[News] There Are Enough Resources in the World to Fulfil Human Needs, But Not Enough Resources to Satisfy Capitalist Greed
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Aug 3 11:45:12 EDT 2023
There Are Enough Resources in the World to Fulfil Human Needs, But Not
Enough Resources to Satisfy Capitalist Greed: The Thirty-First
Newsletter (2023
View this email in your browser
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=9026cc24ad&e=d206d0a40d>
*There Are Enough Resources in the World to Fulfil Human Needs, But Not
Enough Resources to Satisfy Capitalist Greed: The Thirty-First
Newsletter (2023)*
Kurt Nahar (Suriname), Untitled 2369, 2008.
Kurt Nahar (Suriname), /Untitled 2369/, 2008.
Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=1aed7ad060&e=d206d0a40d>.
On 20 July, the United Nations (UN) released a document
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=f2f218560d&e=d206d0a40d>
called /A New Agenda for Peace/. In the opening section of the report,
UN Secretary-General António Guterres made some remarks that bear close
reflection:
We are now at an inflection point. The post-Cold War period is over. A
transition is under way to a new global order. While its contours remain
to be defined, leaders around the world have referred to multipolarity
as one of its defining traits. In this moment of transition, power
dynamics have become increasingly fragmented as new poles of influence
emerge, new economic blocs form and axes of contestation are redefined.
There is greater competition among major powers and a loss of trust
between the Global North and South. A number of States increasingly seek
to enhance their strategic independence, while trying to manoeuvre
across existing dividing lines. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
pandemic and the war in Ukraine have hastened this process.
We are, he says, in a moment of transition. The world is moving away
from the post-Cold War era, in which the United States and its close
allies, Europe and Japan, (collectively known as the Triad
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=488074fac2&e=d206d0a40d>)
exerted their unipolar
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=f3d120caa6&e=d206d0a40d>
power over the rest of the world, to a new period that some refer to as
‘multipolarity’. The COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine
accelerated developments that were already in motion before 2020. The
gradual attrition of the Western bloc has led to contestation between
the Triad and newly emerging powers. This contestation is most fierce in
the Global South, where trust of the Global North is the weakest it has
been in a generation. The poorer nations, in the current moment, are not
looking to yoke themselves to either the fragile West or the emergent
new powers but are seeking ‘strategic independence’. This assessment is
largely correct, and the report is of great interest, but it is also
weakened by its lack of specificity.
Gladwyn K. Bush or Miss Lassie (Cayman Islands), The History of the
Cayman Islands, n.d.
Gladwyn K. Bush or Miss Lassie (Cayman Islands), /The History of the
Cayman Islands/, n.d.
Not once in the report does the UN refer to any specific country, nor
does it seek to properly identify the emergent powers. Since it does not
provide a specific assessment of the current situation, the UN ends up
providing the kind of vague solutions that have become commonplace and
are meaningless (such as increasing trust and building solidarity).
There is one specific proposal of great meaning, dealing with the arms
trade, to which I shall return at the end of this newsletter. But apart
from showing concern over the ballooning weapons industry, the UN report
attempts to erect a kind of moral scaffolding over the hard realities
that it cannot directly confront.
What then are the specific reasons for the monumental global shifts
identified by the United Nations? Firstly, there has been a serious
deterioration of the relative power of the United States and its closest
allies. The capitalist class in the West has been on a long-term tax
strike
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=8874f1b565&e=d206d0a40d>,
unwilling to pay either its individual or corporate taxes (in 2019,
nearly 40 percent of multinational profits were moved
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=ae01aeefd7&e=d206d0a40d>
to tax havens). Their search for quick profits and evasion of tax
authorities has led to a long-term decrease
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=105577fa04&e=d206d0a40d>
in investment in the West, which has hollowed out its infrastructure and
its productive base. The transformation of Western social democrats,
from champions of social welfare to neoliberal champions of austerity,
has opened the door
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=3de7107214&e=d206d0a40d>
for the growth of despair and desolation, the emotional palate of the
hard right. The Triad’s inability to smoothly govern the global
neo-colonial system has led to a ‘loss of trust’ in the Global South
towards the United States and its allies.
S. Sudjojono (Indonesia), Di Dalam Kampung (‘In the Village’), 1950.
S. Sudjojono (Indonesia), /Di Dalam Kampung /(‘In the Village’), 1950.
Secondly, it was astounding to countries such as China, India, and
Indonesia to be asked by the G20 to provide liquidity
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=ab285ea153&e=d206d0a40d>
to the Global North’s desiccated banking system in 2007–08. The
confidence of these developing countries in the West decreased, while
their own sense of themselves increased. It this change in circumstances
that led to the formation
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=c5c42866ad&e=d206d0a40d>
of the BRICS bloc in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South
Africa – the ‘locomotives of the South’, as was theorised
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=9ccfeb7119&e=d206d0a40d>
by the South Commission in the 1980s and later deepened in their
little-read 1991 report
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=0e7a7e4939&e=d206d0a40d>.
