For those of you outside Victoria the name Alan Stockdale probably doesn’t mean much. To those of us who live here, we remember the former Victorian treasurer during the Kennett years, as being a plunderer of public property and an unapologetic disciple of economic rationalism. So it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the man who sold Victoria is now Chairperson of the Institute for Public Affairs – one of the most right-wing, fundamentalist organisations in the country.
This organisation is one of the homes of the Ayatollahs of Capitalism whose philosophy is little removed from the rape, plunder and pillage mentality they decry in others. So it was with some great surprise that I received an email from this organisation the other day that contained links to their latest magazine articles.
The article that caught my eye was titled "The New Missionaries – NGO’s in Third World Development". Written by Gary Johns, who holds the lofty title of "Senior Fellow", it first appeared in "Business Review Weekly" in January of this year.
In this article this "Senior Fellow" – a distinguished academic title usually reserved for those who have some idea of how to mount a rational argument and make demonstrable points - Gary Johns begins by declaring that "the original missionaries carried messages of Christianity and capitalism". A point I will gladly concede. Although I would argue that the Church has never really abandoned its grasp of capitalism and is still one of the prime proponents of ‘earthy rewards’. You know the line "god helps those who help themselves" – just look at how the US is helping itself to Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Chile, and most recently Haiti. But I digress.
Its about here that Gary and I part ways. He goes on to state that NGOs have "unwarranted legitimacy in international forums" and that recent campaigns to reduce or forgive Third World debt, that many of these organisations have conducted, could only lead to "an incentive" for many of these nations to continue "practices that created the debt in the first place". He then goes on to blame these impoverished nations for getting into debt. He writes – and I’ll quote at length:
"Countries that borrowed heavily did so because they were willing to mortgage their future. They were irresponsible, they sold productive assets into unproductive hands, they built unproductive infrastructure, they favoured one ethnic group above another, or one region above another, they ran inflated economies, they were corrupt, they waged war, they allowed black markets to develop because they controlled exchange rates and interest rates."
There you have it. These stupid, backward, probably black, definitely not white, sub-human nincompoops got themselves into bother and because they’re stupid, backward, probably black, definitely not white, sub-human nincompoops they deserve all they get! OK!!
This "Senior Fellow" offers no explanation or historical contextualisation about how these conditions were, more often than not, forced upon developing nations. Gary offers no historical explanation of how the "corrupt" leaderships were often installed and supported by greedy Western nations or, in some instances, corporations, in order to make sure that productive land was stolen and subsistence crops bulldozed to provide space for cash, export crops. He offers no historical background on the ways in which war and ethnic cleansing was used to ‘disappear’ uncooperative peoples who resisted the plundering of their land, crops and cultural heritages. No, Gary is content with telling us that unidentified ‘irresponsible’ individuals created the misery that billions of our brothers and sisters endure as their daily life. This "Senior Fellow" promises no economic salvation for these wretched Third World inhabitants.
He then goes on to castigate NGOs who link things like the environmental degradation of nations with human rights or trade deals. He thinks that an NGO, the Australian Conservation Foundation, should butt out of the Ok Tedi mine disaster. In fact he blames them for promoting the rights of the Ok Tedi people to sue BHP and the mine operators for the disaster than befell them when bad work practices, probably done to save a few dollars, killed the Fly river and their livelihoods.
Gary Johns then concludes his article by saying that New Caledonia is a great example of where the NGOs have stayed out and, as a result, the nation has a "First World standard of living, high literacy rates and long life expectancy". This he attributes to the colony still being in French hands.
Well, I guess this is OK if you ignore the unilateral decision by France to take possession of the country in the mid 1800s. I guess its OK if you ignore the ongoing, often violent tensions, between the indigenous Kanaks and the arrivals from other Melanesian islands. I guess its OK if you ignore the theft of the Kanak land and the planting of cash crops as part of the ‘modernisation’ program the French brought with them. I guess its OK if you ignore the French interventions to maintain ‘law and order’ -read that as suppressing the independence movement. And I guess its OK if you ignore the desire of the Kanaks to be returned to independence and self rule and ignore the poverty that exists side by side with the obscene wealth in the capital Nouméa.
The Christian missionaries who took Christianity to the Pacific Islands took with them not only their religion and capitalism but whole system of repression and persecution. They took diseases, perhaps unknowingly but in some cases with definite intentions. They took their missionary zeal and with bible in one hand and often gun in the other, turned the world of the Islanders upside down.
It’s the abolition of these imposed regimes and religions that many NGOs are working towards but which Gary thinks are the way of salvation. Like his Chairperson, Alan Stockdale, former Victorian Treasurer and now Executive Chairman of Asset and Infrastructure Group, Macquarie Bank, Gary Johns, "Senior Fellow" is still preaching an outdated, inhuman and repressive religion called economic rationalism which has only one purpose – to gather the wealth of the many into the hands of the few.
This could be a polemic about the evils of the "economy" and those who worship it at the cost of real human beings. However, I want to argue its not. It’s an introduction to the fallacious, shallow and totally irrational arguments many of the neo-conservatives offer as ‘accepted logic’ in the pages of the business press. Its also a reminder that ethics courses were, until recently, not part of business school curricula (and now when they are taught they are more akin to "situational ethics" than moral philosophy) and that business schools still refuse to teach social and cultural history as core subjects of their courses.
Gary and Alan are both practicing Ayatollahs of Capitalism and their guiding philosophies are as dangerous and destructive as any of those our Christian leaders decry. The problem is the Ayatollahs in the Middle East (except the Israeli ones) don’t control nuclear weapons and the global markets that no longer serve us, but steal from us for their benefit.