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| Volume 57, Number 10 |
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| March 2006 |
The Millennium Development Goals: A Critique from the South |
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Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His recent books include Obsolescent Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder (Zed Books, 2004) and The Liberal Virus: Permanent War and the Americanization of the World (Monthly Review Press, 2004). James H. Membrez translated the essay from the French. Also by this Author:
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2 OF 2 | << PREVIOUS | 1 | 2 | The New Doctrinaire Liberalism The central question concerns the concept of development maintained, explicitly or implicitly, in the Millennium Development Goals. It can be formulated in this way: In the successive globalized economic and political systems of modern times, who was forced to adjust to whom? The subjects in question can be class or social groups, regions or nations. In capitalist logic founded on private property, it is capital (the firm) that commands and employs labor. Workers do not have direct access to the means of production, which are not used to their liking. In its global expansion, capitalism is polarizing, that is, it is founded on asymmetrical adjustment. The peripheries are shaped to serve the model of accumulation in the dominant centers. The ideology of capitalism ignores the concept of substantive development, for it recognizes only expanding markets. It is significant that the term “development” appeared only after the Second World War (during the colonial period, the exploitation of the colonies was cynically spoken of), supported by the governments of the Asian and African states that arose from national liberation movements. In this sense, the 1955 conference of Asian and African states at Bandung was the birth place of the project of developing the new third world. It was a multidimensional project of modernization: of the economy (through industrialization), the society, and the state. This modernization project appears within a type of globalization and is not at all an invitation to economic and cultural autarky. But it does imply that in this process the North would adjust to the requirements for the development of the South, development conceptualized as a “catching up.” Globalization in this context is then recognized as having to be the result—beyond the conflicts—of negotiations between partners who recognize the divergence of their interests. In Latin America, desarrollismo proposes an analogous model of development. At each of these steps, capitalist globalization rests on transnational social alliances, without which the models of accumulation in the dominant centers and dominated peripheries could not be reproduced. The “colonial” model, challenged after the Second World War, involved the management of the societies of the peripheries by local comprador classes of a given type (merchant intermediaries, large landowners). The new model resulting from decolonization involved social reforms that deprive the older comprador classes of their power and substitute hegemonic blocs of a new type (national populist). This model is the basis of the successes (not the failures!) of the economic and social transformation of the third world in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. But it was always fought—with violence—by the powers of the imperialist triad. The turnaround in the political conjuncture beginning in the 1980s brought us back to former times, before development, which has, in effect, been shown the door. It is significant that the new language of the dominant economics even abandons this term and substitutes “structural adjustment,” i.e., adjustment of the societies and economies of the South to the requirements of the pursuit of accumulation in the North. Simultaneously, this turnaround in the balance of power to the benefit of capital appears everywhere—in the North as well as the South—as a strengthening of the subjection of labor to capital. The new doctrinaire liberalism acknowledges only expanding markets, not the deliberate political transformation of social and economic structures. Although imposed on the societies of the South with extreme brutality, the new model (neocolonial some say, but the term is poor—it is really a question of “paleo-colonial” thought) had to be clothed in a discourse that gives it the appearance of legitimacy. It was necessary to reintroduce the word “development” (as in the Millennium Development Goals) but empty it of all meaning. This was done by reducing it to the fight against poverty and for good governance. A series of documents prepared this revision in the meaning of words. The agencies set up to manage the rest of the world (85 percent of the earth’s population, the dominated peripheries) by collective imperialism (the triad) here fulfilled the functions expected of them. The World Bank (which I call the Ministry of Propaganda for the G7) produced, in this spirit, distressing documents called Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). The IMF (the triad’s collective colonial monetary authority) imposed the priority of debt service, the debt itself being the means of imposing structural adjustment. The WTO, far from being an institution responsible for managing world trade, is devoted to the objective of shaping the productive systems of the peripheries to the needs of the commercial expansion of the North, that is, to operate like a collective ministry of colonies. The European Union —lined up with the general offensive of the imperialist triad—integrates the relations between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) within this same context, pursued literally in the convention for the development of the ACP. It could be asked why the governments of the countries of the South have subscribed to all of these commandments drafted in the imperialist centers. The response, in general terms, is that we should look to the social hegemonic blocs mentioned above that make possible the reproduction of asymmetric globalization. There is a new comprador class in the countries of the periphery that actually derives its existence from the new model of globalized liberalism. This comprador class participates in the new government arrangements that followed the erosion of the national populist models inspired by Bandung. To be more precise, it is possible to distinguish among the reasons that led the South to “rally to liberalism.” There are those that are probably unique to so-called emerging countries (China in the first place). In these countries, the current governments live on illusions: they think about “catching up” (through strong growth) while they are constructed as the industrialized peripheries of tomorrow, and dominated by the new monopolies on the basis of which the