Latin America and global capitalism

Race and Class

Volumn 40, Issue 2-3, 1998, Pages 128-131

  Robinson, William I ^a  

^a NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33750796752     PISSN: 03063968     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. For a summary, see William I. Robinson, 'Globalisation: nine theses of our epoch', Race anil Class (Vol. 38, no. 2,1996), pp. 13-31.
2. For a review of some of the debates on globalisation, see Roger Burbach and William I. Robinson, The.//« de siècle debate: globalisation as epochal shift', forthcoming in Science ami Society.
3. Neo-liberalism is the specific mechanism that adjusts national and regional economies to the global economy by creating the conditions, including the appropriate macroeconomic and policy environment, the legal framework, and so on, for internal productive reorganisation and insertion into the global economy. These themes are analysed in William I. Robinson, 'Maldevelopment in Central America: globalisation and social change', Development and Change (Vol. 29, 1998), pp. 467-97.
4. For analysis of neo-liberal adjustment in Latin America, see also Duncan Green, Silent Revolutions: the rise of market economics in Latin America (London, Cassell/Latin America Bureau, 1995).
5. On this point, see Green, Silent Revolutions: the Rise of Market Economics in Latin America ibid.;
6. Robinson, Silent Revolutions: the Rise of Market Economics in Latin America ibid.
7. See James A. Wilkie (ed.), Statistical s for Latin America (SALA), (Los Angeles, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1995), Vol. 31.
8. World Bank, World Development Report (Washington, D.C. and New York, World Bank and Oxford University Press), 1991 and 1997 reports.
9. World Development Report Ibid., reports for 1991 and 1992.
10. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Economic Survey of Latin America anil the Caribbean, (Santiago, Chile, United Nations, annual reports from 1983-1996).
11. Economic Survey of Latin America Anil the Caribbean Ibid.
12. For example, of S91 billion that flowed into Mexico between 1990 and 1993, S61 billion was in such financial portfolio investment and only S 16.6 billion was in direct investment. See Carlos Marichal, 'The vicious cycles of Mexican debt', NACLA Report on the America! (Vol. XXXI, no. 3, Nov/Dec. 1997), p. 28.
13. For discussion, see also, Valpy Fitzgerald, 'Asia's financial crisis: what it can teach us', ENVIO (Vol. 17, no. 200, March 1998), pp. 33-38;
14. Henry Veltmeyer, 'Latin America in the New World Order', The Canadian Journal of Sociology (Vol. 22, no. 2, 1997), pp. 197-242.
15. According to ECLAC, op. cit., reports 1985 and 1994-95, Latin America's external debt grew as follows: 1980 1985 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 230 374 425 442 457 475 506 533_l growth rate of this debt is as follows: 1979-81 19S2-3 19S4-90 1991-3 1994 22.9 11.2_____3.2_____4.6_____5.3_isis, see the NACLA Report on the America dedicated to this theme, 'Still paying: ten years after the debt crisis' (Vol. XXXI, no. 3, Nov/Dec. 1997).
16. This does not mean that East Asia does not face its own social crisis and contradictions under globalisation, including the breakdown of pre-globalisation national models of accumulation, the integration of local elites into the transnational elite and the subordination, along with it, of national accumulation logics to the logic of global accumulation, new patterns of polarised accumulation, and so on. But such a discussion is the subject of another article.
17. Space constraints limit discussion, but note that the principal contradiction among dominant classes worldwide under globalisation is between national-based fractions of capital and transnational fractions. This contradiction has, in fact, become politicised in many countries of Latin America and the world, and helps to explain many visible conjunctural disputes among ruling' classes and states within and between countries.
18. The following table reveals the dramatic plunge in real wages in Latin America: Evolution of Urban Real Minimum Wage in Latin America (select countries/index: 1980= 100) 79S37m 7m 7m TPP/7992 Argentina 137 110 42 40 56 48 Brazil 96 89 72 53 60 57 Chile 94 73 80 88 96 100 Colombia 108 114 111 108 104 102 Dominican Republic 81 86 78 65 66 80 Ecuador 64 65 47 39 34 33 El Salvador 77 58 37 35 34 35 Guatemala 115 69 68 48 39 35 Mexico 77 65 51 46 44 42 Paraguay 94 108 138 132 126 116 Peru 81 57 25 23 16 16 Urueuay 87 89 78 69 62 60 Venezuela74 90 73 59 55 61 Source: SALA, op. cit.
