5.2.2. Globalisation and Neoliberalism
Liberalism is an ideology, which is not necessarily outdated,
and simply a system of representation with shared history and values.
Globalisation is the economic side of capitalism while neoliberalism is its
ideological side. It is this ideology that controls the relations among States
today, which has at its basis the techno-scientific rationality that
instrumentalizes all.
The turning point occurred in the I980s. In I979, the arrival
to power of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Britain
inaugurated the advent of liberal doctrines. The same year, Senegal launched
the first "structural adjustment plan": the debt crisis has just begun for
developing countries, forced to adopt "development strategies conducive to
market", according to financial institutions such as the World Bank and the
IMF. This unification of economic models reaches not only the developing world
but also the East.
In ten years the world has changed decisively. The end of the
Cold War created the illusion that an international community was born, a
community which will finally
I
Jacques Adda, La mondialisation de l'économie, 1.
Genése, Paris, 200I, p. 4. Globalisation thus appears to be rooted
in a longer trend, that of the progressive submission of any physical and
social space to the law of capital accumulation, an endless accumulation which
is the ultimate finality of the economic system invented nearly a millennium
ago by the cities of the Mediterranean.
live in peace. Capitalism seems to have triumphed, so that
Francis Fukuyama announced "the end of history"I.
In neo-liberalism, there is "neo". It is important to
distinguish yesterday liberalism, liberalism of the early I9th century, mainly
political from today liberalism, almost exclusively economic liberalism,
rejuvenated by globalisation and the apparent disappearance of economic
alternatives and policies.
Political liberalism has much to do with what interests us,
nothing that could displease us in any case: it opposes itself to
authoritarianism in general, and historically to monarchical powers in
particular, it challenges the concentration of power among few hands and
defends freedom of conscience, religious freedom or political freedom.
Economic liberalism, opposes itself to "Statism", and raises
the existence of economic laws under which a natural balance is established
between production, distribution and consumption. As such, it is historically
opposed to socialism. Any government intervention in the economy should be
prohibited. It is a minimal conception of politics, which aims at defending
freedom of employment, private initiative, and therefore competition, free
trade. We therefore see the link between first liberalism and economic
liberalism: there is a mistrust vis-a-vis the State, even when the political
system is respectful of freedoms. It depends on a rather narrow view of the
State and freedom that both necessarily exclude themselves. We therefore
understand why in Africa in general and in Cameroon in particular, there is an
excessive privatisation of State companies and an increase of private
enterprises.
I The End of History and the Last Man is a
I992 book by Francis Fukuyama, expanding on his I989 essay "The End of
History?" published in the international affairs journal The National
Interest. In the book, Fukuyama argues that the advent of Western liberal
democracy may signal the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the
final form of human government.
Neo-liberalism is the second update of this conception, which
accommodates sometimes some planning of the economy by the State, but still
upholds the principle of free enterprise and competition, principles which are
widely recognized today by the law, but it seeks to reduce further limitations
of freedom. The role of politics, even if it is partly acknowledged, is still
very limited and is subordinated to that of economy. In our view, it is not
among those opposed to neoliberalism, to challenge the right to private
initiative, but to remind its limits, and the danger when the State makes of it
a political agenda. It is simply the time for us to raise the awareness of our
democracies to their ideal of freedom, equality, and fraternity and to require
that these ideals do not remain in the sphere of theory and to assure that the
society does not regress.
Neo-liberalism appears as a utopia underway to unlimited
exploitation by neoliberal measures tried or proposed in the I980s and 90s, and
supported by the IMF and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD). With computers, capitalism has no boundaries. In fact,
René Passet and Jean Liberman declare:
K L'informatisation d'une économie capitaliste
rentière a fait tomber les frontieres nationales, et offre subitement un
champ illimité au déchainement de la spéculation
internationale. La grande bénéficiaire en a donc
été la sphere des marchés financiers s'appropriant
progressivement le pouvoir détenu jusqu'alors par l'industrie et
l'Etat-nation. Ceci grace au poids majeur des institutions financiere, des
firmes transnationales et surtout a la puissance politique des institutions
mondiales a leur servie : FMI, Banque mondiale ou OMC dictant leur loi aux
Etats (avec d'ailleurs leur complicité). »1
I René Passet et Jean Liberman,
Mondialisation financiere et terrorisme, La donne a-t-elle changé de
puis le 11 septembre ? Paris, 2002, pp.32-33. The computerisation of a
capitalist economy has broken national borders down, and suddenly offers a
field of unlimited international speculation. The great beneficiary of this
computerisation of economy was the sphere of financial markets gradually
appropriating powers hitherto held by industry and the nation-state. This was
thanks to major financial institutions, corporations and especially the
political power of global institutions at their service: IMF, World Bank and
WTO dictating their laws to States (with their complicity).
The misery is great at work today; many companies develop
effective techniques to oblige workers to accept unacceptable working
conditions. In our country, for example, following one's documents in a
ministry or another State institution requires much courage and perseverance
because the procedure is very slow and its acceleration often requires payment.
We must see behind it the dictatorship of markets, which imposes to companies
its own standards of profitability and its quest for profit in the short
term.
Jacques ADDA thinks this whole business operating without limits
is that of mercantilism:
gLe mercantilisme, généralement
réduit dans les manuels d'économie a une doctrine protectionniste
assimilant la richesse a l'accumulation des métaux précieux, fut
avant tout un vaste mouvement de libéralisation du commerce
intérieur imposé par les Etats-nations issus du régime
féodal, qui mettait fin au systeme de protection économique et
sociale des villes. L'Etat répondait ainsi au vmu le plus cher des
commerçants internationaux, qui pouvaient des lors déployer leurs
activités sur l'ensemble du marché intérieur. De cette
alliance entre la classe des marchands et les Etats, devait na'tre le systeme
concurrentiel caractéristique de l'économie de marché.
01
Hence, Neoliberalism fosters a terrible jump back as far as
social values already acquired are concerned. This phenomenon is akin to a
revolution in that it will deprive the people of a number of their properties,
their progress, with a need to adapt to a globalized market, necessarily
ruthless. Slowly but surely, governments are deprived of
IJacques Adda, La mondialisation de
l'économie, 1. Genése, Paris, 200I, p.II. Mercantilism,
generally reduced in economy textbooks to a protectionist equating wealth
accumulation of precious metals, was primarily a wide liberalization of trade
imposed by Nation-States from the feudal regime, which ended the system of
economic and social protection of cities. The State thus responded to the
utmost wish of international traders, who could then expand their operations
across the market. This alliance between the class of merchants and States was
to develop the system characteristic of the competitive market
106 their prerogatives and their conduct is dictated by the
interpreters of the world market: if there is no reversal of the regime, it is
because the conservative revolution takes a much more subtle form to seize
power: it proceeds by small touches and operates by substitution; it leads
governments to abandon their fate in the hands of international bodies,
seemingly apolitical and uncontrollable.
Within the country, the best evidence of the effectiveness of
this revolution is the constant guilt growing among civil servants, who fear
for the most part to defend their status, as earned by a guilty conscience,
feeling that they are the "privileged". This is the victory of neoliberalism:
to increase the defence of acquired social values for a heinous corporatism,
where the only concern is that of acceptable working conditions. It is
therefore necessary to reverse the trend to refuse division and reaffirm that
defending acquired social values is to defend the common good, and therefore
some idea of the universal. It would therefore be useful to work for a
counter-revolution. Of course, to defend a certain level of social protection
is perhaps a form of conservatism, but only in appearance, because it aims at
extending the gains to society, and more broadly to all societies, regardless
of what they are, European, American or Asian.
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