51本色 – Page 9 – A Critical Perspective On Development Economics

A Multilateral International Monetary System

February 7, 2023February 6, 2023 plbds2 Comments

鈥淥ne of the chief contributions to peace that the Bretton Woods program offers is that it will free the small and even the middle-sized nations from the danger of economic aggression by more powerful neighbours. The lesser nation will no longer be obliged to look to a single powerful country for monetary support or capital for development, and have to make dangerous political and economic concessions in the process. Political independence in the past has often proved to be sham when economic independence did not go with it.鈥� 鈥擧enry Morgenthou Jr (1945)

The world economy has a Dollar problem. Reliance on the currency of a single country as the world鈥檚 chief way to organise trade, carry out financial settlements, and store value creates a series of inequitable economic imbalances and policy tensions鈥攂oth within the US and across the global economy. It bestows disproportionate economic and political power on the US government and financial institutions; exposes world trade and finance to聽聽originating in the Dollar zone; imposes huge costs on the world鈥檚 small and even middle-sized nations; and fuels聽聽in the US financial sector, bolstering its influence in that country鈥檚 political economy.

A Historical Problem

This problem is not new. In fact, the inability to develop an equitable and genuinely multilateral international monetary system is one of capitalism鈥檚 most striking institutional failures, going back to the early days of the industrial revolution. The gold standard of that time and its successors have always some economies at the expense of others, and created favouring the interests of creditors and capital, at the expense of debtors and wage earners.

Only once in the history of capitalism did policy-makers from leading capitalist powers even consider the possibility of building a genuinely multilateral, equitable system: during the on the post-World-War-II economic order. But despite the aspirations and statements of participants like John M Keynes and then-US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthou Jr, the Bretton Woods conference led to the creation of , under which foreign central banks could present dollars to the Federal Reserve for exchange into gold.

That system effectively charged US authorities with the supply of the world鈥檚 ultimate international reserves. In this task they were constrained only by the willingness of central banks in other states to hold Dollars instead of gold. As French Finance Minister Giscard d鈥橢staing put it in the 1960s, this arrangement defined an for the US economy, which enjoyed a lot of space for effectively issuing Dollars to acquire goods and assets overseas.

By the late 1960s, it became clear that the US economy under the Bretton Woods system. Its steady in international trade, fiscal pressures from its protracted, losing war in Vietnam, and increases in social spending in response to domestic political turmoil, led to growing trade deficits, mass outflows of Dollars, and concerns that US authorities would not be able to meet foreign demand for convertibility of greenbacks into gold. In response, the US unilaterally abandoned its commitment to convertibility in 1971.

Coming amidst a series of successful national liberation and anti-colonial struggles across the world, the US鈥檚 inability to sustain the Bretton Woods system fed hopes that a new, equitable international monetary order could be constructed. The 1974聽聽for a New International Economic Order explicitly pointed to the need for a new monetary system centered on the 鈥減romotion of the development of the developing countries and the adequate flow of real resources to them鈥� as means to dismantle 鈥渢he remaining vestiges of colonial domination鈥� and removing the obstacles in the way of international convergence in measures of economic development and living standards.

Whose Polycrisis?

January 27, 2023January 27, 2023 Farwa Sial10 Comments

鈥榠f God the Father had created things by naming them, Elstir recreated them by removing their names, or by giving them another name鈥�.

Marcel Proust (II, 566)

An emerging consensus originated in the US has declared 2022 as the year of the , with a view to marking the beginning of an era of turbulence and unrest in the global economy. Under this conceptualisation, recent events including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change catastrophes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the rise in energy and food prices are generally postulated as separate crises, which can have an effect on each other but nevertheless have separate origins. This centrifugal analysis of events predicates on the decline of the uni-polar world order, as well as acknowledging the emergent structural weaknesses in the traditional western powers; all of which can be loosely interpreted as occurring in a period during which power is dispersing and perhaps as a consequence of this dispersion, the current drivers of crisis have multiplied, leading to a multitude of crises, in contrast to preceding historical instances.

In spite of the current use of the term, the origins of the Polycrisis date further and can be more contextualised. However, there is no doubt that it has now become an important neologism for conventional western media and policy institutes, especially adopted by Bretton Woods Institutions, as well as other leading investors.

