By John Leschak
Approximately 2.7 billion of the total 6.5 billion people (41 percent) in this world are compelled to live in abject poverty on less than $2 per day, while 24,000 people starve to death daily. Many Americans do not think world poverty is “our problem,” but the members of ONE know better. I laud the efforts of the University’s ONE chapter in educating the student body, and I share their goal of ridding the world of poverty. However, even though we share a common goal, we may disagree on the question of tactics.
I fail to see how taking pictures of puppies addresses global poverty. This “activism” bears no relationship to concrete political realities. To the members of ONE, the questions you need to ask yourselves are “Can we end oppression before creating a just society?” and “What is the nature of this ‘just society?'” The society in which we live and the social relations within it function as capitalistic and opposed to the tenets of justice. Yet, ONE’s platform lacks any criticism of capitalism. How can ONE demand to end world poverty without also demanding an end to global capitalism? The reason for the poverty of Third World countries is not inherent in their culture but is the legacy of Western imperialism, which is a stage in the development of capitalism.
Free competition is the basic feature of capitalism. The emergence of large corporations in the developed world displaces capitalist, free competition beyond national borders. Thus, free competition in the era of large-scale corporations becomes competition over the division of the markets and resources of the third world. Imperialism is the colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world. The Iraq War, being fought to give control of Iraq’s oil resources to oil corporations, is an imperialist war.
In 2004, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) entered into an agreement with the United States’ puppet government of Iyad Allawi to forgive 80 percent of Iraq’s debt. Iraq owed the World Bank and IMF $121 billion. Debt cancellation is one of the primary objectives of the ONE campaign, and I am sure they were jubilant over this agreement.
However, while debt cancellation is good news, it comes with strings attached: adherence to “structural adjustment programs.” Although these programs are alleged to be stepping stones to economic expansion and development in the Third World, such “progress” has been waged at the expense of the general social welfare. IMF programs in Iraq and other countries force governments to make severe cuts in public spending on child healthcare, education and environmental programs. The only Latin American country that continued to improve its child mortality rate throughout the ’80’s, Cuba, was isolated from the IMF/World Bank’s economic development policies.
Although the Jubilee Act (HR-2634), which is the current focus of ONE’s lobbying, prohibits harmful economic conditions such as the mandated privatization of water and electricity, as well as freezing the salaries of healthcare workers and teachers, it is na’ve to expect Congress to pass such legislation, especially considering the recent passage of the free-trade agreement with Peru, which contained no such protections. World poverty will only be eliminated when we do away with capitalism and imperialism.
John Leschak is a first-year law student. You may e-mail him at [email protected].