A new facebook group has been set up to stock The Shock Doctrine in Haiti. But the IMF have only agreed an emergency £100m loan with conditions attached.
News stories about Haiti are full of tales of looters. There’s less talk of a bigger scale plunder to come. In Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine‘ she maps the rise of “disaster capitalism”. She describes how, over 40 years, The International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pentagon, and various mega-corporations have increasingly used (or created) disasters as an excuse to push through unpopular right wing economic policies, and asset strip vulnerable economies.
I was just finishing this book on Thursday as the scale of Haiti’s earthquake was becoming clear. My immediate fear was an obvious one. So I did what all young lefties do in a time of crisis. I set up a Facebook group: “No Shock Doctrine for Haiti”.
It turns out the vultures were already circling. Almost immediately, a friend joined the group and posted a link to The Heritage Foundation – a highly influential conservative American think-tank. They argued (in a paper which has since been removed) for the approach described in Klein’s book. See a description of it here.
Worse still, if this article in The Nation is to be believed, the IMF were way ahead of us. As I was setting up the group, they were haggling with Haiti. They agreed to an emergency loan of $100 million. But, allegedly, they forced the Haitian government to agree to freeze public sector pay, and raise fuel costs in exchange.
This is standard fair for the IMF. I won’t detail them here, but Klein gives examples in her book of how disasters or major shocks have been used by the Fund and others as a chance to force through unpopular, radically pro-corporate policies, which have led ultimately to massive inequality. These case studies range from Russia to Chile, and South Africa to Poland.
Debt is also familiar to Haiti. Jubilee USA provide a useful briefing in which they explain how France’s demands for reparations for the lost labour from Haiti’s freed slaves forced the country into massive debts from which it never recovered.
Despite allowing corrupt dictators to remain in power for decades, when the people of Haiti elected a leader promising to do something about poverty, we either backed, or allowed, two coups against him.
The US has also pushed privatisation – of more benefit to their companies than the poor of Haiti. According to Haiti Progrès, for example, in 1996, the United States Agency for International Development (the government’s aid wing) signed an $800,000 contract with a Canadian Public relations firm to hype privatisation in Haiti.
The economic guru of the radical right, Milton Friedman, explained to his students how their neo-liberal ideas would take over the world:
“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
The poverty which made this earthquake so devastating is no accident. It is the result of two centuries of oppression of the world’s first black republic. It is the result of enforced neo-liberal policies that have prevented Haiti developing the only way any country has – through investing in infrastructure and people. Friedman’s ideas are so popular with the mega-rich because they have only ever succeeded in doing one thing – making them richer.
If you want to do something, you can donate to ActionAid or one of these charities. The Shock Doctrine works by pushing policies through while people are distracted and grieving. So we must also be their eyes and ears, and keep the vultures at bay until they can come together to decide how they want their country to be re-built. As I write, more than 4,000 people have joined the Facebook group, and are helping act as those eyes and ears.
Our guest writer is Adam Ramsay who will jointly launch a new blog brightgreenscotland.org on Wednesday.
41 Responses to “No Shock Doctrine for Haiti”
Richard Lawson
Let us not just rage about the threatened corporate takeover of Haiti, let us be clear about the alternative, community based, ecological reconstruction of Haiti that we would wish to see, so that we can put it forward as a coherent plan.
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=9192922&postID=5806032517153574176
Edward
Quite. Poor Chile, now the poorest of South American countries. I’m sure it’s only getting into the OECD (rich countries’ club) because capitalists are all liars and its high GDP per capita is a lie.
Poor South Africa, someone should tell all the Zimbabwean refugees that they ought to go to Zambia instead.
Poor Russia, someone tell them that they should not universally love their leader Vladimir Putin any more, because he is an evil capitalist, whereas the pre-reform system (i.e. Communism) was good and popular and equitable and sustainable.
Clearly, what we need is African-style aid dependency and anti-capitalism combined with Argentine-style protectionism. That has worked so well for those places in the past.
The author wants the IMF to act as a blank chequebook for genocidal dictators, and wants the dictators themselves to decide who gets the cheques, rather than the people providing the money, i.e. us.
Oxford Kevin
Edward, perhaps Chile has done better than some of its South American neighbours because Pinochet disappointed Friedman and his acolytes at the Catholic University of Chile after the early experiences of the destruction of not just peoples lives but also of the economy from the first reforms pushed through by Pinochet, over the long term Pinochet did not follow through with all that was desired from the Friedmanites and actually undid some of his early changes. Also Chile started from a high level of development prior to Pinochet’s dictatorship.
Other South American countries like Argentina had many structural adjustment programs applied to it, the next one being applied due to the failure of the previous structural program. Talk about not learning from your lessons. The IMF/World Bank/WTO are not about rooting out corruption but imposing the failed neoliberal program of forcing markets open, privatized services, this has been demonstrated over and over again.
I can hardly see Russia as a good example of the success of an enforced shock. The enriching of the Russian oligarchs as a result of the forced rapid privatization of the former soviet assetts was at the expense of the rest of the population. Russia’s population declined as a result of the application of this external solution, with a rapid decline in lifespan and living standards. The brief improvements in living standards for most Russians has only occurred due to the recent high prices of its oil exports.
SOCIALIST UNITY » HAITI - A MAN MADE HUMANITARIAN DISASTER
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Tim Worstall
“The poverty which made this earthquake so devastating is no accident. It is the result of two centuries of oppression of the world’s first black republic. It is the result of enforced neo-liberal policies that have prevented Haiti developing the only way any country has – through investing in infrastructure and people. Friedman’s ideas are so popular with the mega-rich because they have only ever succeeded in doing one thing – making them richer.”
Please, get a grip.Haitian GDP per capita is around $1,300 a year. This is around the English level back in 1700. It’s about twice the level prevaling at the time of the Roman Empire (yes, adjusted for inflation).
We got rich, France got rich, the US got rich, Hong Kong got rich, China and India are getting rich…..all through some variant of the same thing. Liberal capitalism. It’s the only way that any country has ever got out of the Malthusian trap that Haiti is caught in. Naomi Klein’s wibble about worker cooperatives is just fine if you’re rich enough to be able to cope with such wibble. What Haiti needs is a great deal more capitalism in hte near future.