Utopias and dystopias - the post-1990 world

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was demolished. The Western press hailed this event as the end of wars, the beginning of a world of peace.

Also, with the end of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, a new world began, the end of history, the triumph of liberalism, the era of the private, of the individual, over the public, the social, the Minimal State over the Controlling State.

But was this the real dispute that arose after World War II, back on September 2, 1945?

That's not my understanding.

This war (1939-1945), which involved a large number of nations, demonstrated the industrial power, the development of manufacturing technologies, the type of development to be pursued by nations. A new colonial model was to be adopted. And this was the backdrop that destroyed what seemed to be, definitively, the old mercantilist-financial colonial model.

That old model, which originated in England, had enriched a small number of families, both in the United Kingdom and abroad. Just to mention some of the best-known names, such as the royal Windsor family, and also in old Albion, the Rothschilds, the Manners, the Cecils, the Wriothesleys, the Dutch royal family and, in that country, the Oranges and the Van Duyns, in short, no more than 40 families who, from the old continent, dominated world finance and the economy until the beginning of the 20th century.

The new colonial model was based on industrial production and mass consumption, and had two avenues for profit distribution: the private sector, prime example being the United States of America (USA), and the public sector, for the State, as in the USSR.

The old financial capitalism, which I will henceforth call "banking," understood that there was a space, in that dispute over the allocation of profits, for it to reassume its colonial power. And, in this way, while the US and the USSR sought a greater number of colonies and waged indirect battles around the world, banking went in search of alliances that would destroy, not communism, but the empowerment of industrialism.

Regarding this resurgence of banking and its new objectives, I have already dedicated other articles to this. I will now recount the recent history of its global power. I will only note that capital of industrial origin, such as that of the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts in the USA, began to embrace the banking sector.

If the 20th century constructed the utopia of the consumer society or, in a later stage, the Galbraithian affluent society, on the one hand, and the protective, socialist society, on the other, the latter lacked the critique of also acting as a colonial empire.

But the society that unfolds before us in the 21st century is dystopian, a universe of islands of well-being within a world of misery, struggle, and death. It's no coincidence that one of the names given to this financial world is the Island Club (British Isles, Manhattan Isles, and Honshu, Japan).

Before addressing the themes of this article – banking power and national power – it is necessary to show the significant change in corporate ownership.

We've become accustomed to seeing large industrial corporations through their products, their factories, their patents. It was evident, then, that they were run by entrepreneurs, inventors, and "engineers."

Starting in 1990, many companies – Royal Dutch Shell, Coca-Cola, Imperial Chemical, Unilever, Nestlé, Rio Tinto Zinc, and many more could be listed – rapidly became owned by investment funds. This rarely meant a change of ownership – the tax advantages gained after Thatcher-Reagan were the real incentive – but rather a new management control model that made the actual ownership more anonymous.

Executives, even those constantly changing, become the most recognizable corporate figures.

This will lead to the fiction of "the richest people in the world," those who have stopped hiding, out of vanity or ignorance, in investment funds. The Windsor billionaires are known for their royalty, not their wealth.

Let us now consider, in the words of the "economic hitman" John Perkins ("The Secret History of the American Empire," Cultrix, SP, 2008), the "truth about global corruption" or how to create the debt that will enslave nation-states.

In 1997, another crisis triggered by the banking sector occurred. This one was in Asia.

Crises are actions provoked by the financial system to increase its profits and dominate countries. International organizations – such as the IMF, the World Bank (WB), and the European Central Bank (ECB) – and espionage and coup agencies – the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the US, MI6 (Military Intelligence Section 6) in the UK – as well as the companies that act as intermediaries and have a direct interest in the crisis, are involved.

Perkins says, "When I arrived in Indonesia in 1971, the objective of US foreign policy was clear: to end communism and support the president (Suharto). My job was to create the economic studies necessary to obtain financing from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)."

Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17 islands, 300 ethnic groups, and, as was known in 1960, "swimming in oil."

