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The Global Crisis, the Political Economy of State Restructuring,

The Global Crisis, the Political Economy of State Restructuring, and the Campaign for Transformative Social Protection Bonn Juego PhD Fellow Global Development Studies Aalborg University, Denmark E-mail: bonnjuego@yahoo.com

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The Global Crisis, the Political Economy of State Restructuring,

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  1. The Global Crisis, the Political Economy of State Restructuring, and the Campaign for Transformative Social Protection Bonn Juego PhD Fellow Global Development Studies Aalborg University, Denmark E-mail: bonnjuego@yahoo.com Presentation for the Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) Conference on Southeast Asia Regional Roundtable Strategizing Meeting: Building Southeast Asia Peoples' Agenda on Transformative Social Protection as a Democratic and Human Rights Response to the Crisis Asian Institute of Management Makati City, Philippines 12 October 2009

  2. The Global Crisis:Nature, Responses, and Alternatives CONTENTS • How can we make sense of crisis in capitalist development (in particular, neo-liberalism)? • Are there fundamental changes to the visions and strategies of global governance institutions, the states, and the social movements in their respective responses to the global crisis? • What does transformative social protection mean in this moment of crisis?

  3. Constitutive Role of Crisesin the Evolution of Neo-liberalism • Relationship: Crisis and Neo-liberalism • Dysfunctional or Functional (or both) • Nature of Crisis and Neo-liberalism • Born out of crises • Evolved through crises • Died of crises???

  4. NEO-LIBERALISM WAS BORN OUT OF CRISESComplex interaction of forces/events/phenomena......Mutually reinforcing tendencies • recession in the developed capitalist economies after 1973, the OPEC oil crisis, and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system • de-linking from the ‘gold standard’ • internationalisation of financial markets as a result of the widespread abandonment of exchange controls • the massive increase in foreign bank lending to the Third World as consequence of the recession in the major economies • the growing stagnation of command economies • the shift from import substitution in favour of export promotion in the Third World and the rise of the NICs in East Asia • the imposition of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) on the heavily-indebted Third World as conditionality attached to rolling over foreign debt • the restructuring of global production towards ‘post-Fordism’ and the growth of MNCs‏ • the revolution in macroeconomic policy that resulted in the weakening of trade unions, the cutting of state budgets, deregulation, privatisation, etc. • the advances in ICT (as the new ‘techno-economic paradigm’)‏ • Etc....

  5. NEO-LIBERALISM HAS EVOLVED THROUGH CRISESFrom crisis to crisis in the last 30 years.... • National Developmentalism (postwar-1970s) • Crisis of Fordism/Keynesianism (stagflation) • Washington Consensus – 1st Generation Neoliberal reforms (1980s – mid-1990s) • Crisis of market fundamentalism of the Washington Consensus — ‘East Asian Miracle’ (8 HPAEs showing high growth and high equity with state intervention) • Post-Washington Consensus – 2nd Generation reforms (mid-1990s - 2008) • Cacophony of crises: financial crises, overaccumulation, overproduction, over-/under-consumption, climate change, ecological degradation, political legitimacy, global governance crisis, oil crisis, food price crisis, subprime crisis

  6. NEO-LIBERALISM HAS DIED OF CRISES(?)Signs of the Times, a Cacophony of Crises:RIP Neo-liberalism (1980s-2008) • Is neo-liberalism dead? • Depends on what we mean by ‘neo-liberalism’.... • The neo-liberal form (i.e., market fundamentalism) is dead; • But not the substance of capitalism as a: • process of capital accumulation; • relations in which labour is subordinated to capital

  7. Neo-liberalism: A strategy for market-led development, A blueprint for crisis management Neo-liberal values: well-being of the financial institutions over well-being of the people • E.g. • Debt crisis in Latin America (1982) • Crisis Response: SAPs • Financial Crises: Scandinavia (early 1990s); Mexico (1994); East and Southeast Asia (1997); Russia (1998); Argentina (2001); Turkey (2001-02); US Subprime mortgage (2007-09) • Crisis response: ‘open’ international financial architecture • US subprime crisis (2007-09) • Crisis response: Bush-Paulson-Bernanke-Obama Bailout Programme (restore power of corporations; assure ascendancy of finance capital)

  8. In times of crisis,“assets return to their rightful owners”! ‘Financial crises have always caused transfers of ownership and power to those who keep their own assets intact and who are in a position to create credit, and the Asian crisis is no exception....there is no doubt that Western and Japanese corporations are the big winners.....The combination of massive devaluations, IMF-pushed financial liberalization, and IMF facilitated recovery may even precipitate the biggest peacetime transfer of assets from domestic to foreign owners in the past fifty years anywhere in the world, dwarfing the transfers from domestic to US owners in Latin America in the 1980s or in Mexico after 1994. One recalls the statement attributed to Andrew Mellon: "In a depression assets return to their rightful owners”.’ —R. Wade and F. Veneroso (1998), ‘The Asian Crisis: The High Debt Model versus the Wall Street-Treasury-IMF Complex,’ in The New Left Review, 228 (1998), 3-23.

