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Encirclement
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Neo-Liberalism Ensnares Democracy
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Producer, director, editor
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Photography
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Sound
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Music
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In order of appearance
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In the ’30s,
the term “totalitarian regime”
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was applied to single-party regimes
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where the party’s mandate
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was to rule over the totality
of a society’s activities -
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political, economic, social, cultural.
The state looked after everything.
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Unfortunately, we had examples
particularly in Fascism, Nazism …
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and Stalinism: totalitarian societies
run by an omnicompetent party.
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Today, we live in a democracy,
of course, but we notice that …
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single parties have given way
to a single mindset,
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and the proponents
of such unilateral thinking
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reckon that there is
but one solution -
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the one imposed by the market -
to cover all society’s activities.
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Whatever the activity -
economic, social, cultural, athletic -
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the market is mandated
to regulate it.
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We see how the market penetrates
all society’s interstices,
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like a liquid, that leaves nothing
and spares nothing.
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This is why we can now talk
about “globalitarian” regimes:
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because there’s a will to impose
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a kind of unique solution
to the plurality of our problems.
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I wrote “La Pensée Unique” …
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in 1995,
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when most of our citizens …
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hadn’t yet become totally aware
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that we had fallen into an ideology
in which we were now immersed.
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Today, we’d call this ideology
“neo-liberal”.
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Neo-liberalism
is an economic technique,
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a certain set
of economic principles,
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but in reality, imperceptibly, it’s
also a veritable ideological yoke.
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This is what I was trying
to point out, primarily,
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by saying what it
ultimately consists in:
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Neo-Liberalism consists in
a certain number of principles,
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notably that
the market’s invisible hand
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is there to settle problems. People
and States need not get involved,
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let the market work.
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Establishing principles
like deregulation.
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Everything’s over-regulated,
the State’s been too involved.
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We need less government.
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Capital must prevail over labour.
We must always favour capital.
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And we must privatize.
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The State’s perimeter must be small,
the private sector’s expansive.
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Free trade must be promoted
because commerce is development.
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We made this kind of equivalency.
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I was trying to show how
these principles weren’t recent,
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but had been developed since ’44,
since the Bretton-Woods conference,
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which initiated the IMF
and the World Bank.
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It arose from all the work the IMF
had done since the ’60s and ’70s
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geared towards southern countries,
called “structural adjustment”,
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or, in some countries,
“the Washington Consensus”,
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namely that State budgets
must necessarily be reduced,
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no public deficit, no inflation,
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bureaucracies must be reduced,
all public services like health …
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and education
must be reduced to a minimum.
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The State isn’t to make
that kind of expenditure, etc.
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Many southern countries
suffered greatly, of course.
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These were basically my points,
and when we add up these elements,
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we’re faced with an ideology.
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And at the time, France was on
the eve of a presidential election,
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which took place
a few months later in May.
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So, I was saying that
ultimately, in reality,
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we were being proposed this almost
single-party kind of pensée unique.
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Leftist Privatization
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Shortly after the Iron Curtain fell,
we witnessed in the West
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a reframing rightwards by the
vast majority of left-wing parties.
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From the British Labour Party to
Germany’s SPD via the Parti Québécois,
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they all got into a State “reform”,
“reengineering” or “modernization”
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that invariably meant
adopting neo-liberal politics.
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From 1997 to 2002 in France,
Lionel Jospin’s socialist government
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proceeded to privatize about
10 major national corporations -
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the same number as the right-wing
governments before and afterwards.
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How has neo-liberalism found its way
into so-called “socialist” parties?
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And where is it coming from?
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origins
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Winnipeg General Strike, 1919
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Neo-liberalism appeared …
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under particular intellectual
and institutional configurations.
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Generally speaking,
from 1914 to 1945,
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capitalism went through
an unprecedented crisis.
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The crisis was a material one.
In the ’20s,
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capitalism had boomed
after Reconstruction,
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but the Depression in the ’30s
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led to unemployment,
bankruptcy, political disorder.
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And intellectually,
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the liberal credo yielded
to the claims of economic planning,
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interventionism, and
general wariness of laissez-faire.
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There was widespread demand
for reinforced State intervention,
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state-controlled economies.
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This turned into concrete projects,
both in “dictatorships”
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and in democracies.
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We think of the Soviet 5-year plan
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and also the New Deal in the U.S.,
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under the National Recovery
Administration (NRA)
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and other such structures.
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In Nazi Germany, it was
the Reich economics ministry.
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In Fascist Italy, it was
the corporations ministry.
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Even in France, a national
economy ministry was established -
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a totally new thing,
under the rising Front Populaire.
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Communist Demonstration
Berlin, 1929
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Important to establishing
a neo-liberal network in France
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was building a publishing house.
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It was called Les Éditions
de la Librairie de Médicis,
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founded in 1937.
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It was created by a woman,
Marie-Thérése Génin,
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which was rare
in this fairly masculine field.
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She was connected to a leader
in French business associations,
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Marcel Bourgeois,
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who encouraged her to establish
a vehicle for intellectual texts
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for a public of intellectuals.
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Éditions de Médicis published
Walter Lippmann’s La Cité Libre,
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the precursor of
the Walter Lippmann colloquium,
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as well as texts by Hayek,
Rueff, Ludwig von Mises.
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About 40 works
between 1937 and 1940.
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They published the proceedings
of the Lippmann colloquium
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at the Institut International
de Coopération Intellectuel,
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now defunct,
but the forerunner of UNESCO.
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This happened
in a fairly official context.
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There were 26 participants, whose
significance is now acknowledged:
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Friedrich Hayek, future
Nobel Prize winner for economics,
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Robert Marjolin, a pillar
of European construction,
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the founders of Germany’s
“social market economy”,
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Alexander Rüstow and Wilhelm Röpke,
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de Gaulle’s financial advisor,
Jacques Rueff,
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the mastermind of Ronald Reagan’s
Star Wars, Stefan Possony.
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That’s all hindsight. At the time,
they were less famous.
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The colloquium lasted 4 days,
during which were discussed
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the eventual responsibilities
of liberalism in the Depression,
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as well as the means
of renewing liberalism
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and building worldwide opposition
to interventionism and socialism.
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The Walter Lippmann Colloquium
hosted the avant-garde
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of the neo-liberal battle
in preparation.
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Among the most ferocious opponents
of collectivism,
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Friedrich von Hayek and
Ludwig von Mises stood out.
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Hayek and Mises represented
a particular trend in neo-liberalism,
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the Austrian School.
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They advocated a radical liberalism
that grants the State minimal power.
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The minimal State is an expression
used by their disciples.
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These two had slightly different
economic ideas.
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Liberals often gloss over
their divergent views.
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But they also had
certain points in common.
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The first is that economic science
was just a fraction of their work.
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Mises considered it a branch of the
more general science of human action.
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Hayek soon left pure economics
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to pursue psychology.
He studied the brain,
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political orders, law, etc.
For them, economics …
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was their original field, but it
didn’t cover all of the humanities.
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Secondly, their conception
of economics was fairly particular.
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Austrian School economics
were far from concrete:
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no statistics,
no mathematical data, etc.
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Everything stemmed from axiomatics.
There were “typical” ideal situations
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where one observes
how a rational person acts
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in negotiating choices
between work and leisure,
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sleeping and getting rich, etc.,
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supported by metaphors like
Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.
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The third thing they had in common,
significant to neo-liberal history,
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is a concept of intellectual work
and its role in socialism.
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The thinking of Hayek and Mises
was very elitist and aristocratic:
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basically, that the mass
of humanity doesn’t think.
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Mises book, Socialism, says,
“The masses do not think.”
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Only a few intellectuals think,
and do so on society’s behalf.
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So they thought,
intellectuals must think,
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and progressively oppose socialism,
which other intellectuals invented
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and spread to the masses.
Socialism wasn’t spontaneous.
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It was propagated by intellectuals.
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Hayek and Mises put the intellectual
at the centre of social change,
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and political and economic change.
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This led to them founding groups
like the Mont Pelerin Society.
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War imposed a hiatus on the
neo-liberals’ militant activities.
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The CIRL, a French research centre
for the renewal of liberalism
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arising from the Lippmann Colloquium,
disappeared after only a year.
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As soon as the war ended,
Hayek took up the torch again.
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He invited proponents
of liberal reestablishment
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to a meeting that would be decisive
to the future of neo-liberalism.
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The Mont Pelerin meeting
took place …
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from April 1 to 10, 1947,
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in the Hôtel du Parc,
near Vevey, Switzerland.
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It was explicitly meant
to bring together
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liberal European and
American intellectuals,
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and to found an international
organization for liberal ideas.
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Hayek had started making contacts
2 years earlier
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with Colloquium participants
and the British and Americans.
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He invited this circle
to Mont Pelerin,
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whence the society’s name.
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There were 39 participants
at the first meeting.
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Again, there were some major figures:
3 future Nobel winners,
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Milton Friedman, George Stigler,
Maurice Allais.
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People known for their political
or philosophical essays,
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Karl Popper, Bertrand de Jouvenel.
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And those with direct political
influence in their country -
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the Germans, Wilhelm Röpke
and Walter Eucken,
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associated with Germany’s
“social market economy”.
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Discussions revolved around
relatively general subjects
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like Christianity and liberalism,
the competitive order,
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the possibilities of founding
a European economic federation.
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It lasted several days.
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Hayek thought they needed
a flexible structure
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with invited members only,
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no offices,
statutes deposited in Illinois,
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that would meet biannually
in different countries -
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a fairly nebulous structure for
confirmed intellectuals who thought
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liberalism was a doctrine primarily
for intellectuals themselves.
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at the core
of the neo-liberal network
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The Mont Pelerin Society
is not a think tank.
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It’s a kind of liberal academy.
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Nevertheless, a kind of
division of labour came about
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between the Society, which recruited
only the most renowned liberals,
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and its members’ national activities,
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which could include setting up
associations or think tanks.
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This took diverse forms.
In France, they created
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the association for economic freedom
and social progress in the ’60s,
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the French section of Mont Pelerin,
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the members of which were recruited
from business or politics.
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This broadened recruitment
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into milieux other than
intellectual circles.
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The other, think-tank model has been
perennial in Mont Pelerin’s history.
