Debt and Development Coalition Ireland - Resources - The Millennium Development
Goals
The Millennium Development Goals: A Critique from the South by Samir
Amin
In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, the 191 member
countries in the United Nations agreed to a set of eight Millennium Development
Goals for the world's poor nations. These goals, targeted for fulfillment by
2015, have since become the fulcrum for public policy discussions and actions
concerning economic and social development. Meetings and conferences on the
goals under the auspices of the United Nations and the governing bodies of member
countries have been held regularly since 2001, most recently at the 2005 Millennium+5
Summit. The aim of these meetings and conferences has been to reiterate the
goals and to reaffirm the commitment of countries to them, as well as to assess
the extent to which progress has been made toward their fulfillment. Most of
the Millennium Development Goals may seem at first sight unobjectionable. Nevertheless,
they were not the result of an initiative from the South itself, but were pushed
primarily by the triad (the United States, Europe, and Japan), and were co-sponsored
by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development. All of this has raised the question of
whether they are mainly ideological cover (or worse) for neoliberal initiatives.
Samir Amin's systematic and revealing critique of the Millennium Development
Goals is therefore of the utmost significance. The goals themselves are appended
to this article.
The declaration adopted by the general assembly is available at:
http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.pdf
The Millennium Development Goals: A Critique from the
South by Samir Amin
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by acclamation in September
2000 by a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly called "United
Nations Millennium Declaration." This procedural innovation, called "consensus,"
stands in stark contrast to UN tradition, which always required that texts of
this sort be carefully prepared and discussed at great length in committees.
This simply reflects a change in the international balance of power. The United
States and its European and Japanese allies are now able to exert hegemony over
a domesticated UN. In fact, Ted Gordon, well-known consultant for the CIA, drafted
the millennium goals!
The claim is made that the MDGs follow up on the conclusions reached in the
cycle of summits organized in the 1990s. That's going a bit too far. The preparatory
meetings to these summits had tried something new by organizing assemblies of
so-called civil society representatives parallel to the official conferences
where only state representatives were seated. Although things had been organized
to reserve the best places for the charitable NGO's, which are beneficiaries
of financial support from large foundations and states, and largely to exclude
popular organizations fighting for social and democratic progress (authentic
popular organizations are always poor by definition), the voices of the latter
were sometimes heard. In the official conferences themselves, the points of
view of the triad and of the South often diverged. It is often forgotten that
the triad's proposals were rejected in Seattle not only in the streets, but
also by states from the South. It is also important to remember that the reconstruction
(or at least the first signs of reconstruction) of a group (if not a front)
of the South took place at Doha. All of these divergences were smoothed away
by the supposed synthesis of the MDGs. Instead of forming a genuine committee
for the purpose of discussing the document, a draft was prepared in the backroom
of some obscure agency. The only common denominator is limited to the expression
of the pious hope of reducing poverty. In what follows, I will examine how these
goals are formulated and the conditions required to reach them.
The Official Millennium 'Development' Goals
Eight sets of goals were defined for the next fifteen years (2000-15). The accomplishment
of each of the targets that specifically define them is based on measurable
indicators, generally altogether acceptable in themselves.
Each of these goals is certainly commendable (who would disapprove of reducing
poverty or improving health?). Nevertheless, their definition is often extremely
vague. Moreover, debates concerning the conditions required to reach the goals
are often dispensed with. It is assumed without question that liberalism is
perfectly compatible with the achievement of the goals.
Goal 1: Reduce extreme poverty and hunger by half.
This is nothing but an empty incantation as long as the policies that generate
poverty are not analyzed and denounced and alternatives proposed.
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education.
UNESCO devoted itself to this goal beginning in 1960, hoping to achieve it in
ten years. Progress was made during the two decades that followed, but ground
has been lost since. The almost obvious relationship between this lost ground,
the reduction in public expenditures, and the privatization of education is
not examined in fact nor in theory.
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women.