China’s growth by itself was astounding, but, as the UN Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD) noted
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=c66fe0ada9&e=d206d0a40d>
in 2022, what was fundamental was that China was able to achieve
/structural/ transformation (namely, to move from low-productivity to
high-productivity economic activities). This structural transformation
could provide lessons for the rest of the Global South, lessons far more
practical than those offered by the debt-austerity programme
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=3ef17a69b9&e=d206d0a40d>
of the International Monetary Fund.
Neither the BRICS project nor China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are
military threats; both are essentially South-South commercial
developments (along the grain of the agenda of the UN Office for
South-South Cooperation
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=328fce3ba2&e=d206d0a40d>).
However, the West is unable to economically compete with either of these
initiatives, and so it has adopted a fierce political and military
response. In 2018, the United States declared an end to the War on
Terror and clearly articulated in its National Defence Strategy
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=93f2deb136&e=d206d0a40d>
that its main problems were the rise of China and Russia. Then-US
Defence Secretary Jim Mattis spoke
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=7fa8d727e9&e=d206d0a40d>
about the need to prevent the rise of ‘near-peer rivals’, explicitly
pointing to China and Russia, and suggested that the entire panoply of
US power be used to bring them to their knees. Not only does the United
States have a vast network of roughly 800 overseas military bases –
hundreds of which encircle Eurasia – it also has military allies from
Germany to Japan that provide the US with forward positions against both
Russia and China. For many years, the naval fleets of the US and its
allies have conducted aggressive ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises which
encroach upon the territorial integrity of both Russia (in the Arctic,
mainly) and China (in the South China Sea). In addition, provocative
manoeuvres such as the 2014 US intervention in Ukraine and massive 2015
US arms deal with Taiwan, further threatened Russia and China. In 2018,
the United States unilaterally withdrew
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=09adf2f1be&e=d206d0a40d>
from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (which followed the
2002 abandonment
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=0a1d7d6d17&e=d206d0a40d>
of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), a move which upset the apple cart
of nuclear arms control and meant that the US contemplated the use of
‘tactical nuclear weapons’ against both Russia and China.
Enrico Baj (Italy), Al fuoco, al fuoco (‘Fire! Fire!’), 1964.
Enrico Baj (Italy), /Al fuoco, al fuoco /(‘Fire! Fire!’), 1964.
The United Nations is correct in its assessment that the unipolar moment
is now over, and that the world is moving towards a new, more complex
reality. While the neo-colonial structure of the world system remains
largely intact, there are emerging shifts in the balance of forces with
the rise of the BRICS and China, and these forces are attempting to
create international institutions that challenge the established order.
The danger to the world arises not from the possibility of global power
becoming more fragmented and widely dispersed, but because the West
refuses to come to terms with these major changes. The UN report notes
that ‘military expenditures globally set a new record in 2022, reaching
$2.24 trillion
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=2ecedf0f07&e=d206d0a40d>’,
although the UN does not acknowledge
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=37faac85b7&e=d206d0a40d>
that three-quarters of this money is spent by the member states of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Countries that want to exert
their ‘strategic independence’ – the UN’s phrase – are confronted with
the following choice: either join in the West’s militarisation of the
world or face annihilation by its superior arsenal.
/A New Agenda for Peace/ is designed as part of a process that will
culminate at a UN Summit for the Future
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=1fbe39ae7d&e=d206d0a40d>
to be held in September 2024. As part of this process, the UN is
gathering proposals from civil society, such as this one
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=3efc47e3b3&e=d206d0a40d>
from Aotearoa Lawyers for Peace, Basel Peace Office, Move the Nuclear
Weapons Money campaign, UNFOLD ZERO, Western States Legal Foundation,
and the World Future Council, who call on the summit to adopt a
declaration that:
Reaffirms the obligation under Article 26 of the UN Charter to establish
a plan for arms control and disarmament with the least diversion of
resources for economic and social development;
Calls on the UN Security Council, UN General Assembly and other relevant
UN bodies to take action with respect to Article 26; and
Calls on all States to implement this obligation through ratification of
bilateral and multilateral arms control agreements, coupled with
progressive and systematic reductions of military budgets and
commensurate increases in financing for the sustainable development
goals, climate protection and other national contributions to the UN and
its specialised agencies.
This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of our comrade Subhash Munda
(age 34), a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who was
shot dead in Daladli Chowk (Ranchi, Jharkhand) on 26 July. Subhash, a
fourth generation communist, was a leader of the Adivasi
(indigenous-tribal) community and was killed for his fight against the
land mafia. There are not enough resources in the world to satisfy the
greed of the land mafias and the capitalists. But there are enough
resources to fulfil human needs, as Subhash Munda knew and for which he
fought.
Warmly,
Vijay
Website <www.eltricontinental.org>
Facebook
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=9c68e62a81&e=d206d0a40d>
Twitter
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=e3559c6f8a&e=d206d0a40d>
Instagram
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=074a0c3969&e=d206d0a40d>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230803/b4d19950/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list