A fake tutorial in development!
By Azwell Banda:






WE Africans in general, and Zambians in particular, after the gruelling past three decades of intensive neo-liberal rubbish, must be wary of all those who want to teach us how to become good capitalists.

During the past 14 years, Chiluba, and now Mwanawasa, have done almost everything under the sun, to return us as a country to a fully fledged open market, naked capitalist country. And the excellent results of the works of these men and their friends, both here at home and abroad, are there for all to see.

Zambia today is at the bottom of the global food chain, any which way one looks at it. While the often cited statistic is that 8 out of every 10 Zambians are desperately poor and sleep hungry everyday, the real situation is that we have whole communities, entire families, who live on next to nothing, in all the provinces of Zambia.

In our circumstances of terrible mass poverty and the non-existant state support to the majority of Zambians who badly need help, we Zambians must welcome any suggestions about how best we can struggle to pull the country out of the extremely difficulty economic and social situation we find ourselves in.

Head of delegation of the European Commission in Zambia Ambassador Henry Sprietsma, speaking recently at the signing ceremony of the financing agreement for a grant of Euros 15 million (approximately K78 billion) support to the Private Sector Development Programme (PSDP) in Zambia, said countries that had successfully developed their economies had strong private sectors.

Sprietsma also said better-managed and well-developed private enterprises stimulate competitiveness, corporate governance, industrial quality, application of latest science and technology results, improved banking services, economic reforms and cross-border trade and foreign capital flows.

He is reported to have further said that the cooperation between the public and private sectors should be enhanced in order to allow the latter to accelerate economic development and create wealth, and that the private sector was not only a larger contributor to the revenue creation but more importantly that it was an engine for economic development through job and wealth creation.

Crucially, and very frankly, head of delegation of the European Commission in Zambia Henry Sprietsma said We perceive the private sector as the dominant and most performing organising principle for any economic activity, where private ownership is a salient input factor, where free markets and transparent competition drive allocation of scarce financial resources and where private initiative and risk-taking set activities in motion.

This was all very faithfully reported in the state owned Times of Zambia newspaper.

Now, it has been quite some time since when I last had a most straight forward tutorial in why we are poor, in the manner that Sprietsma delivered his tutorial to Zambians. So, we have not successfully developed our Zambian economy because we have no strong private sector.

What is the private sector? By private sector is meant capitalists those men and women who engage in business purely for profits, nothing else. These men and women are driven by private greed, private gain, by the desire to make money for themselves. Paraphrased, or correctly stated then, Sprietsma is saying Zambia has not successfully developed its economy because we do not have strong capitalists.

Sprietsma is perfectly right, and he should know better. The history of the development of successful European capitalist economies (private sector driven economies) is full of bloodshed, rapine, looting, wars, slavery, imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and today neo-liberlism. It is this rich history of war and bloodshed which has produced the success Sprietsma talks about, in economies with a strong private sector.

It is this accumulated history of violence at the behest of private accumulation, private greed, or simply put capitalism - which has led to the extremely strong private sectors in Europe and the United States.

The extremely lethal, sophisticated and advanced weapons of mass destruction in the possession of European countries and the United States are a living testimony of what it takes to become, and sustain, being a genuinely successfully developed economy, if it is to be driven by a strong private sector.

Can we Zambians take that route? I do not think it is desirable, possible, and certainly not wise to do so. In the first place, Europe and the US will not let us overtake them, anyway. We certainly must craft a completely different development path, from this bloody one.

It is wrong to teach us how to develop a strong private sector without simultaneously informing us about the inevitable real bloody history of successful capitalism. If you do this, you give us half the story. Capitalism was never crafted in an awareness workshop it is created everyday in the battle fields of production factories - where billions of workers all over the world are ruthlessly exploited by those who have the money to do so.

Of course, it is true that well-developed private enterprises stimulate competitiveness, corporate governance, industrial quality, application of latest science and technology results, improved banking services, economic reforms and cross-border trade and foreign capital flows all to the benefit, and in the interest of the private sector, the capitalists. Workers and the majority of the population receive the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich capitalist, from all this development.

Is the private sector (real capitalists) an engine for economic development through job and wealth creation? This is what Sprietsma wants us to believe. This is not the whole truth of the capitalist class, or the private sector, cannot exist without its double, its twin the working class, in all its diverse glory. And what is development anyway?

From lecturers in universities and colleges to the lowest paid manual labourers on a bad farm, the money in the hands of capitalists is useless if it can not set in motion the many connected actions which workers must undertake to produce even the simplest of products and services. The real engine of development, therefore, is people and their needs in life the working class not the fat capitalists or so-called private sector.

The development Sprietsma is taking about occurs when capitalists are able to exploit labour, to exploit other human beings for profits.
Real development occurs when peoples potentials are realised, freedom expanded, and therefore life is increased. This is not possible under conditions of capitalist/private sector exploitation.

I must thank Sprietsma for putting his capitalist case so well. He said: We perceive the private sector as the dominant and most performing organising principle for any economic activity, where private ownership is a salient input factor, where free markets and transparent competition drive allocation of scarce financial resources and where private initiative and risk-taking set activities in motion!

There rarely is ever any clearer defence of capitalism, of private greed, than this, these days. Capitalism is seen here as the most dominant (remember the violent path it has travelled to attain this dominant position) and most performing organising principle (of course, if you have no job you are as good as dead, which is why so many unemployed Zambians are dying like flies in October!).

There is that God of private ownership the one who leads to bloody wars, looting, imperialism, colonialism, and raping; and in whose name the capitalist are willing to loose their lives. For easy reading, these days wherever you find private ownership simply read private greed. It is the naked truth.

This waffle about Free markets, transparent competition drive allocation of scarce financial resources and where private initiative and risk-taking set activities in motion has become a capitalist mantra we all must chant, in the poor world. There is no such thing as free markets. Capitalists always control and manipulate markets, and prices.

We all know, for example, how the World Trade Organisation is controlled and manipulated by the powerful capitalists of powerful capitalist countries the illusion of transparent competition is just that, a sick illusion. The rich secretly plot and conceal vital statistics and information, about free markets.

When they cannot do this, they go to war. They fix agreements too, through intimidation, corruption and other forms of lethal threats, to poor countries and among themselves.

In our dire social and economic circumstances, there is something sadly very deadly in the assertion that competition drives allocation of scarce financial resources.

Because our babies cannot compete effectively against the financial demands of the fat capitalists, they die from want of simple foods and medicines, in our government hospitals.

This was one hell of a fake tutorial in economic development, from the EC. We deserve better, please.

bandaazwell@yahoo.com


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