  9. The Cacophony of Crises Today • Overproduction • Finance (securitisation, speculative investments, Ponzi scheme) • Environment • Climate (global warming) • Oil • Food (post-Green Revolution, the Great Hunger of 2008) • Governance (WB, IMF, WTO, states) • Etc.

  10. Mechanisms of Financial Crisesand their Effects on the Real Economy The real economy “Güterwelt” Financial economy “Rechenpfennige” ”Black Box” Production of goods and services Money/capital THE CIRCULAR FLOW OF ECONOMICS

  11. Financial capital Production capital Wealth-producing wealthFixed capital,technical capital,human capital, good will Money and paper wealthStatic property“Investible” capital Assets Tied to fixed assets, toknowledge of products, processes, capabilities,clients and markets Essentially mobileKnowledge indifferent Mobility Quasi-liquid assets, SHORT-TERM GAINS Wealth-creating assets,LONG-TERM GAINS Bias COMPLEMENTARY FUNCTIONS, DIVERGENT NATURE Socio-economic results will differdepending on the criteria that lead investment

  12. “In the years preceding the First World Warthere were in common use among economists a number of metaphors . . . 'Money is a wrapper in which goods come’; 'Money is the garment drapedround the body of economic life’; 'money is a veil behind whichthe action of real economic forces is concealed’ . . . During the 1920s and 1930s. . . money, the passive veil, took on the appearance of an evil genius; the garment became a Nessus shirt; the wrapper a thing liable to explode. Money, in short, after being little or nothing, was now everything . . . Then with the Second World War,the tune changed again. Manpower, equipment and organization once more came into their own. The role of money dwindled to insignificance. . .” Arthur Cecil Pigou (1949)The Veil of Money, Macmillan pp.18-19 SHIFTING ROLES OF MONEY ON THE REAL ECONOMY

  13. Three basic and complementary mechanisms behind the conflicts between the real economy and the financial economy(Financial Crises) • THE HAMMURABI EFFECT (Babylonia ca. 1795 – 1750 BC) • The Effect of Compound Interest. • THE PEREZ EFFECT (Carlota Perez, Venezuelan economist) • Technological Revolutions Create Financial Bubbles. • THE MINSKY EFFECT (Hyman Minsky, US, 1919-1996) • Liquidity preference turning point • + ‘bad projects’ killing credit to healthy projects.

  14. THE HAMMURABI EFFECT(The Effect of Compound Interest) “A shilling put out at 6% compound interest at our Saviour’s birth would . . . have increased to a greater sum than the whole solar system could hold, supposing it a sphere equal in diameter to the diameter of Saturn’s orbit.” —Richard Price, English Economist, 1769.

  15. GREATSURGE Technological Revolution Core country Turning Point INSTALLATION DEPLOYMENT IRRUPTION FRENZY SYNERGY MATURITY 1st The Industrial Revolution Britain 1771 late 1780s early 1790s 1798–1812 1813–1829 1770s and early 1780s 1793–97 Age of Steamand Railways Britain (spreading to continent and US) 2nd 1829 1830s 1840s 1850–1857 1857–1873 1848–50 Age of Steel, Electricityand Heavy Engineering USA and Germany overtaking Britain 3rd 1875–1884 1908–1918* 1875 1884–1893 1895–1907 1893–95 1929–33 Europe 1929–43 USA 4th Age of Oil, Automobiles and MassProduction USA (spreading to Europe) 1908–1920* 1920–1929 1943–1959 1960–1974* 1908 Age of Informationand Telecomunications USA (spreading to Europe and Asia) 5th 1971–1987* 1971 1987–2001 20?? 2001–?? Crash Institutional recomposition big-bang Note: * Observe phase overlaps between successive surges. THE PEREZ EFFECTTechnological Revolutions and Finance Capital Approximate dates of the installation and deployment periodsof the great surges of development -- 1771 to the present

  16. THE MINSKY EFFECT(Ponzi Schemes) Types of financing • HEDGE financing • Low risk - can fulfill contractual payment obligation • SPECULATIVE financing • involves future renegotiating of the debt (rollover) • A typical speculative position consists on financing long term assets with short term liabilities. • PONZI financing • ‘cash flows from operations are not sufficient to fill either the repayment of principal or the interest on outstanding debts by their cash flows from operations’ • expected revenues can not afford even interest payments, and agents are submitted to increasing debt