Civil society has also used this term as a neat summary, however, theirs is a critical response and is not interchangeable with how powerful International Financial Institutions (IFIs), policy think-tanks and investors use the term. In this sense, the instrumentalisation of this neologism, seems to have more value than its meaning, with the discernible possibility that any perceived political mileage of the Polycrisis, is a complete transformation away from its intellectual roots. Nonetheless, as an artefact, the intellectual roots and the political role of the Polycrisis merits an integrated analysis beyond its instrumentalisation.

A remarkable feature of liberal thought is the tendency towards identification of social phenomena through the selective elevation of their key distinguishing features, which are abstract enough to form 鈥榮ystems鈥� and neutral enough to subsume the inherent contradictions of capitalist development. Pandemics, climate breakdown, wars and global deflationary pressures are not mere externalities of the capitalist system but intrinsic to its operations- long predicted by a diverse group of thinkers. That these events converge in time is a political outcome, subject to planetary limits, not abstract systemisation, as the Polycrisis seems to imply.

Critical responses to the Polycrisis have pointed towards its disregard in accounting for the long and sustained crisis of the capitalist world order and a resort towards 鈥樷€� to conceptualise things as they appear to be, rather than questioning what is occurring beneath mere appearances. Prima-facie accounts often seek to capture the zeitgeist in the endeavour to simplify things. However, there is a need to differentiate between simplification and reductionism. As a concept, the Polycrisis is simultaneously all-encompassing as well as abstract.

In an attempt to grasp both these aspects, this short blog starts with a focus on three messages of the Polycrisis: a) the qualitative nature of change, b) the drivers or causes of crises and c) the role of Bretton Woods Institutions in adopting the concept. In addition, the blog proposes an alternative way of understanding the contemporary crisis, which hinges on the decline of the western capitalist model, followed by some thoughts on multipolarity and geopolitics.

The labor of land

January 17, 2023January 16, 2023 ramasalladieng1 Comment

Contemporary and agricultural investments have generated huge attention. The transformations in land tenure, production and social reproduction in the aftermath of land rushes have generated a . A central question is about , and its implications for structural transformation and .

Extraversion, exports and the labor question

In Senegambia, the intersecting pressures of food, land, and capital were historically linked to the quest for new labor and cash crops (cotton, then groundnut, followed by fresh fruits and vegetables) in frontier markets for Europe. Some of these transformations have been widely documented by Egyptian economist , Senegalese historian and American historian . In 1819, the Ndiaw Treaty between France and the leaders of the Waalo Kingdom (in northern Senegal) was signed, allowing France to . This agricultural colonization project failed mostly because of the resistance of the inhabitants of the Waalo Kingdom (the Waalo-Waalo) and the inability of French colonial leaders to secure land concessions they thought were automatically and permanently transferred to them through the treaty. The Waalo leaders, who managed the land on behalf of their community, understood otherwise. This conflicting interpretation on how land is governed became a recurrent source of conflict.

Another problem was the shortage of labor鈥攖he Waalo-Waalo refused forced labor and preferred to cultivate their subsistence crops rather than those for export. This refusal led to the return of clandestine slave trade and related abuses. The insecurity created by Waalo鈥檚 neighbors and the resistance of merchant capital added to the failure. These are key to understanding how various historical dynamics have sedimented to make the Senegal River Valley Region (historical Waalo) the site of the land rush that began in 2007-2008, especially for the production of export fresh fruits and vegetables.

Revisiting this rich history offers us a better understanding of relations of exploitation and contemporary resistance to by a number of communities in this region. It is a reminder of the violence of primitive accumulation, a violence that is ongoing. Tanzanian historian puts it well:

The early encounter of Africa with Europe was not commercial involving the exchange of commodities, but rather the unilateral looting of human resources. African slavery was neither a trade, nor a mode of production. It was simply a robbery of a people on a continental scale perpetrated over four centuries through force of arms.

Despite the subsequent attempt to develop new crops in 1826 in Saint-Louis, merchant capital eventually prevailed with the failure of agriculture. As a result, post-colonial leaders 鈥渋nherited a country organized by and for merchant capital鈥� after 1960 as puts it. In the same vein, note how merchant capital subsequently established colonial and post-colonial structures of extraction.

Beyond processes of land acquisition, it is important to pay attention to how land becomes capital and how agricultural workers are included, excluded, or rather into these agri-food networks.For instance, in her 2011 on land grabbing in Southern Africa, Ruth Hall provides a useful typology of agricultural transformations from subsistence to capitalist imperatives. Besides models that are based on the displacement of primary producers and the establishment of large export-oriented agricultural estates, Hall emphasizes 鈥渃ommercialization in situ鈥� and 鈥渙utgrower鈥� schemes whereby petty commodity producers and other land users are incorporated into commercial value chains. This is a further invite to go beyond in our analyses of the genealogy of and of processes of exploitation.