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The most famous are Britain’s 1955
Institute of Economic Affairs,
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or the Heritage Foundation from 1973,
linked to the U.S. Republican party.
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These think tanks
have appointed employees,
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people paid to write notes,
produce legislative proposals
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that are all laid out
and distributed to politicians
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and to journalists with the aim
of creating liberal public opinion.
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There are now hundreds of think tanks
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that form a veritable cluster
which is fairly disorienting,
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to the point where think tanks
like the Atlas Foundation
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now have the role
of promoting think tanks
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by distributing kits and instructions
on how to form one’s own.
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They take very different forms.
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Groups focused on an author -
the Hayek Center,
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the Mises Institute -
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that revolve around
a particular person’s work.
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Groups can have a subject
of particular concern -
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the environment,
foreign politics, etc.
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The quality and power of these
think tanks are very different.
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A think tank’s strength comes from
whether it can connect intellectuals,
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some businessmen, and a general
trend within conservative parties.
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There are think tanks
like the Center for Policy Studies
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of Keith Joseph,
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which promoted Thatcher
and let her garner …
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support to revolutionize
the Conservative Party in the ’70s.
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That’s an organization
at the junction of 3 milieux.
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A purely intellectual think tank
with general thoughts on liberalism
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would have little influence
on political debate.
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A whole part of the career
of Mises, Hayek, etc.
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can be explained by the affinities
they had with business lobby leaders.
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Mises was associated with the U.S.
Foundation for Economic Education,
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and thus with business associations.
Hayek got to Chicago
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financed by tycoons who wanted him
to write another “Road to Serfdom”,
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but on America, not just England.
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These intellectuals got more power
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by teaming up with
or befriending powerful people.
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Hayek’s work may reveal
a utopian quality,
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but it’s the Utopia of the strongest,
not the most underprivileged.
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Financed by corporations
and vast private fortunes,
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neo-liberal think tanks often enjoy
charitable organization status.
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Their generous donors thereby
have the right to tax exemptions.
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However, the law says
charitable organizations
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cannot engage in political acts.
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In 1989, Greenpeace was stripped
of its charitable status
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by the Canadian government.
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The Canada Revenue Agency
concluded that this NGO
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did not always act
in the public’s interest.
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It contributed, for example,
“to propelling people into poverty
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by demanding the closure
of polluting industries.”
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On the other hand, no neo-liberal
think tank with charitable status
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has ever been interfered with.
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During their annual declaration
to the Canadian government,
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these “non-partisan” research
institutes solemnly state
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that they “do not try
to influence public opinion
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or obtain the modification
of a law or policy”.
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How can the market promote
individual choice and freedom?
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Student seminar,
The Fraser Institute on public policy,
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organized jointly with
l’Institut Économique de Montréal …
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Saturday, February 10, 2001 ,
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sponsored by Fraser Institute
supporters throughout Québec”
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When one grants coercive power,
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the monopoly on coercive power,
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to an agency,
one we call the government,
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there will always be a tendency …
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to use it, either ignorantly,
or to abuse this power.
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And power has a tendency to grow.
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What the Fraser Institute tries
to research and emphasize is,
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what the proper limits
of government are,
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and what are the limits
of private enterprise,
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or of voluntary exchanges
between individuals?
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Therein lies the nexus, the division,
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between coercion and free will
that will inform my discussion …
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my lecture today. And you’ll be
seeing lectures by others who came
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to participate today.
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SPECIAL LUNCHEON PRESENTATION
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… from the Foundation for
Economic Education in New York.
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In his presentation,
’Cleaned by Capitalism’,
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this expert on liberty will discuss
how our rising standard of living
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has allowed us the ‘luxury’
of worrying about such things
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as global environmental issues.”
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This seminar’s not government funded.
It’s financed by private sponsorship.
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It’s encouraging to see people put
their money where their beliefs are.
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I think there are
far too many services
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like unemployment insurance,
health, education,
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that fall under a monopoly,
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that of the government, which is
the sole producer of these services.
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Why not open it up
and have competition?
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We could have competition
in the production of services,
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and perhaps address
our concern for the poor
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by giving them grants
so they can buy these services.
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So, divide …
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Separate production, which I’d like
to see private and competitive,
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from funding, which could be
partly governmental.
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I don’t like talking about markets.
They don’t exist without governments.
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Every market needs rules.
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Every market needs
a certain level of coercion.
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And I don’t like talking about
freedom as a value in itself.
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Many people don’t want freedom.
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l’d like the freedom
to choose my masters.
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What I try to …
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discuss in my lectures is,
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how can we …
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have a system of government
that permits us the choice
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of what kind of representatives
and restrictions we’ll choose.
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We must all live under restrictions,
even the fiercest libertarians.
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brief liberal anthology
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libertarianism
and the theory of public choice
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Le Québécois Libre
Editorial
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What must libertarians do?”
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Libertarianism is the descendent
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of classic liberal philosophy.
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It puts the accent
on individual freedom
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and its repercussions. Economically,
it’s the free market. Politically,
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it’s the minimal State
and the least coercion possible.
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The least regulation …
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It gives individuals as much
leeway as possible to act
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and have willing relationships
with others.
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Socially speaking as well, it’s …
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the polar opposite of philosophies
that impose some social, religious …
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or cultural order. The idea is,
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if we are free in a context where
person and property are protected,
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everyone will be able to have
voluntary relationships,
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which will lead to harmony.
Libertarianism isn’t anarchy,
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with individuals fighting,
“wild capitalism”, “wild competition”.
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It’s not that at all.
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It’s giving people enough space for
peaceful, voluntary relationships.
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Neo-liberal, anarchist
or libertarian?
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Libertarianism is the descendent
of classic liberalism,
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a philosophy that was developed
in the 17th and 18th century
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in reaction to the authoritarian
monarchies of the period.
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Liberalism said,
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to match sovereign power,
individuals must have more freedom.
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This developed in subsequent
centuries to give us …
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our current philosophy,
which embraces the free market …
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But 20th-century libertarians
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stand apart from liberals. The
definition of “liberal” has changed.
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In the U.S. a liberal
is ultimately the reverse:
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a social democrat or a leftist.
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Europe keeps the French tradition,
where liberal means liberal.
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But there’s a lot of confusion.
The Americans, the classic liberals,
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started calling themselves
“libertarians” in the ’20s and ’30s
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to stand apart from leftist liberals.
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And libertarian philosophy
is more coherent and radical
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than classic liberalism,
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calling for State reduction,
either to its simplest form,
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or certain libertarians even favour
eliminating the State altogether,
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privatizing even defence,
security and justice.
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Redistributing wealth is immoral
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Today, in a society
where the State spends …
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State expenditures represent
about 45% to 50% of the GDP.
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The State controls such sectors
as education, health.
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It controls a lot
and regulates other things.
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It subsidizes almost everyone.
Much of the population …
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lives only off
the redistribution of money.
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They don’t produce goods demanded
by others on the free market.
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They just receive State money
confiscated from other taxpayers.
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This means there are many people …
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who live at the expense of others.
From a libertarian standpoint,
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society can be divided in two,
those who produce and those who live
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as the producers’ dependents
and are a kind of parasite.
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It’s a strong word,
but it’s appropriate.
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You can’t favour individual
responsibility and defend that stance.
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All who live dependently on others
are really irresponsible.
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They don’t do anything required
and they live …
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on State coercion, which transfers
wealth from one group to the other.
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If we want to promote
freedom and responsibility,
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we cannot accept the dependency
of much of the population.
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The theory of public choice says
the adoption of government policies
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is not motivated
by collective interests
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but by the particular interests
of various social groups.
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In 1986, James M. Buchanan,
originator of this theory,
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who denounces State inefficiency and
advocates limited public spending,
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won the “Nobel prize” for economics.
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Contrary to the perception
being peddled here,
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we in Québec live in a State culture.
People don’t realize
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because we’re so inured
to this viewpoint,
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that we naturally accept it,
but it’s actually a State culture
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that naively perceives …
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the State as the instrument
to maximize the common good.
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As though the inspiration …
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But that view or vision
of the State is perfectly …
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angelic. It has nothing
to do with real governments.
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Why do we believe our governments,
democratic as they are -
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which is an advantage -
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will maximize the common good?
They won’t.
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Governments obey
the game rules that rule them.
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What game rules?
The electoral process.
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That’s the virtue of it.
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What does this herald?
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Primarily that …
-
we will often witness …
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majority dictatorship.
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Since the primary, if not sole,
rule in politics is the majority,
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a government that can win elections
will first privilege the majority.
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The majority’s incomes are weak
relative to the average.
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So the sole object
of policies will be …
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to redistribute wealth in its favour,
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not to maximize wealth
or enhance growth.
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Efficiency isn’t a major issue
for a government.
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Its priority is redistributing wealth
to the majority that elects it.
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That explains
universal social programs.
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That explains …
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the majority’s predilections
with regard to …
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the public health
and education monopolies.
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It’s not compassion,
nor a concern …
-
for sharing wealth
that inspires this position.
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The majority wants services paid
by a slightly more affluent minority.
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That’s the sense of it.
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So, it’s a gigantic lie to say
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that compassion inspires …
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public health and education
monopolies. That’s not the reality.
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The second dimension is that people,
i.e., the majority,
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is rather apolitical.
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In economics, it’s what we call
“rational ignorance”.
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It would be stupid for each of us
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to acquire lots of information
on politics,
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to get informed on the impact on us
of more than just a few policies.
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Because we can’t do anything.
We’re one voter out of X million.
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So, informed or not,
whether we vote wisely or badly,
-
the result’s the same.
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So, everyone must aim to minimize
the effort of understanding politics
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and political information,
which they do.
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People often can’t name their MP.
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And they’d be incapable …
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of explaining a policy.
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To them, this is normal
because, again,
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it would cost a lot to get informed,
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whereas their potential
influence is nil.
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So, people are apathetic, apolitical.
They don’t participate in politics
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because it’s not worth it.
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This opens the way for intervention
by strategically placed groups.
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Interest groups.
That explains their dominance.
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Organizations like the CSN or the
Canadian Manufacturers’ Association
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are already prepared to do politics,
propaganda and lobbying,
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at minimal cost because
they’re already organized.
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So that means political decisions
will be dominated
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by strategically placed people,
organized groups.
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All the world’s great governments -
today’s and yesterday’s -
-
have merely been gangs of thieves,
come together to pillage, conquer
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and enslave their fellow men.