  17. Ponzi Schemes • Ponzi schemes (such as subprime loans) • cause financial institutions to redefine the game • they no longer compete for market share but instead pull out in order to be more liquid. • In this way also, SOUND PROJECTS ARE REFUSED CREDIT, AND A DOWNWARD SPIRAL STARTS. • Third World debt/lending was also a Ponzi scheme. • Myrdalian ‘perverse backwashes’ • Funds tend to flow from poor to rich countries! (Charles Ponzi - police mugshot, 1910)

  18. Responses to Crisis • SCHUMPETERIAN: • ‘IT HAS TO BURN OUT ALONE’ • KEYNESIAN: • ‘REPAIR IT’, but without encouraging the very behaviour that caused the problem in the first place. • MARXIST: • ‘REPLACE IT’ — overthrow crisis-ridden capitalist system; establish socialism, a democratic economic planning

  19. “Times of innovation ... are times of effort and sacrifice, of work for the future, while the harvest comes after....The harvest is gathered under recessive symptoms and with more anxiety than rejoicing....[During] recession ...much dead wood disappears.” —Joseph Schumpeter (1939) Business Cycles

  20. “I sympathize, therefore, with those who would minimize, rather than with those who would maximize, economic entanglement among nations. Ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel – these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible, and, above all, let finance be primarily national. Yet, at the same time, those who seek to disembarrass a country of its entanglements should be very slow and wary. It should not be a matter of tearing up roots but of slowly training a plant to grow in a different direction. For these strong reasons, therefore, I am inclined to the belief that, after the transition is accomplished, a greater measure of national self-sufficiency and economic isolation among countries than existed in 1914 may tend to serve the cause of peace, rather than otherwise. At any rate, the age of economic internationalism was not particularly successful in avoiding war; and if its friends retort, that the imperfection of its success never gave it a fair chance, it is reasonable to point out that a greater success is scarcely probable in the coming years.” — John Maynard Keynes (1933 [1972]) National Self-sufficiency

  21. “Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like a sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” —Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1848) Communist Manifesto “These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will occur. They do show that, within the ruling classes themselves, the foreboding is emerging that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and constantly engaged in the process of change.” —Karl Marx (1867) Capital, Vol. 1

  22. The World Bank, IMF and their G-20 allies:Using the global crisis to their advantage.... G-20: IMF is back!Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the IMF, G-20 Press Conference, 2 April 2009 Maybe some of you were in the IMF press conference at the end of the Annual Meeting last October. And if some of you were there, then you may remember that what I said at that time is that IMF is back. Today you get the proof when you read the communiqué, each paragraph, or almost each paragraph – let's say the important ones – are in one way or another related to IMF work.

  23. WORLD BANK: Exactly the same global neo-liberal project!World Bank, Global Monitoring Report 2009: A Development Emergency, p. xii. The report sets out six priority areas for action to confront the development emergency that now faces many of these countries. First, we must ensure an adequate fiscal response in developing countries to protect the poor and vulnerable groups and to support economic growth. Priority areas must be strengthening social safety nets and protecting infrastructure programs that can create jobs while building a foundation for future productivity and growth. The precise fiscal response needs to be tailored to individual country circumstances, consistent with maintenance of macroeconomic stability. Second, we must provide support for the private sector and improve the climate for recovery and growth in private investment, including paying special attention to strengthening financial systems. Helping small and medium enterprises get access to finance for trade and investment is vital for job creation. But the crisis has also underscored the importance of broader reforms to improve the stability and soundness of the financial system. Third, we must redouble efforts in human development and recover lost ground in progress toward the MDGs. We can do this not only by strengthening key public programs for health and education, but also by better leveraging the private sector’s role in the financing and delivery of services. In support of these efforts to help developing countries, the report emphasizes three key global priorities. Donors must deliver on their commitments to increase aid. Indeed, the increased needs of poor countries hit hard by the crisis call for going beyond existing commitments. National governments must hold firm against rising protectionist pressures and maintain an open international trade and finance system. Completing the Doha negotiations expeditiously would provide a much-needed boost in confidence to the global economy at a time of high stress and uncertainty. Finally, multilateral institutions must have the mandate, resources, and instruments to support an effective global response to the global crisis. The international financial institutions will need to play a key role in bridging the large financing gap for developing countries resulting from the slump in private capital flows, including using their leverage ability to help revive private flows. Source: World Bank, Global Monitoring Report 2009: A Development Emergency, p. xii.

