The stock market explosion that took place at the end of the ’80s, in the countries of the capitalist center, came as result of the long-lasting exploitation of the regional countries and the laborers of the industrial countries. When the ‘bubble’ later burst in the stock markets, everyone believed that the time had came for the theory of economic cycles by Kondratiev [1] to be confirmed, based on which the post ’30s great crisis would come in the ’90s, but instead of capitalism entering the vortex of a great crisis, “existing socialism” collapsed, giving food for the theorists of the “end of the economic cycles”.
The ’90s came in triumphantly for the autocracy of capital and the freemarket, with theories about the end of histories and ideologies, with praise for the technological explosion and the progress that promised the endless expansion of the market, smooth profitability for capital, the constant growth and the end of economic recessions. These opinions were shared by not only the neo-liberals but the whole of the political powers across the political spectrum, from the center-left -which at the time had forever abandoned social democracy and has basically adopted the policies of neo-liberals-, to the mainstream left.
The neo-liberal globalization and technological explosion brought drunkenness to the capitalists who were thirsty for more… blood. The governments of every political shade throughout the advanced capitalist world participated and contributed to the apotheosis of the system of market economy and also to the terms of its expansion at a global level, to the militant confrontation with those countries who did not surrender and to the imposition of the new economic and political order around the planet.
The economic explosion in the ’90s was accompanied by a new greater explosion of hunger in the third world and the intensity of social segregation for the semi-region and the center of capitalism.
While the profits of the businesses grew, what also grew was the pressure of Capital towards society with the blackmailing dilemma ‘reduction of production costs or close down’ and the ‘migration’ of the businesses to countries with cheaper labor. During this decade – in which occurred the last of the many “miracles” of capitalism – a new international allocation of labor was created.
In China, India, the countries of South East Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, the multinationals install their chains of production, since the poverty wages of modern slavery and the modern slave trade itself that developed with globalization promised great profits for businesses. The tension of international exploitation with the most raw and inhuman pillage of social wealth that humanity had ever seen since the end of the 19th century, and the astronomical profits for the businesses from the reduction of labor costs were the factors that brought explosive dimensions to the global social crisis.
But the supporters of globalization from the neo-liberals to the ‘social democrats’ praised the results of this system which “managed to get millions of people out of the spectrum of hunger”. It’s indicative that before the crisis some alleged ‘socialists’ and ‘critics of neo-liberals’ such as Krugman [2], furiously contradicted the arguments of those against globalization, seeing in this the solution for the improvement of the living standards of the poor populations of the planet.
The main argument was the one that said that globalization “brought millions of people out of absolute poverty”, who became workers in the labour camps of the multinationals “maybe they get low pay, but they used to get even less”. At the same time the slogan “better low-paid jobs than no jobs”, which today amidst a crisis, wage cuts and lay-offs, is heard from every mainstream spokesperson in the developed world, was first used as an answer to the critiques about inhuman exploitation of people in the factory hell-holes set up by multinationals in the regional countries.
There is though a sequence in this course of misery for the people in the region. The pre-existing policy of lending from the Western banks. The pre-existing policy of debt that took hostage whole countries, the policies of the IMF that tore out every production procedure that did not bring in large profits for the Western economical oligarchy, the pre-existing sale of productive resources and infrastructures. The pre-existing enslavement to international capital in the countries who fell victim to the Western banks.
The misery of the people in these countries was a result of a long-lasting policy that started in the ’60s. When in the ’90s multinationals raided these countries to find ‘material’ to man the factories, or more to correct the modern slave markets, the previous policies of the international economic elite had assured that many millions of people would have gone into absolute misery and will accept working even for €1 a day in the factories of Western multinationals.
And the “civilized” world of the West which over-defends human rights, when the Western elite regimes are not satisfied, they have no hesitation to take for slaves even children, millions of which live, get sick and in the end die in the factories of the multinationals.
The result from this regime of globalization is the historically unprecedented gap in the level of wealth between north and south. In 1820 the differences between the 20% of the richest people globally and the 20% of the poorest was 3/1, in 1920 it was 11/1 and in 1997 74/1. Today 1/5 of the richest population of the world own almost 85% of the global GDP [Gross Domestic Product] while the poorest 20% less than 4%. This was the “improvement in people’s ‘quality of life’ in the region” which leftists and right-wingers claim that globalization brought.
Under these terms and while the so-called first world takes 80% of the global income leaving the 20% for the rest of the world, business profits go sky high, increasing the national incomes without however increasing labor incomes. This bundle of money coming from the global labour division, global over-exploitation and new work relations, was massively diverted into the channels of the financial system, ending up in the capitalist metropolis while the speculation games in the stock markets and exchange markets flared.
The stock exchanges in the ’90s live new days of glory with their index hitting the top.
It is the era when wealth and speculation is completely decriminalized. With the super-profits from this international model of development, the stock market sphere inflated and fed the stock market explosions of ’90. One ‘bubble’ came after another, internationally capitalists anticipated the non-stop profitability of this specific development model, globalization was glorified as the final exit from the crises of the system and the mythical profits from the ‘bubbles’ supported consumption from the Western mainly middle and upper classes.
In a nutshell, it was the speculation of the stock market sector, the ‘bubbles’ in property, stocks, exchange markets, the “bubbles” in the prices of food products and raw materials that created the demand and gave the possibility for global production to get absorbed. In the end, for today’s crisis you cannot hold neo-liberalism and the uncontrolled action of the markets only responsible. We cannot separate capitalism into good and bad, put the blame on just a part of it, characterizing it as “casino-capitalism” as a large part of the left is often saying today.
The whole system is responsible, for economic globalization and international labour division, the expansion of capital and development.
Those responsible for this crisis are not just some senior banking executives who got rich from speculation all these years. Behind them were and are interests that connect multinational banking groups, industries, food and medicine companies, insurance companies…. which means, every kind of multinational investment that speculates at the expense of labour, human needs, the environment. Behind the crisis is transnational capital, the whole of the regime.
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