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05 Jan 2012 Aminu F. Hamajoda
The stench of global economic crises manifested in
failed financial institutions, rising unemployment and
the camouflaged class revolts that are labeled, as
‘anti greed protests' in cities all over the
industrialized world, is reminiscent of Karl Marx
predictions about the wantonness of monopoly
capitalism and how workers will react to naked capital
accumulation in the 21st Century. While the
world currently may not accept his utopian communist
solutions, it may well have to accept his foretelling
analysis.
Way back in 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote
the famous Communist Manifesto, which analyzed the
nature and the future of ‘bourgeoisie' control of the
riches of the world. Marx said that ‘the history of
all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles'. Who can doubt this statement after
witnessing the ‘Arab Spring', ‘the ‘Indignatoes of
Europe' and the ‘Occupy the Wall Street' in America?
To say, as the world bourgeois say, that the revolts
lack purpose is like saying the Onitsha Market Women
Rebellion of 1929 was purposeless in presaging the end
of colonialism in Nigeria or the Sharpeville Riots of
1960 was irrelevant to ending apartheid in South
Africa. The truth is that the world is only having a
foretaste of the epochal failure of monopoly
capitalism.
Back in the 19th century, Karl Marx
predicted that capitalism has all the ingredients that
will ruin it and the only salvation was supplanting
the system instead of regulating it as is feverishly
done presently by nations. Marx believes the trouble
with capitalism is the unbridled bourgeois drive to
profit. This greed (profit as the main engine) is
detriment to societal values, environment, and
particularly workers who produce the wealth. When
workers or producers get very little from accrued
profit, a surplus is always created. This surpluses
lead to business expansions (boom), at times to all
parts of the globe (globalization). But these business
booms are in the long run not sustainable, quite often
due to the impoverishment of workers (consumers),
resulting into stagnation (depression). The fact that
the world (West?) has experienced not less than 17
recessions since 1930 lay credence to this Marxist
prediction of a cycle of a boom now and a bust later.
This boom-and-bust cycle has disastrous consequences.
One of such consequences is unemployment, a problem
that is bedeviling both the industrial and
underdeveloped countries on a grand scale. In the
month of September alone, 130,000 workers lost their
jobs in the USA. In Europe, the situation is direr as
it affects between 20 to 25% of youth population.
Every year here in Nigeria, unemployment among youth
has featured as a major aspect of development policies
and plans. World Bank recently published a figure of
40 million (28.57%) of unemployed people in Nigeria.
Unemployment in any society breeds dangerous social
consequences in restiveness and violence. The roots of
both the Niger Delta and the Boko Haram militancy have
been linked primarily to youth unemployment. From the
Marxist perspective, unemployment is actually a
paradox of capitalism, a nefarious structural problem
resulting from profit maximization. Marx said, "It is
the absolute interest of every capitalist to press a
given quantity of labor out of a smaller, rather than
a greater number of laborers, if the cost is about the
same". Unemployment means unutilized resources. How
can an undeveloped society, for example Nigeria,
lacking in infrastructure, needing all kinds of social
services not require the available human resources?
However, the most obnoxious consequence of capitalism
is the symbiotic relation between the bourgeoisie and
state power. Marx says,
"The executive of the modern State is but a committee
for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie". From Washington to Bujumbura, Nook to
Abuja, the ruling class are the bourgeoisie, their
surrogates, or their proxies. Whether in despotic
governments or in democracies, the whole state
apparatus is designed to facilitate the accumulation
of wealth for the few bourgeoisie class, quite often
unproductive and parasitic as the ones in Africa. Only
recently the National Assembly suspect cabals are
involved in an import revenue facilitation contract
and a fuel subsidy administration that may cost the
nation a total of N721 billion.
Even the phoney liberal economic regulations and
de-regulations are geared to preserving the rich and
their ventures rather than protecting the 99%.
President Obama threw 778 billion dollars at the
‘black hole' in 2008 to stimulate growth and
employment. The package disappeared like a cube in the
ocean. An African adage will call it, "Neither the
fish nor the hook". This frightening quagmire in no
small measure is the reason why European giants like
Germany are afraid of committing their public funds to
salvaging the failing banks of Europe. We are surely
in interesting times, for what will they think of
next, now that communism is dismantled, and the
Keynesian economics is not working. Could Marx be
right that "What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces,
above all, is its own grave-diggers."
Aminu F. Hamajoda (aminufhamajoda@yahoo.com) |
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