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And their laws, as they call them,
represent only those agreements
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they deemed it necessary to enter
in order to keep their organization
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and act together in plundering
and enslaving others,
-
and securing to each
his agreed share of the spoils.
-
These laws impose no more real
obligation than do the deals
-
that brigands, bandits and pirates
find it necessary to enter into
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with each other.”
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- Natural Law, or the Science
of Justice, 1882 (paraphrased)
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lf we look objectively at the facts,
the State is a coercive institution.
-
The State can only operate
by forcibly imposing things.
-
For example,
-
when the State has
a monopoly like Hydro-Québec,
-
if I decide to produce
and sell electricity
-
and I’m outside the monopoly,
ultimately,
-
they won’t just slap my wrists for
breaking the rules. I’ll go to jail
-
if I persist in doing something
the State prohibits by regulation.
-
The State will physically assault me
if I offer a service
-
that the statesmen
have decided to monopolize.
-
All the State does
when it steals half our salary -
-
sorry, but no one asked
my opinion about it,
-
so half my salary’s stolen …
It could be said that,
-
democratically, we elected people
who decided that for us,
-
but democracy is
the “peaceful” organization
-
of the State’s thievery.
-
I didn’t vote to have half my salary
lifted, but many are interested -
-
because they live
at the expense of the State -
-
in having the State take half
and giving it to them.
-
So, democracy isn’t true freedom.
-
I’m not anti-democratic in the sense
of being for an authoritarian State,
-
When you speak against democracy,
you’re always seen as favouring
-
an authoritarian State.
On the contrary, I’m for a State
-
that’s absolutely non-authoritarian,
to the point where
-
it doesn’t even justify its actions
on the basis of democracy.
-
Individual freedom does not equal
democratic freedom.
-
Democratically giving people
the power to take and impose things,
-
contradicts individual freedom.
-
A true defence of individual freedom
doesn’t favour more democracy,
-
more ways of divvying up
-
resources that have been
stolen from others.
-
We’re for reducing the State’s role
so individuals are altogether free,
-
not to decide
which fox they’ll vote in
-
to raid the hen house, but to decide
what to do with their property.
-
The incentives incorporated
into social policies are harmful,
-
both to the poor,
and to the general population.
-
What I mean by that is,
we have a public social economy
-
in parallel with
the capitalist market economy.
-
One is productive. The other is
based on the former-USSR model
-
and comprises incentives that
hurt everyone. We reward people …
-
for not working.
We compensate them
-
for not having stable families.
-
Welfare for single mothers …
-
is a way of multiplying births
outside the family.
-
And we reward poverty.
It’s as radical as that.
-
Poverty obeys the standard rules:
subsidies make it more prevalent,
-
because people start liking it.
-
This has been clear in Ontario
and the U.S. over the past 5 years,
-
where they really imposed
-
limits to people’s access
-
to welfare payments,
-
and the population of poor people
fell by half in a few years!
-
Because there was no more money,
conditions changed,
-
work was imposed on them,
whatever the methods were.
-
So, there are ways
to foster people’s reinsertion
-
into the productive economy.
-
Instead of piling them
into social housing, ghettos,
-
where everyone’s poor,
-
if they were given vouchers or stamps
that gave them access to property,
-
instead of subsidizing unemployment,
-
as with unemployment insurance.
People are subsidized
-
to be unemployed.
Otherwise, no subsidy.
-
We could create
unemployment savings funds,
-
so people could accumulate a hedge,
-
sheltered from tax,
even subsidized,
-
in case they lose their job.
Everyone would then be careful
-
not to lose their job because
they’d be eating into their own fund,
-
the beneficiary of their own savings.
-
Lots of ideas. But our social
policies are really built
-
to create an industry of poverty,
an industry of dependence,
-
that benefits all the bureaucrats
who gravitate around it
-
and encourage dependence
in the population,
-
as well as political support,
-
with no long-term effect
across the country.
-
Social policies
haven’t diminished poverty.
-
That’s the final diagnosis
of the matter.
-
We observe …
-
that growth …
-
Historically and from
country to country,
-
the growth of economies’ revenues
is the only means
-
to help the poor.
-
We have rigorous data about this.
-
The only variable that affects …
-
that reduces poverty
-
in various countries
-
is the growth of wealth.
-
Social policies count for nothing!
-
So, whoever is concerned
-
about helping the poor
or underprivileged
-
must also privilege growth.
-
Consequently, all those
who oppose free trade
-
on behalf of poor countries,
or of the poor within countries,
-
are wrong.
Their observations are mistaken.
-
The facts contradict their options.
-
The best help is to open trade
so everyone’s income goes up.
-
Statistically, the income of the poor
increases as fast as anyone’s
-
when revenues go up. To achieve this,
the economy must be opened up.
-
Beyond that,
-
beyond helping the poor
with measures that might help,
-
I don’t see any …
-
basis for redistributing wealth.
-
The government
redistributes a lot of wealth
-
in favour of the middle class,
because it’s the decisive majority.
-
But not on any moral basis.
The only social justice, if I may,
-
is the respect for property rights.
-
Libertarians believe
public goods don’t exist.
-
The notion’s a fallacy
to justify State intervention.
-
The logic is, there are always
external factors, like pollution.
-
We cannot produce without making
smoke, which falls on our neighbour,
-
or residues that will have to …
-
go into the river.
But the reason this happens is
-
there’s no property right
over water, for example.
-
Rivers are public.
-
Hence,
during the entire 19th century,
-
companies were allowed
to pollute rivers,
-
and until very recently
this was done because the State
-
controlled the river. It was
a public State-controlled resource
-
and the State let private companies
pollute the river.
-
But if the river had been privatized
and each of its owners
-
had had to be consulted
for permission for the company
-
to put effluents into the river,
we can be quite sure
-
things would’ve been different.
Or it might’ve happened,
-
if the company had paid
the true price for polluting,
-
i.e., paid the owners
for polluting their resource.
-
Resource allocation
would’ve been very different.
-
There would’ve been emphasis
-
on alternative solutions.
-
Companies would’ve invested more
in technological solutions,
-
or arranged to pollute
in very targeted places
-
owned by someone who would accept
pollution in exchange for payment.
-
Production priorities would’ve been
reorganized differently.
-
So, “public goods” exist
only because the State
-
distorts production
-
by nationalizing certain assets,
or the environment itself.
-
Historically, liberalism
represented a progression.
-
But classic liberalism
as championed by Adam Smith,
-
founder of political economics,
has very little to do
-
with what’s presently circulating as
the “liberalism” in neo-liberalism.
-
It has almost nothing to do
with classic liberalism.
-
So, historically liberalism was
a progression, in that it was …
-
a way of contesting
absolute monarchies,
-
and giving individuals rights.
-
Among these rights,
in the liberalism of Locke and Smith,
-
were private property rights.
That’s a progression.
-
But it’s not absurd
to think that even anarchism …
-
is a child of liberalism. Early
liberalism was somewhat radical,
-
and today’s “liberal” thinkers would
make Adam Smith roll in his grave,
-
because he wouldn’t recognize much
in what’s now passing for liberalism.
-
Take the case of private property.
-
lf it stems from interactions driven
by transnational corporations,
-
at the core and in the framework
of classic liberalism,
-
this is unthinkable.
It’s a fallacy to think
-
that private tyrannies like GM
or Bombardier can have rights,
-
either property rights or rights
that transcend human beings.
-
On the other hand, the question
of property rights is a hard one.
-
It’s important to ask.
There’s no simple answer.
-
Nevertheless, I’m sure that,
even in the context of liberalism,
-
one cannot place current practices,
agents such as transnationals,
-
and their accepted rights,
within a classically liberal model.
-
Property rights must be reconsidered.
-
My opinions about it
are those of classic anarchism:
-
private ownership of means
of production seems aberrant.
-
But what Proudhon calls “possession”
has a place.
-
Ownership rights are healthy.
-
But the current, ersatz “liberal”
or “neo-liberal” doctrine is absurd.
-
Let’s suppose that, in our world,
-
someone can appropriate,
-
by the means one normally acquires
property rights over anything …
-
Suppose someone like me
appropriates by accepted legal means
-
elements that are essential
to everyone’s life.
-
People like you could die
or sell out to me.
-
Current neo-liberalism would
recognize such a society as just.
-
It’s clearly aberrant. Such questions
can’t be answered as simplistically
-
as our world would have it. But it’s
a tough question. I choose to think
-
production means can’t be private but
ownership of things we use is good.
-
Free trade
is a very beautiful concept,
-
and, as it was imagined
in the 18th century,
-
it certainly had merits,
because it’s very logical to say
-
you must produce better
and more cheaply,
-
and trade with others
who’ll do the same.
-
Instead of making wine in England,
buy it from Portugal.
-
The Portuguese
will buy your woollens.
-
That’s Riccardo’s original example.
-
But the great 18th-century
theoreticians never imagined
-
that capital itself would be free
to go where it wanted,
-
and an American or British company
could go invest in China,
-
take advantage
of repression in China,
-
which rejects unions
and so has extremely low wages,
-
could “externalize”
all the environmental costs,
-
make society and the whole planet pay
because it pollutes but it’s cheaper.
-
So, instead of having
a “comparative” advantage -
-
I make wine cheaper than you,
you make woollens cheaper than me -
-
it becomes an absolute advantage
because …
-
my capital is free
to roam wherever it finds
-
the best conditions for profit.
-
This is what warps trade practices,
-
and makes the transnationals
naturally want
-
the greatest possible freedom
for themselves.
-
But there’s no question
of labour circulating,
-
except for our “contemporary nomads”-
-
highly qualified personnel,
-
covered under service agreements,
since they have the right
-
to circulate freely
and set up where they want,
-
whereas the common mortal does not.
-
December 17, 1992.
U.S. president, George H. W. Bush,
-
signed the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
-
with Canada and Mexico.
-
Fourteen years later,
on October 26, 2006,
-
his son, George W. Bush
promulgated the Secure Fence Act.
-
This law authorizes
the construction of a double wall,
-
4.5 meters high and 1,200 km long,
along the Mexican border.
-
It is also outfitted with
the latest surveillance technology:
-
watchtowers, cameras,
ground sensors, drones, etc.
