In his pamphlet Two Worlds Collide, Alan McCombes, a leading figure in the Scottish Socialist Party, paints a vivid picture of the contemporary capitalist world.
This is a world in which the combined wealth of the world's 691 billionaires amounts to £1.2 trillion — a sum 85 times larger than Africa's total debt burden — and a world in which rock stars like Bob Geldof release songs, like the 1984 Band Aid hit "Feed The World", that conjure up an image of Africa where "nothing ever grows, no rain nor rivers flow".
McCombes notes that in Africa rain does fall and rivers do flow: "Crops grow all across Africa. In the year of the catastrophic famine, Ethiopia was a net exporter of grain." Yet in 2004, the Band Aid single was re-released, with lyrics unchanged, as famine swept Ethiopia's neighbour, Sudan.
McCombes exposes the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for what they are: hired thugs that "force national governments to privatise their national assets, slash public spending, reduce labour costs and turn their local economies into happy hunting grounds for big business corporations".
A country like Cameroon is forced to spend 36% of its budget on debt repayment and just 4% on social services. Yet surveys show that two-thirds of people in Britain believe that Africa is dependent on the West. The manipulation of language to undergird myths about global capitalism is mercilessly exposed by McCombes — redescribing "structural adjustment programs" as "poverty reduction strategies" is like "a serial arsonist describing himself as a fire-fighter". Trickle-down economics "is like justifying a mugging on the grounds that some of the stolen cash might eventually trickle back to the victim".
For a short time, as it smashed down the structures of feudalism, capitalism was progressive. But today "capitalism has begun to resemble a fading rock star, who dreams of past glories while guzzling ever greater quantities of drugs and alcohol to feed his addiction. He may still be capable of knocking out a few old tunes and trashing his hotel room, but his music is increasingly out of tune with the changing world around him."
McCombes compares socialist Cuba with capitalist Haiti to show just how out of tune capitalism really is. In terms of physical geography, the small Caribbean states are very similar, yet in Cuba life expectancy is 77 years compared to Haiti's 53; Cuba's infant mortality rate is 12% lower than Haiti's; in Cuba the literacy rate is 97% compared to 53% in Haiti.
Overall, "on every measurement of health, education, life-expectancy, infant mortality, poverty and general quality of life, Cuba beats hands down not just Haiti, but Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and the other countries of Central America and the Caribbean". All this despite a 45-year economic blockade and active sabotage of the Cuban Revolution by the United States.
The world's socialist and progressive movements and countries are in a state of siege, constantly having to ward off the depredations of global capitalism, with its attendant exploitation, wars and famines.
McCombes balances this with an alternative image: "Today, the world's ruling elite, like the French aristocracy of the 1780s, is under siege. There is not a strip of land anywhere on the planet where they could now meet undisturbed by protest."
We are constantly told by the corporate media and other mouthpieces of the ruling class that socialism has lost the battle of ideology with capitalism and that we have reached "the end of history". If so, why did it take the biggest security clampdown in Scotland's history to make Gleneagles safe in 2005 for the leaders of the G8? Why were 12,000 police officers needed to protect eight men? Why did George W. Bush land in Scotland accompanied by a fleet of Galaxy C-5 planes, armoured limousines and helicopters?
McCombes contrasts this multi-million-pound security operation with the 1991 G7 summit held in the centre of London, where "not a stone was hurled in anger, not a slogan chanted in outrage, not a placard waved in protest".
The truth is that despite all of the hype from the corporate media and the political lapdogs of the contemporary ruling class, from Bolivia and Venezuela to France and Germany the ordinary working people of the world are waking up once again, to, in the words of radical poet Shelley, "Shake their chains to earth like dew".
If you want to join the fight to send Bush, Blair and Howard and the parasites they represent the way of the 18th century French aristocracy, join the Socialist Alliance today.
Alex Miller
[The author is a former member of the Socialist Alliance national executive, now living in Britain, and is an associate member of the Scottish Socialist Party.]
From Green Left Weekly, May 24, 2006.
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