The equality in question is reduced to access to education and the empowerment
is measured by the proportion of wage-earning women. The neoconservative Christian
fundamentalists of the United States, Poland and elsewhere, the Muslims of Saudi
Arabia, Pakistan and other countries, and the fundamentalist Hindus agree on
eliminating any reference to the rights of women and the family. Without discussion,
declarations on this question are only empty talk.
Goals 4, 5, and 6: (Concerning health) reduce infant mortality by two-thirds
and maternal mortality by three-fourths; stop the spread of pandemic diseases
(AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis).
The means implemented in these areas are assumed to be completely compatible
with extreme privatization and total respect for the "intellectual property
rights" of the transnational corporations and, curiously enough, are recommended
in Goal 8 concerning the supposed partnership between North and South!
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability.
A general principle is asserted ("to integrate the principles of sustainable
development" into national and global policies), but no definite content
is made explicit. Moreover, any mention of the refusal of the United States
to promote conditions necessary for environmental protection (i.e., their rejection
of the Kyoto Protocol) is carefully avoided.
It is presupposed, then, that the rationality of capitalist economic strategy
is compatible with the requirements of "sustainable development."
That is obviously not the case since capitalist strategy is founded on the concept
of the rapid discounting of economic time (with the timespan governing investment
decisions never exceeding a few years at maximum), while the questions raised
here relate to the long term. The specific goals are thus in fact reduced to
nothing much: reduce by half the population having no access to clean water,
improve living conditions in the slums-two ordinary goals of simple public health.
The criteria for measuring the results (CO2 emissions, change in the ozone layer)
undoubtedly make it possible to monitor the degradation of the environment,
but certainly not to curb it. Note the strange timidity of the writers concerning
biodiversity (there is no question of infringing on the greater rights of the
transnationals!): they propose only "to observe" the evolution of
land areas protected from the destruction of biodiversity! But above all not
to stop it!
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development.
The writers straightaway establish an equivalence between this "partnership"
and the principles of liberalism by declaring that the objective is to establish
an open, multilateral commercial and financial system! The partnership thus
becomes synonymous with submission to the demands of the imperialist powers.
Progress in access to the market is measured by the share of exports in the
GDP (an increase in this ratio is thus synonymous with progress regardless of
the social price!), progress in the conditions of nondiscrimination by the reduction
in subsidies.
To carry out this "liberal partnership" would require, in the end,
nothing more than the fight against poverty (the only "social" goal
allowed). To this is added, like hair in soup, "good governance,"
a phrase favored by the U.S. establishment that is never defined and is taken
up uncritically by the Europeans and the institutions of the global system (UN,
World Bank, etc.).
Many targets are added to this completely contradictory text, which fill in
its gaps and offer recommendations. I am singling out five of them for further
examination:
Enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries.
In fact, the program implemented in this regard for the heavily indebted poor
countries imposes a genuinely colonial tutelage on them. That the governments
of the countries in question have internalized the abandonment of their sovereignty
changes nothing. Indeed, in the past, heads of state had sometimes abdicated
in the face of colonization. But such abdication had never been accepted as
legitimate by the peoples involved.
Deal comprehensively with developing countries' debt problems through national
and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term.
This exhortation is not accompanied by any further information concerning what
is to follow (international negotiations? within what framework?) or the principles
on which such a measure should be founded. However, certain reasonable things
can be said on the subject, such as the necessity for an audit that makes it
possible to classify the debts (immoral, illegal, acceptable...) and an elaboration
of legislation that makes it possible to define for the future the legal conditions
of debts and the creation of courts charged with deciding the law in this area.
It is perfectly obvious that all of this is ignored by the writers of the MDGs!
In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable
essential drugs in developing countries.
The significance of the generous intention to provide access to drugs is immediately
nullified by the specification that this would be "in cooperation with
the pharmaceutical industry," precisely those who prohibit anyone from
calling their abusive monopoly into question!
In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies-especially
information and communications technologies.
Here again an intention is subjected to a condition that empties it of any meaning-"in
cooperation with the private sector"!
More generous official development assistance for countries committed to
poverty reduction.
Is there a better comedy than this proposal, endlessly repeated for the last
fifty years by those who are responsible for implementing it and yet never do
it?