-
The theory of comparative advantage
posits international specialization.
-
It says nations must specialize
according to comparative advantages.
-
It’s a purely static theory.
-
Pawns are shifted around a box
without questioning the box’s form,
-
or whether the box evolves
with the pawn configuration.
-
The theory’s purely immediate.
So, why doesn’t it work?
-
Because international trade
isn’t just neutral exchange,
-
where the nice Natives trade
with the charming conquistadors.
-
It doesn’t work like that
and it never did.
-
The conquistadors kill everyone.
Then trade comes in
-
as Phase Two of pacification.
But in international trade,
-
which is the matrix of business …
That’s another preconceived notion.
-
Trade’s not intra-village, then city,
region, nation. Then international.
-
It never worked that way.
Quite the contrary.
-
International business
follows the military,
-
it follows predation. Then comes
an inward pacification process.
-
The “invisible hand” theory
is quite extraordinary.
-
First, it wagers that men are bad.
-
It’s quite lucid. It says,
we’ll work with that.
-
People are self-centred, greedy,
-
mean and self-interested.
They dislike collectives.
-
They’re unsupportive,
anti-social, narcissistic.
-
Let’s say this kind of flaw
turns into …
-
an advantage
for the collective and society.
-
Let them go. Public happiness will
arise from their egoistic antagonism.
-
That’s the invisible hand.
The idea is that
-
every time one intervenes,
tries to order this ego antagonism,
-
the system gets disrupted and worse.
One great reactionary thesis
-
is the argument of perverse effect.
Hirschmann said it. It’s great.
-
The reactionary rightists
-
have always accused leftists
of causing evil by doing good.
-
You want to do good, help the poor,
you’ll create a lot of poverty.
-
The Economist published an amazing
picture after the Seattle summit.
-
It showed starving Third-World people,
African children, labelled,
-
Victims of the Seattle failure.
-
That is vile!
Worse than the Benetton ads.
-
The message was, you played
around at hindering the WTO.
-
To what end? You created
poor, unhappy, starving people.
-
Whereas this system creates
the poor, starving, unhappy.
-
The invisible hand says, let it be.
-
You can’t fix it. Man is unkind, bad.
-
Only wickedness can stop wickedness.
-
Put two bad guys together,
it balances out. Laissez-faire.
-
Economists have been studying
the invisible hand since 1776.
-
So they’ve been studying
this problem for quite a while.
-
For it to work, men have
to be separate. Autonomous.
-
No relationships, no collectives.
Only their own rationality,
-
separate from others’, individual.
Absolute individualism.
-
The second condition
is perfect information.
-
Omniscience about future events
for centuries to come …
-
Second condition.
Now, what’s the third …
-
Perfect information …
and thirdly,
-
no uncertainty, like a storm,
chance, Ariane breaking down
-
on the 25th flight and not the 3rd.
-
The world must be hazard-free,
which is corollary to saying
-
perfect foresight is necessary.
Under these conditions,
-
the invisible hand might work,
but it’s not even sure,
-
for it’s important to know
that liberal economists -
-
the greatest, most mathematical,
most prestigious, Nobel winners -
-
have shown for about 25 years,
-
that the invisible hand theorem
doesn’t work. It’s bullshit.
-
They’ve shown it.
Many suspected as much.
-
Keynes suspected it for a long time
because he thought
-
the idea of equilibrium
was inapplicable to economy,
-
It was more disequilibrium -
economy was fundamentally chaotic.
-
But the pure, hard, mean, liberal,
most prestigious economists,
-
draped in the prestige
of the most hard-nose science,
-
starting with Nobel winner,
Gérard Debreu, 25 years ago,
-
have said it doesn’t work. Markets
don’t mean equilibrium or efficiency.
-
Markets don’t mean equilibrium, so
supply-and-demand means nothing.
-
And they’re not efficient, so
laissez-faire is the worst solution.
-
Thank you, liberal gentlemen. Kind of
you to say so. We thought as much.
-
So anyone who says “invisible hand”,
“supply and demand”, “equilibrium” …
-
is either a crook (not uncommon),
-
or hides his eyes (also happens),
someone who’s wilfully blind,
-
or Sartre’s “bastard” -
who knows but stays silent,
-
or an incompetent. They exist too.
-
Adam Smith, David Riccardo,
Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill,
-
Malthus, more or less -
-
all the classic figures
in the creation of economics
-
incorporated social thought.
They were social philosophers
-
more than “pure” economists.
-
But the neo-classics - Auguste
and Léon Walras, father and son,
-
mid- to late-19th century,
-
inaugurated a kind of economics
that calls itself scientific.
-
In doing so, it dispenses with
all moral or philosophical thought.
-
So it evacuates all the concerns
the classics had until Karl Marx,
-
which were the following:
-
Who makes money and why?
Has he the right to make so much?
-
Is this fair? Unfair?
-
Is it good for the community or bad?
Economics had an ethical dimension.
-
And this was evacuated
with neo-classical thought.
-
This neo-classicism opened the way
for neo-liberal thought.
-
Neo-liberalism then added
to neo-classicism’s kind of …
-
scientific decree (We are a science,
so we imitate physics.):
-
We notice money goes
from here to there.
-
We count, observe, classify.
-
But we refrain from casting judgment,
-
because physics, the mother
of all sciences, does not judge.”
-
Economics’ strength is that it
comes as obvious, neutral truth -
-
a neutral discourse
that speaks neither good nor evil,
-
that is scientific,
with all the neutrality of science,
-
that comes across as normal.
-
Putting pressure on wages
to cut inflation is obviously normal.
-
Obviously we can’t have inflation.
-
No matter if this generated
phenomenal inequality,
-
led certain peoples into destitution,
-
created disparities
between north and south,
-
created a caste of rich people
taking up the foreground,
-
eradicating State power,
breaking social security.
-
Despite all this,
there is but one obvious truth:
-
You can’t be pro-inflation!?
-
But if we look at truth and history,
we see that those rare times
-
when capital was muzzled,
as in the glorious ’30s,
-
were inflationary periods
when wages could increase,
-
because people who borrowed
for houses, etc., due to inflation,
-
managed to pay off debt quickly.
-
Now, it’s an economy of the rich.
-
One could ask,
“You want the rich to run the world?”
-
instead of,
“Surely, you’re against inflation?”
-
To impose their ideology,
neo-liberals have, over the years,
-
developed a relentless strategy,
thought encirclement.
-
This strategy rests in large part
on the actions of a global network
-
of propaganda, intoxication
and indoctrination
-
that can make its polymorphous voice
heard in all forums.
-
Largely conceived in think tanks,
-
neo-liberal propaganda subsequently
branched out in many ways.
-
Education became
one of the most important branches.
-
propaganda and indoctrination
-
propaganda and indoctrination
-
education
-
The idea of national education
arose in the 18th century.
-
In the wake of the French Revolution
and European nation-states,
-
there arose the idea …
-
that a public democratic space
implied people who were informed,
-
and who were skilled
at thinking, discussing,
-
participating in political discourse.
There were 2 institutions for this
-
to ensure that people could become
“citizens”, as they said at the time:
-
Education, one important function
of which was to train citizens,
-
prepare citizens.
And then, the media.
-
We’ll discuss that later.
As for education,
-
one of its mandates - not that it was
implemented or realized very well -
-
but a mandate of education
was to train citizens,
-
empower people to take part
in political debate
-
and reflect on political questions
beyond their own interests.
-
That was the main thing.
Not to think about politics,
-
or economic and social debates,
from a self-serving standpoint,
-
but from the standpoint of the
public good and collective interests.
-
Education cultivated this.
-
But in the so-called “neo-liberal”
changes of the past 30 years,
-
the dominant institutions realized
education was an important issue,
-
and important to appropriate.
Is what I’m saying right?
-
Are they penetrating education?
Anyone who looks knows it is.
-
From primary school to university,
it varies according to country.
-
It’s different in the U.S.,
Canada, Québec, France.
-
It depends on the history
of how each system developed.
-
But we see massive penetration
on the part of private industry
-
into the education system. Why?
-
The answers are quite simple.
-
Education’s a very profitable market.
-
It’s interesting to appropriate this
piece of social and economic activity
-
because it’s profitable. And it lets
children’s minds be appropriated.
-
It’s as blunt as that.
Educating is seizing minds.
-
Being able to take hold of children’s
minds is extremely crucial, serious.
-
It requires a strong justification
and I’m not sure we can give it one.
-
When companies infiltrate education,
they’re aiming for children’s minds,
-
and to transform the subjects taught.
-
That’s when training deviates from
citizenship and sense of common good
-
towards the interests of the
businesses appropriating education.
-
Seeing the world through culture,
knowledge, outside of oneself,
-
is different than from the viewpoint
of what a company gives us.
-
The latter element’s always there.
-
Appropriation of a market,
of children’s minds,
-
and preparation for labour.
From this perspective,
-
education will increasingly
lose its other functions -
-
preparation for civic life,
openness to the world,
-
the pure pleasure of understanding
and knowledge for its own sake -
-
to orient towards
market enslavement,
-
the preparation of subjects
taught for economic functions.
-
Education will become
-
a prelude to mercantile life,
and to employment.
-
That’s also very troubling.
-
We’ve seen transformations like this
for about 20 years.
-
With some resistance.
As this phenomenon arises,
-
so does resistance to it, luckily.
-
Channel One is an American company,
-
now listed on the stock market.
It launched a project
-
where they go into
underfunded schools and say,
-
Since you have no supplies,
we’ll furnish you with TV’s, VCR’s
-
in exchange for which,
you’ll screen for 20 minutes a day
-
our educational videos.” -
current issues shows for children.
-
Their interest in this
is the captive clientele.
-
Throughout the X minutes of
proposed programming, there are ads.
-
They add a few minutes of publicity
-
that allows advertisers to address,
in an extremely privileged context,
-
this captive clientele.
-
This is strong in the U.S.
Here, it has been tried.
-
The company in Canada
was called Athena.
-
It made sustained efforts
for a few years.
-
By and large,
the school boards refused.
-
Our public-service funding is not
in the same state as the U.S.’s,
-
but it’s another assault
being conducted against education.
-
It takes many forms,
according to country and region.
-
Mobil has shows on energy. Learn
environmental protection from them.
-
And nutrition from NutraSweet,
which has a kid’s show on nutrition.
