NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/6371

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From: New Liberation News Service <[e-mail]>
Subject: Third World USA...
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Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 20:17:08 GMT
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THIRD WORLD, USA?
David Jarman and Jason W. Moore, NLNS

(NLNS)--As the flames from the L.A rebellion fade into the distant
reaches of America's sound-byte media consciousness, the economic
crisis which fueled the violence remains.  A quarter-century after
Watts, racial inequality remains worse than ever.  The "colored
only" signs on the bathrooms and fountains may have come down, but
there remains in place an even more effective means of racial
oppression, in the form of an economic system that seeks to
institutionalize the disparity between the "haves" and the
"have-nots."  "These problems aren't really about race," Jesuit
priest Greg Boyle, who works with gang youth in East Los Angeles,
told the Los Angeles Times, "They're about class."
     Even conservative economists are beginning to acknowledge
that this "recession," as it is termed in polite circles,
represents more than a slump in the business cycle.  In fact, the
economy has not been in "recession" for some time now.  Yet, there
seem to be few explanations for what is, in effect, a "recovery"
without jobs.  No jobs and less hope drive an increasingly
widespread perception among working people -- and an increasing
number of previously successful, comfortable white surbanites --
that something is woefully wrong with the Way We Do Business.
     Not a few observers from past decades have suggested that the
problems stemming from U.S. economic intervention in the Third
World would some day come home to roost.  For those few who manage
to catch the media blips concerning the Third World, the L.A.
riots bore an eerie parallel to the urban revolts which convulsed
Latin America throughout the 1980s. From Guatemala City to
Santiago, Chile, people have rioted in response to International
Monetary Fund (IMF)-imposed "austerity programs" -- mandating huge
increases in the prices of basic necessities -- and for political
democracy.  While the catalyst for the L.A. rebellion may have
been the racism of the Rodney King verdict, the underlying causes
were remarkably similar to those in the Third World -- decades of
police abuse and denial of jobs or even job training, reasonably
priced food, housing, and health care, to name just a few.
     Few are willing to call it such, but the United States has
been caught up in a steady "Third World-ization" over the past
twenty years.  This process is marked by de-industrialization (the
loss of manufacturing jobs to both capital flight and the growth
in lower-paying service jobs), a shrinking middle class, the
chronic exclusion of growing numbers of Americans from any
standard form of economic activity, the increased exploitation of
people of color and women, and the further growth of the Garrison
State (more cops, more prisons, more criminals).
     Deindustrialization.  Two mutually reinforcing trends have
appeared to accelerate U.S. economic decline and social
dislocation -- the problem is not just that factories are moving
overseas, but that economic prosperity and industrial output are
less connected than ever.  As big business moved production sites
to the Third World, the role of industry as a catalyst for
national or regional economic development has been crippled by the
shift to a global economy.  Simply put, more factories no longer
mean more jobs.  A factory in Detroit, for example, no longer
receives parts from Wisconsin, but from northern Mexico, thereby
limiting the "multiplier" effect -- the factory has an economic
relationship with its supplier plants, probably located in another
country, but not with the surrounding consumer market.
     Moreover, most new industrial investment does not center
around heavy industry or pay much attention to the domestic
markets; America's New Manufacturing consists largely of low-wage,
export-oriented sweatshops little different from similar sites in
San Salvador or Mexico City.  Contrary to the rhetoric of most
liberals, this development disproves the notion that all we need
to do is build more factories, "reinvest in America."
     Industrial decline goes hand-in-hand with dramatic growth in
the service sector.  While the number of workers in the
manufacturing sector will fall from the current 14 percent (down
from 26 percent in 1950) to 2.5-5 percent in 2005 ["Great
Depression, pt.2"], the ten jobs projected to grow most quickly
over the next decade, eight pay less than the average income and
five pay poverty wages [Solutions for the New Work Force, pp.
18-19, John Sweeney and Karen Nussbaum, Seven Locks Press,
Washington, DC, 1989].  Significantly, all these jobs (retail
employees, fast food workers, janitors) are in the low-wage
service sector.
     Shrinking Middle Class.  As relatively high-wage
manufacturing jobs give way both to high-salaried management and
analysis jobs and to the low- wage service jobs just mentioned,
income disparities widen further.  For example, the $15-50,000
family income bracket fell from 63 to 56 percent from 1973-87
[ibid, p. 10].  The drop would have been even more severe had it
not been for increased numbers of two-income families,
necessitated by the need to "make ends meet."  Economic trends,
which appear irreversible, indicate that a new, smaller, middle
class is taking shape, to the exclusion those who work for wages.
No longer will manufacturing or even many previously
"middle-income" (like school teachers or nurses) service sector
jobs propel workers into the middle class, which will become the
