World Bank Figures Show Real Face of Capitalism

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Bolivian miners-exploited by imperialist bankers life has been devoted to the capitalist system.

His first career led him to become Chief Executive of one of the world's largest corporations.

Then John F. Kennedy made him US Secretary of Defence, in which post he prepared and executed the demonic policies of US imperialism in Indochina.

Resigning on the eve of imperialism's humiliating defeat, the defoliator of Vietnam, the architect of some of the most barbaric acts of modern times, was considered with breathtaking cynicism to be the right man to head the World Bank-whose stated objective is to develop the backward countries of the capitalist world.

Incongruity

If Macnamara did not feel some incongruity at the time of his appointment, he has in his decade of office been forced more and more to recognise in public that this objective is very far from being achieved.

He has just launched the second World Development Report-a detailed annual compilation of economic and social statistics about the underdeveloped countries.

Despite his attempt to wrest at least a partially optimistic message from the figures, Macnamara's survey -compiled by World Bank economists and one of the most comprehensive ever published-carries a sombre message on, or between, every line.

Given the source of the survey-a bastion of imperialist reaction-the report carries perhaps even added weight as an empirical indictment of capitalism.

Differential

Of course, it is possible to find some aggregate figures which may seem to "prove" that the relative position of the economically backward countries is improving under capitalism, underdevelopment.

Life expectancy at birt (19 Child death rate age 1-4 per Adult literacy rate (%) Population per doctor Population per nurse Daily per capita calorie Birth rate (per 000)

Death rate (per 000) albeit slowly.

Gross National Product of what the World Bank euphemistically calls the low ine ome COI intri So, for instance, the ised capit alist countries "developing countries" rose at an average rate of 5.7% between 1960 and 1976, while that of the industrial "free market" (i.e. imperialist economies) grew at only But the narrowing of the gap implied by these figures is more than wiped out by the differential in population growth rates.

More than that, the World Bank Report divides the developing countries into two groups-the poor ("middle income countries") and •the extremely poor ("low income countries").

And the average rate of growth of production per head in these 37 poorest countries in the two "Development Decades" has been, according to the World Bank, scarcely more than 1% a year.

Even this figure conceals the undoubted accentuation of economic inequality the poorest countries.

The inescapable conclusion is that, during several decades in which the apparent concern of bourgeois politicians and media for world poverty has never been greater, the material lives of hundreds of millions of people has been getting steadily worse.

One of the "positive" facts in the Report is that life expectancy at birth in the poorest countries has risen from 42 years in 1960 to 50 years in 1977.

The other horrifying figures show that this means for most people eight extra years of deprivation and misery.

The plight of Cambodians today is an extreme case of a situation which is world-wide.

The World Bank estimates that food production per head in Cambodia (Kampuchea) in 1975-77 was only 59% of the very low level it had been in 1969-71.

But Cambodia is only one of 48 underdeveloped countries in which food production per head fell during the same period.

Such developments mean that the often quoted figures which suggest that a growing share of the national production of the economically backward countries is in the industrial sector can be worse than misleading.

Sometimes, instead of demonstrating the expansion of industry it can be the statistical expression of decline in agriculture.

The growing food deficit, along with the increase in oil prices of the last few years, is one of the major reasons behind the growing balance of payments deficit of the economically backward countries.

An IMF estimate published two weeks ago suggests that the total deficit for 1979 will be as much as $49 billion, bringing their cumulative deficit since 1973 to $200 billion.

That staggering sum must be obtained largely from borrowing on the part of the economically backward countries.

And the problems of indebtedness are one of the major themes of this report.

The total medium and long-term public debts of "developing". countries, it shows, grew from $113 billion in 1970 to $231 billion in 1977. much the poorest countries which, being less "credit worthy" , are left without even the prospect of borrowing from the banks.

A number of middle income countries, however, have fallen deeply into debt whence they have been "rescued" by the IMF acting for their creditors, which thereby obtain an iron grip on the economies.

In this way countries like Peru, Bolivia, Egypt, Mauritania, Mexico, Chile and Uruguay had to pay in 1977 over 20% of their export earnings in debt servicing (repayment and interest).

Enough for all

The statistics produced by economists show that the value of production in the world as a whole has passed $10,000 billionroughly $2,500 a head of the world's population.

Such figures are simplistic and easily misused.

But they are part of the evidence that the forces of production have developed on a world scale sufficiently to make possible a decent material standard for every inhabitant.

Misery

Now is the first time in history that it has been possible to say that.

Yet the capitalist system. in whose orbit the great majority of people still live, has in its advanced regions been suffering for ten years a prolonged and agonising crisis while on its underdeveloped edge it accumulates human poverty and misery on a frightening scale.

The World Bank Survey carries a prediction thaton assumptions which are in no way unrealistically pessimistic-the world as it is now moving will contain millions more inhabitants who eat less than daily minimum calorie requirements by the year 2000.

Rotten ripe

It is one of the more startling of many facts and projections in this book which go to underline Lenin's view now more than halt a century old, that the capitalist system is rotten ripe for overthrow.

Trotsky also said in his great History of the Russian Revolution that capitalism had:

"reached a point on the world arena where it ceased to justify its costs of production-understanding these not in the commercial but in the sociological sense.

"Tariffs, militarism, crises, wars, diplomatic conferences and other scourges, swallow up and squander so much creative energy that in spite of all achievements in technique there remains no room for the further growth of prosperity and culture."

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