-
You’ll learn the virtues
of NAFTA with GM,
-
and about protecting
forests and the environment
-
from the companies
responsible for deforestation.
-
This model has repercussions
from primary school to university,
-
which means, ultimately,
we could have - I’m half joking -
-
university ecology departments
where pollution will be justified.
-
That’s the troubling thing.
-
The loss of meaning in certain
intellectual and human activities …
-
that this implies.
-
The more efficient we think
we are economically …
-
Financially is more precise,
since finance is multiplying money.
-
The more efficiently we make money,
the less sense it makes.
-
Does it makes sense to say
that GM, for example, is efficient
-
because it made $23- or 24-billion
net profit in the last decade,
-
when it created 300,000 unemployed!
-
Does that make sense?
-
We say GM is efficient,
but what is this efficiency?
-
We say the American economy
is more efficient.
-
It is, in financial indicators,
yield over capital investment, etc.
-
But the U.S. has never had so many
people living under the poverty line,
-
the American poverty line,
-
or so many people
without access to health care -
-
40% of the American population has
practically no access to health care.
-
The U.S. has never had
such a low level of education.
-
50% of Americans
can’t locate England on a map.
-
Today, this is aberrant,
-
when there are at least
50 TV channels per household.
-
There’s a picture of what
I’m calling lack of meaning.
-
Materially, economically,
financially, we’re more efficient.
-
But ecologically, socially,
politically, humanly,
-
we are steadily losing
our values and quality of life.
-
Senselessness.
-
To discuss this, we must eschew
the dominant economic discourse.
-
To start to make sense of this,
the problem must be reformulated …
-
from scratch. To do this,
we must go back to Aristotle.
-
He said, “Do not confuse
the economic -
-
oikos nomia, the norms
of running home and community,
-
with chrematistic, krema atos,
the accumulation of money.”
-
That brings us to education.
-
In education today,
to what degree is Aristotle taught?
-
Who knows Aristotle? Who reads him?
-
I could say the same
of Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre,
-
Archimedes, etc.
-
So, today,
-
we say we’re in
a knowledge-based economy,
-
but we’ve never educated
or taught so little.
-
Yet we’ve never put so much emphasis
-
on so-called training
and educational institutions.
-
Now for the paradox and nonsensical.
They’re in the fact that
-
just about everywhere,
particularly in North America,
-
schools are being turned into
the system’s servant factories.
-
In other words, thinking bipeds
-
must be concerned only about fuelling
this free, self-regulating market
-
and the mechanics
of production and finance.
-
We call this “employability”,
-
training the employable,
-
reforming education,
from grade school to university -
-
training people to find their place
in the labour market.
-
That’s horrible.
-
Would a Victor Hugo
be employable today?
-
Would a Socrates be employable?
-
Would a Paul Verlaine
or a Rimbaud be employable?
-
No! So, there would be none.
-
But what would humanity be
without Socrates, Aristotle,
-
Rimbaud, Verlaine, Hugo?
-
What would we be without them?
We’d be animals.
-
Now, on the pretence that they’re
unemployable and unwanted,
-
we no longer train poets, literary
people, pure mathematicians,
-
or theoretical physicists.
-
We only train what industry,
financial enterprise, wants
-
to fuel the money-making machine.
-
Who is employable?
-
The people I see in universities
where I teach, around the world.
-
In other words, at the highest level
- Master’s, Ph.D. -
-
they’re what I call “technocrats”,
-
analytical technocrats,
trained to analyze problems.
-
We tell them they’re smart
because they do problem-solving.
-
Problem-solving is not intelligence.
Problem-formulation is.
-
The person who formulates
the problem is the smart one.
-
He articulates it, puts it in terms
of links and combinations
-
that call for a question.
-
He’s the smart one. The one who
relies on a pre-formulated problem
-
in order to find the right solution
isn’t intelligent.
-
Despite what they say.
Analytical technocrats
-
master techniques
of analysis and calculation,
-
and confuse thinking
with analyzing and calculating.
-
They make decisions with no qualms,
like laying off 60,000 in a day,
-
doubling their salary by a million,
and saying “I’m suffering.”
-
I make hard decisions.
These are non-humans!
-
Someone who openly makes
decisions without soul-searching
-
is saying, “I’m not a human being.”
-
By what right do we let him make
decisions that affect human beings?
-
He says, “No soul-searching,
no soul. I’m not human.”
-
These are highly trained technocrats.
At the intermediate level …
-
are the producer technicians.
These technicians serve machines,
-
from the computer
to the digital machine
-
that cranks out parts
in plastic, steel, aluminum.
-
These people are there
-
so the automated mechanics
of production never break down.
-
The only knowledge required of them
-
is the logic of the machinery
they’re overseeing. That’s all.
-
What’s more, they’re merely required
to understand the machine’s demands.
-
They don’t even dominate the machine,
or possess a kind of …
-
human superiority, additional soul,
knowledge or sense of the machine.
-
Instead, the machine says,
if you’re smart enough,
-
find the bad chip, change the card.
And if he can’t, he’s no good.
-
And on the lower levels,
what do we train? We don’t.
-
45% of the labour of multi-nationals,
American in particular,
-
are completely illiterate.
-
The multi-nationals
don’t want to change that.
-
They don’t want these illiterates
to be the least bit trained,
-
because otherwise
they’ll start asking questions.
-
lf they read papers and reports,
they’ll start asking questions,
-
unionizing, thinking.
-
So, no way.
-
Today, particularly in North America
and even more in the States,
-
there are primary
and high school graduates …
-
in fairly staggering proportions -
-
up to 25% here in Québec,
-
and if we looked at U.S. figures,
they’d be the same, if not more -
-
who graduated, yet are illiterate,
who basically can’t read or write.
-
They graduated by seniority.
-
By attendance and age.
This suits the system fine.
-
Because when your low-level workers
-
are lobotomized bipeds,
-
who haven’t even been taught to think
because this would require reading …
-
lf I want to learn to think,
I must read Victor Hugo, poems …
-
I must read philosophers.
-
Writers teach me to think.
-
I can’t think without putting words
and their permutations into my head.
-
lf I don’t have this, I cannot think.
-
But I can become an excellent
reproducer of the system,
-
who doesn’t think
and who defends the system.
-
There are now workers who say -
and this has happened to me
-
in serious situations where
there are closures, layoffs, etc.
-
and I ask the workers,
“What do you think?”
-
They often tell me,
“It’s the law of the market.
-
Competition. We must be more
competitive than the Japanese…”
-
They defend the very system
that’s crushing them.
-
We began by examining the networks
by which ideas circulate.
-
Education’s the same. We find …
-
ideological justifications, theorists,
people who conceived education,
-
advocating its transformation
in a way I’ll describe.
-
There are also
powerful transnational institutions
-
that entertain the same discourse
and compel agents, governments
-
and teachers to adopt practices
that conform to these ideals.
-
Finally, lobby groups, think tanks,
try to accomplish the same thing.
-
Education is striking.
It has all three.
-
The most influential education
theorist of the last 50 years
-
was an economist, not a pedagogue.
-
The top educational theorist
was probably Gary Becker.
-
He teaches at
the University of Chicago.
-
He developed
the theory of human capital.
-
The idea is …
-
humans and knowledge
are capital that requires investment
-
and evaluation from
the standpoint of profitability.
-
This theory of human capital
-
allows mathematical economic tools
to be applied to education,
-
henceforth viewed as a certain order
of capital that can be quantified.
-
This has been the most influential
theory of the last 50 years,
-
especially where it counts, in places
where decision-makers are influenced.
-
Places where States,
education ministers
-
and education policy-makers
are influenced.
-
The second theorist who established
the mechanisms that are in play now
-
is Milton Friedman, the father
of monetary economics,
-
who proposed a system
of education vouchers,
-
the idea again being
to inject market mechanisms
-
into education,
and to make schools compete.
-
These 2 education theories, never
discussed in education faculties,
-
are the most influential
recent educational thinking.
-
These theories circulate to the IMF,
the OECD, the World Bank.
-
National education systems are
analyzed from their point of view.
-
Recommendations
are made accordingly.
-
Think tanks and major media groups
often enjoy privileged connections.
-
Propaganda naturally circulates
from one group to the other.
-
Also, it is largely due
to this media transmission
-
that neo-liberal ideology
attains the status of accepted fact.
-
propaganda and indoctrination
-
propaganda and indoctrination
-
the media
-
It has traditionally been said
that Hitler invented propaganda.
-
Journals, etc., describe how Hitler
understood its role in World War II.
-
It’s true, he understood
it’s societal importance.
-
But he didn’t invent it.
He learned from us,
-
the Western democracies,
in particular the English,
-
and the Americans.
-
Overall, since the advent
of modern societies,
-
two trends prevail.
-
The first calls for participative
democracy with aware people,
-
who can talk, act
and influence decisions.
-
The other vision of the world says
some people must be pushed aside.
-
They must not get involved
in the issues that concern them.
-
This vision of society,
the world and the economy
-
also exists in our culture.
It strongly manifested itself
-
during World War I in the U.S.,
when the government was elected
-
on a promise
of abstaining from war.
-
Shortly thereafter, for reasons
pertaining to internal affairs
-
and the role of the industrialists,
-
the government decided
to enter into the conflict.
-
The serious problem it then faced was
confronting an opposed population.
-
They formed a commission named after
the journalist who presided over it,
-
Mr Creel.
It was the Creel Commission.
-
This commission largely invented
modern propaganda techniques,
-
techniques for shaping
and preparing public opinion.
-
The Creel Commission magnificently
fulfilled its mandate,
-
reversing public opinion
in a few months.
-
The commission engaged very famous
people, renowned intellectuals
-
and Edward Burnays, founder of
the modern public-relations industry.
-
These people later
left the commission
-
and established communication tools
within our societies
-
that are still present and are among
the propaganda mechanisms.
-
One very important political aim
-
is to exclude part of the population,
to shape public opinion
-
and build consensus within society.
-
The institutions they invented -
public relations firms -
-
plus the modern concept of the role
of companies and of P.R. within them,
-
social communication, media,
the role of the intellectual,
-
the role of publicity and information
in our society …
-
This was all set up, and was
the lesson Hitler rightly remembered.
-
Whence the mechanisms that
led to today’s one-track thinking?