Why global value chains should be called global poverty chains

January 13, 2023January 8, 2023 benjaminselwyn3 Comments

Global value chains (GVCs) 鈥渂oost incomes, create better jobs and reduce poverty,鈥澛犅爐he World Bank. Since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1991 and the reintegration of China into the global economy, world trade has become increasingly organized through GVCs. For example, the components and inputs for Apple鈥檚 iPhone, an icon of contemporary capitalist globalization, are made by聽聽in over fifty countries.

Transnational corporations (TNCs) 鈥� labeled 鈥渓ead firms鈥� in the academic literature 鈥� established GVCs as part of their competitive strategies, outsourcing existing work or starting up new activities in countries where labor costs were cheap. State managers across the Global South increasingly gave up on establishing integrated domestic industries and sought instead to enter GVCs as component suppliers. Today, over four hundred fifty million workers are employed in .

Many prominent figures suggest that these systems of production and distribution represent radically new development opportunities. As the former secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 脕ngel Gurr铆a, :

Everyone can benefit from global value chains . . . encouraging the development of and participation in global value chains is the road to more jobs and sustainable growth for our economies.

The academic Gary Gereffi, the intellectual father of GVC analysis, that development across the Global South requires supplier firms 鈥渓inking up with the most significant lead firm in the industry.鈥�

In reality, GVCs are a great boon for some of the world鈥檚 biggest companies, but not for their workers. It would be more accurate to describe many GVCs as聽.

Layers of compounding pressure: the gendered experiences of rural migrant youth in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

January 9, 2023January 10, 2023 elizabethdessieLeave a comment

鈥淚 have lived everything there is to be lived in this city. Now I need to leave because all that is left for me here is misery and I want a better life for my child.鈥�

It is with these words that Tizita, a 21-year-old mother-of-one from Gojjam in northern Ethiopia, described her dismay at life in Addis Ababa when I interviewed her in 2022. After living in the Ethiopian capital for eight years, she had had enough. Tizita was set on moving to one of the Gulf States, a part of the world from where many of the women she met on the street had returned from and were planning to re-migrate to. Having previously worked as a domestic worker in Addis Ababa, and having learnt that sex work was the only way to make 鈥�real money鈥� in the city, the young woman remained focused on meeting the fundamental purpose of her migration project: transforming her life. 聽

For Fikadu, a 27-year-old man from Wollega in western Ethiopia, the strain of life in the city is similar, yet different. Unlike for young women like Tizita, whose income-earning activities are overwhelmingly limited to domestic work, petty street work, commercial sex work and begging, the fractions of the informal economy available to migrant men are slightly wider. Nevertheless, this is not to say that times have not been hard. Having previously worked as a street vendor selling second-hand clothes, Fikadu has had to downscale his work and is struggling to meet the rising costs of food, rent, sending money to his family of origin, and realising his plans for the future:

鈥�Our supplies disappeared and when they were back, the price went up by more than double. That was the end of it. Now I pay for my life here by selling socks, but I don鈥檛 let that dismay me. I remain focused on my plans of transforming my life here, and once things improve I will start saving for my own metalwork shop.鈥�

The testimonies of Tizita and Fikadu form part of a longitudinal qualitative research project that maps the livelihood strategies of a sample of migrant youth in Addis Ababa at two points in time between 2018 and 2022. Drawing on these findings, this blog outlines some of the ways in which rural-urban migrant youth between the ages of 15-27 experience and counteract pressure. Through an exploration of migrants鈥� everyday strategies of navigating the city, findings presented here show how dealing with the intricacies of urban life relates intimately to the lives rural youth left behind and the imaginary futures they aspire towards, the ways in which youth relate to the social and economic responsibilities they carry, and the manner in which subjective pressure experienced by women and men has a compounding effect that further exacerbates the challenges migrant youth face.

The pressure to provide and perform: Anti-feminism, masculinity consultants, and the threat of male expendability in contemporary Nairobi

December 22, 2022December 22, 2022 marioatschmidtLeave a comment

Women are the reason why men have changed because women are hard on men. [鈥 The expectations they come with into a relationship, and generally how they have been brought up, or the life they live, that is what gives some men stress. [鈥 When someone is living with a woman in the house, you find that issues are many because money is little.

