e-Con e-News

‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 29 October – 04 November 2023

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We don’t produce, there are no vibrant entrepreneurs.

There is no risk-taking. What happens in privatization

is that SoEs go from one set of corrupt hands to another.

– Chandrasena Maliyadda (see ee Focus)

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Now listen to the gnashing of teeth & caterwauling by US World-Bank-front-window mannequin Transparency International (TISL) Executive Director Nadi Perera, just returned from an opaque closed-door IMF-civil society do-do in Morocco:

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‘No matter how much aid we receive, it will be squandered or misappropriated

if we do not tackle corruption head-on. It’s akin to pouring water into a leaky vessel.

While there’s much talk about revitalizing the economy, there’s an alarming lack

of focus on governance reforms & corruption prevention.

The masses, who took to the streets in large numbers last year,

demanded a ‘system change’ [to the IMF? – ee]

because they recognized that the country’s crisis was not solely economic

but rooted in weak governance & deep-seated corruption.’

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This Perera thus informed a forum in Colombo last week, focusing on ‘The Civil Society Governance Diagnostic Report on Sri Lanka’ just as the USAID, World Bank & IMF heavyweights descended on Colombo & Indian industrialists arrived to debone the chicken (see ee Random Notes, & ee Economists, Civil society).

     But wait. Where exactly had all that ‘aid’ been supposed to go? Was it meant to invest in industry? Was it meant to make the country economically stronger? No! The aid, both principal & high commissions to higher comissioners, remains a bribe to prevent industrialization, to pay for a system of patronage. (see ee Quotes, UNP Gravy Train)

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‘We import half a trillion rupees of machinery every year.

Rs1.5trillion of fuel, vehicles & garment inputs every year.

That is Rs2trillion on such imports alone.

When the procurements were made in public sector institutions

for machinery, EU standards were made a requirement…

Although we have workers who could produce the same machinery,

they cannot sell their products to public sector institutions

because of these so-called green EU standards.’

(see ee 05 Dec 2020, A War Economy is Inevitable)

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So where can such ‘aid’ funds then go when not into modern industry? Well? Where can it go when it cannot be productively invested: Into gambling & speculation & other rentier activity which amounts to legal theft anyway, making money off money, or money off land minus any intervening ‘improvement’ in the money (ie, investment in industry) or the land (ie, building modern plant & making equipment on it).

     ee recently pointed to the US Biden Administration’s ‘metastasizing diversity, equity & inclusion bureaucracy‘ which provides ‘well-paid perches for members of the educated working class itself. The watchwords of this project are ‘fairness’ & ‘justice’: terms which do not describe a social ideal at all, but a state of affairs among individuals’. (see ee Economists, 7 Theses on US Politics)

     So guess who gives a damn? Good old civil society, which an ee reader noted recently: ‘the most pliant political, legal, religious, artistic, philosophical cliques that dollars can buy, who can forcefully reforge the colonial economic base to consolidate it…?

     And true to recipe: Nadi Perera was speaking at ‘The Civil Society Initiative on Anti-Corruption Reform for Economic Recovery’, led by TISL and a core group including Verité Research, Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, People’s Action for Free & Fair Elections (PAFFREL), and the National Peace Council (NPC). Professor Arjuna Parakrama, the researcher behind the Civil Society Governance Diagnostic Report, emphasizes these recommendations are important ‘not only from an economic perspective but also in ensuring justice & fairplay for the masses’!

     But again, wait! Justice! Fairplay! What is the economic perspective? Everybody wishes to know to whom (Colombo’s Anglomaniacs?) & what (Colombo landlords) exactly all these NGO funds have gone, and what improvements they can point to?: The problem is these NGOs are the very embodiment of most modern corruption.

