MICHAEL PARENTI ON CAPITALISM

‘Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.'
- John Maynard Keynes, key capitalist economist

MICHAEL PARENTI ON CAPITALISM
Summary of Parenti's speech at the Rijksuniversiteit Gent, Tuesday november 6th, 2001

Gent - The reactionary American political scientist Michael Parenti came to Gent on november 6th to hold a lecture on ‘Globalisation and the New War'. According to the flyers, his appearance in Gent also stood in the spirit of his book ‘Blackshirts and Reds', which was published in 1997 and treats the emergence of fascist ideas in favor of neoliberal thinkers and multinationals, and the resistance of -mainly (?) - socialists and communists against these evolutions. About the book however, very little was said. But still, Parenti had some very worthwile new insights to offer on the way capitalism fights the people in the name of freedom, democracy and free trade.

Parenti began by attacking the dogma's of free trade. ‘Transnational corporations try hard to make us believe that globalisation is a natural and benign evolution. In their words, there is a evolutionary growth from trade between villages, over trade between countries, to trade between the world. This is indeed a natural process, but it is in no way benign. The whole idea of capitalism is that you make profit by means of reducing the costs, thus increasing the so-called ‘rate of return'. This is easy to explain: if you have to pay 1000 francs to a worker in Belgium, and only 10 to a worker in Indonesia for the same work, the rate of return ,and therefore the profit, is much greater in Indonesia. So your company moves to Indonesia to exploit the workers there for little money.'

‘These transnationals also say that there has always been poverty in the Third World, that it is part of history. When I was young', he said, ‘I was taught to think that the Third World was poor because it is so warm, rendering the people lazy. Or that the soil was poor, making poverty. Or that they had too many children, making them poor. Or because they were culturally backward.' But they were not poor or backward. They built great societies and buildings we can still not understand. No - they were RICH instead of poor. You don't go to poor countries to rob them, you go to rich ones! The only things we had as a cultural advantage over the South in the times of colonialism, was long-range transportation and better arms. During this period, terrible atrocities were committed by the colonisator to turn the colonized peoples into slaves. This brought wealth to us, and death or slavery to them.' Parenti gives examples on all western countries, figures of slaughter more than sufficiently proving his claim.

‘When I was in El Salvador some time ago, a terribly poor country, I noticed that there were a lot of big multinationals like General Motors and Microsoft there, in gleaming buildings surrounded by shabby houses. ‘Why are they here?', I asked myself. The answer was that multinationals go to poor countries for the one thing they hold more valuable than gold, oil, tobacco, lumber,…, namely cheap labour. The so-called outsourcing. It costs less to transport high-tech computer parts from the US to El Salvador and to have the natives put them together, than to complete them in the US. This caters for profit and wealth, that is true, but NOT for wealth for the natives themselves! There were good roads between production sites and the harbour, just to transport wealth out of the country, good houses for the Western tycoons, great hospitals and schools for the rich, while for the workers, there was nothing at all. This economic activity indeed makes the Gross National Product grow, but in the meantime, poverty grows too because of major exploitations of the people. A growing disparity between rich and poor appears, all in the name of Free Trade.'

Parenti's main thesis was the following: the world's population consists of two columns, A and B. Column A is roughly 1% of the world's population that live of interests and are rich, while column B earns wages and salaries working for column A. Both columns have in common that their money derives from the labour provided by column B, about 99% of the population. Column A would very much like it to stay this way and goes to extremes to protect its interests…

‘But these diffirences between poor and rich were not just between North and South. At the end of the 19th century, the US for example was itself a third world country, with rich people on top and extremely poor ones at the bottom. During the whole 20th century, people all over the world did what they could to fight back against this injustice. This climaxed in 1917 in the Russian Revolution.'

‘But now column A had a means to say to their working class to shut up, because ‘they had it so much better than the communists'. They had more consumer goods and a higher standard of living. But at the same time, they failed to recognize that in the Soviet Union, there was free education, medical assistance, free housing and work for all. The US launched a Marshall Plan just after the Second World War, which indeed helped the Europeans to gain a better life, in contrast to the people of the Soviet Union. A middle class appeared and labour unions brought social security to the people.'

