[Translator's note: In June of 1997 the following analysis of neoliberalism appeared in a European publication. Cecilia Rodriguez of the NCDM]

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 18:46:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Cecilia Rodriguez

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SECOND PIECE:

The Globalization of Exploitation

The second piece is constructed by drawing a triangle.

One of the fallacies of neoliberalism is that economic growth of the companies brings with it a better distribution of wealth and a growth I employment. But this is not so. In the same way as the growth of political power of a king does not bring as a consequence a growth of political power of the subjects (to the contrary), the absolute power of financial capital does not better the distribution of wealth nor does it create major employment for society. Poverty, unemployment and instability of labor are its structural consequences.

During the years of the decades of 1960 and 70's, the population considered poor (with less than a dollar a day of income for their basic necessities, according to the World Bank) was about 200 million people. By the beginning of the decade of the 90's this number was about 2 billion. In addition to this the "mainstay of the 200 most important companies of the planet represent more than a quarter of the world's economic activity; and yet these 200 companies employ only 18.8 million employees, or less than 0.75% of the world's labor force." Ignacio Ramonet in LMD. January 1997, #15).

More poor human beings and an increase in the level of impoverishment, less rich and an increase in the level of wealth, these are the lessons of the outline of the First Piece of the neoliberal jigsaw puzzle. To achieve this absurdity, the world's capitalist system "modernizes" production, circulation and the consumption of merchandise. The new technological revolution (the information revolution) and the new political revolution (the emerging megalopolis on the ruins of the National States). This social "revolution is no more than a readjustment, a reorganization of the social forces, principally the labor force.

The Economically Active Population on a global level went from 1,376 million in 1960 to 2,374 million workers in 1990. More human beings with the capacity to work, in other words, to generate wealth.

But the "new world order" not only rearranges this new labor force in geographic and productive spaces, it also re-orders its place (or lack of a place, as in the case of the unemployed and subemployed) in the globalizing plan of the economy.

The World Population employed by sector was substantially changed in the last 20 years. In fishing and agriculture it went from 22% in 1970 to 12% I 1990; in manufacturing from 25% in 1970 to 22% in 1990; while in the tertiary sector (commerce, transport, banking and services) it grew from 42% in 1970 to 57% in 1990; while the population employed in the agricultural and fishing sector fell from 30% in 1970 to 15% in 1990. (Statistics from "The Labor Force in the World Market in Contemporary Capitalism". Ochoa Chi, Juanita del Pilar. UNAM. Economy. Mexico, 1997).

This means that each time more workers are channeled towards the necessary activities to increase production or to accelerate the elaboration of merchandise. The neoliberal system operates in this way like a mega-boss, conceiving the world market as a single company, administered with "modernizing" criteria.

But neoliberal modernity appears more like the beastly birth of capitalism as a world system, than like utopic "rationality". "Modern" capitalist production continues to base itself in the labor of children, women and migrant workers. Of the 1 billion, 148 million children in the world, at least 100 million of them live in the streets and almost 200 million of them work. It is expected that 400 million of them will be working by the year 2000. It is said as well that 146 million Asian children labor in the production of auto parts, toys, clothing, food, tools andchemicals. But this exploitation of child labor does not only exist in underdeveloped countries, 40% of English children and 20% of French children also work in order to complete the family income or to survive. In the "pleasure" industry there is also a place for children. The UN estimates that each year a million children enter sexual trafficking (Statistics in Ochoa Chi, J. Op. Cit.).

The neoliberal beast invades all the social world homogenizing even the lines of food production "IN global terms if we observe particularities in the food consumption of each region (and its interior), the process of homogenization which is being imposed is evident, including over those physiological-cultural differences of the different zones." ("World Market of means of Subsistence. 1960-1990. Ocampo Figueroa, Nashelly, and Flores Mondragon, Gonzalo. UNAM. Economy. 1994).

This beast imposes upon humanity a heavy burden. The unemployment and the instability of millions of workers all over the world is a cutting reality which has no horizons and no signs of lessening. Unemployment in the countries which make up the Organization for Cooperation and economic Development went from 3.8% in 1966 to 6.3% in 1990. In Europe alone it went from 2.2% in 1966 to 6.4% in 1990.

The imposition of the laws of the market all over the world, the global market, have done nothing but destroy small and medium-size businesses. Upon the disappearance of local and regional markets, the small and medium-size producers see themselves without protection and without any possibility of competing against gigantic transnationals.

The results: massive bankruptcy of companies. The consequence; millions of unemployed workers.

The absurdity of neoliberalism repeats itself: growth in production does not generate employment, on the contrary, it destroys it. The UN calls this stage "Growth without employment."

But the nightmare does not end there. In addition to the threat of unemployment workers must confront precarious working conditions. Major on-the-job instability, longer working days and poor salaries, are consequences of globalization in general and the "tertiary" tendency of the economy (the growth of the "service" sector) in particular. "In the countries under domination, the labor force suffers a precarious reality: extreme mobility, jobs without contracts, irregular salaries and generally inferior to the vital minimum and regimes with emaciated retirement benefits, independent activities which are not declared and have hit-and-miss salaries, in other words, servitude or forced labor within populations which are supposedly protected such as children" (Alain Morice. "Foreign workers, advance sector of instability." LMD. January 1997).

The consequences of all this translates itself into a bottoming out of global reality. The reorganization of productive processes and the circulation of merchandise and readjustment of productive forces, produce a peculiar excess: left-over human beings, not necessary for the "new world order", who do not produce, or consume, who do not use credit, in sum, who are disposable.

Each day, the great financial centers impose their laws to nations and groups of nations in all the world They reorder and readjust their inhabitants. And, at the end of the operation, they find they have "left-over" people. "They fire upon the volume of the excess population, which is not only subjected to the brunt of the most cruel poverty, but which does not matter, which is loose and separate, and whose only end is to wander through the streets without a fixed direction, without housing or work, without family or social relations-with a minimal stability--, whose only company are its cardboard and plastic bags (Fernandez Duran, Ramon. "Against the Europe of capital and economic globalization". Talasa. Madrid, 1996).

Economic globalization "made necessary a decline in real salaries at the international level, which together with the reduction of social costs (health, education, housing and food) and an anti-union climate, came to constitute thefundamental part of the new neoliberal politics of capitalist reactivation_ (Ocampo F. and Flores M. Op. Cit.).

Continue on...

Third piece: "Migration, the Errant Nightmare"