-
They’re the descendents of what
I’m describing - the Creel Commission
-
and, further back in time,
of the conception of politics
-
that says society must exclude
part of its population to function.
-
We find this too.
-
But if the agents I’m describing
are very powerful, strong, numerous,
-
a counter-discourse arises, as do
sites where other analyses blossom,
-
alternative media, intellectuals,
social and community groups,
-
where new thought percolates.
There’s a dual phenomenon.
-
Unfortunately,
pensée unique predominates.
-
Propaganda is working.
-
Through such mechanisms
and institutions,
-
a world vision, a vocabulary, a way
of thinking and conceiving the world
-
ensure that certain questions
may be asked,
-
certain answers given,
-
certain analyses made,
while others are excluded.
-
Currently, dominant ideology,
which I call ambient ideology,
-
has its official face,
the pensée unique we spoke of,
-
and its unofficial face, which is …
-
this ensemble of behaviours
prescribed by the media overall.
-
This ideology never appears
as an ideology.
-
It’s presented as entirely natural,
something we should obviously do.
-
Owning a TV must be obvious.
“How can one not own a TV
-
in the late 20th century?”
-
Accepting the advertising system
is obvious.
-
Surely, you won’t,
-
in early 2K, call the advertising
system into question!”
-
All that is ideological,
all that is choice,
-
which the system has organized
without consulting us,
-
is presented to us as self-evident,
given and above discussion.
-
Interesting. Indeed,
concerning pensée unique,
-
which is a uniform,
partial and sectarian way
-
of interpreting and
conducting economy,
-
Alain Minc said, “Thought
is not unique, reality is.”
-
From that point on,
forget calling into question
-
what the liberal or ultra-liberal
economy was doing.
-
It was given as reality.
Reality had to be followed.
-
For example,
“Internationalization is a reality.”
-
Of course it is,
but not necessarily a good one.
-
The ideology says it’s a reality,
it’s valid, we must go with it.
-
Globalization, same thing.
-
Privatization, same thing.
-
It’s being done, so it must be done.
It had to be done, etc.
-
They present as faits accomplis,
-
things people must be made to accept,
instead of asking whether they agree.
-
Naturally, this pertains to
what I was saying in my book
-
on the sophism of the ineluctable:
-
most politicians cover up
their actions, their choices,
-
because these choices and decisions
are being billed as inevitable.
-
We couldn’t do otherwise.
-
It was decreed.
The Americans are doing this.
-
Everyone knows what happens in France
happened 10 years earlier in the U.S.
-
It had to be done in France.
-
Renault closed a factory in Belgium
-
in order to restructure …
-
and create factories elsewhere to do
the same work, with cheaper labour.
-
That was the result
of an economic calculation.
-
About this closure, the head of the
French state declared the following:
-
Alas, factory closures are life.
-
Trees are born, live and die, as do
plants, animals, men and companies.”
-
That is a good example
of naturalizing
-
what’s happening,
which is depoliticization.
-
People are obliged
to accept as natural,
-
as independent
of the will of politicians,
-
certain decisions
that are in fact contingent.
-
That’s how they manipulate citizens
-
and dissuade them from believing
in their own vote, ultimately.
-
Today, the functioning
of the media
-
fosters the creation of truth.
-
The truth can only appear
as the confrontation,
-
the verification of a given version
-
confirmed by a number of witnesses.
We know truth is hard to establish.
-
We see it with investigating judges,
-
with analytical scientists
trying to discover truth.
-
But today,
the way the media functions,
-
it’s enough that,
in coverage of an event,
-
all the media - press, radio, TV -
say the same thing
-
for this to be established as truth,
even if it’s false.
-
We saw it during the Gulf War,
and recent mega-events.
-
Consequently, in establishing
this kind of false equation,
-
repetition equals proof.
I was recently rereading …
-
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley,
-
and I found a phrase
about hypnopaedia,
-
the aural hypnosis they subject
infants to when they’re born
-
to persuade them to be happy
to be what they are,
-
and one of the directors of the
Conditioning Centre, as it’s called,
-
says, “64,000 repetitions
make one truth.”
-
We’re now in Huxley’s world.
-
Sustained by incessant
propaganda and proselytizing
-
that pass repeatedly through
the multiple relays
-
of a sprawling network
of mind control,
-
neo-liberal reforms
gradually impose themselves
-
in the anaesthetized consciences
of Western democracies.
-
In these countries, in the name
of a necessary “realism”,
-
all parties, both right and left,
adopt measures
-
that sap the social State more
every day, to market’s benefit.
-
But elsewhere, where propaganda
doesn’t enjoy the same success,
-
especially in developing countries,
other solutions are imperative.
-
Drastic solutions.
-
For behind the ideological
smokescreen,
-
behind the beautiful concepts
of spontaneous order
-
and harmonized interests
in a free market,
-
beyond the panacea
of the invisible hand,
-
what’s really hidden?
-
What were the true motivations
of the bankers and industrialists
-
who financed the establishment
of the neo-liberal network?
-
neo-liberalism or neo-colonialism?
-
strong-arm tactics
of the financial markets
-
Before,
-
nearly all of banks’ operations
until the ’70s were monitored.
-
All these operations passed
via the French central bank
-
which kept track.
-
Now the problem is,
banks transact over the counter.
-
They’ve taken out just over
half of their business figures -
-
OTC transactions
outside market control.
-
It’s as though there were
the normal market,
-
and a black market.
A grocery with posted prices
-
and a proper cash register.
Then, a mysterious black market.
-
In its reports,
the Bank of France says,
-
when it checks bank reports,
-
about half of bank transactions
are unreported,
-
beyond the control
of a superior authority,
-
like a public treasury
or a central bank.
-
These unreported activities mean that
governments count for nothing.
-
There must be …
-
$500 billion minimum
-
circulating every day
in off-shore funds, etc.
-
If a government hassles a bank,
-
it doesn’t care. It just stocks up
with one of its foreign counterparts,
-
another multi-national bank,
-
an off-shore fund or elsewhere.
No problem. Money’s mobile now.
-
Beyond the control
of any public authority.
-
OTC transactions
-
are a very serious problem.
-
To control the economy,
you must control money.
-
Over-the-counter operations
are generally effectuated
-
with relatively new financial
instruments, derivative products:
-
It’s basically insurance contracts.
In other words,
-
you get insured
against future fluctuations
-
in interest rates and currency.
-
You sign a contract
-
with someone to pay in 6 months.
The contract is in dollars.
-
If the dollar rises,
you’re in trouble. In 6 months,
-
you’ll have to buy dollars at a 10%
premium. So you take out insurance
-
on the value of the dollar.
-
A guy takes on the risk. You pay him
3% or 4% extra at the onset.
-
Whatever the dollar’s rise or fall -
the guy wins if it falls -
-
you don’t move. You have insurance.
That’s derivative products.
-
The interesting thing is
it creates a risk economy.
-
Currency’s no longer controlled,
capital flux isn’t monitored, etc.
-
So, it’s an economy
where risk is maintained
-
in order to create
on top of this system,
-
an insurance system
where risk is covered.
-
But the difference between this
and risks like car accidents
-
is that accidents are predictable.
It’s the law of probability.
-
Whereas the risks
in the financial markets …
-
are rare epiphenomena that
can’t be statistically quantified.
-
Absolute risks,
absolutely unforeseeable.
-
So these insurance contracts
that crown the normal economy
-
create a 2nd layer
that’s even riskier.
-
So, sometimes people take out
insurance on their insurance.
-
It’s Escheresque.
You create a risk pyramid.
-
And people speculate on that.
-
You create a purely speculative
economy by sustaining risk.
-
A trait of contemporary capitalism
is this economy where financial risk
-
is systematically maintained,
and systematically marketed.
-
In the 1980s, under the sway
of Thatcher and Reagan,
-
a number of countries adopted reforms
to deregulate financial markets.
-
By allowing capital to flow freely,
governments considerably increased
-
the power
of major institutional speculators:
-
hedge funds, commercial banks,
pension funds, insurance companies …
-
Now in a position of strength,
-
these entities would act as a new
purveyor of neo-liberal ideology,
-
going so far as to compel
the most recalcitrant States
-
to accelerate the liberalization
of their economy.
-
Among the methods used to do this,
speculative attacks proved to be
-
particularly effective …
and devastating.
-
Certainly, the emperor’s new clothes
are woven of complex mechanisms
-
that readily deflect
the most curious minds.
-
But if colonialism has changed
its look, its goal remains the same:
-
the concentration of capital.
-
Speculation …
-
has several instruments.
-
Without going into technical details,
-
I’d like to show what happened
in the Asian Financial Crisis of ’97,
-
which led to a currency collapse
in several countries,
-
countries that had been categorized
as “Asian tigers”,
-
with a successful economy, etc.
-
There were various factors
in this crisis,
-
but I think one of
the fundamental elements
-
was the prior deregulation
of the exchange market.
-
In certain cases,
this deregulation was imposed,
-
if not indeed recommended by
the International Monetary Fund.
-
Now, speculators
-
got their hands on the reserves
of the central banks
-
through the following mechanism:
-
they speculated against
national currencies
-
by selling short.
-
Short selling is speculating on
a transferable security’s decrease
-
rather than on its increase,
as is traditionally the case.
-
If a security is the object
of massive short selling,
-
it leads to a collapse in demand
and thus of the security’s price.
-
This constitutes speculative attack
-
for, in wagering massively
on a decrease in value,
-
the speculators themselves
bring about the decrease.
-
Say I want to short sell
the Korean won.
-
I start selling huge quantities
of Korean won,
-
deliverable at some future date.
The contracts are 3 or 6 months.
-
When the contract comes to term,
I must deliver huge quantities
-
of Korean won or Thai baht.
-
But I don’t have them.
I can sell as much as I want,
-
I can sell billions of dollars’ worth
of Korean won.
-
Who buys up the Korean won?
-
The central bank of Korea,
-
which is obliged through accords
with the International Monetary Fund
-
to stabilize its currency.
-
Technically, what happened was,
-
when the Korean currency fell,
-
a few months later,
-
the short-selling contracts
came to term
-
and that’s when …
-
there was an appropriation
of the central bank reserves,
-
because the won was worthless
-
and speculators had only to buy
Korean won on the spot market,
-
and then fulfill the terms
of their contracts.
