ReOrient global Keynesianism (1) - Lula

["g kohler" <kohlerg@xxxxxxxx>]

ReOrient global Keynesianism (1) - Lula

Certain politicians may, as Keynes said, be merely implementing some ideas
of some by-gone scribbler of yesteryear. However, it is also possible that
certain politicians may be ahead of the scribblers and may give contemporary
theoreticians certain clues for their theories and models.

Take Lula for example (Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, President of Brazil since
January 2003). He declared the eradication of hunger as the first priority
of his government. Quotable lines by Lula include:  don't "perpetuate a
system that lets some people eat five times a day and others spend five days
without eating" and  "black children have the same right to eat as those
with blue eyes of the Nordic countries" (from "Le président brésilien veut
faire . . .", Le Monde, 26 January 2003, my translation)

Numerous (post) (-) Keynesians are concerned about unemployment, but none
has ever thought, or so it seems, of making hunger the highest priority.
Thus, a theoretician can learn from a politician. Eradication of hunger
seems to be a goal worthy of inclusion in a  modernized (global)
(transnational) (multi-civilizational) (multi-cultural) (multipolar)
(ecologically sane) (post) (-) Keynesianism.

On a global scale, hunger and underemployment/unemployment are actually
closely related - about one third of humans are chronically hungry and about
the same proportion of one third is chronically underemployed or unemployed.
(Unemployment /underemployment  in rich countries is not quite as closely
related to hunger as it is in poor countries.)

Trick of history: Lula and the World Bank may have something in common. As
English Marxist Paul Cammack pointed out (he is studying the
ideological-theoretical program of the World Bank; lecture at York
University, Canada, fall of 2002), the World Bank is also interested in the
eradication of hunger - in order to stabilize world capitalism.

Gernot Köhler

["ReOrient", with capital letter "O", is a logo that appeared in a book
title by Andre Gunder Frank]