At that time, Perkins was working for MAIN, and "the Suharto government appreciated our promptness in providing reports that secured immense loans, which benefited American corporations and Indonesian rulers. They cared little that these loans would leave the country deeply indebted. For the banks, this was part of the plan. As for Suharto, by investing his ever-growing fortune in tax havens, he was protecting himself against the future of a bankrupt Indonesia." Reflecting on his work, he adds: "We had created a new elite class in the Third World, the lackeys of the corporatocracy." And, he adds, "According to the WB report and the IFS (International Financial Statistics) statistical series, Indonesia has always had the highest external debt (as a percentage of GDP) of all Asian countries. During the critical period of 1990-1996, this figure remained close to or above 60% (compared to 15% for China and 10% for Singapore)." Today, after a year and a half of a coup government, Brazil has reached a gross debt of 73,9% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Companies like Nike, Adidas, Ralph Lauren, and Gap exploit the rampant misery in Asia to abuse workers, beating or killing them when they protest; international corporations encourage privatizations and tax breaks for foreign companies. The coup government in Brazil sought to change the legislation that punishes work in conditions analogous to slavery.

Commenting on Latin America (LA), where he also acted as an "economic hitman," he writes: "Guatemala with Arbenz, Brazil with Goulart, Bolivia with Estenssoro, Chile with Allende, Ecuador with Roldós, Panama with Torrijos – all the countries in the hemisphere that were blessed with resources that our corporations coveted and that had leaders determined to use those resources for the good of their people… saw those leaders deposed by coups or assassinated and replaced by puppet governments of Washington."

The arrival of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia caused a revolution in South America at the dawn of the 21st century. But at that moment, the banking system was provoking wars in the Middle East. The history of coups in this subcontinent may have reassured it about the easy reversal of those countries to its imperial domination.

The Arab Spring, in the world's richest oil region, seemed the ideal strategy to eliminate nationalist leaders, overthrow local power structures, and transform the Middle East into a new colonial model: countries under the direct rule of corporations, in the dystopian model of corporate islands producing in a sea of ​​misery. Perkins calls this corporatocracy.

The example of Indonesia is repeated on every continent. After all, debt is the real weapon, the great instrument of domination and enslavement adopted by the banking sector.

Perhaps the most unfortunate, if there is a less unfortunate continent, has been Africa. I transcribe a dialogue between Perkins and Sudanese brothers who refused to go to the USA.

"We need to fight for Sudan's independence." "But Sudan became independent in 1956." "Sudan doesn't exist. We are two countries, not this single one that the British and Egyptians created. The north is part of the Middle East. The south is Africa." "But where is Egypt?" "Before, Egypt was in Europe, now it's in the lap of the USA."

While not new, it is not common knowledge that corporations and international organizations dominate nation-states, promoting coups d'état, assassinating national leaders, and killing entire populations and ethnic groups in veritable genocide. If tourists testify or are victims of these actions by "economic hitmen," corporations, and "intelligence agencies," the crime is transformed into acts of ethnic or religious fanaticism. This is how MI6 created the Muslim Brotherhood.

Nothing deters, nor does anyone hesitate to, kill and destroy lives and countries through corporations, today mostly anonymously controlled by investment funds. A French example: the Compagnie Française pour le Développement des Textiles (CFDT) sells pesticides, herbicides, along with plows, fertilizers, and seeds to Mali, dominating that country's cotton production. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn of its involvement in the recent conflict that appeared to be a case of Islamists against the Malian government.

Today's Brazil, after the 2016 coup, is yet another example of the banking sector's actions. It's not the laughable members of the Brazilian executive, legislative, and judicial branches who would have the audacity to hand over our irreplaceable riches and, additionally, increase Brazil's financial debt. They lack intelligence and courage. They simply carry out, and therein lie the constant blunders, orders from the corporatocracy.

But they feel secure having the protection of the police, armed forces, and active foreign intelligence.

I have personal knowledge of a case. For many years I played golf. Although with mediocre performance, it was the only sport that interested me. You spend four hours walking with three other partners. Conversation is inevitable and, with the partnerships that form, a greater knowledge of the other players. One of them had a "curious job" at the French representation in Brazil: coordinating the sale and training, by French companies, of equipment and technology for the Brazilian police. A job that had begun after the military governments. I can't say more, nor was I interested in going into detail, and I believe that, being the only partner with whom I could speak in his native language, this indiscretion was given to me over several games.

There is no possible agreement with the banks. National interests and those of this system are opposed and incompatible. If the Workers' Party was able to lead the Brazilian executive branch for thirteen years, it was due to a lack of depth in reforms and partnerships with those who would betray it at the first opportunity. The maxim that the pomp of power blinds proved true.

What seems fundamental to me, beyond the didactic presentation of the new reality, is the consistency and conscious acceptance, by the majority of the population, of a project for change that is not limited to the economic area, but reaches the entire power structure: political, military, psychosocial, media, scientific, technological and, above all, with the construction of Brazilian citizenship.