Economic and debt crisis

In her book titled The Accumulation of Capital, [1] published in 1913, Rosa Luxemburg [2] devoted an entire chapter to international loans [3] in order to show how the great capitalist powers of the time used the credits granted by their bankers to the countries of the periphery to exercise economic, military and political domination on the latter. She sought to analyse the indebtedness of the newly independent states of Latin America, particularly, following the wars of independence in the 1820s, as well as the indebtedness of Egypt and Turkey during the 19th century, without forgetting China.

In February 1918, the repudiation of the debt by the Soviet government shocked international finance and sparked off unanimous condemnation by the governments of the great powers.

This decision of repudiation was intrinsic to this first big movement for social emancipation which rattled the Russian Empire in 1905. This huge revolutionary uprising was caused by the conjunction of many factors: the Russian debacle in its war with Japan, the wrath of peasants demanding land, the rejection of autocracy, workers’ demands... The movement began with strikes in St Petersburg in 1905 and soon spread throughout the empire like wildfire, adopting different forms of struggle.

Out of the process of self-organization by the masses emerged councils, or soviets in Russian: peasants’ councils, workers’ councils, soldiers’ councils and so on.

Proposals Doomed to Fail

In his latest book, Adults in the Room [4] Yanis Varoufakis gives us his version of the events that led to the Tsipras government’s shameful capitulation in July 2015. It essentially analyses the period 2009-2015, though it makes incursions into earlier periods. [5]

The Varoufakis-Tsipras Line was Doomed to Fail from the Word ‘Go’

Disclaimer: This series of articles on Varoufakis’s book, Adults in The Room: My Battle With Europe’s Deep Establishment is a guide for left-leaning readers who are not happy with the dominant narrative meted out by the mainstream media and the Troika-controlled governments. This is also a guide for readers who are dissatisfied with the former Finance Minister’s version. As a counterpoint to Varoufakis’s story, I have highlighted events that he is silent about and I have expressed different views on what he should have done and what he did instead. My story runs parallel, and not opposite, to his.

In the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis, capitalism regrouped as states pumped enormous amounts of money into the system to stabilize it. The result has been a relatively weak recovery—one that has failed to clear away the problems that had produced the crisis in the first place. As a result, eight years later crisis threatens to return.

In Xi Jinping’s China the habitual political framework has not withstood any substantial modifications. The party has kept its usual centralized posture, which makes it the backbone of de facto power. The recent attempts to invest state-level and provincial agencies with greater managerial significance have not altered the usual frame of reference. This happened despite the erosion of credibility that the elite had to necessarily register vis-à-vis a body social that is progressively going into overdrive and within which increasingly divergent pressures and disparate impulses are taking shape. [6]

This interview presents the genealogy of the anti-debt struggle, the campaigns for debt cancellation, the empirical foundation, the political battles and the concepts of the “illegitimate,” “illegal” or “odious” nature of public debt. In other words, how it is necessary for the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) – formerly known as the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt – to ally with opposition forces and social movements, where the concepts and the people involved can challenge and overpower debt and its “system” once the government hears their voice. Yet, for CADTM the outright priority is to fortify the activities described below rather than lobbying.

This interview presents the genealogy of the anti-debt struggle, the campaigns for debt cancellation, the empirical foundation, the political battles and the concepts of the “illegitimate,” “illegal” or “odious” nature of public debt. In other words, how it is necessary for the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) – formerly known as the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt – to ally with opposition forces and social movements, where the concepts and the people involved can challenge and overpower debt and its “system” once the government hears their voice. Yet, for CADTM the outright priority is to fortify the activities described below rather than lobbying.

This interview presents the genealogy of the anti-debt struggle, the campaigns for debt cancellation, the empirical foundation, the political battles and the concepts of the “illegitimate,” “illegal” or “odious” nature of public debt. In other words, how it is necessary for the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) – formerly known as the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt – to ally with opposition forces and social movements, where the concepts and the people involved can challenge and overpower debt and its “system” once the government hears their voice. Yet, for CADTM the outright priority is to fortify the activities described below rather than lobbying.

This interview presents the genealogy of the anti-debt struggle, the campaigns for debt cancellation, the empirical foundation, the political battles and the concepts of the “illegitimate,” “illegal” or “odious” nature of public debt. In other words, how it is necessary for the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) – formerly known as the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt – to ally with opposition forces and social movements, where the concepts and the people involved can challenge and overpower debt and its “system” once the government hears their voice. Yet, for CADTM the outright priority is to fortify the activities described below rather than lobbying. This second part of the interview deals with the experience acquired by the CADTM in Rwanda and in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s and early 2000s.