19. See World Bank, Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America: the story of the 1980s (Washington, D.C, World Bank, 1997).
20. See Comision Economica para America Latina (CEPAL), Panorama Social de America Latina (Santiago, Chile, CEPAL/United Nations, various reports).
21. 'Great reforms, nice growth, but where are the jobs?'. The Economist (21 March 1998), pp. 37-38.
22. Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America, op. cit.
23. Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America Ibid.
24. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report 1995 (New York, Oxford University Press/UNDP, 1995).
25. Poverty and Income Distribution in Latin America, op. cit.
26. See David Barkin, Irene Ortiz, and Fred Rosen, 'Globalisation and resistance: the remaking of Mexico', NACLA Report on the Americas (Vol. XXX, no. 4, Jan/Feb. 1997), pp. 14-27.
27. For detailed discussion of the issues raised in this section, see William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: globali:ation, US intervention, and hegemony (Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996).
28. Polyarchy does not bring an end to class domination but only a change in the mechanisms for mediating relations between dominant and subordinate groups. An effectively functioning polyarchic system (such as that in place in the United States) does not mean an end to coercion but a more selective application than under a dictatorship and that such repression becomes 'legalised' (legitimated) by civilian authorities, elections, and a constitution. See Robinson, ibid.
29. For discussion on these incidents, see Latinamerica Press, 'Special issue: the face of human rights in the '90s' (Vol. 27, no. 10, 23 March, 1995);
30. 'Pope's visit raises hopes, frustrations' (Vol. 29, no. 37,29 October, 1997).
31. See Green, Pope's Visit Raises Hopes, Frustrations op. cit.;
32. John Wallon and David Seddon, Free Markets anil Food Riots: the politics of global adjustment (Oxford, Blackwell, 1994).
33. For an extended analysis of this new 'social movement' unionism in the context of the restructuring of the global working class, see Kirn Moody, Workers in a Lean World: unions in international economy (London, Verso, 1997).
34. To be sure, many of these Left organisations have suffered internal fissures and outright splits, often between more radical fractions and those willing to accommodate to neo-Iiberalism. The radicals in Causa R, for instance, broke off and formed the Homeland For All (PPT) party in 1997. The Lavalas Family is itself the result of the splintering of the Lavalas Political Organization. And so on.
35. For instance, the PRO in Mexico, the FREPASO in Argentina, the FSLN in Nicaragua, Lavalas in Haiti and other groups, have not challenged neo-liberalism in their programmes put forward during major elections in the late 1990s, and in fact were careful to allay the fears of transnational capital in these programmes. Space constraints limit discussion, but the experience of Cuba in recent years - the survival of the revolution and its ongoing transformation, even as it has been forced to integrate into world capitalism and despite its internal problems - should be studied for the lessons it may offer, and I do not concur with the assessment of some progressives that the Cuban revolution now be dismissed. For that assessment, see, e.g., Roger Burbach, 'Socialism is dead; long live socialism', NACLA Report on the -4H;mc(7i(Vol.XXXI,no.3,Nov7Dec. 1997), pp. 15-20.
36. For example, see Fernando Calderon, Afoviinientos Sociales y Politico: la decada de los ochenta en Latinamerica (Mexico City, Siglo XXI, 1995).
37. For instance, cross-border organising has been extended and systematised in the wake of multinational US-Canadian-Mexican trade union coordination against the NAFTA in 1993. In Central America, community-based social movements have formed the Central American Federation of Community Organisations (FCOC) to coordinate strategy and action throughout the Isthmus, and the peasant movements in South America have formed the Latin American Peasant Confederation (CLOC).