Wellington Ochieng, 36-year old labor migrant from western Kenya

During almost three years of ethnographic fieldwork among male migrants in , I heard complaints like Wellington鈥檚 almost daily. Migrant men, in my case predominantly Luo from western Kenya who came to Nairobi with high expectations of a better future, bemoaned a life full of pressure caused by the romantic, sexual, and economic expectations of their girlfriends, wives, and rural kin. The blame often lay on 鈥榗ity girls鈥� who were portrayed as materialistic 鈥榮lay queens鈥檞ho 鈥榝inish鈥� men by leaving them bankrupt only to suck away the after grabbing him with their 鈥楤eelzebub nails鈥� as Wellington called the colorful nails sported by many Nairobi women. Soon, so a fear expressed repeatedly by my interlocutors, most men would no longer be needed at all and Kenya鈥檚 economy would be ruled by economically powerful women who raise chaotic boys brought up . Such fears of male expendability also manifested in imaginations about a future in which more and more men and women would live in or 鈥榗ontract marriages鈥� that replace trust and love with contractual agreements. When my flat mate Samuel, a student of economics divorced from the mother of his baby son, returned to our apartment after passing the neighbor鈥檚 house where a group of women celebrated a birthday, for instance, he just shook his head and sighed: 鈥榃e live like animals in the jungle. Women and men separately. We only meet for mating and making babies. Maybe that鈥檚 where we鈥檙e heading to.鈥� Overwhelmed by their wives鈥� and girlfriends鈥� expectations, many migrant men who spoke to me in Pipeline decided to spend as little time as possible in their marital houses. Instead, they evaded pressure by lifting weights in gyms, , , gulping down a cold beer in a Wines & Spirits, playing the videogame FIFA, or catcalling 鈥榖rown-skinned鈥� Kamba women on the roads. Some men who could no longer cope took even more drastic measures involving murder and . One man, for instance, cut the throat of his girlfriend only to try to kill himself, while another tried to poison himself, later quoting the wife鈥檚 actions and character as the cause. Anything appeared better than spending time with the 鈥榙aughters of Jezebel鈥� who were waiting for them in the cramped houses of Pipeline, sometimes demanding migrant men to engage in romantic and sexual practices they were unfamiliar with as expounded upon by Wellington:

When you come to Nairobi, our girls want that you hold her hand when you are going to buy chips, you hug her when you are going to the house, I hear there is something called cuddling, she wants that you cuddle, at what time will you cuddle and tomorrow you want to go to work early? [鈥 you don鈥檛 go to meet your friends so that you show her you love her, you just sleep on the sofa and caress her hair, to me, this is nonsense because that is not romantic love, I think that romantic love, so long as I provide the things I provide, and we sire children, I think that鈥檚 enough romance. [鈥 Another girl told me to lick her, and I asked her 鈥榃hy do you want me to lick you?鈥� She said that she wanted me to lick her private parts. Are those places licked? [鈥 Those things are things that people see on TV, let us leave them to the people on TV.

Figure 1: Pipeline

Agricultural production, sectoral imbalances and inflation in Albania: A Kaleckian view

December 12, 2022November 25, 2022 mimozashabaniLeave a comment

The current remarkable surge in inflation is considered to be a nearly global phenomena (Reinhart and Lucker 2022), affecting both developed and developing nations. While there may be common drivers of inflation, such as factors associated with the Covid-19 pandemic followed by Russia鈥檚 invasion of Ukraine, there are considerable variations in the causes of it, especially with reference to developing countries, including Albania. Drawing on Kalecki鈥檚 (1976) Essays on Developing Economies, I argue that there are also domestic factors attributed to the increase in inflation that resides in the structural sectoral imbalances of the Albanian economy.

Rising prices in Albania sparked protests across the country in March 2022. The protests highlighted the rise in food prices which increased by more than 9% compared to March in the previous year; with the price of bread being the main contributor to such increase. With Albanians spending more than 42% of their total budget on food, rising prices of 鈥榥ecessities鈥� adds more pressure to the poor households to make ends meet. Nearly a quarter of Albanians, 640,000 people, already live in poverty (Kote 2022) and soaring prices in the economy could push people further into poverty. But what is pushing food prices to soar in a country where agricultural land accounts for 24% of overall land, a good Mediterranean climate, and water resources, all of which are crucial for agricultural development? Despite these favourable conditions, the productive capacity of Albania鈥檚 agriculture sector to meet domestic demand for food and feed meets is only one third (World Bank, 2022a). 聽