The Real Goals of Dominant Capital
A critical examination of the formulation of the goals as well as the definition
of the means that would be required to implement them can only lead to the conclusion
that the MDGs cannot be taken seriously. A litany of pious hopes commits no
one. And when the expression of these pious hopes is accompanied by conditions
that essentially eliminate the possibility of their becoming reality, the question
must be asked: are not the authors of the document actually pursuing other priorities
that have nothing to do with "poverty reduction" and all the rest?
In this case, should the exercise not be described as pure hypocrisy, as pulling
the wool over the eyes of those who are being forced to accept the dictates
of liberalism in the service of the quite particular and exclusive interests
of dominant globalized capital?
Besides, the MDGs cannot truly be taken seriously by their promoters in the
imperialist triad, which implements them only when it is convenient and ignores
them otherwise, nor by states in the South that, not wanting to take any risks
at the present time, refrain from formally rejecting the proposals. In another
time, a text of this type would not have been adopted and the states of the
South would have, at least, imposed a compromise.
The MDGs are part of a series of discourses that are intended to legitimize
the policies and practices implemented by dominant capital and those who support
it, i.e., in the first place the governments of the triad countries, and secondarily
governments in the South. The real goals, openly recognized as such, are:
1. Extreme privatization, aimed at opening new fields for the expansion of capital.
Such privatization calls into question the existence of national state property,
which should be liquidated on open markets, by foreign capital among others.
Beyond that, privatization aims at eliminating public services, particularly
in education and health. Here, the ideas developed in the MDGs concerning the
elimination of illiteracy and the improvement of health lose all credibility.
The privatization of property and access to important natural resources, in
particular petroleum and water, facilitates the pillage of these resources for
the wastefulness of the triad, reducing the discourse of sustainable development
to pure, empty rhetoric.
2. The generalization of the private appropriation of agricultural land.
Just as with agricultural and food products, land, too, must be subjected to
the general law of the market. This general offensive aims at nothing less than
extending the policy of "enclosures" (referring to the "enclosures"
implemented in England in the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries and then extended
to the rest of Europe in the nineteenth) to the entire world. Its success would
lead to the destruction of the peasant societies that make up nearly half of
humanity. This destruction, now underway (and liberalism would like to see the
tempo accelerated), is already the major cause of pauperization in the third
world, which results in emigration from the countryside to the urban slums.
But that is of little importance, since the minority of so-called modernized
rural producers who will survive the massacre, and be subjected to the demands
of agribusiness, will produce the superprofits that the latter aspires to capture.
Nothing else matters.
3. Commercial "opening" within a context of maximum deregulation.
This is a way of lifting all obstacles to the expansion of a trade that is as
unequal as it can possibly be in conditions characterized by a polarized world
development and a growing concentration of power in the hands of the transnationals
that control the trade in raw materials and agricultural products. The example
of coffee illustrates the disastrous social effects of this systematic choice.
Twenty years ago, all coffee producers were paid nine billion dollars and all
the consumers paid out twenty billion for this same coffee. Today these two
figures are respectively six and thirty billion. The gap between them is the
gigantic profit margin captured by a handful of oligopolistic intermediaries.
It goes without saying that in these conditions campaigns in favor of so-called
fair trade, even when their promoters are moved by the most impeccable moral
intentions, are not up to the challenge. The correction of these deteriorating
terms of trade for the producers can only be obtained by the political intervention
of government authorities-both national legislation and international negotiations
and legislation.
4. The equally uncontrolled opening up of capital movement.
The fallacious pretext advanced is that deregulation would make it possible
to attract foreign capital. Yet it is well known that China, which attracts
more of this capital than other countries, has maintained a tighter control
over foreign enterprises. Elsewhere, direct foreign investments are targeted
at little more than pillaging natural resources. In fact, the IMF imposed the
opening of "capital accounts" in order to facilitate the indebtedness
of the United States, allow speculative capital to engage in pillaging raids,
and subject the currencies of the South to systematic undervaluation. This undervaluation,
in turn, makes it possible for local assets in these countries to be purchased
for next to nothing, to the evident advantage of the transnational corporations.
