HomeOld_PostsOwning means of production key to Third World growth

Owning means of production key to Third World growth

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How to Change the World (Tales of Marx and Marxism) by Eric Hobsbawm
Published by Great Britain (2011)
ISBN: 978-0-349-12352-3

COMMUNISM, as defined by Wikipedia, includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, anarchism and the political ideologies grouped around both.
Both share the analysis that order in society stems from its economic system.
According to the ideology, there are two major social classes: the working class — who must work to survive and who make up the majority within society — and the capitalist class — a minority who derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production.
The primary element which will enable this transformation, according to this analysis, is the social ownership of the means of production.
Since Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published, the doctrine that bears his name was embraced by many in the name of equality.
In 2011, Eric Hobsbawm penned the book How to Change the World (Tales of Marx and Marxism), which seeks to interrogate the need to revert back to Marx’s teachings.
“Once again it is evident that even between major crises, ‘the market’ has no answer to the major problem confronting the 21st Century; that unlimited and increasingly high-tech economic growth in the pursuit of unsustainable profit produces global wealth, but at the cost of an increasingly dispensable factor of production, human labour, and, one might add, of the globe’s natural resources,” writes Hobsbawm.
“Economic and political liberalism, singly or in combination, cannot provide the solution to the problems of the 21st Century.
“Once again the time has come to take Marx seriously.”
With the world recovering from the global economic crisis, various think tanks and world leaders have proffered possible solutions to try and save their economies.
The world, especially First World countries, is joined by the same fate and have been forced to work together to map the way forward.
As usual Third World countries, in some instances referred to as the ‘bottom billion’, have not been spared the effects of the crisis.
Some developing nations, such as Zimbabwe, have faced economic challenges but have somehow managed to stay afloat and rebounded.
Hobsbawm writes, the West turned away from Marx’s teachings hence their economic cases are different from those of developing countries.
One should understand that effects of the crisis were not the same across the board, hence situations of the countries differ.
In nations such as Zimbabwe, the effects, especially those of job losses, were countered by the country’s informal sector that offered employment to those who had lost jobs in the formal sector.
“During the decades of the great global capitalist boom, it increasingly seemed that social revolutions would be hoped for primarily in the dependent and ‘under-developed’ world,” writes Hobsbawm.
“Hence the second point to note is that ‘Third World’ experience concentrated the attention of Marxists on the relations between the dominant and developed countries, on the specific character and possible transition to socialism in such regions.”
Poverty is a relative term, and how it is defined in a First World country is different from that in the Third World.
Through social ownership of the means of production, Hobsbawm contends that is how developing countries have managed to record growth, even though its minimal.
Statistics indicate that Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate stands at 80 percent but the numbers do not include those in the informal sector.
A number of locals are in the informal sector as evidenced by the increasing number of people at markets such as Mupedzanhamo, Siyaso and Glenview ‘Area’ Eight, all which are home industries.
People are making a living out of manufacturing their own products such as chairs, wardrobes and kitchen-units, among other products, for sale.
Some are beneficiaries of the Land Reform Programme and their lives have been turned around by growing cash crops such as tobacco and cotton.
Not everyone who is not employed by ‘world standards’ in Zimbabwe is poor.
“It is the activities of the informal sector that have contributed significantly to the growth of the economy,” writes Hobsbawm.
“Economies of countries such as China and India have thrived at the back of the informal sector.
“In Western countries the same scenario does not apply.
“Not many people in the West are employed in the informal sector with most (who) are out of jobs having to rely on Government grants for survival.”
This in turn negatively impacts on the countries’ economies as the grants tend to drain the fiscus.
How to Change the World (Tales of Marx and Marxism) is an enlightening and worthwhile read.

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