a unity of purpose and focus of all the poor countries across the board to pressure the industrialised world for greater equity in world trade, nothing will change. The multinationals now feel the confidence given the existing technologies (IT) to supersede sovereign nation States and manage the world.

World wars in the past were fought in an attempt to fully globalise trade and manage capital internationally but all to no avail. What the wars failed to accomplish, the corporations now feel they have the capacity to do.

George Bell, ex-US politician and later an investment banker, is quoted in Global Reach as having said: "Working through great corporations that straddle the earth, men are able for the first time to utilise world resources with an efficiency dictated by the objective logic of profit..."

There is no question of an ideal of equity, no compassion for the destitute and the starving throughout the world, no question of the lifting up of all humanity, only the "efficiency as dictated by the logic of profit" and capital accumulation. We keep saying that it is not the "logic of profit" that must drive the world but the "reasoning of human beings." Otherwise the more things change, the more they would seem the same.

Recently there was a TV documentary about the "Hoodia" plant and the San people, the oldest people, of South Africa. It has just been discovered that this plant, which the San people have used for generations to suppress hunger and yet provide vigour during their extensive long periods of hunting, contains a "miracle molecule", never seen before, that has the capacity to reduce obesity in mere weeks while providing vigour and sexual prowess like Viagra.

The pharmaceutical giants of the world have begun to compete with each other to get hold of this plant that grows nowhere else. They are busy rushing directly to the leadership of the San people, mesmerizing their minds with nonsense talk about what they should do with the millions that will accrue to them for the Hoodia. Of course they were initially talking about a one-off payment.

No one in South Africa has yet said to the giant pharmaceuticals that a research laboratory and processing equipment must be located in San territory and that a percentage of sales of all tablets or pills produced should accrue to South Africa and to the San people for generations to come. Instead they have settled for a mere eight per cent of profits.

A percentage of sales would have brought additional billions of US dollars that could be used for the development of social infrastructure in South Africa. The South Africans have since licensed the UK-based firm Phytopharm to develop the products, and they in turn licensed Pfizer, the Viagra company. Pfizer initially showed their true colours by attempting to prove that the San people were extinct.

Why has no one with an aggressive no-nonsense business vision emerged in South Africa? Because things are supposed to remain the same. Africa, the only continent that possesses every known mineral on and below the Earth's surface in commercial quantities, must be kept impoverished and disunited in order to never realise its true potential as a world power.

The Hoodia products should guide the way for all Africa to follow in regard to developing natural resources. Caribbean intellects helped to pave the way for the political independence of African countries at the turn of the last century, so too the Caribbean will once again be forced to play a significant role for African liberation and self-determination in this new millennium.

What can we expect when already there is talk coming out of Africa that re-colonisation might be the only way forward. Imagine that, in 2003!