5. States are forbidden in principle from interfering in economic affairs.
Internally, the state is reduced to narrow police functions. Internationally,
it is reduced to guaranteeing debt service, as the first (and almost exclusive!)
priority in public expenditures. The debt is hardly anything more than a particularly
primitive form of exploitation and pillage.
This model is presented as being without an alternative because it is imposed
by the "objective" requirements of globalization, which negate the
power of national states. In reality, the causal relation is just the reverse:
this particular form (among other possible ones) of globalization is allotted
the objective of destroying the ability of nations and states to resist the
expansion of transnational capital.
That is why all these principles, openly adopted by the writers of the MDGs,
can only produce what I have elsewhere described as apartheid on a world scale,
reproducing and deepening global polarization. As a counterpoint, the restoration
of a margin of autonomy for states and the recognition of the legitimacy of
state intervention (the definition even of democracy) within a multipolar perspective
are the inescapable conditions required to attain the social objectives proclaimed
by the MDGs.
In fact, then, the social goals proclaimed by the MDGs do not constitute the
real goals of the whole exercise. Their supposedly democratic packaging must,
in turn, be subject to a legitimate doubt. No democracy can possibly take root
if it does not support social progress, but, instead, is associated with social
regression. This is undoubtedly the reason why the vapid term "governance"
is served up as an accompaniment to the empty rhetoric of the MDGs.
The writers of the document appear to have paid no attention to the facts. In
the course of three decades following the Second World War, the highest rate
of growth known in history took place, along with full employment and notable
upward social movement and, if not always a reduction in inequality, the stabilization
of structures aimed at more equitable income distribution. But it appears that
because the systems in existence at that time regulated markets, these procedures
were "irrational" and their results "bad." In the course
of the following three decades, accompanying the welcome deregulation, there
has been a collapse of growth, a breathtaking increase in unemployment, precariousness,
and other manifestations of pauperization, and mounting inequalities. Yet it
appears that this system is nevertheless better and more rational. That is undoubtedly
because in the preceding systems the rate of return for capital was in the range
of 4 to 8 percent and since then it has doubled, moving to between 8 and 16
percent.
The New Doctrinaire Liberalism
The central question concerns the concept of development maintained, explicitly
or implicitly, in the Millennium Development Goals. It can be formulated in
this way: In the successive globalized economic and political systems of modern
times, who was forced to adjust to whom? The subjects in question can be class
or social groups, regions or nations.
In capitalist logic founded on private property, it is capital (the firm) that
commands and employs labor. Workers do not have direct access to the means of
production, which are not used to their liking. In its global expansion, capitalism
is polarizing, that is, it is founded on asymmetrical adjustment. The peripheries
are shaped to serve the model of accumulation in the dominant centers. The ideology
of capitalism ignores the concept of substantive development, for it recognizes
only expanding markets.
It is significant that the term "development" appeared only after
the Second World War (during the colonial period, the exploitation of the colonies
was cynically spoken of), supported by the governments of the Asian and African
states that arose from national liberation movements. In this sense, the 1955
conference of Asian and African states at Bandung was the birth place of the
project of developing the new third world. It was a multidimensional project
of modernization: of the economy (through industrialization), the society, and
the state. This modernization project appears within a type of globalization
and is not at all an invitation to economic and cultural autarky. But it does
imply that in this process the North would adjust to the requirements for the
development of the South, development conceptualized as a "catching up."
Globalization in this context is then recognized as having to be the result-beyond
the conflicts-of negotiations between partners who recognize the divergence
of their interests. In Latin America, desarrollismo proposes an analogous model
of development.
At each of these steps, capitalist globalization rests on transnational social
alliances, without which the models of accumulation in the dominant centers
and dominated peripheries could not be reproduced. The "colonial"
model, challenged after the Second World War, involved the management of the
societies of the peripheries by local comprador classes of a given type (merchant
intermediaries, large landowners). The new model resulting from decolonization
involved social reforms that deprive the older comprador classes of their power
and substitute hegemonic blocs of a new type (national populist). This model
is the basis of the successes (not the failures!) of the economic and social
transformation of the third world in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. But it was
always fought-with violence-by the powers of the imperialist triad.
