In
1989 the Berlin Wall fell and the so-called “transition period”
for Central and Eastern Europe began. The goal pursued was a radical
change of society at economic, political and social level. In
relation to this, Bulgaria endorsed a variety of development
programs, which were manipulated by the two supranational
institutions – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The country was quickly encompassed by a wide network of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) whose number amounts nowadays
to 38,000. The UN agencies, supranational authorities and NGOs
organized and coordinated Bulgaria’s transition through the same
methods, ideas and language, which were being used for the Third
World Countries by that time.
by
Daniela Penkova
PART
5 - The Rhetoric
Although the supranational institutions of development
declare as their fundamental purpose “the struggle against
poverty”, they keep on demanding economic reforms which have proved
to be totally inefficient. The leading assumption is that only the
free market and strongly restricted government intervention are able
to guarantee prosperity. Instead of nations to be allowed to act at
their own discretion in order to increase the welfare of their
people, they are forced to adopt neoliberal policies. After that no
one measures whether the life conditions have improved, but only to
what extent the recommended policies have been implemented.
The advertising of the reforms imposed outside is a job
of the think tanks, hiding behind the disguise of NGOs. Their
projects are being financed by big development agencies among which
the American USAID stands out. The foundation representing USAID in
the country is “America for Bulgaria”. Think tanks use the same
rhetoric they have been using until now in the Third World countries.
They speak about democracy, reforms, good governance, citizenship
formation, freedom, development and so on. The loans imposing the
above listed “reforms” are being called “aid”. The World Bank
and other agencies are being described as “donors” and every
political idea in the interest of the population is being
straightforwardly qualified as “populism”. The goal is to
manipulate the public opinion using the methods described by Pierre
Bourdieu:
The one reproducing the official knows how to produce,
i.e. to manufacture, making theatre (in the etymological sense of the
term producere, which means bring to the light), something which does
not exist (in the sense of sensory, visible), and speak for it. He
has to produce that in which name he has the right to produce. There
is no way that he does not make theatre, create forms, perform
miracles. The most ordinary miracle for a speech artist is the verbal
miracle, the rhetorical success. He has to present that what
justifies his words, that is, the authority for which he has the
right to speak.
An important example of the rhetoric used is the book
“The Bottom Billion” by the director of the Development Research
Group of the World Bank Paul Collier. Collier is a typical neoliberal
economist totally devoted to the policies of the development agencies
from the last decades. He encourages the “shock therapies” using
in his book the usual language of “freedom, democratization, aids,
transition, struggle against poverty” and proclaims the politicians
who dared to impose these policies as “brave reformers”. Everyone
who dares to follow a different economic path and use the available
funds for building state social services is being branded as
“dictator”, while the adversaries of these reforms are called
“politically motivated” and “Marxists”. For example, he
praises the neoliberal policies of Blaize Compaore: “For more than
a decade the governments of Uganda and Burkina Faso have demonstrated
satisfactory development rates partially fixing the damages caused my
their horrible predecessors.” The “horrible predecessor” in
this case is Thomas Sankara who implemented policies of Keynesian
type and was eliminated in 1987 by Blaize Compaore with a coup aided
by France, the USA and Liberian militaries.
Besides, Collier claims that economic growth is the
means to reduce poverty, but he fails to mention the fact that the
profits of this growth are being exported beyond the state borders
(remember the convenient swap of GNP with GDP) and he also dodges the
question about the way the remaining in the country income is being
distributed among its population. The same two omissions are being
made by all neoliberal economists and think tanks in Bulgaria.
Collier even comes to deny reality by claiming that neoliberal
policies have reduced poverty. And in those cases when the denial of
their failure is impossible, he attributes the blame to bad luck:
“Nigeria’s best phase of economic policy was the reform phase of
the late 1980s, but the benefits of these reforms were completely
swamped by the coincident crash in the world price of oil” Collier
supports the most radical “reformist” line of action, calling for
a total and instantaneous acceptance of the packet of neoliberal
prescriptions (“necessary albeit very painful at times”), which
are very well depicted by Naomi Klein in her book “The Shock
Doctrine. The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”.
Collier never stops praising the American interventions
in Africa, calling them “truly magnificent”. From him we also
learn that “spread of democracy is an explicit agenda – indeed
even the overarching agenda of the United States in the Middle East”.
It is hard to find any connection between democracy and the US
support for the brutal regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar or
Bahrain. Having made the argument that the US and Britain are
“morally compelled” to intervene in countries of the “bottom
billion,” he notes that peacekeeping also provides “reformers”
with a vital opportunity:
There is the odd looking result that reform is more
likely after civil war… How can these two seemingly contradictory
results be reconciled? I think that they are telling us that post
conflict situations are highly fluid ... This suggests that our
policy interventions to help failing states need to differentiate
between types of situations, treating post conflict situations as
major opportunities.
This is a pragmatic example of a “shock doctrine”,
depicted by Naomi Klein as follows:
“The shock doctrine, like all doctrines, is a
philosophy of power. It’s a philosophy about how to achieve your
political and economic goals. And this is a philosophy that holds
that the best way, the best time, to push through radical free-market
ideas is in the aftermath of a major shock. Now, that shock could be
an economic meltdown. It could be a natural disaster. It could be a
terrorist attack. It could be a war. … These crises, these
disasters, these shocks soften up whole societies. They
discombobulate them. People lose their bearings. And a window opens
up, just like the window in the interrogation chamber. And in that
window, you can push through what economists call “economic shock
therapy.” That’s sort of extreme country makeovers. It’s
everything all at once. It’s not, you know, one reform here, one
reform there, but the kind of radical change that we saw in Russia in
the 1990s, that Paul Bremer tried to push through in Iraq after the
invasion.”
From Collier’s book we can understand that behind all
the rhetoric for liberalization, democratization and struggle against
poverty there lies the only intent to implement the neoliberal
policies of the free market in all countries, using all the necessary
methods, one of which is military force, considered to be totally
justifiable.
Source
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