  24. World Bank President Robert Zoellick (31 March 2009, prior to the G-20 Meeting): New Powers for the Multilaterals! • “a WTO monitoring system to advance trade and resist economic isolationism, while working to complete the Doha negotiations to open markets, cut subsidies, and resist backsliding”; • “a monitoring role for the IMF, to review the execution of .. stimulus packages and assess results, calling for further action if necessary”; • IMF and World Bank Group monitoring of actions and results in the banking sector, with financial sector assessments to be extended to developed countries, “with the results published, taken seriously, and followed up”; • an overhaul of the financial regulatory and supervisory system” in which “most of the actual authority over regulation will rest with national governments”, but within which an expanded FSF [Financial Stability Forum] “could become another important institution of a stronger multilateral system, working with the IMF and the World Bank group on implementation”

  25. IMF: ‘An opportunity to make progress on seemingly intractable issues’IMF (February 2009), Initial Lessons of the Crisis for the Global Architecture and the IMF Bottom line. The crisis has revealed flaws in key dimensions of the current global architecture, but also provides a unique opportunity to fix them. On the flaws, surveillance needs to be reoriented to ensure warnings are clear, successfully connect the dots, and provide practical advice to policy makers. An effective forum for policy makers with the ability and mandate to take leadership in responding to systemic concerns about the international economy is key. Ground rules for cross-border finance need to be strengthened. And, given the growing size of international transactions, resources available for liquidity support and easing external adjustment should augmented and processes for using them better defined so they are more readily available when needed. These are all ambitious undertakings. But the damage wrought by the crisis provides an opportunity to make progress on seemingly intractable issues. The moment should not be missed.

  26. ASEAN: ‘Ensure free flow of goods, services and investment’ASEAN Member States, Press Communique, Thailand, 1 March 2009

  27. Malaysia First stimulus measure: increase capitalisation of a government investment company by USD 5 billion (also to stabilise stock exchange) Philippines Economic Resiliency Plan (ERP): PhP 330 billion States’ Bailouts and Resiliency Plans(Bailouts for the poor???)

  28. “The crisis consists precisely in the fact thatthe old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” —Antonio Gramsci (1971) Prison Notebooks Global Civil Society Challengeand the Challenge to Global Justice Movements— ‘Another World Is Necessary’ —

  29. Crisis as a ‘Turning Point’ • CRISIS from Greek ‘krisis’ • “the turning point of a disease when an important change takes place, indicating either recovery or death” • People from left, right, centre look at the crisis the ‘Chinese way’ — i.e., an opportunity to advance their respective interests!

  30. Neo-liberals Well-being of the market/financial institutions TSP Well-being of the people Material — not just ideational — basis for alternatives Transformative Social Protection

  31. Lessons of the 1997 Asian Crisis for TSP Campaign(Towards a Democratic and Human Rights Response to Crisis) • Democratisation may be stalled. • Justification for authoritarian rule (e.g. ‘Asian Values’) • Human Rights compromised. • Human rights obligations sidelined in the name of surveillance and internal security (Malaysia, Singapore) • The poor severely neglected. • e.g., ASEM Trust Fund failed to target the poor, workers, and the vulnerable, adversely affected groups.

  32. Emergent AUTHORITARIAN LIBERALISM in Asia(Authoritarian Polity, Market Economy)

  33. CONCLUDING REMARKS 1. The Constitutive Role of Crises in the Evolution of Neo-liberalism • was born out of the crises of the 1970s • has evolved through a series of crises over the last 30 years • died of the cacophony of crises culminating in the current global economic crisis.

  34. As it shows, crises have so far been functional, rather than dysfunctional, to neo-liberalism: • Crises reshape class and social relations but in ways that perpetuate the hegemony of capital over labour and the preservation of elite rule. • Crises restrategise development plans of institutions from international organisations to states to further advance, not retreat from, market-led development. • Crises restructure states and societies in which social institutions are oriented towards the logic, requirements, and imperatives of neo-liberalism.

  35. 2. The responses to the global crisis from the multilaterals, to regional organisations, to states are fundamentally the same through the years, with or without crisis. • But there are differential catastrophic impacts across social classes, amongst the poor, marginalised, vulnerable sectors.

  36. Another world is necessary! • Tranformative Social Protection now!!! • ‘Social Security’ (at a minimum, right to livelihood, food, healthcare, water, housing, education, and other essential services): both timeless and universal • The TSP Campaign: find, advance, and create a democratic and human rights response — protect, care for, and work with the most vulnerable sectors such as the urban and rural poor, the workers, women, migrants, farmers and fisherfolks, persons with disability, and indigenous peoples

  37. Thank you very much.—Bonn Juego

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