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Structural Adjustment
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Structural adjustment is a strategy for financial imperialism, part of the so-called "Washington Consensus." It is insisted upon by the World Bank, the IMF and free trade Economists when dealing with underdeveloped countries; it is advantageous to global corporations. What Structural Adjustment means is that the Bank and private lenders tell poor countries that in order to get loans they will have to change economic policies: such as selling off their state industries (probably corrupt, usually inefficient, so perhaps a good thing), but also they must cut back expenditures on health care, education, environmental enforcement; in addition they are pressed to convert subsistence agriculture to export agriculture.
That means that peasant farmers are driven off their lands; agribusinesses take over large tracts, employing some of the same peasants on what was once their land. The banks also advise countries to lease out their resources to foreign companies--usually well-connected with the bankers of the world--so the country can pay the loans back to the bank. Usually the leases aren't fair; additionally, the companies often avoid paying taxes.
So, of course, the countries can't pay back the loans. They are re-loaned back to the country with higher interest rates, and more and more of their growing exports and lease fees are actually needed to pay off just the interest on the debts. So, the net result of structural adjustment is to impoverish the many for the enrichment of the few, and to boost the bottom lines of international corporations.
The Romans just used old-fashioned graft. And war, of course, which created the greatest fortunes. Bill Gates, the wealthiest man, didn't get his money directly from the defense industry, but many have, especially since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates's money came as a pay-off of structural adjustment: millions of workers were so desperate for work that they produced the hardware cheaply enough that his software could be used by billions.
Structural adjustment delivers at least as much money as war, but it immiserates many more. At least they're not being bombed or shot to death. No, they're dying more slowly, of cholera because of polluted water, of starvation because their land has been taken away, or of police repression needed to keep the people down. The police are needed so the people will accept their fate: higher fuel prices, higher food prices, high metered water prices, no schools, no doctors and only jobs for people desperate enough to work for practically nothing.
If you were one of those millions of people, and you saw how hopeless it all was, wouldn't you grasp onto any message of hope and power someone offered, any way out of your miserable powerlessness?
It's as if the World Bank, the IMF, the Economists, the global corporations, all got together to agree on how to PROMOTE TERRORISM! Is it any wonder, that some third world people, especially the brighter ones, the ones who can think, the ones who can see how hopeless things are, might actually be persuaded that blowing themselves up for a cause would make sense? Fundamentalist Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians offer them a comprehensive answer as to why they are miserable and powerless, and place the blame squarely on others--the West in the case of al Qaeda, Pakistan in the case of Hindu right-wingers, the Liberals and al Qaeda in the case of American right-wing fundamentalists.
Structural Adjustment is a fertile foundation for terrorism; it creates all the conditions in which aggressive desperation can take hold. There is misery, but usually after great promises of better times--from the free market. (Scholars of revolution call this "relative deprivation" caused by "rising expectations"). Examples of success pointed to by proponents of these policies are often local leaders widely known to be on the take from westerners, and the westerners themselves, who are stripping their country bare.
There is enough education that some people know how to think for themselves. They can see that the system doesn't serve them, just like Danton, Robespierre and Lenin. However, what they rebel against is not just within their own country; it's a global system.
Structural adjustment, the banks claim, will develop the country, and rising exports make it look as if the countries are getting richer. But most of the people are getting poorer, especially when you count the non-monetary values they've lost like living on their own land and the ability to grow their own food so they won't starve.
A very few get extremely wealthy because of Structural Adjustment. In Russia, after the USSR collapsed, the former leaders, the nomenklatura, all well-connected, and corrupt, were the ones who grabbed the state industries. Wealth in most third world countries is often political, too, but unlike the US, there are hardly even crumbs for the people who "don't make it," especially in the violent cauldron we call the Middle East.
So, they strap on those suicide vests and dream of ideal worlds.
