capitalism

According to figures from the Bank of England, in 2006, money from developing countries deposited in UK banks surged by over $124 billion - around $10 billion more than in 2005 - lifting total deposits to $514 billion. In 2006, nef revealed that in spite of the UK Government's commitment to increasing its aid budget, another barely noticed trend, the rise in money from developing nations deposited in UK banks, cast questions over the nation's financial role in relation to developing countries. Overall, a range of factors will be influential but, generally, the removal of controls over the movement of money around the world, and 'capital flight' are both likely factors.

The UK still relies on health workers from poor countries: As issues of immigration refuse to leave the mainstream political debate, the reality appears to be that many of our vital public services could not function without the arrival of skilled professionals from overseas. In the last five years alone, the UK has imported 289 trained nurses from Malawi, 364 from Botswana and 757 from Zambia. South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho and Zimbabwe also send nurses trained in the health systems of Africa to work in the NHS. The popular myth of the UK being a soft-touch for health tourists, masks a reality in which we are being tended in our sick beds by nurses that many poor countries can ill afford to lose.

European construction boils down to transferring State power to a super-privileged bureaucracy which preaches to others the purest economic liberalism. Elections can go on being held, but they are of no importance, because no serious political alternative can be proposed, no "New Deal", no "structural reform", no "common programme of the left", no "Italian way to socialism". Competition and the free market are the only prospects on the horizon now and forever. And, as in the United States, people vote more and more with their feet by avoiding the ballot box, or else vote for whoever seems to be most hated by those in power (Le Pen for instance).

Middle-class capitalist societies are particularly shame-faced about the violence that founded them. This is because the middle classes, more than any other social formation, are necessarily committed to peace, stability and security. Without such a framework, capitalism cannot operate. So they are eager to make the transition from bandits to bankers. Like a hippy applying to law school, they need to put their disreputable political past behind them. They must thrust it into the political unconscious, repressing the original sin that brought them to birth.

For every $100 of crude taken out of the Ecuadorian rain forests, the oil companies receive $75. Of the remaining $25, three-quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. Most of the remainder covers military and other government expenses - which leaves about $2.50 for health, education, and programs aimed at helping the poor. Thus, out of every $100 worth of oil torn from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the people who need the money most, those whose lives have been so adversely impacted by the dams, the drilling, and pipelines, and who are dying from lack of edible food and potable water.

All over Latin America, there is disillusionment with the policies that the United States and the IMF had pushed. Growth under liberalisation is just over half of what it was under the old pre-reform regime... Unemployment is up 3 percentage points; poverty... is up even as a percentage of the population. Where growth has occurred, the benefits have accrued to those at the upper part of the income distribution.