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Title: Third World
Author: Pierleone Porcu
Date: 1995
Language: en
Topics: Third World, development, economics
Source: From ProvocAzione — Anarchist Paper 1987–1991 — N.12 PP 1–5. https://archive.elephanteditions.net/library/pierleone-porcu-third-world

Pierleone Porcu

Third World

The economic and social situation in the countries of the Third World

has in no way changed from the beginning of the eighties, in fact it has

regressed frighteningly, accentuating the inequality between rich and

poor countries more and more.

Underdeveloped countries exist where the income, consumerism and

investment have gone back to the level of the seventies, and others,

such as the poorest African countries, have even sunk back to the level

of the sixties.

The situation is tragic from every point of view for the peoples living

in these territories. This was brought up in a UN report (November 1987)

that was drawn up concerning the world food situation, and in the latest

annual report of the World Bank in Washington, where they speak of the

“debts” contracted by these countries and their economic development.

From an examination of what is contained in these two reports — even

though for obvious reasons they are very “contained” so as not to alarm

world public opinion — one can get some idea of the dramatic level of

the social and economic conditions that Third World populations are

living in.

At the same time the progressive and humanitarian democrats of the

opulent Western World are boasting on various fronts of the aid being

given to these populations to fight famine. They promote vast campaigns

of public opinion and solidarity which are in fact more useful to the

States, parties, unions, Church and capital itself as they create social

consensus by exploiting the disasters that have been brought about by

the structure of dominion itself.

The extermination of entire populations continues in the Third World.

This is not only due to the extension of the problem of hunger and the

spreading of infectious diseases new and old — some, such as AIDS,

deadly gifts from capitalism — but to the very aid sent by the Western

countries, in reality a scientific way to assassinate them more quickly.

In fact any “aid” given is no more than a way to increase these

countries’ dependency on the more powerful ones. The richer countries

resupply the Third World with goods of primary necessity that are not

sufficient for a correct alimentation given the different climatic

conditions that these populations live in and that the food supplied

contains a high fat content. The same goes for agriculture: what is

promoted is based on indiscriminate deforestation which is leading to

the irreversible process of desertising the planet, increasing the

already torrid temperature and limiting the natural production of

oxygen. An ecological disaster of immense proportions is already taking

place in some areas of the African sub-continent.

It should be added that the plan for “progress” and development in these

countries is nothing more than a model for the systematic destruction of

every previous internal rural economy. This is aimed at installing an

industrial process based exclusively on the production of death, carried

out by multinationals such as Union Carbide, responsible for the death

and maiming of thousands of people, and one of the greatest ecological

disasters produced by capitalist industrialisation.

Moreover, while they are amassing huge profits due to the very low cost

of labour and the indiscriminate looting of the raw materials which

these countries contain, the opulent and advanced western capitalists

are getting even richer, and are accelerating the process of

impoverishment of these countries. These crimes are being carried out by

capital daily, with the complicity of the various States, to the injury

of these peoples all over the world.

This picture perfectly fits the logic of dominion that is at the basis

of the modern cynical democratic conviction concerning progressive,

humanitarian and “civilising” man.

To come back to the figures, the UN reports that in the African

subcontinent 25 per cent of the population is undernourished: this means

one hundred million people. Infant mortality from 0 to 5 years is 4

million children every year. In southern Asia, excluding China, 15 per

cent of the population turns out to be undernourished, 160–170 million

inhabitants out of a population of 800 million altogether.

This UN report, drawn up to tame world public opinion, cynically

considers undernourished those people who manage to assimilate the

minimum number of calories required in order not to die of starvation

and to be able to move slightly. The statistical tables used in this

report bring to mind those used in the Nazi concentration camps. In

fact, such a report covers up the true conditions that exist in the

poorest countries, as the number of people who die of hunger is far

higher. If one started off by considering a greater number of calories

to be necessary, enough to allow the development of any activity that

requires even a very modest dispensation of energy, the figures would

soar vertiginously. Above all, all the areas of the world are not

examined: for example, Latin America is not even mentioned as well as

some areas of Africa and Asia.

The World Bank report begins with a reference to the debt contracted by

the Third World, increased by 6.25 per cent, which corresponds to the

hyperbolic figure of 1.190 billion dollars, which could become 1.245

before the end of this year. All this is in spite of the fact that in

1987, for the fourth consecutive year, the countries that are poorest

and most in debt have sent increasingly high sums of money to the

creditor countries in payment of interest: more than they have received

in new loans.