-
So the central bank’s buying back
its own money - not too profitable.
-
And in exchange,
its reserves are confiscated
-
and go into the pockets
of the major Western banks.
-
That’s the mechanism.
-
Now the reserves have been sacked,
-
and this means Korea must now
go to the IMF and say,
-
Our reserves have been sacked.
We can’t function without them.
-
We must reimburse…” (The money
hasn’t even gone to creditors yet.)
-
We must reimburse our creditors
(the speculators).
-
What’s going on?
-
When the IMF grants a loan
in the order of $56 billion,
-
there’s participation
by a number of countries.
-
There were 24 countries,
-
because astronomical sums are needed.
The American and Canadian treasuries,
-
the main Western governments.
-
For the American
or Canadian treasury
-
or another Western country
to help give
-
a $56-billion loan,
-
they have to raise
their own debt level,
-
which means they must start selling
-
and negotiating their debt
on the stock markets.
-
So, it’s the debt market.
And who controls the debt market
-
for sovereign Western debt?
The same speculating banks.
-
There’s a vicious circle here.
-
Attack Korea, come to its rescue,
-
confiscate its reserves,
lend it money …
-
from the public funds
of various Western governments,
-
and increasing the debt
of these Western countries
-
requires backing from
these private-sector banks,
-
the underwriters of national debts.
-
In the end, everyone goes into debt
-
except the speculators,
-
who are creditors of both Korea
and the Western governments
-
who came to Korea’s rescue
-
through the intermediary
of the IMF program.
-
So, what happens?
-
The Korean economy
-
is doomed to bankruptcy.
-
Its bank shares and high-tech
industry are sold at a discount.
-
What’s in the process of happening
-
is the transfer of
all this country’s industrial wealth
-
to American foreign investors,
-
to the point where …
-
its shares are practically taken over
for an absolute pittance.
-
I’ll give you an example
-
of one of the primary Korean banks
-
that was restructured
on the recommendation of the IMF,
-
following this operation,
because it had conditions.
-
This bank, Korea First Bank,
was sold for $450 million.
-
It was sold to Californian and
Texan investors for $450 million.
-
But a condition of sale was
-
that the Korean government
finance the bad debts of this bank
-
with grants,
-
subsidies that were
35 times the purchase price.
-
Something in the order
of over $15 billion.
-
These American investors
arrive in Korea,
-
and overnight they gain control over
the whole local financial apparatus,
-
the commercial banks,
-
and they hold the debt
of major Korean companies
-
like Hyundai, Daewoo, etc.
-
And they’re in a position to dictate
the break-up of these companies!
-
Part of Daewoo
has now been sold to GM.
-
Other Korean companies will be sold.
-
So, through a mechanism
that was initially based on
-
manipulating financial markets,
-
they take possession
of an entire economy.
-
Korean companies see
credit dried up by bank crisis.
-
A million people
affected by unemployment
-
The IMF’s ‘beggars’”
-
The most serious social crisis
South Korea has faced
-
since the war began.
-
Early March, the number
of unemployed surpasses a million”
-
The economic liberalization campaign
led by the financial markets
-
wouldn’t have enjoyed
the same success
-
without the precious collaboration
of the Bretton Woods institutions,
-
which constitute another major
vehicle of neo-liberal ideology:
-
the International Monetary Fund
(IMF),
-
the World Bank
-
and the World Trade Organization
(WTO, formerly GATT).
-
The IMF and World Bank
were established in 1944
-
to ensure the stability of exchange
rates and support the reconstruction
-
of countries devastated
by World War II.
-
Over time, however, the U.S. and
Europe have considerably altered
-
the mandate of the twin institutions,
based in Washington.
-
Indeed, shortly after the U.S.’s
unilateral decision in 1971
-
to put an end to
the International Monetary System,
-
the IMF and World Bank were invested
with an entirely new mandate:
-
to impose economic liberalization
upon developing countries,
-
by fixing as a “conditionality”
to granting any loan
-
the adoption of a series
of neo-liberal measures.
-
Some have described this set of
economic reforms as “shock therapy”,
-
while others ironically call it
“the Washington Consensus”.
-
neo-liberalism or neo-colonialism?
-
neo-liberalism or neo-colonialism?
-
strong-arm tactics
of the Bretton Woods institutions
-
or
-
the Washington Consensus
-
Washington, where the World Bank
and IMF are headquartered,
-
started dictating
to the rest of the world,
-
especially the poorest,
almost-bankrupt countries,
-
how to apply sound economic science.
-
It was called
“structural adjustment measures”.
-
or “the structural adjustment plan”,
dictated by the IMF,
-
and bolstered with World Bank loans
to the countries concerned.
-
Equatorial Guinea, 2006
-
Many dozens of countries
were thrown into chaos
-
precisely because of the measures
of the IMF and the World Bank,
-
of which there are many.
It would take too long to outline
-
fundamental adjustment measures
vs. short-term cyclical adjustments
-
but overall,
-
let’s say the 3 or 4 most important
measures can be summed up.
-
first measure:
reduce State expenditures
-
The first measure imposed
on countries approaching default,
-
i.e., poverty-stricken,
-
was governmental non-deficit
or deficit reduction:
-
the reduction of State expenditures.
-
Shrink the government,
shrink its expenditures.
-
second measure:
privatization
-
In privatization, who will buy?
-
There are no local operators.
-
If there were enough
local money to buy
-
entire oil, phosphate
or steel companies,
-
the country wouldn’t be so poor.
-
The extraversion of these Third-World
impoverished economies gets so bad,
-
they sell off their last
national economic interests
-
to foreign interests.
-
So, multi-nationals start buying
and relocating to these countries,
-
due to low wages and dollarization.
-
It gets cheaper for multi-nationals
to produce there than at home.
-
But these multi-nationals
can also acquire, dirt cheap,
-
installations and
production capacities,
-
like sugar production and refining,
-
oil or gas production
and pre-refining,
-
gas liquefaction
or mineral transport, etc.
-
at low prices, which cost these
national economies years and years.
-
third measure:
currency devaluation
-
Devaluing local currency
means, all of a sudden,
-
for already-poor countries,
-
anything imported becomes
proportionally more expensive
-
than the level of devaluation.
-
When the CFA franc
was suddenly devalued by half
-
in the early ’90s,
-
well, suddenly about
a third of Africa or more
-
that was using the CFA franc,
-
found itself with half its
purchasing power overnight.
-
So, your wage, that lets you live
at a certain level,
-
only gives you half of that.
-
That’s an immediate 100% inflation.
-
Add to that manufactured or
semi-manufactured products,
-
refined products and
everything you’d expect Africa,
-
West and Central French Africa,
to import.
-
Suddenly with the franc cut in half,
these things are twice as expensive.
-
Combine that with the effects
of local devaluation,
-
and products and services
suddenly cost you 4, 5, 6 times more,
-
from one day to the next!
-
Add time, and see what happens.
Local products
-
made from imported
semi-raw materials,
-
or that need imported binders,
glues, solvents, paint, etc.,
-
over a longer wavelength,
-
1 , 2, 3, 6 months later, they become
2, 3, 4 times more expensive.
-
fourth measure: reorient
the national economy around export
-
If we measure the effects
of making the poorest countries,
-
where the IMF and
World Bank intervene,
-
boost the production
of exportable products,
-
we make them compete
with the same products.
-
Coffee-producing countries
all start producing more coffee.
-
Cocoa, petroleum, same thing.
-
Bauxite …
-
Whatever it is … Sugar, wheat …
-
All the base products
-
suffer falling prices
due to over-production.
-
Not only do their prices fall,
and countries made to compete,
-
but added to this is the inflation
effect from currency devaluation
-
and the automatic increase
in anything the country imports.
-
We witness a kind of reversal
of the countries’ interests -
-
even as we pretend to defend them -
caused by this initial phenomenon.
-
All their imports
are increasingly expensive,
-
while all their exports
bring in less.
-
They enter a spiral of indebtedness
that means that now, in 2002,
-
servicing the debt
of most of the poorest countries -
-
I’m talking about countries like
Bangladesh, Ruanda, Burundi, Togo -
-
countries like that,
that are already minus 250th …
-
Their debt servicing alone can be
up to 600 x their export revenues.
-
fifth measure:
“getting the prices right”
-
Getting the prices right
goes like this:
-
no subsidies for basic necessities,
so no more subsidized housing,
-
no more subsidies
for health, oil, rice …
-
transportation …
No more subsidies,
-
in the name of the right price.
What does this mean?
-
In terms of dollars, all prices
become equivalent world wide.
-
If you travel with dollars,
as I, a Canadian citizen, do,
-
wherever you go, products
and services cost the same.
-
Whether in Cotonou, Benin,
one of the poorest countries,
-
or Chicago, New York, Paris,
-
your Holiday Inn or Sheraton room,
your Holiday Inn meal
-
cost about the same in dollars
throughout the world. Fine.
-
But in Cotonou, capital of Benin,
one of the world’s poorest countries,
-
one night at the Sheraton,
where I sleep when I go there,
-
equals six months’ salary
of a Benin public servant.
-
One meal in the restaurant
of this Cotonou hotel
-
is a week’s work
for a minor Benin official.
-
sixth measure: liberalization
of investment and reverse wage parity
-
Next comes reverse wage parity.
This consists in …
-
a succinct formula
that slides all wages
-
down to the lowest, by sector,
-
and does so in concert with
the “movement” to liberalize trade.
-
I’ll explain.
-
NAFTA is announced: the Mexico,
U.S., Canada free trade zone.
-
Wages naturally slide from the
American level to the Mexican level.
-
That’s what happens when Mexican,
Canadian and American labour compete.
-
Relocation to Mexico means NAFTA
has created employment in Mexico.
-
But in net terms,
6 or 7 years after NAFTA,
-
wages in the whole region of Leone,
northern Mexico,
-
where the American
multi-nationals moved in -
-
while they shut down
proportionately in the U.S. …
-
There has been
an elimination of jobs
-
that were high-paying,
compared to Mexico,
-
to “create” jobs in Mexico
-
that are infinitely lower-paid.
So, for the past 5 years,
-
the average wage in the most
active, richest region of Mexico,
-
where the American
multi-nationals relocated …
-
Wages dropped in net terms
of purchasing power by 23%.
