[News] Ten-Point Agenda for the Global South After COVID-19

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://mailchi.mp/thetricontinental.org/goliath-is-not-invincible-the-twenty-third-newsletter-819173?e=d206d0a40d
Ten-Point
Agenda for the Global South After COVID-19: The Twenty-Fifth Newsletter
(2020).
June 18, 2020
------------------------------

Jorge González Morales (Mexico), *Capitalism*, 2020

*Ten-Point Agenda for the Global South After COVID-19: The Twenty-Fifth
Newsletter (2020).*

Dear Friends,

  Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social
Research <http://thetricontinental.org/>.

  In 1974, the United Nations General Assembly passed
<https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/218450?ln=en> a New International
Economic Order (NIEO), which was driven by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
The resolution laid out a clear plan for the structural transformation of
the world system, which was in the throes of a crisis at the time. But, the
NIEO was set aside and the world order was shaped in a neoliberal
direction; this neoliberal orientation furthered the crisis and brought us
to this current cul-de-sac of human possibilities.

  Our team at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research developed a
ten-point agenda for a post-COVID-19 world. Last week, I presented this
agenda at the High-Level Conference on the Post-Pandemic Economy, organised
by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). The rest
of this newsletter is taken up with the agenda, which we hope will be
adopted by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) who might take it forward for
discussion to the UN General Assembly. We are certainly in need of a New
International Economic Order.
*1. Tackle the global pandemic.*

Our priority is to tackle the global pandemic. To this end, enhancing and
pivoting public sector production towards masks, protective equipment,
ventilators, field hospitals, and tests for the entire population must be
central – as it is already in places such as Vietnam and in Venezuela. It
is essential to establish worker control over working conditions so that
workers – who are best placed to make these decisions – can be guaranteed a
hygienic work environment. In the absence of adequate public action,
governments need to create work plans to hire people for projects to break
the chain of infection and to ensure that people are fed, clothed, and in
good health; such public action can learn from the cooperatives in Kerala
(India) and the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in Cuba. The
workforce in shuttered sectors – such as tourism – should be immediately
hired into jobs that are geared towards countering the pandemic.


Greta Acosta Reyes (Cuba), *Women Who Fight*, 2020

*2. Broaden medical solidarity.*

A united front of the Global South must reject the IMF and creditor-driven
limit placed on government sector salaries; because of these limits, former
colonised countries have been losing medical personnel to the North
Atlantic states. States must use their precious resources to enhance public
medical education and train medical workers within communities to provide
public health services. ALBA’s medical internationalism, with the Cuban
brigades in the lead, must become a model for the world through the World
Health Organisation (WHO). Chinese medical internationalism would play a
key role here as the US departs from the WHO. The entire private health
sector must be nationalised, and smaller medical centres need to be created
so that people can easily access public health facilities. Governments must
withdraw from public insurance for private health care; in other words, no
more public subsidies for private health care. Public health systems must
be strengthened, including the production of medical equipment and
medicines and the distribution of essential medicines (whose prices must be
controlled by regulations).

3. *Create an intellectual commons.*

  The Global South must push for the annulment of the TRIPS Agreement
(Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights), which provides
unrestrained property rights on goods that must be part of the global
commons. This applies directly to the COVID-19 vaccine, which must be
offered for production in countries without consideration of profits or
intellectual property rights. But it applies equally to any pharmaceutical
drugs, many of them publicly financed – the profits for which are then
privately appropriated – and to energy technologies that would swiftly move
us from fossil to renewable fuels as well as to more efficient
communications technologies (such as 5G). In the short term, the states of
the Global South must enhance mechanisms for science and technology
transfer amongst themselves.

Judy Ann Seidman (South Africa), *Capitalism*, 2020
*4. Cancel debt.*

  Reasonable estimates suggest that the ‘developing countries’ owe $11
trillion in external debt, with debt service for this year alone estimated
to be $3.9 trillion. With the coronavirus recession, such payments are
unthinkable. Debt relief must go beyond the forty-seven ‘least developed
countries’ and include all of the states in the Global South; this relief
must not only postpone debt, but it must *cancel* debt (from both public
and private creditors). An international alliance must be formed on a broad
front to pressure creditors to cancel the debt so that all resources that
go to service the debt can be channelled fully towards the dire needs of
society.

