Institutionalised Violence in Europe

One of the best moments during my visit to Latin America came during a visit to a project celebrating the life of Dario Santillan. Following the economic disasters of shock-tactic neoliberalism under Menem he was one of the heroic young people known as piquiteros who both resisted and responded with hope and in solidarity. Dario was killed trying to protect his friend Maximiliano Kosteki who was under police fire, as shown in the famous image of him. As part of our exploration of the solidarity economy in Argentina we visited the Frente Popular Dario Santillan where Dario worked and where his comrades continue their emancipatory economic activity and keep his memory alive.

Th visited also produced for me one of the funniest moments of the trip. To raise funds the comrades sell t-shirts that they make on site. Finding the design but not in the colour I wanted I actually heard myself asking 'Can I have Capitalism Kills in the purple please?' I am now the proud possessor of said t-shirt. In the global consumer society my wish is their command, even in a ramshackle printworks in an Argentinian barrio.

One of the things that makes Latin American politics so fascinating to Western radicals is that the oppositions are so much more explicit than they are in the late capitalist countries where we have a system of Danegeld and consumption-based narcotics to undermine our dissent and soothe our sense of powerlessness. In Argentina and Brazil the economic injustice and the violent struggle between capital and labour is still visible.

But it was also in this continent that Catholic social teaching evolved into the idea of 'institutionalised violence', to describe a situation where the institutions of the state defend a situation of such inequality that it stunts and shortens human lives. In the statement from their conference in Medellin in 1968 the Latin American bishops defined institutionalised violence as existing:

'when, because of a structural deficiency of industry and agriculture, of national and international economy, of cultural and political life, "whole towns lack necessities, live in such dependence as hinders all initiative and responsibility as well as every possibility for cultural promotion and participation in social and political life," thus violating fundamental rights.'

Just as labour control through debt crisis and public-sector destruction through austerity began in Latin America and travelled across the Atlantic, including during the Menemismo that Darian fought to resist, so evidence of institutionalised violence is now emerging in Europe. Leading academics have found early evidence of the destructive health effects of cuts in government spending and the psychological and physical impacts of recession.

In Greece the incidence of HIV has doubled since 2011 and the country has also experienced its first malaria outbreak for many years. The book, called The Body Economic, concludes that austerity kills, although the body-count will never be laid at the door of the politicians and bankers responsible.

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Inside the World Trade System: Personal

The idea of travelling on a cargo ship seems so far-fetched that the only way to deal with it was to make the plan work on paper and then go through with it without thinking too much about the personal implications. I had to leave myself entirely open to what might happen, since I had nothing to base my expectations on. Various jokes were made about the likely behaviour of the Filipino crew, jokes that turned out to be wildly inaccurate and probably racist too.

What I discovered on board was the international division of labour in shipping, or perhaps what we might more accurately call the ethnic segmentation of the marine labour market. On our ship the officers were East European and the crew were Filipino, with only a few exceptions. The senior crew had trained during the communist era, learning skills that would then enable them to drive the capitalist trade machine. They welcomed us into the small community and shared with us all their knowledge of the ways of the sea and the workings of their ship. We stood on the bridge watching the pilot guide us into and out of some of the world's large container ports. It was a remarkable experience.

Our best friend was the 'reefer man', largely because he had the best English of the officers. Every container ship needs a skilled mechanic and electrician to maintain the health of the 'reefers' that bring us our bananas. The word 'reefer' comes from the fact that these containers (the white ones you see on lorries) are refrigerated, having their own cooling system driven by electricity. Every day in the tropics Valentin, the reefer man on our ship, had to go down to what he called 'hell', the container hold, where temperatures rose to around 50 degrees, to check that the containers were functioning.

The days of joining the merchant marine to see the world are over. When the ships are in port the corporate owners are losing money, so the crew are busier than ever, working with the robots and automatic cranes to load and unload containers as quickly as possible. They rarely leave the ship while in port except to work on the quay; during my 14 days at sea I was the only person who left the port area. At sea the officers and crew work on regardless of conditions and had some horror stories to tell as soon as the waves reached above 4 metres. They were brave in this physical endurance, but also in the mental endurance of months spent in a tiny space far away from family and friends.

I know that my perspective on trade has been changed and that I will feel differently when I see a container on the road or see the imported fruit in the supermarket. We are the consumers of the world: we earn money in other ways to pay people from countries where wages are lower to do the heavy lifting to support our lifestyles. Every time you eat a banana or a melon you rely on that huge energy-intensive system where human lives are spent in sad and lonely work.
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Inside the World Trade System: Financial

Leaving Natal on the north-eastern coast of Brazil for Europe we had expected to enjoy tropical fruits at every meal, but we were to be disappointed. The chief cook, we were told, bought all fruit in that well-known fruit-growing paradise The Netherlands. The absurdity was made worse by the fact that our cargo included 140 'reefers' or refrigerated containers, many of which contained fruit bound for the European market.

