Re: Current implications for South Africa

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 24/06/01 11:19 +0000, you wrote:
> > Date:          Sat, 23 Jun 2001 17:52:05 +0100
> > From:          Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > But fundamentally the enemy is not a policy: it is the blind workings of
> > global finance capital. That is why we need regulation not de-regulation.
> > This may not come through the reform of Bretton Woods organisations,
> but it
> > needs to come from somewhere, of a global economy that is a highly complex
> > social structure, but is privately owned by finance capital.
>
> Chris, the only vague sense I have that "regulation" may be on
> the agenda of international elites is the UN Financing for
> Development conference which Ernesto Zedillo is chairing early next
> year in Mexico, and whose main economic advisor is John Williamson,
> who came up with the term Washington Consensus. So there's absolutely
> no hope there at all.

Your factual knowledge will be better than mine, but I am still reluctant
to take your depressing word for it.

a) there are contradictions between imperialist powers and between finance
capitalist companies that tend towards the need for stabilisation of the
system. If Brazil and Argentina really do crash, that will be unsettling.

b) there remains the global problem of overproduction and limited
purchasing power

c) the agenda set by the progressive campaigning organisations requires a
global fund for AIDS management and some alternative to regular cycles of
debt forgiving.

d) all the finance capitalists need the market in energy managed and
stabilised.



> Or am I missing something? Even the new Giddens/Hutton book with
> chapters by Soros and Volcker can't come up with anything really
> convincing, that is going to be on the real world agenda.
>
> We've got quite good progressive momentum, by the way, behind the
> argument -- made by Keynes forcefully in that 1933 Yale Review
> article -- that aside from trade finance, we must stick as much as
> possible to local sources of development finance.


I see the argument and it should be a reasonable one. But it does not
accept, as I do, that there are powerful centripetal forces sucking capital
in and centralising it in the metropolitan heartlands. There has got to be
a mechanism for pumping it out. (I thought that was one of the correct
ideas that Soros had supported.)


> No need, we want to
> posit very strongly, for a WB or IMF given the havoc that they've
> caused, the need for Third World debt repudiation (paid for in part
> by drawing down BWI capital), their refusal to truly reform, and the
> hard/soft currency translation problem. (If you want I'll send you
> the paper offlist.)

 Unfortunately I would not be able to do your paper justice off list.

I think it is very helpful you weighing in on this list, sharing
information and arguing your corner as effectively as you do, (if not
always totally convincingly). This helps to stimulate informed debate.

Campaigning for global reforms BTW does not presume that any capitalist
institution will "truly" reform. It may however give ground.

Chris Burford

London