imperialist centers reproduce their domination (monopolies of technology, access to the planet’s natural resources, and weapons of mass destruction). They think of building a “strong and independent nation,” but in that connection must ignore that the United States prepares “preventative wars” against them that will not allow them this opportunity. History will undoubtedly be given the responsibility to dissipate these illusions. Here I will place more emphasis on the rationales offered with respect to the most vulnerable peripheral regions, Africa in particular. The discourse developed in this regard by dominant thought is well known: Africa is marginalized in the new globalization. This is by its own fault, having sunk into an excessive nationalism during the Bandung period. It can only get out of this difficult situation if it accepts being “more integrated” into globalization by a totally uncontrolled opening that will allow foreign capital to “develop” it. The miseries associated with this option, for which there is no alternative, will only be “transitory” and can be attenuated by programs that “fight against poverty.” This option will require, moreover, democratic political management called “good governance.” This discourse abounds in contradictions and inadequacies. Africa is no less integrated into globalization than other regions, but it was and is differently integrated. The forms of the new proposed integration, based on agro-mineral specialization, are not new but are, on the contrary, a return to the old (paleo-colonial). These forms can only accentuate the pauperization and exclusion of huge masses of the population, in particular the peasants. But simultaneously and independently, they facilitate the pillage of the continent’s natural resources (petroleum, minerals, and wood), which is probably the principal objective of large transnational capital in Africa. Foreign direct investments will come to Africa for nothing else. The responsibility of the current government teams—and behind them the new comprador classes—should not be excused. But that does not absolve the dominant forces in the imperialist centers of the global system from responsibility either. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is undoubtedly part of the new liberal thinking, but not with any great conviction it seems. It should be remembered that originally behind this initiative was the justified refusal of the racist “afro-pessimist” discourse and the proclamation by Thabo Mbeki in 1998 that “Africans should and can appropriate modernity,” a way of indicating the renaissance of Africa that he called for. But Mbeki rushed into the same discourse of specifying that that appropriation should be done “in cooperation with the developed countries,” ignoring, or pretending to ignore, that that has never been the case up to now. NEPAD even includes in its title the term “partnership,” commonly used for a long time by the European Union and adopted, in turn, by the Millennium discourse of the United Nations. In its content, NEPAD’s founding document, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is not, in fact, very coherent.* It identifies the bottlenecks that block development in Africa, which it identifies in all aspects of reality (infrastructure and energy, education and health, family agriculture and environment, and modern technologies, notably computer technology), giving the impression that it takes into consideration the hostile practices of world trade. But at the same time, the document lines up with dominant liberal thought: it abandons the centrality of industry that the Lagos Plan had, in its time and with good reason, taken as the axis of development for this least industrialized of the earth’s continents. It adheres to an agro-mineral model of growth (paleo-colonial), and it adopts the discourse on the reduction of poverty. Unquestionably even more serious, the NEPAD document lines up with liberal thought on the discourse of “good governance.” This is a concept that is useful as a way to dissociate democratic progress from social progress, to deny their equal importance and inextricable connection with one another, and to reduce democracy to good management subjected to the demands of private capital, an “apolitical” management by an anodyne civil society, inspired by the mediocre ideology of the United States. This discourse comes at the very moment when the interruption in the construction of the state (begun in the Bandung period) imposed by structural adjustment has created, not conditions for a democratic advance but, instead, conditions for the shift towards the primacy of ethnic and religious identities (para-ethnic and para-religious, in fact) that are manipulated by local mafias, benefit external supporters, and often degenerate into atrocious “civil wars” (in fact conflicts between warlords). As Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua argues, it is less a question of a North-South partnership (here EU/ACP) than a new phase in asymmetrical structural adjustment. The NEPAD document’s exposition, its hesitations or anodyne character, acquires its meaning in this context. For example, the wish to alleviate the debt is expressed, but this is done precisely because the debt has fulfilled its function of imposing structural adjustment. NEPAD also proposes an “integrated” (Pan-African) development, just like the EU, giving its preference to arrangements with regional African groups. But, in the end, this document remains, as far as its proposals on trade, capital transfers, technology, and patents are concerned, aligned with liberal dogmas. I will say in conclusion that a system of this type hardly has any future. Neither the MDGs nor NEPAD will make it possible to attenuate the seriousness of the problems and curb the resulting processes of political and social involution. The legitimacy of governments has disappeared. Thus conditions are ripe for the emergence of other social hegemonies that make possible a revival of development conceived as it should be: the indissociable combination of social progress, democratic advancement, and the affirmation of national independence within a negotiated multipolar globalization. The possibility of these new social hegemonies is already visible on the horizon. I bet that at the end of 2015, no one will propose a balance sheet of the achievements of the MDGs or NEPAD, which will have been long forgotten. Note: *The NEPAD framework document was adopted by the 37th Summit of the Organization of African Unity in July 2001 at Lusaka, Zambia and is available at http://www.nepad.org/2005/files/inbrief.php. Appendix: The UN Millennium Development Goals Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Substainability
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth
Source: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/index.html. | Top | |
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