We questioned the captain who told us that fruit is cheaper in Europe than in Brazil--even tropical fruit. He told us of carrying a cargo of melons across the Atlantic on his own ship only to discover that the price for the fruit was less after the voyage of some 8,000 miles. This is a clear example of the inequities of the global trading system which ensures that while the Brazilians grow the fruit the profits are made in Europe. It is also evidence of how global inequality is now the result of currency fixing, since the Brazilian real is high relative to the Euro.

The captain also told us about a voyage where he had carried grain to the port of Philadelphia, where he unloaded it into a silo and took his ship into dock. The following morning he returned to the same silo to reload the grain, which he then carried back across the Atlantic to be sold as US grain.

Maersk are the lords of the sea, with the largest fleet of the fastest ships. This Danish based company has ruled the waves since 1996 and has its own designated areas in the large ports. All shipping gives way to their monstrous vessels, which are also some of the fastest on the sea. You will know the other companies that control this vast trade in containers from reading the logos on the sides of lorries: Hamburg Sud and Hapag Lloyd (both German owned), Marfret and CMA-CGM (both French owned).

The logistics of the global trading system revolve around Rotterdam, which is where the world's container fleet stop for refitting and for purchasing supplies. It seems that the trade wars between the Dutch and the British that began in the 17th-century have been won by the Dutch although perhaps only because the British decided that to actually touch the physical aspects of trade was beneath them and focused instead on the finance and insurance. Although the purpose of containerisation was to mechanise and remove the need for (unionised) labour, the number of jobs that have been lost to the UK is vast:  the Port of Rotterdam website estimates that 87,000 people are directly employed there. the multipliers are clearly also significant. Britain is now responding by dredging a huge area of land near Tilbury for the creation of a vast container port called London Gateway.
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Inside the World Trade System: Technical

The lengthy hiatus in posts is the result of my spending two weeks aboard a cargo ship without an Internet connection. The lack of connection was an interesting experience in itself, but seeing the global trading system from the inside was even more remarkable.

Before boarding the 170m vessel that would bring us back to Europe from Brazil I had seen the extraordinary documentary 'The Box that Changed the Britain' so knew something of what to expect from the vast logistical complexity and technological sophistication of the global trading system. But seeing the huge machines lift 40-tonne containers as though they were match-boxes was truly impressive.

The first thing we learned was metaphorical rather than technological. I cannot remember now many times I have been told that things cannot be changed because it would be like 'trying to turn around a supertanker'. Well, from the vantage-point of a ship of similar size I can tell you that it can be turned around in little more than its own length, as we were when leaving our berth in Natal. Somehow this proof that the metaphor is nonsense cheered me immensely, undermining another ideological block to the rapid structural changes we need to make to the global economy.

The largest port we visited was Rotterdam, which is actually three ports in one with another one under construction and a third on the drawing-board for 2020. Altogether these ports span 50km of land, much of it reclaimed from the sea, it is only the fourth largest port in the world. Our ship, the MV Homere was 'small' at just 170m long. We saw ships three times the size, capable of carrying 12,000 TEU and there are plans to build ships nearly twice this size. Physically this is overwhelming but the energy it takes to construct and maintain such facilities is horrifying.

The reason for my cargo-ship passage was to hitch a ride on a voyage that was already committed and so reduce my carbon impact. Although this may have worked at a personal level it was reduced to absurdity by the flights taken by the 23 crew members who made my journey possible. The shipping company that employs them flies them home after each 42-day contract from wherever they are to wherever their home is. Since our crew had more Filipino crew than Romanians (the two countries that make up the majority of the world's fleets) this meant at least 15 return flights to Asia to enable my air-free passage plus a slightly smaller number of European flights.

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Solidarity Economy in Brazil

One of our most stimulating meetings during the Latin American tour was at the social economy incubator (ITCP: Incubadora Tecnologica de Co-operativas Populares) at the Universidade de São Paulo. The incubator was established in 1998 by Paul Singer, who now works as the minister for social economy as part of the federal government. We met with Diogo Tsukumo, who will shortly be moving to Brasilia to work with Singer, and Reinaldo Pacheco da Costa, who is a professor in the engineering department.

ITCP is engaged in developing small businesses in the favelas along the lines of genuine auto-gestion, including the production of soap and herbs and services such as cleaning. They support the businesses with finance, capacity-building and networking. The history is that in 1998 a group of Singer's students discussed the economic situation with unemployment at 25% and suggested new forms of working, especially co-operatives. They explored the history of co-operatives in Brazilian agriculture and found that they were really consortia of producers and not economically empowering for the poor. They wanted to encourage the development of real grass-roots autonomous co-operativas and so set up the incubator.

Their well-meaning intention was to to do what they call 'extension work' in an urban context on the basis that, as a public university, USP has a duty to create knowledge in collaboration with society. An opportunity presented itself closer than they had imagined: one of the communities they work with is a favela right next to the university that was built by unskilled wokers who built the university! Once it was built they were out of work so the students worked with then to set up a restaurant and organised a grounds-maintenance service. They spread this model across the city and into the southern favelas.

