Poverty and Neoliberalism , livre ebook

Poverty and Neoliberalism
Persistence and Reproduction in the Global South
Ray Bush
First published 2007 by Pluto Press
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Copyright © Ray Bush 2007
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ISBN-13 978 0 7453 1961 2
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Contents List of figures and maps List of tables List of abbreviations Preface 1. Framing poverty and neoliberalism: the Middle East and North Africa Framing poverty Poverty and income distribution in MENA The future of poverty: an alternative perspective Poverty and politics 2. Commissioning Africa for globalization: Blair and the G8’s project for the world’s poor African crisis: what the CFA and G8 already knew Blair’s commission: to Africa’s rescue? Commissioning poverty: an African response – a return to the future 3. Labour across frontiers? Capitalism’s struggle for profit and order A global migration crisis? Migration and the internationalization of capital Order and value: labour demands and state responses 4. Land, poverty and politics Land dispossession and accumulation Agrarian reform: from poverty reduction to the modernization of poverty Struggling over land 5. Wealth and poverty: mining and the curse of resources? Unfulfilled optimism African mining 6. Securing food and famine Africa’s food crisis Agency explanations for the food crisis The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme Food, politics and power: the onward march of hunger 7. Resisting poverty and neoliberalism Governance and the poor Struggling against capitalism Notes Bibliography Index
Figures and maps Figures 2.1 Estimated number of people living with HIV and adult HIV prevalence (%) globally and in sub-Saharan Africa 1985–2005 6.1 Where are the hungry? 6.2 Hunger in sub-Saharan Africa compared with the rest of the world Maps 6.1 Hunger hotspots in Africa: Areas with more than 20 per cent underweight pre-school children 6.2 Sudan: oil exploration and pipeline 6.3 Oil concessions in central and southern Sudan
Tables 1.1 Summary of poverty trends in five MENA countries, 1980s–1990s 1.2 Poverty trends in five MENA countries, 1980s–1990s 1.3 MENA poverty 3.1 World population and international migrants, 1965–2050 3.2 World population and migration stocks by continent, 2000 3.3 Labour migration in Africa 3.4 Net migration flows in Western Europe, 1960–2000 3.5 Top 20 receiving countries of migrants’ remittances, 2000 4.1 Summary of reasons for redistributive land reform 4.2 Percentage distribution of land according to national regions at the time of Zimbabwe’s independence 4.3 Distribution of land in Zimbabwe, 2002 5.1 African export concentration ratios in the 1990s 6.1 Trends in the availability of food in developing regions 6.2 Determinants of hunger and the strategy to end starvation: a view from the donors 6.3 Countries requiring urgent external assistance (total: 27 countries)
Abbreviations ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States AHDR Arab Human Development Report APRP Agricultural Policy and Reform Program CA communal area CAADP Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme CFA Commission for Africa DFI direct foreign investment DfID Department for International Development (UK) EGP Egyptian pound EITI Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN FDI foreign direct investment G8 group of leading industrial capitalist countries plus Russia: United States, UK, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Canada GDP gross domestic product GoE government of Egypt GoZ government of Zimbabwe HIES Household Income and Expenditure Survey (Egypt) HIPC heavily indebted poor country IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development IFIs international financial institutions ILO International Labour Organization LSCF large-scale commercial farmer MAPP Multi-Country Agricultural Productivity Programme MDG Millennium Development Goals MENA Middle East and North Africa MNC multinational corporation NEPAD New Economic Partnership for African Development OAU Organization of African Unity ODA Official Development Assistance OECD Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development POLIS School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds PASS Poverty Assessment Study Survey PPP purchasing power parity PRSP poverty reduction strategy paper SPA structural adjustment programme SPLA/M Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement SSA sub-Saharan Africa UDI unilateral declaration of independence UN United Nations UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNHCR United Nations Humanitarian Committee for Refugees UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund USAID United States Agency For International Development WFP World Food Programme ZNLWVA Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association
Preface
This book examines the ways in which poverty in the Global South is created and reproduced. More than a billion people, one in five, live on less than US$1 a day. Poverty is often linked by policy makers to the poor lacking access to the world’s resources, land, minerals and food. In contrast this book examines the difficulties the poor have in controlling resources and in shaping their use to the promotion of greater equity and social justice. I also show how the uneven spread of commoditization that characterizes the world economy ensures the production and reproduction of poverty. Adherence to neoliberal ideology and practice by international agencies sustains a hegemony that is manifest in the actions of policy makers from the biggest financial organizations to the smallest non-governmental agency.
It is commonplace for ‘civilization’ to be equated with Western capitalism, and the drive to universalize that ideology has intensified with wars on ‘terror’ and the idea of progress that is inextricably linked to contemporary capitalism. The poor in the twenty-first century are now seen as guilty of creating violence and unrest in dissent from seeing capitalism as their saviour. Yet if capitalism and industrialism are indeed an answer to global poverty, it is little in evidence. Capitalism as an economic and social system is unable to explain the persistence of global poverty when it fails to redress inequality in the Global South. And among the resources that are seldom explored but are clearly systemic to the ways in which poverty is created and sustained are labour, labour power and labour migrancy.
Labour power is simply the most fundamental element of all wealth creation, and control over it has always been a central component of capitalism and its international system, as we shall see. Capitalism creates destitution by throwing people away when they no longer benefit the structures and processes around them. The failure of capitalism to universally spread the capital-wage-labour relationship, and in fact to benefit from non- or only partial proletarianization, remains a key feature of contemporary capitalism and central to how and why poverty in the Global South takes the form that it does. Policy makers however are unable to understand this. They have no recognition of the historical patterns of poverty creation and reproduction and can do nothing more to explain it than express moral outrage or proclaim its inevitability.
This book explores the persistence of global poverty by exploring the way in which control, use and access to the world’s resources are intrinsically part of why so many in the world are poor. I investigate why much donor and international agency policy for poverty alleviation centres on the importance of resource-led growth and why that mantra continues to promote policies of poverty creation rather than its alleviation. I focus on the resources of labour, land, minerals and food. The analysis will situate the ways in which access to these resources and control over them by dominant economic actors has helped shape power and politics in the Global South. Never wholly powerless before the influence of international capital, Southern states have had opportunities and often relative strength to barter improved market positions with multinational companies, international financial institutions and Northern states. Yet those opportunities have seldom led to the promotion of sustainable and equitable development.
Southern state opportunities to benefit from access to resources have been constrained by lack of control of value added and technology and ‘know how’ retained by multinational companies (MNCs). Southern states have often been constrained by elite power and a reluctance to advance economic policy that would control foreign firms, distribute wealth locally to improve the living conditions of the poor and advance welfare for the majority of citizens.
Yet as I indicate it would be a gross simplification and wrong-headed to suggest that poor governance and corruption in Southern states either caused poverty or in themselves prevent its erosion. I show throughout this book that the preoccupation among donors with governance is frankly a red herring.
People in the Global South are poor because of the ways in which the economies in which they live have been incorporated into the world economy. Thus poverty is not about being left behind but about being actively ex