The turnaround in the political conjuncture beginning in the 1980s brought us
back to former times, before development, which has, in effect, been shown the
door. It is significant that the new language of the dominant economics even
abandons this term and substitutes "structural adjustment," i.e.,
adjustment of the societies and economies of the South to the requirements of
the pursuit of accumulation in the North. Simultaneously, this turnaround in
the balance of power to the benefit of capital appears everywhere-in the North
as well as the South-as a strengthening of the subjection of labor to capital.
The new doctrinaire liberalism acknowledges only expanding markets, not the
deliberate political transformation of social and economic structures.
Although imposed on the societies of the South with extreme brutality, the new
model (neocolonial some say, but the term is poor-it is really a question of
"paleo-colonial" thought) had to be clothed in a discourse that gives
it the appearance of legitimacy. It was necessary to reintroduce the word "development"
(as in the Millennium Development Goals) but empty it of all meaning. This was
done by reducing it to the fight against poverty and for good governance.
A series of documents prepared this revision in the meaning of words. The agencies
set up to manage the rest of the world (85 percent of the earth's population,
the dominated peripheries) by collective imperialism (the triad) here fulfilled
the functions expected of them. The World Bank (which I call the Ministry of
Propaganda for the G7) produced, in this spirit, distressing documents called
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). The IMF (the triad's collective colonial
monetary authority) imposed the priority of debt service, the debt itself being
the means of imposing structural adjustment. The WTO, far from being an institution
responsible for managing world trade, is devoted to the objective of shaping
the productive systems of the peripheries to the needs of the commercial expansion
of the North, that is, to operate like a collective ministry of colonies. The
European Union -lined up with the general offensive of the imperialist triad-integrates
the relations between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of
States (ACP) within this same context, pursued literally in the convention for
the development of the ACP.
It could be asked why the governments of the countries of the South have subscribed
to all of these commandments drafted in the imperialist centers. The response,
in general terms, is that we should look to the social hegemonic blocs mentioned
above that make possible the reproduction of asymmetric globalization. There
is a new comprador class in the countries of the periphery that actually derives
its existence from the new model of globalized liberalism. This comprador class
participates in the new government arrangements that followed the erosion of
the national populist models inspired by Bandung.
To be more precise, it is possible to distinguish among the reasons that led
the South to "rally to liberalism." There are those that are probably
unique to so-called emerging countries (China in the first place). In these
countries, the current governments live on illusions: they think about "catching
up" (through strong growth) while they are constructed as the industrialized
peripheries of tomorrow, and dominated by the new monopolies on the basis of
which the imperialist centers reproduce their domination (monopolies of technology,
access to the planet's natural resources, and weapons of mass destruction).
They think of building a "strong and independent nation," but in that
connection must ignore that the United States prepares "preventative wars"
against them that will not allow them this opportunity. History will undoubtedly
be given the responsibility to dissipate these illusions.
Here I will place more emphasis on the rationales offered with respect to the
most vulnerable peripheral regions, Africa in particular. The discourse developed
in this regard by dominant thought is well known: Africa is marginalized in
the new globalization. This is by its own fault, having sunk into an excessive
nationalism during the Bandung period. It can only get out of this difficult
situation if it accepts being "more integrated" into globalization
by a totally uncontrolled opening that will allow foreign capital to "develop"
it. The miseries associated with this option, for which there is no alternative,
will only be "transitory" and can be attenuated by programs that "fight
against poverty." This option will require, moreover, democratic political
management called "good governance."
This discourse abounds in contradictions and inadequacies. Africa is no less
integrated into globalization than other regions, but it was and is differently
integrated. The forms of the new proposed integration, based on agro-mineral
specialization, are not new but are, on the contrary, a return to the old (paleo-colonial).
These forms can only accentuate the pauperization and exclusion of huge masses
of the population, in particular the peasants. But simultaneously and independently,
they facilitate the pillage of the continent's natural resources (petroleum,
minerals, and wood), which is probably the principal objective of large transnational
capital in Africa. Foreign direct investments will come to Africa for nothing
else.
