Go to hell with your aid!

These words were written on an Indonesian wall, featuring in John Pilger’s documentary on globalization, “the new rulers of the world”:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-210088912352527308#docid=-7932485454526581006

In them, I saw a condensed expression of what emancipatory politics is all about. We don’t need your help. We don’t need your gentle oversight. We don’t need the stability and relative security that you provide, at the price of our obedience and submission. We can take care of it ourselves.

One of the most disgusting rhetorical gestures I know of is the one sometimes used by Americans to justify their country: “We saved Europe from Hitler”. Excuse me? Not only was the defeat of Nazi Germany mainly a work of Stalin, but more to the point: As if we wouldn’t have been able to defeat him ourselves! The Europeans are a revolutionary people; how long would they have allowed Germany to dominate Europe? Do you not remember the French revolutions of 1789 and 1792? All the freedom struggles that European peoples have fought? Do you think the French would have suffered silently under the German yoke? The Britons? Do you think Hitler would have been able to control the Europe he, as history happened to unfold, was to lose so utterly, had it not been for a few American soldiers?

The principle of aid is indebtedness. You are given aid, provided you agree on certain terms and condition. Debt is dependence. When you are indebted, you are not free. Our entire financial system relies on debt. Debt, not money, is the lifeblood of Capitalism. And debt is also a principle in military policy. You “free” a country, you bring it “democracy” — and henceforth, that country is forever indebted to you, and forced to comply with your wishes.

I bring up the Hitler-argument to shed light on something important. After WWII, a new power-structure arose in the world, with two superpowers opposing each other — the United States and the Soviet Union. Each was eager to expand its sphere of influence and to gain the strategic upper hand. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Europe was divided — in a quite literal sense, in Germany’s case — between the West and the East. Western Europe fell under the sphere of influence of the United States, whereas Eastern Europe fell to Stalin. Two opposing alliances were formed: the Warzaw Pact, and the NATO.

“Freeing Europe from Hitler” is not something one does from the kindness of one’s heart. One will expect something in return. Had Stalin alone defeated Hitler, all Europe would surely be part of a greater Russian empire. The tremors of communism were late to die down in Europe — think of May 1968, think of the strong communist parties in France and Italy, in Finland and elsewhere, think — why not? — on the Prague spring, think of the RAF and the IRA. These were the aftershocks of the clash of two superpowers, in their contest to butcher the world up between them. America intervened in Europe because it was anxious to control it.

Today, the world is structured around debts. Credit institutes are powerful entities, who control the financial markets that play their silent games with the world economy. Through bonds of debt, the populations of innumerable countries are kept in thrall. This is true not only for the third world, whose backs are broken under the burden of World Bank loans, that come with the strings of globalization and economic exploitation attached, but also for us citizens in the affluent West. Very few Western citizens are free of debt. My parents have a house loan, I myself have a student loan of several hundred thousand. We are always indebted to someone. Maybe we feel secure in the knowledge that this “someone” is largely benevolent, and that either way, we’re protected by our rights as citizens. But such rights can be rapidly stripped away, as numerous occasions in history have shown. And make no mistake: The necessity of working off our debts forces us to conform our life to a certain mode of economic production. We might not be slaves under capitalism, but we are certainly its cogwheels, who work in an orderly rhythm, from 8pm to 5am, every day, every year. Our homes, our neighborhoods, our means of transport, our entertainment, our leisure activities — they are all organized around the pulse of capital. In this sense, we, too, have paid a price for our indebtedness, because what life to live is not ours to choose.

Capitalism relies on debt. The principle of capital is the principle of a debt that you incur, in order later to be able to repay it with a profit. This is called “investment”. Through investment, the world economy grows. But it grows to a price. Firstly, the system is self-reinforcing. