By Joao Pedro Stedile and - -
SAN PAOLO, Jun 8 2009 (IPS)

In the 250-year history of industrial capitalism, there have been numerous cyclical crises, at least three of them global and systemic, including this one. In the preceding crises, capitalists always introduced measures to repair the system and restart the cycle of expansion and capital formation.

One of the most important of these measures is the necessary destruction of surplus capital (in a few months more than five trillion dollars have been vaporised), increasing the exploitation of workers to boost profit margins across the board through unemployment, salary reduction, and increased worker productivity. The International Labour Organisation predicts that 40 million workers will lose their jobs in this crisis.

In this context, the effects of the crisis on agriculture have very particular features.

In the last 20 years the southern hemisphere has seen an alliance forged between the major landowners and the corporations that control the agricultural production and the world food markets – agribusiness.

This form of mechanised, capitalist, landowner agriculture demands an ever increasing supply of both agrotoxins and credit. It needs the financial credit to buy the industrial inputs produced by corporations. But the current crisis has effected the irrigation of capital and resulted in a decrease in the production of items destined for the world market, a decrease in the profit margin, and high unemployment among the seasonal agricultural workers, most of whom are immigrants.

Although the pace of capital investment in agriculture has slowed, there has been an intensification of the appropriation of the natural resources that are still available. In recent years there has been a noticeable capitalist offensive to buy up more land, specifically areas with biodiversity, mineral reserves, and sources of water and energy.

The tendency is towards owning natural resources that are low-priced now because they are not being exploited but that in the next cycle of accumulation will generate huge profits when placed on the market. At the same time corporations are seeking greater control of the seed market. In many countries we have seen the imposition of the use of genetically-modified seeds, which according to the World Trade Organisation the corporations have ownership rights to, though in reality they are part of the patrimony of humanity.

Brazil and many countries in Asia and Africa are victims of the greed of international capital that decided to hibernate there during the crisis to be able to reconstitute and concentrate themselves in preparation for a new cycle of accumulation.

Throughout the world the peasant farmers continue to resist and are feeling the negative and positive consequences of the crisis.

What is negative is the drop in demand for their products in local markets as a result of the lowered income of the worker population, which is increasingly urbanised, unemployed, or precariously employed. The emigration of youth to the cities or developed countries has slowed because of a lack of jobs there. For this reason the quantity of remittances sent back by emigrants from the South to their families, usually peasant farmers, has fallen.

The pressure of the major corporations to take over more land and natural resources has also sparked social conflict. In almost all the countries of the South the land that is most fertile and closest to the markets is being fought over in hand to hand skirmishes between the peasant farmers and capitalists, who want to impose the for-export agribusiness model.

In the many cases in which peasants farmers were the caught in the industrial agriculture model and bought the inputs made by corporations, they now see the prices of these products rising far faster than inflation. Many farmers have gone into debt and had to abandon their land, particularly in Asian countries like India, Thailand, and Indonesia.

The resources that governments had previously dedicated to social assistance for farmers -health care, education, transportation, and technical assistance- are being redirected to save the capitalists, to the great detriment of those services.

The positive aspects of the crisis are related to the fact that the small farmers, though they operate in a capitalist field, can produce their own foods and not lose their jobs. Their income may shrink, but they don’t go bankrupt.

Large scale monoculture production, which destroys other forms of animal and vegetable life and generates food that is increasingly adulterated by agricultural toxins, is causing an imbalance in the environment, air and water pollution, and climate change.

These contradictions are leading the populations of cities to ally themselves in the medium term with the peasant farmers to bring about a change in agricultural production to make food healthier.

The crisis will inevitably spark a long and intense debate in society about the usage of natural resources, and could bring about positive changes in world agriculture.

The capitalists want to produce dollars and profits. The peasant farmers want to produce healthy foods and well-being. Disputes arise whenever the two groups meet. The future, though, is on the side of the peasant farmers, and against the plunderers of nature and the exploiters of people. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Joao Pedro Stedile is an economist and a member of the Movement of the Landless (MST) and of Via Campesina International.

Excerpt:

By Joao Pedro Stedile and - -
SAO PAULO, Nov 11 2008 (IPS)

In the 1960s about 80 million people suffered from hunger worldwide. In this period global capitalism was peaking and transnational companies were expanding throughout the planet, dominating markets and exploiting cheap labour and the natural resources of peripheral countries, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, a member of the Landless Farmers Movement (MST) and of Via Campesina Brazil. This was the world into which the Green Revolution was born, with its promise to end hunger. Its mentor, Normal Borlaug, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. The real objective was to introduce a new system of agricultural production based on the intensive use of industrial inputs. Productivity per hectare increased and world production quadrupled. And yet the number of people suffering from hunger grew far faster, from 80 to 800 million. Today, prices of agricultural products around the world are no longer tied to production costs or even to supply and demand. Instead, they swing rapidly in response to market speculation and transnational corporations\’ control of the international food markets. Meanwhile the number of people suffering from hunger rose in the last two years from 800 to 925 million.

This was the world into which the Green Revolution was born, with its promise to end hunger. Its mentor, Normal Borlaug, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. The real objective was to introduce a new system of agricultural production based on the intensive use of industrial inputs. Productivity per hectare increased and world production quadrupled. And yet the number of people suffering from hunger grew far faster, from 80 to 800 million.

Today 70 countries depend on imports to feed their people. This demonstrates that the new model of agriculture served to concentrate global agricultural production and trade in foodstuffs in no more than 30 transnational firms: Bunge, Cargill, ADM, Dreyfuss, Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Basf, Nestle, among others.

According to recent estimates, the world’s petroleum reserves, the primary source of energy in the contemporary age, will only last about another 30 years. Meanwhile, global warming increases dangerously.

In this context, a diabolic alliance has been formed between oil, automotive, and agro-industrial companies to produce agrofuels -the term biofuels is misleading- like ethanol in countries with an abundance of land, sunshine, water, and cheap labour.

In the last five years, millions of hectares that had been previously dedicated to food production and controlled by farmers were taken over by large corporations to plant monocultures of sugar cane, soy, corn, African palm, or sunflower to make ethanol or vegetable oils.

The dynamic of the Green Revolution is being repeated. In this case, because the price of ethanol is linked to the price of oil, the price of crops is rising with the latter and in turn driving up food prices.

However, agrofuels are not the solution to the problem of energy supply and global warming. Scientists warn that devoting all of the planet’s arable land to agrofuel production would only replace 20 percent of current oil consumption.

But food production and costs were already in irrational territory when the financial capital crisis hit.

Many holders of massive sums of capital, whether in currency or fictitious capital (treasury bonds, mortgages, commercial paper), fearing losses, rushed to invest in futures markets and to buy natural goods -earth, energy, water- in peripheral countries. As a consequence of these movements of capital, prices of agricultural products around the world are no longer tied to production costs or even to the balance of supply and demand. Instead, today they swing rapidly in response to market speculation and transnational corporations’ oligopolistic control of the international food markets. In other words, humanity is at the mercy of a handful of transnationals and giant speculators.

And the result: according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, the number of people suffering from hunger rose in the last two years from 800 to 925 million. And millions of peasant farmers in Asia, Latin America, and Africa are losing their land and emigrating.

Given this new situation, Via Campesina, which comprises dozens of peasant farmer organisations across the world, proposes a radical transformation in the production and trade of foodstuffs. We defend the principle of food sovereignty: that in every region and every country, governments should implement policies that stimulate and guarantee the production of and access to the food necessary to their respective populations.

There is no region in the world that doesn’t have the potential capacity to produce its own food. As Josue de Castro, author of The Geopolitics of Hunger, explained in the 1950s, hunger and the lack of food is not the result of geographic or climatic conditions but rather the social relations of production.

We hold that humanity should consider food a natural right of all human beings. This implies that agricultural products should not be treated as a market whose ultimate purpose is the generation of business profits, and that small farmers should be encouraged and strengthened because this is the only policy that can sustain the populations in rural areas. And of course, with the goal of producing food that is both healthy and safe, we oppose the use of agro-toxins.

Until now, governments have not listened to our demands. However, unless they make radical changes, social problems and contradictions will intensify and sooner or later they will explode.(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

By Joao Pedro Stedile and - -
SAO PAOLO, Feb 13 2008 (IPS)

Almost the entire western world is at the mercy of agroindustrial capitalism, a system of depredation that does not respect nature, produces food with high levels of toxins that makes its consumers sick, and is a cause of climate change and global warming, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, a member of the Landless Farmers Movement (MST) and of Via Campesina Brazil. In this article, Stedile writes that the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, in association with Via Campesina International, is pushing for various agreements that would end this dependence and create a path towards food sovereignty. The first step was reorganising the teaching of agronomy to focus on new approaches to the production of healthful foods, with agro-ecological techniques that do not use agro-toxins. In the spirit of Latin America integration that is the inspiration of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), Latin America is building the scientific foundations needed to find a way to achieve food sovereignty for our peoples.

But it is also true that in the political struggle between governments and the economic and geopolitical interests, food has always been used as a weapon to make a people or a country and its government dependent. In the last fifty years, which have been characterised by the hegemony of US capital, Washington has systematically used food production as an instrument of domination. To achieve the latter, the US first offers food, whether as a donation or through long-term sales, which will in turn cause changes in food production and eventually create a dependence on US supplies. This has been the fate of tens of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is the old trick of giving fish to keep people from fishing.

Agroindustrial capitalism then assumes control of the means of production, inducing farmers to adopt its methods of large-scale intensive monoculture and the extensive use of mechanisation and poisons, also called agrotoxins.

Almost the entire western world is at the mercy of this type of agricultural exploitation, which has been given the friendly name the ‘Green Revolution’. In reality, this development was a counter-revolution that destroyed the independence of millions of farmers around the world, obliging them to buy agroindustrial inputs manufactured by US and European transnational companies.

In effect, agroindustrial capitalism is a system of depredation. It does not respect nature. It produces food with high levels of toxins that makes its consumers sick. Moreover, as has been verified in recent years, it is a cause of climate change and global warming. In many countries, including Brazil, livestock farming, along with automobile use, is the major cause of the pollution that causes global warming.

Many Latin American countries, and Venezuela in particular, have been victims of this approach. Because Venezuela had abundant oil resources, it accepted this agro-industrial dependence once it became a major petroleum producer. Today, after half a century of US domination, the results are plain to see: despite its great agrarian potential, Venezuela imports 85 percent of the food it consumes.

Aware of this situation, the government of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, in association with Via Campesina International, is pushing for various agreements that would end this dependence and create a path towards food sovereignty. The first step was reorganising the teaching of agronomy to focus on new approaches to the production of healthful foods, with agro-ecological techniques that do not use agro-toxins.

After a year of experimentation, with the participation of more than 200 young peasant farmers from across Latin America, Chavez recently signed a decree creating the Paulo Freire Agroecological Institute of Latin America, which will operate in the buildings of an expropriated farm in the town of Barinas. This revolutionary school will have among its students the children of peasant farmers from across Latin America whom it will make into agronomists trained to advance food sovereignty.

Similarly, a network for exchange and association among other agronomy schools in Latin America is being organised to tap into the experience of schools in Mexico, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Chile. And here in Brazil, the Landless Movement, a member of Via Campesina, is developing two basic initiatives. On the one hand, conventions with federal universities that share our interests, with which we have created four special agronomy courses for the children of peasants who are attending classes: one for each of the forms of biomass (or ecosystems) in Brazil. On the other hand, we are introducing one high-level and various medium- level courses in agroecology in association with the Federal University of Parana, which has operated for two years and is open to other countries of Latin America.

Thus, in the spirit of Latin America integration that is the inspiration of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) – a response to the failed Free-Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA) pushed by Washington – we are building the scientific foundations needed to find a way to achieve food sovereignty for our peoples. We know that only an alliance of peasant and environmental movements and popular governments can assure the production of all of the foods a people requires – food that is both healthful and obtained in a sustainable manner. This is the antithesis of global agroindustrial capitalism which pursues only profits, whatever the price, using any toxin necessary to carry on its extensive monoculture farming. This causes not only food dependence but also social and environmental damage. The fight will be long and hard, but we are certain that the people will understand what is at stake and that nature will take revenge on those who seek to exploit her for merely economic interests. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

By Joao Pedro Stedile
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 24 2008 (IPS)

Joao Pedro Stédile thinks that the World Social Forum (WSF) should remain a debating arena for civil society, because with all its breadth and variety, to attempt to agree on resolutions is “an illusion.”

The Brazilian landless movement activist is also in favour of holding the WSF every three years, instead of annually, he said in an interview with IPS correspondent Mario Osava.

A member of the group that founded the WSF in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001, Stédile is regarded as one of the main theorists of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), and he belongs to the local chapter of Vía Campesina, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The 54-year-old economist is a national coordinator for the MST, and a staunch defender of food sovereignty and the right of farmers to produce their own seeds. Conversely, he is a radical opponent of genetically modified crops and of monoculture forestry, especially of eucalyptus.

IPS: Do you think it was a good idea not to hold an international WSF meeting this year, but instead stage local actions all over the world? Doesn’t this pose the risk of dispersion, loss of identity and loss of momentum in the coming years?

JOAO PEDRO STÉDILE: Vía Campesina has always said in the WSF International Council that the global Forum should be held every three years, so that local and regional activities could take priority. We cannot spread our resources and energy so thinly. The future of the movement depends on creating spaces for more people to participate.

IPS: Some members of the International Council are in favour of the WSF assuming political positions based on consensus. They say that if it remains only an open forum, as others want it to, it will stagnate and lose direction. What do you think about this dilemma?

JPS: The WSF is an arena for debates, exchange of ideas and reflection. It is illusory and utopian to think that it could take more practical resolutions or adopt more united ideological platforms. That could disperse energy, and we could get stuck in a purely ideological struggle.

We believe the WSF should only be a place for presenting ideas. This is an important role at this moment in history, when activism is declining in the world. We need spaces for sharing and discussing ideas so that we can at least consolidate our common visions in opposition to free-market economics and imperialism.

IPS: Isn’t there a problem of representation and even democracy within the WSF, since social movements made up of millions of activists in many countries have the same right to speak as local NGOs with only a few members?

JPS: There is no problem with representation or democracy if we understand the WSF as a space where every participant is invited to express him or herself. It’s a place for reflection, not for reaching decisions or developing action plans, so we don’t need to be overly concerned about strict delegation or how representative we are.

IPS: Climate change has become an enormously high-profile issue. Doesn’t this oblige the WSF to modify its priorities and central themes?

JPS: Our main concern now is to stick to our agenda of struggle against free- market economics and imperialism. And of course climate issues and the destruction of the environment are directly related to the development model espoused by the centres of global power.

The amount of time and concern devoted to the issue of climate change is bound to increase from now on, because its social and environmental consequences are clearer than they were three or four years ago. So it is not a question of priority, but of focus.

IPS: The impact of the WSF seems to have declined after the novelty of the first few meetings. What will it take for the Forum to exert greater influence on politics, people’s lives and societies?

JPS: What has declined is the impact of a world forum that had the audacity to set itself up in opposition to Davos [where the yearly meeting of the World Economic Forum is held]. It’s true, the novelty value has worn off.

Back in 2001 [when the civil society forum began], no one commanded any media attention if they were against the neoliberal free-market economic model.

So the WSF managed to break the ideological hegemony in the media of uniform approbation of neoliberalism. But now we need to generate debating spaces that are closer to the movements, the people, the research centres, and universities.

IPS: Over and above its continued existence and becoming stronger, what are the achievements of the WSF? Has it had any influence at all on changing the model of globalisation?

JPS: I think its main achievement has been to get intellectuals and social leaders together from all over the world, to reflect on the limitations and consequences of the neoliberal and imperialist economic and political models. Don’t forget that a broad sector of the left, especially political parties, once even supported certain free-market ideas, and others remained silent.

In Europe, and in Latin America as well, so-called socialist parties in government applied free-market economic programmes which served the interests of international financial capital. So it was very important that we were able to create an anti-neoliberal culture, and an opportunity for reflection, so that social movements could clarify their ideological confusion.

IPS: What do you think are the limits of the WSF? How much can it contribute to the social change it proposes?

JPS: The limits of the WSF are clear. It cannot aspire to be a workers’ international, because that’s not what it is, nor can it be a central committee that dictates political guidelines for everyone else to follow.

But the challenge is for the social movements and all the different people’s organisations to use the WSF as an opportunity to build mass actions. I think it is essential that sectors with a social base and influence in society should move on to the next stage – which is to carry out coordinated mass actions on a global scale.

The ideological unity we have is small in scope, but extremely important. We are all against imperialism, war, and neoliberal economics, so based on this minimum degree of unity, we must plan actions against transnational corporations and multilateral bodies such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the free trade agreements.

Street demonstrations were, and still are, important as a means of airing ideas in public, but they cannot stop free-market policies. Now we have to advance and agree on common actions against our common enemies.

IPS: Studies of the participants’ profiles have shown that the WSF is composed of an intellectual elite, with a majority holding university degrees and belonging to the middle classes. Doesn’t that contradict the ideals of social inclusion and changing the world?

JPS: It’s natural that this should be the case. When you look at the WSF as a global meeting to discuss ideas, it obviously takes economic resources and a certain level of intellectual development for people to attend. That’s why we advocate reducing the frequency of the forums, and prioritising local and regional activities.

Excerpt:

By Joao Pedro Stedile and - -
SAO PAOLO, Mar 3 2007 (IPS)

The Landless Movement of Brazil and the international organisation Via Campesina condemn the new initiative of President George Bush, who in his upcoming trip to Latin America hopes to seduce and co-opt the countries of the region into becoming major producers of bio-fuels for export to the US, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Movement of Brazil (MST) and Via Campesina Brazil. In this article, Stedile writes that a diabolical alliance of the oil companies, the transnationals that control agricultural and GM seeds, and the automobile industry, in order to maintain the current consumerist model of the first world and its profit levels, are trying to convince the governments of the South to concentrate their agriculture in bio-fuel production to supply the cars of the first world. The new US plan would be a tragedy for tropical agriculture and would transform major areas of our best lands into monoculture tracts, aggravate the loss of biodiversity, and reduce the amount of land dedicated to food production, forcing millions of peasants around the world from their land and into the swelling slums of the big cities.

Recently 600 leaders of peasant movements from around the world, scientists, environmentalists, and feminist leaders met in Mali to debate problems related to the development of food sovereignty in our countries. At this event, we analyzed the offensive being launched for vegetable-based fuel production and reached the conclusion that a diabolical alliance has been forged between the major sectors of international capital: the oil companies, the transnationals that control agricultural and genetically-modified seeds, and the automobile industry.

What do they want? To maintain the current consumerist model of the first world and its profit levels. To this end they are trying to convince the governments of the South to concentrate their agriculture in bio-fuel production to supply the cars of the first world. The energy contained in grains or plants is in reality an agri-chemical metamorphosis of solar energy which is transformed into a fuel as either vegetable oil or alcohol. The best conditions for this to occur are in the south of the world, where solar energy is greatest.

In addition, the firms want to take advantage of the agri-fuel push to expand their genetically-modified soy and corn business, guaranteeing profits through the exercise of their patents and the sale of fertilizers used in the development of energy agriculture.

This drive for the production of fuel from sunflower, corn, soy, almonds, African palm, or sugar cane is apparently well intentioned: to replace petroleum, a non-renewable and polluting fuel with renewable fuels that do not harm the environment. This alternative will be rewarded with wide and free publicity because it will be presented as a goodwill gesture to reign in global warming.

But this trilateral alliance is interested only in producing profits, not protecting the environment. It opted for renewable energy to free itself from the dependence on oil imported from countries with nationalistic governments like Venezuela and Iran, because the failure of the war in Iraq prevented the US from appropriating its oil, and because of the political instability in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Angola — in other words, because of problems in the major oil exporting countries to Europe and the US.

The peasant movements hold, first of all, that the term ”bio fuel” should not be used because it creates a non-existent concept by generically relating energy with life (bio); they would prefer adoption of the term ”agri-fuel”.

Second, while we admit that agri-fuels are more suitable for the environment than oil, this does not affect the essence of the dilemma now facing humanity: replacing the current model of energy squandering and individual transport with one based on mass transit (trains, metro, etc.)

Third, we are against the use of goods generated for human consumption– like sunflowers or corn– to make agri-fuels.

Four, even if the production of agri-fuels is considered necessary, it must be at sustainable levels. We are fighting the current neo-liberal model of large-scale monoculture agriculture, which damages the environment with its intensive use of pesticides and mechanisation, which eliminates the need for labourers and increases the warming of the planet by destroying bio-diversity and preventing water and rains from keeping in balance with agricultural production.

We argue that it is possible to produce fuels from agricultural products if they are cultivated sustainably, on a medium or small scale, and so do not unbalance the environment and allow for greater autonomy over energy control for the peasants and its supply to cities.

The peasant movement opposes Bush’s tour of the region –between March 8-14 he will visit Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico– because it is the first step in his offensive to get Latin American countries to export agri-fuels on a large scale to the US. In exchange, the American entrepreneurs of the trilateral alliance are demanding the right to build a large number of new alcohol plants throughout North and South America — 100 in Brazil alone. To render the plan viable, the Bush administration is calling for alcohol-ethanol to be reclassified as a non-agricultural ”energy raw material” in order to avoid the rules imposed on agricultural products by the WTO. It also proposes that Brazil, the US, South Africa, India, and other countries negotiate a common technological standard for agri-fuels derived from sugar cane, corn, or other plants that would be accepted internationally, creating a kind of agri-fuel OPEC that would oversee world trade in the substance.

In the upcoming months, the peasant movements will maintain their dialogue with researchers, scientists, and environmental organisations to come up with a better formulation of a proposal for sustainable and viable production. Above all, we will discuss how to fight the new US plan, which, if successful, will be a tragedy for tropical agriculture and would transform major areas of our best land into monoculture tracts, aggravate the loss of biodiversity, and reduce the amount of land dedicated to food production, forcing millions of peasants around the world from their land and into the swelling slums of the big cities. All this to supply gas so that those in the First World can drive their own cars and maintain the consumption levels of “the American way of life”.

This debate, and this fight, are just beginning. We hope that the discussion will extend to all societies and that the media will fully cover this matter, which is fundamental to the future of our peoples. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

By Joao Pedro Stedile and - -
SAO PAOLO, Nov 8 2005 (IPS)

Brazil is undergoing a profound crisis, writes, Joao Pedro Stedile, one of the leaders of the Landless Movement (MST) and Via Campesina Brazil. In this article, Stedile writes that the Lula administration was wrong about everything. It did whatever the right wanted and nevertheless all of the sectors of the right are in the opposition and dedicated to its moral, political, and electoral defeat and to winning power in 2006. The left is in serious need of a profound self evaluation of its approach. It am not talking about corruption but rather the fact that the left has essentially abandoned the ideological struggle for the illusion of governing. It traded voluntary activism for paid employment as functionaries. It abandoned a plan of social change for the vanity of being in power. Perhaps in a collective self-delusion, many convinced themselves that class struggle had been superseded by competition between corporate bodies in which the most expert would prevail. Brazil\’s social movements are working from the assumption that the real way forward is neither the government nor elections but instead the creation of popular force and a grass-roots organisation to generate in the medium term a true mass movement.

This is the question our friends in other countries are asking us with increasing frequency, worried by the near daily news stories about corruption in the Lula administration –which they believed to be a popular government– and about the crisis in the Workers’ Party, the largest leftist party in Brazil.

But what Brazil is now experiencing is far more serious than the corruption charges brought against the government and politicians on the left.

Social movements in general, churches, and Via Campesina in particular, have been consumed in recent months by debates in an attempt to understand and better explain to our members and activists what is really happening in Brazilian society. Our sense is that the country is undergoing a profound crisis.

The crisis is in large part economic, because the current government has maintained neoliberal policies that guarantee high earnings for financial capital –national and international– and for oligopolistic groups dedicated to exports. The economy remains dependent on the interests of foreign capital while it fails to meet the needs of the population.

Brazil’s rate of growth is well below that of neighbouring countries and the global average. There is a clear social crisis reflected by a drop in relevant indicators. The first is joblessness: there are 12 million unemployed adults and another 15 million underemployed in the informal sector. In all, 27 million potential workers out of a total population of 184 million are outside of the system of production. Agrarian reform remains a mere promise. The public resources that should be invested in health care, education, and road construction are going to pay the interest on the debt. This year the government will spend the equivalent of over 60 billion dollars on interest– and even so the public debt continues to grow.

We also face a political crisis, which the corruption scandal has brought to the surface: 92 percent of Brazilians do not feel that their politicians are legitimate or represent them. For them, elections are but formal games from which the interests of the people are excluded.

There is also an ideological crisis in Brazilian society manifested in a weakening of mass movements, in social apathy, the striking inactivity of organised social forces, and the lack of debate on how to get out of the current situation, which is growing worse and worse, partly because of the legacy of 15 years of neoliberal rule, partly because of serious errors committed by the Lula government and its Workers’ Party.

The government opted for governability and bet all of its chips on an alliance with the conservative sectors in the belief that financial capital would help to maintain its economic policy. It never considered popular mobilisation as a fundamental political tool. It favoured the conservative press with abundant official advertising.

The Lula administration was wrong about everything. It did whatever the right wanted, and yet all of the sectors of the right are in the opposition and dedicated to Lula’s moral, political, and electoral defeat and to taking power in 2006.

The left is in serious need of a profound self evaluation of its approach. I am not talking about corruption but rather the fact that the left has essentially abandoned the ideological struggle for the illusion of governing. It traded voluntary activism for paid employment as functionaries. It abandoned a plan of social change for the vanity of being in power. Perhaps in a collective self-delusion, many convinced themselves that class struggle had been superseded by competition between corporate bodies in which the most expert would prevail.

Lamentably, the Brazilian left is still far from recognising the need for a real self evaluation. The recent internal elections of the Workers’ Party showed there has been no change.

Given these grim prospects, Brazil’s friends abroad ask, what is the way out?

To exit this morass will take a long time and require an intense expenditure of social energy.

Brazil’s social movements are now working from the assumption that the real way forward is neither the government nor elections but instead the creation of popular force and a grass-roots organisation that will stimulate a wide range of social struggles to trigger the emergence in the medium term a true mass movement. In late October a large popular assembly was held, bringing together more than 8000 social activists from around the country. This effort must be bolstered with a concerted effort to train more activists while broadening the debate in order to form a new popular project for Brazil.(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

By Joao Pedro Stedile and - -
SAO PAULO, Sep 1 2004 (IPS)

The government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been in power almost two years old now, and yet, intimidated by threats of speculation and every sort of blackmail, it has lamentably maintained an economic policy based on the same neoliberal precepts subscribed to by the previous government, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, national co-ordinator of the Movement of the Landless (MST) and a leader of Via Campesina. In this analysis, Stedile writes that the government\’s priority is the performance of financial capital, to which it transfers the nation\’s savings by running the budget surpluses advised by the International Monetary Fund in order to make payments on its debt. The results are predictable. The economy grew but there was no improvement in employment and education or in land and income distribution. The problem is that Brazil desperately needs to hold a debate on the creation of a new development plan. As long as there is no such plan for national development, the Lula administration will shuttle between growth and crisis, formulating short-term measures that time will quickly sweep away.

The government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been in power almost two years old now, and yet, intimidated by threats of speculation and every sort of blackmail, it has lamentably maintained an economic policy based on the same neoliberal precepts subscribed to by the previous government. In other words, its priority is the performance of financial capital, to which it transfers the nation’s savings by running the budget surpluses advised by the International Monetary Fund in order to make payments on its debt.

The results are predictable. The economy grew but there was no improvement in employment and education or in land and income distribution. The problem is that Brazil desperately needs to hold a debate on the creation of a new development plan. In effect, the country has been stuck in the same crisis since 1980 — a crisis of plans, a crisis of destiny. This is the sense of the historic moment we are living in.

Brazil is a young country. It was born under the mantle of the colonial expansion of commercial capitalism, which for 400 years imposed on the country an agro-export model based on slave labour. With its crisis, the bourgeois revolution came late, in 1930, ushering in a new economic model of dependent industrialisation — dependent on foreign capital and directed towards the tiny domestic market, which comprised no more than 15 percent of the population. Even so, this served as a model for national development and in only 50 years brought about the transformation of a rural country into an urban one, and an agrarian economy into an industrialised one.

Brazil’s social wounds remained open, however, because the new structure of production was based on a concentration of land and profits. In the 1980s, these limitations eventually triggered another crisis. Afterwards, the military dictatorship fell and opened the way to the restoration of electoral democracy –though not to a social democracy.

In response to this crisis, there was a flurry of plans in 1989 during the electoral campaign disputed among Lula and his rightist rival Collor de Melo, who emerged as the winner. Consequently, the popular plan that was formulated as the alternative model lost. As a result, the ruling classes abandoned the idea of a national plan and submitted meekly to the transnational corporations and the yoke of international financial capital, which introduced neoliberal policies into Brazil and the rest of Latin America.

This process took a very heavy toll. In the 1990s, the subcontinent sent the First World no less than 1 trillion dollars in the form of interest payments, amortisation of foreign debt, remittances of profits of foreign companies working in Brazil, and payments for royalties and services. Another 900 billion dollars flooded out of the country into private accounts of the local bourgeoisie in the First World.

Not even in the colonial era was so much wealth transferred to another region. All social indices fell. The people suffered financially and bodily and, after a decade of neoliberalism, voted against the neoliberal candidates.

It was in this context that Lula was elected president, in a vote against neoliberalism but without any debate of an alternative plan for national development.

In mid-September the Semco Foundation, a group of progressive entrepreneurs, brought together about fifty representatives from various segments of society to discuss these issues and the future of Brazil. During a three-day retreat, we attempted to identify the DNA of our country, raising questions like, What is our vocation? What is the best path to national development?

Despite the natural, and necessary, ideological plurality and the very different life experiences of the participants, there emerged consensus on certain matters. Brazil is a rich country with immense natural, economic, and social potential, but it is also unequal and unjust. How can it be made more socially just? Everyone agreed that the first step must be income distribution and education: access to education, wealth, and land must be democratised, and work must be guaranteed to the entire population.

The question is how to make this happen. Less than a proposal, what is called for above is the right of the Brazilian people. Here the need for a national plan became clear. It must be created with the participation of the people in collective effort that brings minds and hearts together around the same goal.

This should be Brazil’s number one priority, for as long as there is no such plan for national development, the Lula administration will shuttle between growth and crisis, formulating short-term measures that time will quickly sweep away. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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By Joao Pedro Stedile and - -
SAO PAULO, Dec 2 2003 (IPS)

On November 21, Brazilian president Lula announced a programme of agrarian reform that will settle 400,000 peasant families by the end of his term in 2006, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Landless Peasant Movement (MST) and Via Campesina-Brazil and member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum. The government did not consider a more ambitious plan that would have settled a million families in the same period. However, Stedile argues in this article, the definition of goals and numbers it is less important than knowing whether the government will make agrarian reform a priority. We believe that the Lula administration should redefine its priorities: first, it should cease it preoccupation with making interest payments on the national debt and generating a budget surplus. Instead its priority must be to use public funds to solve social problems. If it doesn\’t the people will begin to protest and mobilise against the administration. There is a limit to patience, especially when people are hungry. Now it is Lula\’s turn. The President knows all too well that if he doesn\’t implement a broad programme of agrarian reform, his government will founder.

The government did not consider the more ambitious plan of a team lead by Professor Plinio Arruda Sampaio, which would have settled a million families in the same period.

We think that the definition of goals and numbers it is less important than knowing whether the government will make agrarian reform a priority. If it does, it is up to the government to decide how it will reach its goal. The problem of the Landless Peasant Movement (MST) and advocates of land reform is organising people to pressure the government to settle the largest number of workers so that they can begin to produce and lift themselves out of poverty as soon as possible.

We believe that the Lula administration should redefine its priorities: first, it should cease it preoccupation with making interest payments on the national debt and generating a budget surplus. Instead its priority must be to use public funds to solve social problems. If it doesn’t the people will begin to protest and mobilise against the administration. There is a limit to patience, especially when people are hungry.

But if the government begins a programme of massive and rapid agrarian reform, the workers will back him and work to make sure that the project is fulfilled.

The Lula administration has an historic opportunity to bring about real land reform in a country that has failed numerous times to do so.

In the colonial era land ownership was the monopoly of the monarchy, which granted concessions in the form of large estates to the privileged, who used slave labour and produced for export.

The end of slavery provided an excellent but missed opportunity to democratise land ownership and give blacks not only formal freedom but the freedom to become farmers.

A second opportunity was presented with the adoption of dependent industrialisation (1930-1980). All modern industrialised economies were based on a strong domestic market built through the redistribution of income and agrarian reform, which incorporated millions of farmers into the market. The elite Brazilians, however, preferred a form of industrialisation that was dependent on foreign capital and oriented towards a small segment of the population. To this end, they wrought an alliance with the rural oligarchy, which kept the land concentrated in the hands of a few producing for export. As a result, the consumer market today comprises less than 20 percent of Brazil’s population.

This model reached its first crisis in the 1960s, when the government of Joao Goulart proposed as an alternative the development of a domestic market, policies to spur the redistribution of income, and agrarian reform. The elites, however, preferred to ally themselves with US capitalism and imposed a military dictatorship.

In the 1980s, when the model of dependent industrialisation entered a terminal crisis, the Brazilian elites opted to subordinate themselves to international (now financial) capital, and were deceived again. Twelve years of continuous neoliberal policy was not able to remedy the country’s economic crisis, while the social situation got worse.

The people eventually took revenge and voted against neoliberalism, electing Lula.

Now the neoliberal faithful are pretending that Brazilian agriculture is modern and is saving the national economy. This is pure propaganda. Grain production has increased in twelve years from 80 to 100 million tonnes — this hardly counts as development.

Brazil has approximately 350 million hectares of arable land, yet a mere 50 million hectares, or 15 percent, is actually cultivated, and this percentage has remained unchanged for twenty years.

The neoliberal agricultural model only deepened the country’s dependency on foreign markets. Of Brazil’s 34 principal agricultural products, only for three were planting and production increased: sugar, soy, and corn. All others in fact were reduced. Meanwhile Brazil has among the highest hunger indices in the world, with 44 million of the country’s 177 million people suffering from hunger and malnourishment, and another 60 million consuming less than they need.

What neoliberalism has generated is the growth of a sector of production dedicated to exports –particularly soy and sugar– to the detriment of the general population and small farmers. All social indicators have fallen, unemployment has risen, as land ownership has grown increasingly concentrated.

The neoliberal model applied by the governments of Collor de Mello and Fernando Henrique Cardoso favoured a sector of about 400,000 landowners –as opposed to the 23 million rural workers– and transnational companies that control grain trade and the agroindustry and which now want to take over the sale of seed through the introduction of transgenic varieties.

Now it is Lula’s turn. The President knows all too well that if he doesn’t implement a broad programme of agrarian reform, his government will founder. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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The leader of Brazil's landless movement, known by its initials MST, offers his views of the World Social Forum, which gets under way this week in Porto Alegre. The upcoming Third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will take place in a world marked by growing militarisation, a military-economic offensive by the US, and servility on the part of the international organisations. The consequences of this for all humanity are tragic, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Movement of the Landless (MST) and Via Campesina-Brazil and Member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum.

In this article for IPS, Stedile writes that the objectives of the US and its business class are clear: to maintain their imperial power at any cost. They want to find a way out of the capitalist crisis, shifting its costs onto the peoples of the Third World,and monopolize access to energy sources and restore profit levels.

The US also wants to push through a Free Trade Area of the Americas, with which they could obtain comparative advantages that would help them emerge faster from the current crisis and be better positioned to face their competitors in Europe and Asia.

Fortunately the people are waking up. A powerful and unified continent-wide movement against the FTAA is gathering strength. Recent elections in the region have gone decidedly against liberalism and US proposals. This was the case in Ecuador, Brazil,and Bolivia and will be so in Argentina and Uruguay this year.

Editors interested in acquiring these columns, please contact romacol@ips.org

By Joao Pedro Stedile and - -
SAO PAOLO, Jan 1 2003 (IPS)

The upcoming Third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will take place in a world marked by growing militarisation, a military-economic offensive by the US, and servility on the part of the international organisations. The consequences of this for all humanity are tragic, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Movement of the Landless (MST) and Via Campesina-Brazil and Member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum. In this article for IPS, Stedile writes that the objectives of the US and its business class are clear: to maintain their imperial power at any cost. They want to find a way out of the capitalist crisis, shifting its costs onto the peoples of the Third World,and monopolize access to energy sources and restore profit levels. The US also wants to push through a Free Trade Area of the Americas, with which they could obtain comparative advantages that would help them emerge faster from the current crisis and be better positioned to face their competitors in Europe and Asia. Fortunately the people are waking up. A powerful and unified continent-wide movement against the FTAA is gathering strength. Recent elections in the region have gone decidedly against liberalism and US proposals. This was the case in Ecuador,Brazil,and Bolivia and will be so in Argentina and Uruguay this year.

The upcoming Third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will take place in a world marked by growing militarisation, a military-economic offensive by the United States, innocuousness and servility on the part of the international organisations, and the looming possibility of a new war, now against Iraq. The consequences of this for all humanity are tragic.

The World Social Forum has been a grand arena for debate, reflection, and protest by thousands of intellectuals, militants, an leaders, young and old, who share an opposition to neo-liberalism and all forms of oppression. While there is a great plurality of opinion among the participants, they are united in their opposition to the current offensive of the US empire.

Bush and Sharon have succeeded in one great achievement: unifying all of us against them.

The objectives of the US and its business class are clear: to maintain their imperial power at any cost. They want to find a way out of the capitalist crisis, shifting its costs onto the peoples of the Third World. They want to monopolize access to energy sources to their own exclusive benefit. And they want to restore their profit levels as fast as possible.

Every time the capitalism system has found itself in a prolonged crisis, it has resorted to war and the arms industry to bolster its ability to accumulate capital. The capitalists have discovered that the arms industry is the only one that produces a unique commodity that is designed to self-destruct and destroy accumulated labour, making room for new commodities.

Since the lamentable events of September 11, 2001, Washington has transferred more than 400 billion dollars to the arms industry and augmented its offensive in the Middle East; it fought a war in Afghanistan, is stoking war in Palestine, and demanding war against Iraq.

In Latin America the US is operating on three fronts. First, it is financing and providing arms for the interminable war in Colombia, which can only be ended with a political solution.

Second, it is setting up a military network in the Latin America. It has installed military bases in Ecuador and Bolivia and is now trying to do so in Argentina and Paraguay. It worked out an agreement with Brazil to use the airforce base in Alcantara but this was subsequently denounced in parliament as a violation of national sovereignty. Washington pressured the outgoing government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso to install a surveillance system for the Amazon with satellites, radars, and powerful computers (SIVAM, System for Vigilance of the Amazon) built by its companies, with access to all information captured in the area.

Not satisfied with this, the US government also wants to push through a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) — which, incidentally, would not be limited to trade and has nothing ”free” about it. Rather it is a strategy designed to subjugate the territory, wealth, economy, investments, agriculture, seeds,culture, currencies, central banks, public services, and even public spending of Latin America to the profits of US companies.

With this agreement they could obtain comparative advantages that would help them emerge faster from the current crisis and be better positioned to face their competitors in Europe and Asia. What the US was unable to achieve through the (aborted) Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) it will now try to get with the FTAA.

Behind the FTAA and the militarisation of the continent lies a plan to gain total control over Venezuelan, Colombian, and Ecuadorean oil as well as the biodiversity of the Amazon and potable water. To this end, the US wants to introduce into the FTAA a law that guarantees private ownership of living matter and control of patents on transgenic seeds. It wants to introduce private property rights not only to land and mineral resources but to water as well, which will be transformed into an endless source of profits for monopolistic companies.

All of these measures directly affect family farming,food production, food sovereignty, and access to natural resources; they also threaten the future of peasant farmers as a social class and as citizens who want to live in rural areas.

But the US offensive on these fronts is politicising and unifying the peasant movement all over Latin America. Peasant farmers are organising around the Via Campesina to fight on every front the FTAA and regulation of Latin American agricultural production by the WTO, and to prevent the installation of new military bases and remove those already in place.

Fortunately the people are waking up. A powerful and unified continent-wide movement against the FTAA is gathering strength. Recent elections in the region have gone decidedly against liberalism and US proposals. This was the case in Ecuador, Brazil, and Bolivia and will be so in Argentina and Uruguay this year.

The upcoming Forum should be a space for the exchange of ideas between all social, intellectual, and academic movements to create a united continental and global front against the imperialist offensive. No empire has lasted forever, and neither will this one. (END\COPYRIGHT IPS)

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