Here again the kind of “aid” given by the most industrialised countries

to their poorer “brothers” emerges.

All the same, what worries the World Bank is not so much the abnormal

in-crease in Third World debt, so much as its level of internal

development which, as well as not having shown any improvement, has

regressed in some cases. If this is the situation in which the poor

nations are living in a period where the world economy is going full

sail ahead — they ask — what will happen in a period of recession’? It

is particularly on this point that the problem lies.

The World Bank director for international economy, Jean Baneth, points

out that it would take only a simple moment of stasis in the process of

economic development of various countries to bring about a fall into a

state of poverty for wide sectors of the population. He adds “it is also

potentially disruptive at the social and political level. It threatens

the survival of many new and fragile democracies and, more widely, of

regimes which favour cooperation rather than conflict”.

In simple terms what this means is that it would take only a period of

crisis in the world economy to provoke a chain reaction within the

countries involved, that could open up tensions and vast areas of social

and political conflict. The extension of this would mean great

difficulty for the institutions in controlling the situation: the result

could be the overturning of the present capitalist order.

Their main preoccupation is therefore that of exorcising the spectre of

“social disorder”, of a radicalisation of the class conflict within the

countries that, once involved in such a situation, could make their

world and their economic order based on the fragile equilibrium

established by State terror, crumble down around them.

It is also in this sense that the proposal of the entry of the USSR into

Western capital’s international organisations should be seen. In fact an

improvement of relations between the two superpowers, not only in

political but also economic, financial and commercial terms, would

undoubtedly create conditions of major instability for the whole world

economy, as well as that within the individual States. The support that

the US government is giving to their entry into the International

Monetary Fund is based exclusively on reciprocal economic and political

interest, not the ideological questions that are talked about so much to

deceive the unprepared.

Capitalism and Statism are two realities that are not instituted at

planetary level. They differ only in their exterior forms and in the way

they are applied in the various countries, but their substance is

identical. In the West as in the East, for the proletarians of the whole

world, these concepts will always mean exploitation and oppression. The

imperialist wars of conquest between the two superpowers have been over

for some time. They have already colonised the whole planet. Their

present interest is to come to an agreement and cooperate at all levels

to guarantee themselves a painless and ordered management of their

dominion within their respective areas of influence having recourse to

their smaller collaborators who, in exchange for services rendered,

receive welcome compensation in political terms.

But just as there is a precise social hierarchy within States, there is

also another between the State “extras”, which one knows, are always in

the pay of the powerful, and are treated as such by their bosses.

Basically the wellbeing that is shown off by the economically and

technologically more advanced countries has come about and continues to

come about through the oppression and exploitation of the proletariat

internally, and through the impoverishment of the populations in the

underdeveloped countries in the Course of development.

Further confirmation comes from the same World Bank report when it

states that under the weight of the debt and the interest paid in the

80s, the middle range pro capita income in Latin America was reduced by

a seventh and at least by a quarter in the poorest African countries.

This is causing serious economic and social differences within them and

an increase in tension between those countries that find themselves in

the same situation.

In their report the experts are therefore trying to find palliatives to

resolve some of these problems, without obviously facing them at the

roots. The situation of the economic crisis in Mexico is illuminating

for example. Inflation there has reached the level of 140 per cent.

Well, among the proposals of the World Bank there is the recent one to

cover a part of the Mexican debt with special US treasury bonds, and

there is also that formulated in 1985 by the secretary of the American

treasury Baker, who foresees new loans but excludes any moratorium on

loans given in the past. It was the World Bank itself who recognised the

inconsistency of both these proposals, in that, if these solutions had

been applied they would only have had the effect of slowing up the

degenerative process, reducing the foreseeable negative effects which

would consequently bring heavy repercussions on the world economy.

Beyond the figures and statistics, from our point of view, the

revolutionary one, it will take quite different and radical measures to

solve these problems that seem enormous and insurmountable.

Even between the lines of the reports of all these “experts” we are able

to read what their main worry is, i.e. to find a plan which will put a

brake on all the thrusts of revolt that naturally animate the exploited

in every part of the world. It is always the latter who pay the cost of

the world social and economic “crisis” that exists in their own

countries. That is why the “solutions” that revolutionaries all over the

world must search for can only be those aimed at accelerating a process

of social subversion for the destruction of capitalism and all States on

a planetary scale. But this leads us to another discourse!