Like many things in Brazil the scale of the solidarity economy is somewhat overwhelming. In 2007 there were 22,000 co-ops compared with 30,000 in 2011. Today there are more than SSE incubators in Brazil. They have recently worked to have a solidarity economy law passed through congress, and the level of support in terms of funding, fiscal advantages, and funded co-operative development work is also impressive.

The ideology of this grassroots economic empowerment is also somewhat unexpected. There are three main influences on the solidarity economy in Brazil:

• liberation theology;
• anarchism;
• communism.

In a synthesis that would seem impossible in any other society, in Brazil somehow they manage to create a positive synthesis between these three.

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Greens Celebrate EU Policy to Control Tax Havens

Readers of this blog will remember Green MEP Sven Giegold as a staunch campaigner against the excesses of the finance industry and for his attempt to discover the most destructive so-called 'financial product'. Now Giegold is celebrating another success: his campaigning to open up the festering sore that is the global tax system and to shine the light of transparency into the dark recesses of global tax havens appears to be contributing to change in the EU finance regime.

As Giegold writes in his newsletter:

'It is music to my ears. The finance ministers of the six largest EU countries Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Poland and Spain held a memorable press conference in Dublin on Friday night. Their requests have been put forward by Attac and the Tax Justice Network since their establishment more than 10 years ago: Closure of tax havens, automatic exchange of information for all income from capital, an end to the abuse of banking secrecy for tax evasion and disclosure of the real beneficiaries of companies. I have given uncountable interviews, written articles and shown presentations campaigning for the subject, and now it has all become mainstream.'

German Finance Minister Schauble, who had longed campaign to maintain banking secrecy, turned the tables during discussion in Dublin last Friday and argued for a new regime of transparency so that all data relevant for taxation purposes must automatically be made available to the tax authorities in the home country of the foreign investor. Campaigning by Greens and Socialists in the European parliament had created sufficient momentum to undermine the long pact between German finance ministers and the gnomes of Zurich who they had been sheltering. You can watch the press conference here: George Osborne's discomfiture is particularly enjoyable.

The message of the press conference is that the members of the EU will set the standard of financial transparency, and will then expect other countries to reach this standard. This would appear to be a significant challenge to the world's tax havens, at least those that rely on secrecy. Amazingly, and with no apparent irony, the agreement is called FATCA, with just a missing letter to get to the real heart of the matter.

In these days of austerity the pressure is on for all to pay their share, so we should not be immediately sure that these fine words will butter the necessary legal parsnips. It was when I heard that 'Italy has always been committed to fighting in the field of tax evasion' coming from the lips of Italian finance minister Vittorio Grilli that I wondered whether Sven was being somewhat naive. But hey ho, even hearing these suited guys who have for so long taken the side of bizniz without question talking tough on tax evasion is an enjoyable change and it looks as though even arch-nemesis of the tax cheats Richard Murphy thinks that we are getting somewhere. The race to the bottom in terms of corporate tax rates must become the next objective. 

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When is A Free Market Not a Free Market?

We have a joke in the South-West Green Party along the lines of the Monty Python sketch about the Romans but ours revolves around the question 'What has the EU ever done for us?' As someone who is critical of Europe, although not a Euro-sceptic, I am glad to be reminded that Europe has constrained the worst excesses of neoliberalism in Britain, and that much of this results from the actions of the powerful Green Group in the European Parliament. Now it looks as thought the EU is the last hope to stop the dangerous decision to build a new nuclear station at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

An article in the Guardian last month suggested that the EU Commission looks set to set up a full-scale inquiry into the massive government subsidies that are needed to encourage EDF to build at Hinkley Point in Somerset following the disastrous planning decision gave the new station the go ahead last month. Ironically, it is the hugely destructive single market regulations that this time might delay or even scupper the project, since that mythical 'level playing-field' must be ensured for all energy generators and, although EDF is not a UK company, if the UK government offers it financial incentives to build at Hinkley Point that could still contravene what is considered to be free competition.

The comment from Doug Parr, policy director for Greenpeace, is most pertinent: 'The government wouldn't need state aid approval for nuclear if it wasn't trying to subsidise a risky technology that could wind up costing more than the renewable alternative'. The misguided policy to give life support to a dying and obsolete industry is also a dangerous diversion from the urgent investments we need to make in the energy generation of the future, the renewable forms of energy generation such as windpower, wavepower and solar that are clean and do not damage the health of current and future generations.

Meanwhile, South-West MEP Graham Watson has told the somewhat ironically titled Business Green that he supports subsidies for nuclear in the South-West. Following the change of direction of the party, led by Energy Secretary Ed Davey, Watson 'defended the UK government's right to offer hefty state aid support for new nuclear reactors'. He argued that the nuclear industry has a fair case for subsidies because fossil fuel suppliers also receive generous government support. To which we can only suggest that two wrongs do not make a right, and when the risks are as high as they are with nuclear any price is too high a price to pay.
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