-
Five years ago, a General Motors
worker in northern Mexico
-
could survive and maintain
a family of 1 or 2 kids.
-
Today, the same worker
can support only his own needs.
-
Survive alone.
-
On the eve of the summit
to be held in northern Mexico,
-
they’re building in Monterey
a wall to hide the slums.
-
Three meters high
and kilometers long,
-
so summit participants
won’t see the poverty there.
-
That’s reverse parity: sliding wages
from highest to lowest by sector.
-
And now that the most modern sectors
- like information technology,
-
electronics, etc. - are increasingly
saleable in the Third World,
-
you have entire companies -
such as Swissair I think,
-
and other companies,
the steel industry, whatever -
-
that do all their accounting,
financial and IT work in Bombay.
-
A Bombay accountant who does the
same work as a Swiss or Canadian one
-
costs 100 times less.
-
A programmer who writes an aviation
program is 200 times cheaper.
-
And so on.
That’s reverse wage parity.
-
What bothers me is that
when we combine these measures -
-
devaluation, export, debt servicing,
-
privatization,
shrinking public budgets,
-
forced public lay-offs
making more unemployed …
-
Combine all these
with the prices and wages,
-
and we come to the situation
we’re in today:
-
rich countries are infinitely richer
and poor countries infinitely poorer.
-
And I’m alarmed to see
the World Bank and the IMF
-
trying to repeat in Argentina exactly
what massacred the Argentine economy.
-
It’s like we never learn.
Why not? There’s a reason.
-
It’s in their interest that this
ideology that explains the world,
-
continue to survive,
as long as the planet,
-
in its entirety,
is exploitable this way.
-
At the International Monetary Fund,
the right to vote is exercised
-
within the board of directors.
-
Now, it’s a right based on …
-
financial participation,
-
or the financial contribution
of each State.
-
In fact, it’s the IMF shareholders.
-
Same for the World Bank.
It’s not like the U.N.
-
The main shareholders
of the IMF are, of course,
-
the U.S., Germany, Japan,
Great Britain, France, etc.
-
But ultimately, that’s just
one aspect, because …
-
under the political representation
in an intergovernmental organization,
-
there are other issues.
It’s the backroom.
-
It’s influence-peddling between
Wall Street, on one hand,
-
and Washington. It’s the connections
between the IMF and the think tanks:
-
the Heritage Foundation,
the Brookings Institute.
-
The American treasury’s involved.
The U.S. Federal Reserve.
-
This all forms what’s been called
“the Washington Consensus”.
-
It’s a power game.
-
In 2005, Paul Wolfowitz,
-
one of the most radical ideologues
of imperialist politics
-
and President Bush’s warmonger,
passed directly
-
from the U.S. Defense Department
to being head of the World Bank.
-
This appointment put an end
-
to any ambiguity about
the World Bank’s real goals
-
and revealed the true face
of the Bretton Woods institutions.
-
Bretton Woods conference,
Mount Washington Hotel, 1944
-
After the war,
naturally there was the creation
-
of the IMF and the World Bank.
-
In the mind of John Maynard Keynes,
the architect of these institutions,
-
a third thing was needed.
-
A third organization,
the International Trade Organization.
-
This didn’t work.
The Americans didn’t want it.
-
So, as a fallback position,
-
GATT was created.
-
It was created in ’47
and was supposed to take care of
-
lowering customs duties
on industrial products.
-
GATT worked fairly well
-
because during
its 50 years of existence,
-
there were major reductions
in duties,
-
which went from
an average of 40% to 50%
-
down to 4% or 5%.
-
But that covered only
industrial goods. Products.
-
So, the need was felt,
-
primarily by transnational
financial companies
-
to create an organization
-
that would cover many more domains
-
than just industrial products.
That’s why,
-
at the end of the Uruguay Round,
the final GATT negotiation cycle,
-
the decision was made to create
the World Trade Organization,
-
which became a reality
on January 1, 1995,
-
and covers a multitude of agreements.
Not just the perennial GATT
-
but the agricultural accord,
-
the TRIPS accord
on intellectual property,
-
the general accord on the service
trade, a huge thing that covers
-
11 main areas and 160 sub-areas,
-
so that all human activities
are found there,
-
covered by GATT regulations:
-
education, health, culture,
environment.
-
There are other technical agreements
-
that may seem technical,
but that are extremely political:
-
the accords on
technical trade barriers,
-
on sanitary and
phytosanitary measures.
-
These are accords on standards
that various members, i.e., States,
-
can put in place
-
and which declare that certain norms
are technical barriers to trade.
-
Perhaps lesser known,
but the most important of all
-
is the Dispute Settlement
Understanding,
-
which is the very powerful
judicial branch
-
of the World Trade Organization,
-
which enables it to settle
disputes among members
-
and exercise jurisprudence.
-
So, who judges?
-
We don’t really know.
Experts are chosen from lists.
-
Countries may recommend someone
for these lists.
-
They’re generally private citizens.
-
Business lawyers or sometimes
former business executives.
-
But they’re unidentified.
They meet in secret,
-
generally in three’s.
-
They decide fairly quickly.
-
There’s also an appeals process,
-
but appeals have the same conditions:
a new panel,
-
and it’s done in secret.
-
What’s important to know about the
DSB, the Dispute Settlement Body,
-
is that it’s at once
-
the legislator, the jurist
and the executive,
-
because it renders verdicts
and establishes jurisprudence.
-
It places itself above all the laws
-
that have been passed
-
by the countries’
individual legislatures,
-
but also above international law,
established laboriously over 50 years.
-
Human rights,
-
multi-lateral conventions
on the environment,
-
the basic labour conventions of the
International Labour Organization.
-
All this is forgotten and verdicts
are rendered at the DSB
-
that say, “Business trumps all,
-
and we don’t want to hear about
your environmental conventions.”
-
And it’s executive because
it has the power to impose sanctions.
-
When a country disagrees
with its verdict, it’s told, “Fine.
-
Don’t make your legislation conform
to our verdict, but you’ll pay.
-
You’ll pay annually,
-
through customs duties that your
adversary in this settlement process
-
will determine.”
So when the U.S. decides
-
to impose duties on Europe,
for France,
-
on foie gras, mustard
and roquefort,
-
it’s perfectly within its rights.
-
And it’s expensive. And few countries
can afford this annual leaching.
-
At the WTO, various negotiations
go on at the same time.
-
A country with no ambassador
in Geneva,
-
or that shares one
with other countries,
-
as is the case with the Africans
and with many small micro-States …
-
It’s impossible for them
to follow negotiations.
-
So, the South doesn’t know
what’s going on in all areas,
-
and they say so openly.
One Southern ambassador
-
said, “The WTO
is like a multiplex theatre.
-
You must pick a film,
you can’t see them all.”
-
So they pick only what seems
important to their country.
-
So who really makes the decisions?
-
They say it’s by consensus.
There’s never been a vote.
-
And the American ambassador said
a vote would be a very bad precedent.
-
So much for democracy.
-
In reality, it’s the Quad.
The Quad is 4 countries -
-
Canada, the U.S.,
the European Union and Japan -
-
that meet all the time
and have numerous staff
-
at the WTO,
-
and that come to their own consensus
-
and come back
before the plenary assembly
-
and say, “Well, you agree,
don’t you?”
-
And it’s very hard for
Southern countries to say no.
-
It takes courage
and they must be certain,
-
because pressure tactics
against them exist.
-
And don’t delude yourself.
-
If you’re dependent on the IMF
or have problems with the U.S.,
-
you know you can’t step out of line.
-
Certainly, the financial markets
and the Bretton Woods institutions
-
have become privileged instruments
of the neo-liberal conquest.
-
But some countries
still obstinately refuse
-
to join this forced march.
-
That’s when colonialism
sheds its new suit
-
and comes forth
in its old warrior gear.
-
From the break-up of Yugoslavia
to the war in Afghanistan via Darfur,
-
post-Cold War conflicts
hinge on very different issues
-
than the ones Western propaganda
presents as new “military humanism”.
-
Control over resources,
financial flux and geostrategic space -
-
like the dictates of the IMF,
the World Bank and the WTO -
-
ensure the domination of mega-
corporations and giant capitalists
-
over the entire planet.
-
Also, the colonial governments
that the conquerors have installed
-
have soon moved to adopt
the dogma of neo-liberal ideology.
-
And the encirclement is complete.
-
neo-liberalism or neo-colonialism?
-
neo-liberalism or neo-colonialism?
-
strong-arm tactics
of military humanism
-
or
-
war is peace
-
The Dayton Accords were signed in ’95
-
on an American military base.
-
And if we consult
the text of these accords,
-
we see the Constitution
of Bosnia-Herzegovina appended
-
to the Dayton accords.
-
This constitution was written by
American consultants and lawyers,
-
who got together and wrote
a fundamental document
-
without so much
as a constituent assembly
-
of Bosnia-Herzegovina citizens.
-
And we can read
in this constitution
-
prepared by the United States,
-
Article X:
-
The central bank
of Bosnia-Herzegovina
-
shall not function as a central bank.
It must function as a currency board.
-
In other words, a colonial bank,
-
with no chance
of creating money.
-
Meaning, it’s completely trapped
by its external creditors.
-
Well, that’s the model that
currently exists in Argentina.
-
Moreover, in the Bosnia-Herzegovina
Constitution, written in Dayton,
-
we read that
-
the IMF will nominate the president
of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s central bank,
-
and this person …
-
may not be a citizen
-
of either Bosnia-Herzegovina
or a neighbouring country.
-
In other words,
we see that this constitution,
-
which is totally fabricated
-
and has no citizen base
within Bosnia-Herzegovina,
-
is installing a colonial government.
-
We don’t call it that. We say
it’s the international community …
-
But ultimately we see that
all the administrative structures
-
are dominated by foreigners.
-
Budgets are dominated by foreigners.
Monetary policy is non-existent.
-
Nevertheless, the Dayton Accords
-
are now being presented by the
so-called international community
-
as the answer to the problems
of various countries.
-
They’d like to establish
the same management model -
-
colonial administration -
-
in countries like
Macedonia and Yugoslavia.
-
Indeed, they talk about a mosaic.
-
A mosaic of protectorates.
-
Adaptation: Kathleen Fleming
Anrà Médiatextes, Montréal
-
srt & ripped by Tokadime