exclusive domain of salaried professionals benefitting from the
"information society."  As has long been the case in the Third
World, this refitted middle class will serve to manage an economy
increasingly geared toward the needs of wealthy at home and abroad
and oversee the pacification of the increasingly restive masses.
     Economic and Social Marginalization.  Over the past two
decades, U.S.  capitalism has systemically excluded millions of
workers from earning a livelihood as wage-earners -- necessitated
by the vast oversupply of labor in America resulting from
irrational economic organization (it is estimated that if
America's economy were restructured for maximum sustainable
efficiency, the average work week would be 14 hours).  This
exclusion is effectively hid by the way of calculating the
unemployment rate, which factors out the underemployed,
discouraged workers, those whose unemployment benefits have run
out, armed service members, and the incarcerated.  In communities
of color, where official unemployment runs at least double the
national average, and real unemployment is even higher (sometimes
50 percent or higher), this problem is especially advanced.  It is
here that we see the development of an entire parallel informal
economy, of drug traffickers, street vendors, the illegal
immigrant workforce both in fields and sweatshops, and temporary
under-the-table odd-jobbing.  If one wants to see the future of
L.A. and other decaying urban areas, go to Mexico City -- the
incipient problems posed by joblessness, overcrowding, crime, and
general social decay are in full bloom south of the border.
     Racist and Sexist Exploitation.  It is widely recognized that
women and people of color make less than white men -- but progress
is being made, Isn't it?  Quite the opposite trend has appeared
over the past two decades, as the median income gap between black
and white families from 1970-89 grew from 39 to 44 percent, this
amounts to an extra $120 billion annually in "super-profits," that
is, those profits taken off the top of what oppressed groups would
earn were they white.  The gap between men and women has closed
slightly, but only because women worker's real wages have fallen
less rapidly than their male counterparts.  Even the touted
panacea of education has proven to be no cure.  Economist Randy
Abelda writes that "the average white male college graduate earned
$6000 more in 1987 than the average comparably educated Latino
man, $8000 more than his black male counterpart, and $13,000 more
than a white woman with a similar educational background."  In the
Third World and increasingly here, race and ethnicity are broken
down along class lines, where people of color, particularly women
of color, are the most heavily exploited.
     Garrison State. The Garrison State is the result of U.S.
reliance on using too much of the "carrot" to motivate the rich
and too much "stick" to guide the swelling ranks of the poor.
This is manifest in increasing prison populations (the overall
incarceration rate is up 250 percent over the past two decades;
3.25 percent of all black men are behind bars; budgets for state
prison construction are up 73 percent since 1987), in that
America's fastest growing occupation is Private Security, and in
the "Drug War" and its accompanying assault on civil liberties.
"Law and Order" always becomes more of an issue during crisis
times, but from the amazing proliferation of prime-time "real-life
cop shows" to a Democratic candidate pledging 100,000 more cops
and eagerly supervising the execution of a brain-dead prisoner,
the issue more than ever seems to be one of social control and
coercion; the new Law and Order is qualitatively different from
previous decades in its stress not on deterrence or tranquility so
much as a siege mentality -- the need to hold the line at any
cost.  This mentality is indicative of a ruling elite which sees
it as most cost effective not to deal with social problems but to
beat down the "agitators" and "hoodlums."  Such a strategy will
succeed no more in South Central L.A. and Newark than it did in
Vietnam, El Salvador, and other poor nations.
     The current tribulations of Peter Ueberroth's "Rebuild L.A."
commission demonstrate that solutions for our inner cities will
not come as easily or cheaply as the 1984 Olympics.  Again, the
problem is not just one of too few factories -- reformist calls
for "enterprise zones" and "empowerment" will solve nothing as
long as corporations have the luxury of fleeing to Matamoros, or
for that matter, Malaysia.  Expenditures (or "investments" as they
are now called) for education, community centers, urban
beautification, police reform, and job programs address some of
the underlying social issues, but even they ignore the structural
decay driving the disturbing trend towards "Third World-ization"
in our inner cities and isolated rural areas.
     As retired Illinois mechanic Walter Wiaduck in May told a
Times/CBS poll, "The Los Angeles riots were entirely predictable,
because we live in a system where our strongest force is
selfishness, where everybody is greedy, so that when a lot of
people don't have jobs, it's natural for them to feel a lot of
animosity and envy." As we seek to reverse the Third World-ization
process, we need to look beyond the narrow confines of capitalism
and the "two" parties.  If Wiaduck is right, our escape from
ecconomic decline lies not in more competition, but an economic
system based on cooperation, internationally as well as at home,
as the catalyst for economic growth.

David Jarman, former managing editor of the Amherst Student at
Amherst College, and Jason W. Moore, Editor of the Student
Insurgent, serve as co-directors of the Center for Contemporary
Activism.