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G8 Arguments with Sunday Herald |
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Last week, Iain McWhirter's review of our book Arguments Against G8 in the Sunday Herald discussed some important issues but was woefully inaccurate. My letter to the Sunday Herald is below. McWhirter's piece is here: 'If more aid won't give this girl a better life, what will?' Sunday Herald By Iain Macwhirter 10 July, http://www.sundayherald.com/50686
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From: David Miller <
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Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 14:57:29 +0100
To: <
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Subject: for publication
Dear Sir/Madam,
Iain MacWhirter's review of our book Arguments Against G8 was a travesty.
He compares our position of that of the Bush regime and argues that our view on aid to Africa is that 'there’s no point in doing anything because it will be corrupted by capitalism.' This is false. No-one in our book, none of us who marched in Edinburgh to make poverty history, believes in doing nothing on aid. In fact the movement is united in saying that aid should be increased dramatically. None of the G8 countries has lived up to their 30 year old promise to give 0.7% GDP. They should do so straight away at a minimum.
The problem with the kind of aid given by Blair and Brown is that it comes with strings attached. As Make Poverty History put it in their response to the G8 summit: ‘The G8 have not met the challenge of trade justice’. There are fine words but the WTO and IMF ‘continue to force open developing country markets’. It is not that Browns honest intentions are corrupted by capitalism. Would that this were true. In fact it is Brown that is pushing the neoliberal agenda. He chairs the key IMF committee which imposes the 'corruption'.
MacWhirter goes on to say that 'Like Marx in the 1840s, David Miller believes revolution is the only answer.' Wrong again. Marx did not believe that revolution was the only answer, or rather he thought that capitalism might be replaceable by a democratic process. As to myself, I have never written anything that could be interpreted as meaning 'revolution is the only answer'. This, along with phrases like 'the far left' has a whiff of McCarthyism about it. In fact the main criticism of our book in the left press was precisely that it did not say that revolution was the only answer. This is because the book contains representatives from across the global justice movement who sign up to a wide range of positions. MacWhirter wants to pretend that the views in the book are somehow marginal, but in fact they are pretty representative of the views of the vast majority of humanity.
MacWhirter seems to be encapsulated in the same bubble as the political elite, maintaining, that There Is No Alternative: 'The capitalist system is the only one around, and is likely to be for a very long time.' Poor Iain should pay more attention to the news. First, there are all sorts of alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. In Venezuela the Chavez administration is in the middle of constructing an alternative, which they call 'socialism'. In Bolivia, the government has collapsed as a result of protests against privatisation. In Iran, the new Prime Minister - yes an Islamist - was largely elected on his rejection of the inequality imposed by neoliberal pressures. In France the overwhelming 'non' to the constitution suggests a strong desire for a Social Europe and not the Market Europe promoted especially by Blair and Brown. Secondly, it all depends on what he means by a very long time. Actually, if capitalism as a social system is not stopped, there will not be much to be around for. If the world's leading scientists are right - and only Bush, Exxon and their paid stooges now believe otherwise - we only have about two generations to stop capitalism before the climate change makes life for our species very difficult indeed.
Honest debate about the G8 and the social system they defend is welcome, but the Herald really should ensure that its journalists try to be accurate.
Yours
David Miller
Professor of Sociology
University of Strathclyde
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For the reviews in the Left press referred to in the letter see Workers Liberty, Morning Star |
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