  *5. Expand food solidarity.*

  Half of the world’s population struggles with hunger. Food sovereignty
and food solidarity are essential antidotes, as has been shown by platforms
such as Via Campesina. Corporate control over agriculture must be
challenged and food production must be made into a human rights priority.
Funds need to be marshalled towards enhancing the production of food; these
funds need to be spent on infrastructure for agrarian production (including
to enhance such projects as the ALBA Seed Bank). Universal public
distribution systems must be strengthened to provide higher incomes for
farmers and to ensure distribution of food to the people. A more robust
rural landscape will decongest cities and draw people to live meaningful
lives in rural areas.

  *6. Enhance and invest in the public sector.*

  The CoronaShock <http://thetricontinental.org/studies/> has shown that
the private sector is simply not capable of addressing emergencies, let
alone human needs. States of the Global South must lead by offering a
robust defence of the public sector, not only for the production of key
goods and services (medicine and food), but for anything that is essential
for modern life – more public housing, more public transportation, more
public Wi-Fi, and more public education. Allowing the profit sector to
commodify these parts of human life has eroded our capacity to build a
civilised society.

Davide Leone, Associazione Italiana Design della Comunicazione Visiva
(Italy), *Capitalism*, 2020

*7. Implement wealth taxes.*

  Currently, roughly $32 trillion is sitting in offshore tax havens
<https://www.thetricontinental.org/working-document-1/>, and untold amounts
of money are simply not counted towards taxation. Two things are necessary:
first, that illicit financial flows be recovered, and second, that wealth
taxes be properly imposed on the upper echelons of the bourgeoisie and the
wealthy land-owning elite, as well as financiers and those engaged in
financial speculation. These funds would be enough to redirect priorities
to eliminate poverty, hunger, illiteracy, homelessness, and indignity on a
global level.

  *8. Enact capital controls.*

  Without capital controls, a country has no effective economic
sovereignty. States of the Global South must create an international
platform that binds each of them to undertake capital controls; this is a
political issue that cannot be implemented by a single country. Capital
controls are measures taken by a government to regulate the flow of
finances into and out of a country. Such controls include transaction
taxes, minimum stay requirements, and caps on the amount of currency that
can move across borders. Capital controls and democratic control over the
Central Bank will prevent capital flight and should give governments
sovereignty over their currency and their economy.

Túlio Carapiá and Clara Cerqueira (Brazil), *Fruits of the Earth*, 2020

*9. Shift to non-dollar-based regional trade.*

  Dedollarisation is an essential part of a new agenda. Sixty per cent of
the world’s reserves are held in dollars, and world commerce is largely
conducted in dollars. The Dollar-Wall Street Complex has a near
stranglehold on international finance and trade; it is no surprise that US
unilateral sanctions are having a catastrophic impact on countries not
necessarily because they rely upon the dollar, but because their trading
partners are enmeshed in it. The dollar has become a weapon to undermine
development. Experimental alternative payment systems like the Sucre need
to be dusted off, and new global financial institutions need to be created
to facilitate wire transfers. In the short run, this could begin with
non-dollar-based regional facilities, although there is a need for global
institutions to set aside the immense advantage provided to the United
States by the dollar being used as a global currency. Relatedly, there is a
need to strengthen regional trade blocs that would honour barter as a
mechanism for payment.

  *10. Centralise planning, decentralise public action.*

  The pandemic has shown us the power of central planning and the
importance of decentralised public action. Economies that are not allowed
to plan their use of resources have floundered before the virus. There is a
need to establish participatory central planning mechanisms on an
ever-increasing scale and to recast social production towards need – not
towards profit. These plans must be derived from maximum democratic input
and must be transparent to the public. Central planning would enable the
nationalisation of sectors such as mining (including energy production),
the large-scale production and processing of food, and tourism; these would
be placed under worker control into cooperatives. It would be an instrument
to minimise waste, including profligate military expenditures. The
enhancement of local self-government and cooperative production, as well as
of associations and unions of the people, will allow social life to become
increasingly democratic.

Ahmed Mofeed (Palestine), *Coca-Cola Zero*, 2020
The images in this newsletter are from the Anti-Imperialist poster
exhibition <https://antiimperialistweek.org/en/exhibitions/capitalism/>.
The first set of posters are on the idea of capitalism. Please go to the
website and browse through the posters, which come from seventy-seven
artists from twenty-six countries and twenty-one organisations.

  Warmly, Vijay.

PS: please share this newsletter from our website
<https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/25-2020-ten-point-agenda/>.
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