六，古巴經濟學家論危機
We are facing something more than a mere financial
crisis’
An Interview with Cuban economist Oswaldo Martínez
Luisa Maria Gonzalez García
Translated by Richard Fidler
Socialist Voice
March 23, 2009
"one of the problems of socialism is
that it has adhered to a development model similar to that of capitalism
....."
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Cuban economist Oswaldo Martinez, with
Fidel Castro
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2009 started off badly. The international
economic crisis is the top priority of governments, companies, international
organizations and individuals preoccupied with having a roof to sleep under and
food on the table.
The situation has surprised almost
everybody, albeit Cuba
to a lesser degree. Almost a decade ago, Commander Fidel Castro warned that the
conditions were being created for the outbreak of a crisis of enormous
dimensions.
Oswaldo Martínez, director of the Research
Centre for World Economy and chair of the Cuban National Assembly’s Economic
Affairs Commission, had also alluded to the subject on several occasions.
Looking back, the Economics PhD says: “They criticized us heavily, they called
us catastrophists, but finally the crisis is here.”
Mass lay-offs all around the world, rising
unemployment and poverty, shutdowns of companies and closures of banks are some
of the most obvious effects of the crisis. What stage of the crisis are we in?
The crisis is just beginning, and no one
can predict with certainty its duration or intensity. We are facing something
more than a mere financial crisis: it is a global economic crisis that affects
not only international finances but also the real economy. Due to the high
degree of development achieved by speculation and financial capital in recent
years, due to the extent of the breakdown in the financial sector and due to
the high degree of globalization of the world economy, we can confidently
conclude that the present crisis will be the worst since the Great Depression
that occurred in the 30s.
What has been happening since August 2008
is the explosion of the speculative financial bubble, caused particularly by
neoliberal policies. At this point the crisis is beginning to affect the real
economy, that is, the economy that produces real goods and services,
development of technology, and values that can be used to satisfy needs. How
much more will it affect the real economy? It is hard to say. There are many
opinions on this subject. Some suggest that the crisis may last between two and
five years. If we use historical references, we see that the crisis of the 30s
started in October 1929, developed at full speed
until 1933, and the economies had not fully recovered their previous levels of
activity when the Second World War started in 1939.
What finally solved that crisis, and I say “solve” in inverted commas because this is how
capitalism solves a crisis, was precisely the Second World War; it was the
destruction of productive forces as a result of the war that allowed post-1945
capitalism to initiate a new growth stage based on the reconstruction of
everything that had been destroyed by the war. Every crisis, whether linked to
a war or not, is above all a process of destruction of the productive forces.
Turning to the current situation, I would
not presume to make a precise forecast on the duration of the crisis, but I
will say that it is far from having hit bottom.
Which are the sectors that have been worst
affected?
The explosion of the financial bubble has
caused the collapse of stock markets and the bankruptcy of large corporate
speculators (the so called investment banks, which in fact are not productive
investors but speculative investors). Large banks have become bankrupt and
credit at a global level has become scarce and expensive. The prices of raw
materials and oil have plunged. Sectors of the real economy, such as the motor
industry in the USA,
are beginning to be affected by the crisis: the three largest companies,
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, are receiving support from the government to
avoid bankruptcy. Several airlines have closed down, and flights have been
reduced. Unemployment is on the rise, tourism is also affected. It is a
snowball effect, which can lead to a much deeper crisis in 2009.
To some specialists, this is one more cyclical crisis of the capitalist system, one of those
described by Marx in the 19th century. But it has also been said that it is not
just “one more” but, given the huge dimensions it has reached, it is the
expression of the internal destruction of late capitalism. What is your
opinion?
I think that the current crisis is, without doubt, another cyclical crisis of capitalism.
It is one more in the sense that the system that has been in place since 1825, the date of the first crisis identified by
Marx, has suffered hundreds of similar crises. A crisis is not an abnormality
of capitalism, rather, it is a regular feature and is even necessary to the
system. Capitalism follows a particular logic, since it needs to destroy
productive forces in order to pave the way for another stage of economic
growth. However, the current crisis is undoubtedly the mark of a deep
deterioration within the capitalist system.
I believe the crisis can reach very serious
dimensions, but I do not think that, on its own, it represents the end of the
capitalist system or its definitive destruction. One of the things that Marx
argued with great lucidity was that capitalism does not
collapse through an economic crisis. Capitalism has to be brought down, through
political actions.
So you agree with what Marx said, and
Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg later demonstrated, that despite the self
destructive nature of capitalism, there has to be a revolution to bring it
down?
Of course I do. To think that capitalism
will collapse on its own, due to a spontaneous force like an economic crisis,
is to believe in utopia. The crisis may create conditions
that promote large anti-capitalist political movements. A capable
leadership of the masses that is adept at the art of politics can take
advantage of the favourable conditions created by the greater poverty,
unemployment, large-scale bankruptcy and desperation of the masses generated by
the crisis.
Throughout history, major economic crises
have been linked to revolutionary movements. For example, during the First
World War there was a profound capitalist crisis, and the success of the first
socialist revolution in Russia
was linked to this. The crisis of the 1930’s
however, was linked to the rise of fascism because in Germany and Italy the desperation of the masses
as a result of the crisis was successfully turned by the right toward
far-right, fascist, chauvinist and ultranationalist positions.
What I want to stress is that nothing is inevitably written in history. It all depends on
the skill and expertise of the contending political forces. In the
present situation, I think that it is possible to think about change: we are in
a situation that in my view is quite likely to result in a radicalization of
anti-capitalist movements.
It is yet another cyclical crisis, but it
is different; what makes it unique?
I think the differences lie especially in the
context. The present crisis is particularly complicated
because the global economy is much more complicated than it was in 1929. In the
first place, the level of economic globalization is vastly greater. The degree
of interconnectedness of national economies back in 1929 was still incipient,
corresponding to the technologies available at the time, especially in transportation and communications. In 1929 there
was no internet, no email, no jet planes; they depended on telegraph
communications, telephones were still quite underdeveloped, and planes were
just starting to take to the skies.
Today the situation is very different.
Globalization ensures that whatever happens in a powerful economy has an impact, within minutes, on the rest of the world.
Markets are greatly interconnected, especially global financial markets, and
that means that the world economy is like a spider web in which we are all
trapped. A movement in any part of the spider web is felt everywhere else.
Therefore, the capacity for this crisis to spread is infinitely greater than in
1929. That is the first difference.
Secondly, the level of
financialization of the global
economy is also vastly greater. Speculative capital and its operations play a
much greater role than in 1929. Back then there were stock markets, but their
functioning was much more simple. Today, financial speculation has achieved
immense sophistication, and this sophistication is at the same time one of its
weak points. That is, the speculative operations are so sophisticated, risky,
unreal and fraudulent that they have been at the basis of the global financial
breakdown.
Up until now no steps have been taken that
are sufficiently radical to curb the crisis. However, little by little, we are
seeing how states, above all the United States, have been
intervening to avoid the bankruptcy of companies… with a “protagonist” approach
reminiscent of the Keynesian methods used by Franklin D. Roosevelt to overcome
the 1930s crisis. Today many claim that “neo-Keynesianism” will be the
alternative.
In essence that is what they are trying to
do: to apply neo-Keynesian methods in a very diffused
manner. We can see this in what Barack Obama has announced in connection
with a major public works program including the
reconstruction of the highways system (roads, bridges, etc). That is a
typical Keynesian method of generating employment and income and stimulating
demand. But at the same time, measures
like this are being combined with others that are contradictory, such as rescuing bankrupt speculators and allocating huge
amounts of money to reconstitute the speculative structure which has failed
and collapsed.
This is in contradiction to
classic Keynesianism, and a
clear expression that the neoliberals continue to hold some key positions of power;
in fact, they have not been removed. We are witnessing a
battle between a neo-liberalism that is unwilling to die and a neo-Keynesianism
that is supposedly being established.
I very much doubt that
neo-Keynesianism, even if it is strictly applied, can be the solution to this
crisis, because the current crisis has new components. The crisis combines elements of over-
and under-production simultaneously; it is a crisis that coincides with
an attack on the environment so massive that it is not only economic, it is
also environmental, jeopardizing the survival of human beings and the
conditions for human life on this planet.
Do you mean that, in the form it has taken,
Keynesianism will only be a temporary solution that will paper over the
problems without getting at the roots?
Of course. It is inconceivable that
Keynesianism and neo-Keynesianism can be an infallible recipe to resolve the
economic problems of capitalism. Capitalism has suffered major crises with both
neoliberal and Keynesian policies. Between 1973 and
1975 there was a severe capitalist crisis that occurred under Keynesian
policies, and that was a factor that brought about the substitution of
neoliberal policy for Keynesian policy.
We
should put no credence in the false dichotomy according to which neoliberalism
provokes the crisis and Keynesianism resolves it. Simply put, the system is
contradictory and has a tendency to develop periodic economic crises. Whether they are neoliberal or Keynesian,
economic policies can facilitate, postpone or stimulate, but they are not able
to eliminate capitalist crises.
Then there is one solution left: socialism …
Without a doubt. I am more convinced of
this than ever before and I believe that we are very clearly faced today with
the quandary posed by Rosa Luxemburg: “Socialism or
barbarism”. I do not believe that humanity will regress to barbarism, if
only because our survival instinct is the strongest of all.
I believe rational conditions will prevail,
and rational conditions imply a sense of social justice. I think we will
overcome capitalism, and we will come to implement a creative socialism,
socialism as a continuous search, which is not to deny that the system has
certain general basic principles in common to all socialisms. However, based on
these principles, there are immense possibilities for experimentation,
controversy and creativity.
And that would be the socialism of the 21st
century?
I think so.
President Rafael Correa, in a lecture he
gave in the main assembly hall at the University of Havana in January this
year, explained that one of the problems of socialism is that it has adhered to
a development model similar to that of capitalism; that is, a different and
fairer way to achieve the same thing - GDP, industrialization and accumulation.
What do you think?
Correa raised a good point. The socialism
practiced by the countries of the Socialist Camp replicated the development
model of capitalism, in the sense that socialism was conceived as a
quantitative result of growth in productive forces. It thus established a
purely quantitative competition with capitalism, and development consisted in
achieving this without taking into account that the capitalist model of
development is the structuring of a consumer society that is inconceivable for
humanity as a whole.
The planet would not survive. It is
impossible to replicate the model of one car for each family, the model of the
idyllic North American society, Hollywood etc. - absolutely impossible, and this cannot be the reality
for the 250 million inhabitants of the United States, with a huge
rearguard of poverty in the rest of the world. It is therefore necessary to
come up with another model of development that
is compatible with the environment and has a much more collective way of
functioning.
Although I heard Correa say many correct
things, there was one that seems incorrect to me. In his TV interview, when he
was talking about this socialism of the 21st century, with which I am in full
agreement, he referred to things that would be obsolete and would have to be
done away with. Amongst them, he mentioned the class
struggle, but I think that what he was explaining in his lecture in the
main assembly hall about the political struggles that confront him in Ecuador,
what he was describing is nothing more than an episode of the class struggle in
which the agenda he represents is immersed.
Who opposes this agenda? It is undoubtedly
the oligarchy, the bourgeoisie. Who can he rely on to support him against those
enemies? The workers, the peasants, the indigenous peoples. What I have in mind
is not a narrow classic definition of “class”, but the
undeniable existence of social classes, broadly speaking, and the struggle of
those classes is undeniable and evident. If we renounce the class
struggle, what would we be left with? Class collaboration? I do not think Ecuador can proceed to 21st century socialism
with the cooperation of people like Gustavo Novoa [Former president of Ecuador (2000-2003), now living in exile in the Dominican Republic
-SV] or that sector of the Catholic church and all those who are now trying to
overthrow Correa.
Many expectations have developed worldwide
in relation to the presidency of Barack Obama. What role can his government
play with regards to solving the crisis?
I do not have high hopes of change. I
believe that Obama’s government may represent a certain change in U.S. politics
that is more cosmetic than substantive. In my opinion, he represents the
position of a certain political sector in the United States which understood that
it was impossible to continue with a regime that was as unpopular, worn out and
disagreeable as that of George Bush. However, there is something we must take
into account, and at least give him the benefit of the doubt: Obama’s ideas are
one thing, and where the deepening economic crisis may take him is another
thing. And once again I have to use the Thirties as an example.
In 1932, when the crisis was full-blown,
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president. His ideas were nothing
extraordinary, there was nothing in his election platform that would suggest
what would happen next: his policy of active state intervention in the economy,
of basing himself on the trade unions or regulating the private U.S.
economy along the lines of a national economy.
All those measures were taken more as the
result of what the crisis forced him to do, than as a result of a pre-existing
political philosophy. Something similar could happen with Obama; we must give
him the benefit of the doubt to see where the crisis might take him.
In the past few weeks there has been a lot
on talk about the role of Latin American integration in
confronting the crisis. Although this process is only in its initial
stages, there have been changes at the structural level that point towards integration.
How can integration help us face the crisis as a region and as a country?
I think that the integration of Latin
America and the Caribbean will be a key strategic factor in the future of the
region, of course, and I do not mean integration as an appendage of the United States.
For decades, Latin American integration has been not much more than rhetoric,
and not practice. But now we are seeing the beginning of a new period,
characterized in particular by the Summit of Salvador de Bahía, held last December,
when Cuba
joined the Rio Group. We also have the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas),
a new model of integration based on solidarity and cooperation, not on the
market.
This situation coincides with the big
crisis that is forcing Latin America to
rethink her position in the global economy. This also coincides with the
profound crisis in the neoliberal policy that dominated the region during the
last 30 years. It is a great moment, and I think that there is a real
possibility that true Latin American and Caribbean
integration is beginning to take firm steps.
Some commentators are arguing that in the
wake of the current crisis the world economy will be structured in large
regional blocks: one in Asia, another that will continue to exist in North
America, and a new one taking shape in Latin America.
This is a very interesting possibility.
Martinez was interviewed by Luisa Maria Gonzalez
García, a journalism student at the University
of Havana. The interview
was published in Spanish on March 14, 2009
in Apporea.
Translated for Socialist Voice by Richard
Fidler. A somewhat different translation by Damaris Garzón was published
in CubaDebate .
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