The responsibility of the current government teams-and behind them the new comprador
classes-should not be excused. But that does not absolve the dominant forces
in the imperialist centers of the global system from responsibility either.
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is undoubtedly part of
the new liberal thinking, but not with any great conviction it seems. It should
be remembered that originally behind this initiative was the justified refusal
of the racist "afro-pessimist" discourse and the proclamation by Thabo
Mbeki in 1998 that "Africans should and can appropriate modernity,"
a way of indicating the renaissance of Africa that he called for. But Mbeki
rushed into the same discourse of specifying that that appropriation should
be done "in cooperation with the developed countries," ignoring, or
pretending to ignore, that that has never been the case up to now. NEPAD even
includes in its title the term "partnership," commonly used for a
long time by the European Union and adopted, in turn, by the Millennium discourse
of the United Nations.
In its content, NEPAD's founding document, New Partnership for Africa's Development
(NEPAD) is not, in fact, very coherent.*
It identifies the bottlenecks that block development in Africa, which
it identifies in all aspects of reality (infrastructure and energy, education
and health, family agriculture and environment, and modern technologies, notably
computer technology), giving the impression that it takes into consideration
the hostile practices of world trade. But at the same time, the document lines
up with dominant liberal thought: it abandons the centrality of industry that
the Lagos Plan had, in its time and with good reason, taken as the axis of development
for this least industrialized of the earth's continents. It adheres to an agro-mineral
model of growth (paleo-colonial), and it adopts the discourse on the reduction
of poverty.
Unquestionably even more serious, the NEPAD document lines up with liberal thought
on the discourse of "good governance." This is a concept that is useful
as a way to dissociate democratic progress from social progress, to deny their
equal importance and inextricable connection with one another, and to reduce
democracy to good management subjected to the demands of private capital, an
"apolitical" management by an anodyne civil society, inspired by the
mediocre ideology of the United States. This discourse comes at the very moment
when the interruption in the construction of the state (begun in the Bandung
period) imposed by structural adjustment has created, not conditions for a democratic
advance but, instead, conditions for the shift towards the primacy of ethnic
and religious identities (para-ethnic and para-religious, in fact) that are
manipulated by local mafias, benefit external supporters, and often degenerate
into atrocious "civil wars" (in fact conflicts between warlords).
As Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua argues, it is less a question of a North-South partnership
(here EU/ACP) than a new phase in asymmetrical structural adjustment.
The NEPAD document's exposition, its hesitations or anodyne character, acquires
its meaning in this context. For example, the wish to alleviate the debt is
expressed, but this is done precisely because the debt has fulfilled its function
of imposing structural adjustment. NEPAD also proposes an "integrated"
(Pan-African) development, just like the EU, giving its preference to arrangements
with regional African groups. But, in the end, this document remains, as far
as its proposals on trade, capital transfers, technology, and patents are concerned,
aligned with liberal dogmas.
I will say in conclusion that a system of this type hardly has any future. Neither
the MDGs nor NEPAD will make it possible to attenuate the seriousness of the
problems and curb the resulting processes of political and social involution.
The legitimacy of governments has disappeared. Thus conditions are ripe for
the emergence of other social hegemonies that make possible a revival of development
conceived as it should be: the indissociable combination of social progress,
democratic advancement, and the affirmation of national independence within
a negotiated multipolar globalization. The possibility of these new social hegemonies
is already visible on the horizon. I bet that at the end of 2015, no one will
propose a balance sheet of the achievements of the MDGs or NEPAD, which will
have been long forgotten.
Note:
*The NEPAD framework document was
adopted by the 37th Summit of the Organization of African Unity in July 2001
at Lusaka, Zambia and is available at:
http://www.nepad.org/2005/files/inbrief.php
Appendix: The UN Millennium Development Goals
Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
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External links
Millennium Campaign (United Nations Millennium Development Goals
Campaign)
Millennium Campaign Youth Site (United Nations Youth Millennium
Development Goals Campaign)