Tearing Down the Seven Pillars of Neoliberalism
Manifesto 2007
Attac France
http://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/Docs/CX8243-TearingDownNeoliberalism.htm
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2007/05/371642.html
Publisher: Attac France
Year Published: 2007
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX8243
With the beginning of the 1980s, we entered a new era of capitalism, the era of neoliberalism. This project systematically destroys all political, social and ecological restrictions for the activity of capital. Its methods are universally known: transformation of all relations into commodity relations, freedom of action for businesses and investors and expansion of the hunting area for transnational corporations over the whole planet.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
With the beginning of the 1980s, we entered a new era of capitalism, the era of neoliberalism. This project systematically destroys all political, social and ecological restrictions for the activity of capital. Its methods are universally known: transformation of all relations into commodity relations, freedom of action for businesses and investors and expansion of the hunting area for transnational corporations over the whole planet.
The goals of neoliberalism are unmistakable. More weight should be given to owners of capital who already have very unequal relative strength in relation to wage earners. Neoliberalism produces great inequalities and lives from them: inequalities between social classes, between countries and also between men and women. Lower wages are reserved for women. Women play the role of “social shock absorbers ” when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Bank forces indebted countries to destroy their public services – educational system, health system, child care, canteens and so forth. Beyond their daily work, they are now forced to assume tasks that the community no longer funds. Finally, neoliberalism promotes individual conduct that reflects the conventional image of masculinity – the race for power and money, competition and aggressiveness to the disadvantage of values like solidarity and cooperation.
Neoliberalism is enforced through intensified discipline imposed on workers, pressure on their purchasing power, the shattering of social security systems and – as a logical consequence – the shameless allocation of extremely high incomes to the wealthiest managers, shareholders and creditors.
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In the area of agriculture, an unbridled productivism and introduction of genetically-modified species ruin rural agriculture, destroy the environment and damage the diversity of species.
The new social world order is inseparably connected with the hardening of the hierarchy of power between the richest states with the United States at the top and the poor often heavily indebted countries. The United States sucks in the savings of other countries and invests them where considerable profits are expected. Europe also strives for this privileged predator status without achieving the same efficiency. So-called “threshold countries” like China and India enter this circle of the new world economy by selling the output of their workers at cut-rate prices and intensifying the competition with wage earners of the “first world.” Extorted with the threat of job loss, these workers stand with their backs to the wall to maintain the social achievements gained in hard battles over the course of the past decades. The policy of the European Union hardly protects against this downward spiral. Rather it contributes to accelerating the downward suction within the union and in the rest of the world.
The indebtedness of many states that belong to the “third world” (as the states of “command socialism” constituted the second world) has become an unbearable burden on account of the enormous rise of interest rates imposed by the United States from 1979. Although paid back several times, these debts are used by the IMF and the World Bank as a lever to force these countries under the yoke of the neoliberal order.
We have identified seven main pillars, pillars of neoliberalism, not pillars of wisdom. These seven pillars must be torn down to build a solidarian, ecological and democratic world.
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Contents:
First Pillar: Free Trade and the Free Circulation of Capital
Second Pillar: Nature as Inexhaustible Reservoir and Waste Disposal
Third Pillar: The Underdevelopment of Democracy
Fourth Pillar: State Policy Helping Owners of Capital
Fifth Pillar: Everything for the Shareholders of the Corporations
Sixth Pillar: Permanent War and Security Policy
Seventh Pillar: Controlling Minds
Subject Headings