And here is where Parenti struck a blow: ‘But after 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, everyone shouted ‘we have won the war!' Column A, however, was annoyed. Capitalism flooded into Russia, and they began wondering: ‘if the former Soviet Union is capitalist, then why do we have socialism?' They started saying to the people that it was time for competition now: labour was cheaper in the Third World. Social benefits and labour unions were told that their realizations were now up for grabs: if they wanted to compete with the South, they would have to give up their ideas. A rollback of social ideas was starting to form.' Note Parenti's use of the Cold War axiom ‘Rollback'…

‘Now Free Trade Councils emerged, and succeeded in making the property right supreme over all other human rights. Free Trade became an even greater dogma. Now private businesses could sue public organisations on ‘Lost Market Opportunities', and win! The laws were overturne while governments found themselves forced to pay fines to transnational companies.' Parenti gave some American examples. ‘Column A left column B with but a shell of their former social rights, with a mere shell of democracy - all claims of freedom and democracy, but no power to actually enforce it…'

‘Of course, the main defender of column A, namely the chief capitalist country, the US, has the ‘responsability' to enforce this rollback. They certainly have the teeth to do it, with 300 military bases all over the world and a defence budget of 345 billion dollars, over 7 times the budget of nummer two in rank, Russia. Actually, the total of all defense budgets of the world is still smaller than the one of the US alone! They were more than able to repress all social revolutions, mainly column B people fighting for their rights. And they did it in El Salvador, Mexico, Panama (where they actuallty invaded), Nicaragua, Kosovo, Serbia,… In Iraq, they have bombed for almost 12 years now, resulting in over a million deaths, and countless cancer victims of the ‘non-radioactive' depleted uranium'! In Jugoslavia, Iraq and now also in Afghanistan, they mainly bombed so-called soft targets. These are schools, bridges, hospitals,… mainly all the ‘socialist' institutes. They fight not agianst countries, but against left wing, social ideas all over the world. The goal: to ensure that no competing social order comes into being threatening column A.' His examples of the left wing fighters: Saddam Hussein, the Taliban,… to name a few - all right wing dictators oppressing their people, but leaving column A alone to do business as usual…

Another of Parenti's sharp visions: at the same time, column A is masterful in its attempts to channel real frustrations and pressures of column B into false directions. His example: ‘in the past, it has occured that column A bankers and textile mill owners, to name a few, have aided KKK and other extreme right-wing groups. A white male sits in a leaking house, he is unemployed and his wife is sick, and asking why this comes to him - he has worked hard. ‘Because it is all going to the niggers', is the reply. They take relevant grievances and channel them at irrelevant enemies, thus ensuring that no real solution is found.' Parenti's comparison with Nazi-Germany was not at all misplaced, where people's hurts were turned against jews , gypsies and communists.

‘Take for instance the WTC-bombing. The US said their war is against terrorism. Without considering the real issues underlying the bombing, they immediately channeled money from social security into more arms and money for big business. And even while the people dying in the WTC were just plain, column B people, all real grievances are redirected into bombing the Taliban…'

Asked about whether there was resistance against all of this, Parenti looked at the global anti-imperialist movement of the Democratic Globalists. ‘Immediately after the WTC-bombings, there were many American column A people who said that antiglobalisation was helping the terrorists.' He said not to worry: the best way to fight for justice and freedom is to educate yourself and to establish a personal and critical alternative of a better world. ‘The repression is the greatest if you don't even know you are being repressed.' Critical independence is Parenti's weapon against this sort of tyranny, and there is hope that even the non-political people will rise up - in their way: ‘when George Bush Senior started bombing Iraq, 93% of the Americans voted in favor of his policy. The year later, he wasn't even reelected!'

Parenti concluded with this powerful message: ‘When the people are finally ready to lead, the leaders will follow.'

- Want to read the bibliography of Michael Parenti's book ‘Blackshirts and Reds', which was the underlying ground for his lecture in the RUG? Go to http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html
- Interested on reading more of Michael Parenti's works? Go to http://www.michaelparenti.org
- Constructive criticism on ‘Blackshirts and Reds'? Read the Indymedia-article Blackshirts, Reds and the others or the underlying article on http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/freeearth/ice_pick.html

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