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• ‘Just when more than ever we need a Karl Marx to reveal the inner workings of the capitalist system, or a Friedrich Engels to expose its ugly realities ‘on the ground’, what we are getting is an army of ‘post-Marxists’ one of whose principal functions is apparently to conceptualize away the problem of capitalism… The replacement of socialism by an indeterminate concept of democracy, or the dilution of diverse and different social relations into catch-all categories like ‘identity’ or ‘difference’, or loose conceptions of ‘civil society’, represent a surrender to capitalism and its ideological mystifications.’ – see ee Politics, The Uses & Abuses of ‘Civil Society’ (2016)

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• Transparency This! – While whining about ‘corruption’, an ‘obscure international law’ known as ‘investor-state dispute settlements’ (ISDS) is being ‘weaponized’ by the fossil fuel & mining corporations, to sue governments for harming their interests. Recently, after Italy banned offshore oil drilling, an English oil company said it had been planning to drill and sued the government, winning about $200million.

     So, we’re curious about the repeated news on this Singapore Convention on Mediation Bill, which is claimed as ‘a leap forward in international commercial dispute resolution’. The Enforcement of International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation Bill was published in the gazette of 16 Oct 2023, which will be presented in Parliament soon and ‘hopefully receive the support of all political parties to enact a statute that will be of benefit to Sri Lanka’. But how?

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‘They were not mere peddlers of handouts written by others

or what we in the profession called ‘sunshine stories’

(not about what has been done but what is going to be done

often on the never never) and hurrah boys of their ministers

ever-hungry for publicity, then as much as now.’

– Manik de Silva (see ee Media, MS de Silva)

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The Island editor’s silvan saga about journalists of the so-called good-old-days locates corruption in ‘ministers.’ But surely as a recipient of the largesse of Unilever’s fair&lovely advertizing budget, he must be cognizant that both ministers & permanent bureaucrats are the agents of multinational banks & their corporations & the nation-states that watch their backsides. Why no mention of larger forces?

     Recently, a smallholding cultivator told us they were finding it hard to purchase fertilizer, as prices have increased considerably. It turns out that certain Ministry of Agriculture officials affiliated to a certain ‘struggling’ political party had deliberately delayed placing orders for urea, mainly to mess up the government plans. And guess who paid them under that table for this service? The minister is said to have simply transferred them, with no disciplinary action, due to fear of the union, which has also been captured by this well-known multinational corporation (MNC) & its political instruments.

     This ee therefore begins a series on India’s colonial labor law and how little it changed after independence. Interestingly, it also looks at the 19^th century ‘nightwork’ laws for children & women! Further, we begin to further examine the role of huge MNCs like Unilever, who hide behind the ‘private sector’ fronts who push for destroying labor laws (see ee Random Notes & ee Focus)

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• US NGO Advocata Institute, a whacko-economic churner-outer of surveys & reports of dubious scientific & statistical sampling has been re-anointed by its fraternal US-embassy business tickertape worm EconomyNext as‘the Colombo-based free market thinktank’. Fancy that!

     The name change suggests: 1) They are a tank, which is true (but more like a cesspool of thoroughly vacuous economic theories!). 2) They think. No. They parrot. 3) That they are Colombo-based. Colombo must be the new Chicago! 4) And even after massive US Dollarization, claim to be ‘free!’ Free as Free Trade. Free as the Free Market can be, Free as the Free World (now meat-grinding Gaza). Free at last! No Doubt! Jaya-way-wah!

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• ee continues to serialize Idirimagen Idiriyata, the Communist Party of Sri Lanka ‘s ‘Alternative Program’. The important ‘progressive’ features of modern machine manufacturing identified by Marx include: division of labour; socialisation of labour; mechanisation; increasing returns to scale; learning-by-doing; and overall, superior potential for cumulative productivity increases’.

     Learning by doing interests ee very much, for it represents the accumulated practical knowledge of workers. This ee looks at the CPSL’s plan for technical and vocational education and training (TVET), the negative perceptions of TVET by society. Setting long-term plans for vocational education will be hard in this situation, yet there is no escape from this investment…. (see ee Focus)

Privatization: From One Thief’s Offshore Account to Another