Palestine Think Tank

Most economists, from Marxists and leftists to liberals, have been contributing to analysis of the current crisis of the world capitalist system that started within the last resort economy, the US economy. Despite various reasons and interpretations mentioned by those writers, and even in spite of contradictory analyses between economists of one school, there is some form of consensus that the US housing sector on the one hand, and oil prices on the other, are the main reasons behind the deterioration of the US dollar. This has effects on a world scale as a result as well as being behind the galloping hike of basic prices.

But it is worth mentioning that to call it a ‘capitalist’ or ‘US capitalism’ crisis doesn’t explain the real social effects on the world population. In fact, it is a crisis that is entrenched in the internal logic of the capitalist system, but its victims are the middle and popular (working and poorer) classes all over the world.

The following lines are not dealing more on the description of the crisis. I want to comment on what Hugo Chavez’s call to the oil producing and pumping [1] countries to adopt a new price policy favoring poor countries might mean.

Despite the clean soul and revolutionary spirit of Chavez and his regime’s struggle to lead a new socialist approach in the 21 century, his call is still in the orbit of the capitalist ideology, and it doesn’t matter if he breaches the producers’ demands in order to help the poor countries.

While it is right that the poverty of peripheral countries is to a large extent due to the previous colonial plunder and current exploitation in both unequal exchange and armed un-equal exchange as it is in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries undergoing military invasion and occupation, most of the regimes in peripheral countries have a long hand in the economic/social deterioration of their own peoples.

Following the previous oil price shocks in 1973 and 1982, huge amounts of money liquidity has been poured in money pools of oil producing and pumping countries, and large amounts of that money has been donated in a charitable manner to some poor countries. But it never made a change or improvement in those countries. In the Arab case, the countries of surplus transferred large amounts of surplus to the Arab countries living in a state of economic deficit. The transfer amounts went through the channels of the ruling comprador classes who found it a good opportunity to steal most of that money and to continue their corrupted habits. The donor Arab regimes never made their assistance conditioned with any investment policies or strategies. It was devoted to offsetting the deficit. It was a political consensus between the two parts of Arab ruling comprador regimes in rich and poor countries to not adopt any developed approach.

In fact, the policy of free donations from the countries of surplus to those of deficit was a joint conspiracy by these regimes against their class and political enemies. It was against:

The Arab working class who suffers unemployment numbering in tens of millions.

Arab unity as the negation of Arab Qutriyah.

The normal development is that Arab oil pumping countries must open their doors for Arab workers and to give priority to them over those of other nationalities [2]. But, the rulers of oil pumping counties prefer non-Arab workers because they believe that Arab workers feel that they have a right to work in another Arab country, but non-Arabs will be grateful if they get the chance to work there, even if they suffer harsh exploitation and humiliation.

Since Arab Qutriyah regimes are afraid of Arab unity and see it as a threat to their selfish interests, they prefer to bring non-Arab workers on the one hand and on the other to subsidize the deficit of other Arab countries.

The Arab countries of surplus were and still are keen to obstruct any possibility of social tension, not to say revolution, in the countries of deficit because it might expand into their own countries.

This interpretation is applied to most poor countries which Chavez likes to help. But to place his call in a radical context, three points must be considered:

1- The oil-rich countries are not the richest countries in the world. They are backward and even poor in comparison to the core capitalist countries. We must remember that Arab oil pumping countries were in a state of deficit before the current oil price shocks. Rent never means wealth in real meaning. Wealth comes through production, i.e., the goods produced by a nation’s proletariat but demanded in the world market. In addition to their richness on the one hand, and the fact that the core countries plunder the peripheral countries on the other, those core countries are the first to help their previous and current victims.

2- For a revolutionary regime, like that of Caracas, it is a catastrophe to spoil its surplus to help the Israel of Latin America, Colombia, i.e., Caracas must help countries like Cuba, and I think it does.

3- As for the Arab oil-rich countries, as long as they are against Arab joint development strategy, and afraid of Arab workers, at least they must design a preferential oil policy which will sell oil at a low price to countries that support Arab rights [3].

But, Arab ruling classes in general, and those of oil in particular are externalizing regimes. They are not independent, their surplus is oriented lately to cover the US deficit, under the claim that their currency will melt down following the melting of US dollar. This is in addition to the fact that these regimes are accelerating their normalization with the Zionist Ashkenazi Regime ZAR. It is even worse, as Stanley Fischer, the governor of the Bank of Israel, declared lately that he is quite sure that Arab oil countries will rescue the Israeli economy to the extent that it will avoid the passive effects which are harming it because of the US crisis. The Arab regimes are too far even behind Chavez’s charitable call. It is not yet the time for a new or renewed Bandung experience, but Chavez might suggest the establishment of a Third World Development Fund to work exceptionally for real and controlled joint development between Third World countries. Such funds must favor countries whose social policy is progressive, and its regimes are ready to accept a follow-up from radical development experts.

Charity is nice from a religious point of view, but it will never terminate poverty, especially the current Third World poverty which is a result of the capitalist logic of polarity.

Finally, if Chavez really asks FARC to stop their guerilla strategy and negotiate with the Israel of Latin America, and if his call is limited to charity, it will be a bitter setback for world revolution which is witnessing in the recent years the beginning of a revival.

[1] To put non-Arab readers in the reality of Arab oil countries, it is necessary to point out that regimes of these countries depend on oil rent. They are pumping, not producing oil. We can’t call Venezuela or even Russia pumping countries, at least because they invest some of that surplus in development and industrialization.

[2] Some might argue from a Marxist viewpoint that socialists shouldn’t discriminate against workers from other nations. This is right when we are talking about socialist countries and when socialist cooperation is there. But, when each economy is devoted to its own capitalist class, and that class tries to export its reserve army to other countries so as to avoid internal social tension, the acceptance of this army is in fact a rescue of the capitalist regime of the mother country of that reserve. In addition to that, as long as economies of the world are still ruled by nation-states, it is the ‘right’ of each country to protect its own job opportunities.

[3] In 1986 I wrote in Khamsin journal a long article on Arab nationalism and the Arab-Israeli conflict. I mentioned there that not only military struggle against Zionist regime and its supporters could liberate Palestine, but economy is a great weapon, especially oil. In case of having a radical Arab regime, this regime is able to decide its policy towards any country according that county’s relationship with Israel. This economic pressure might in the long run help as much as or even more than military struggle especially if there will be an Arab nuclear bomb challenging that of the Zionist regime.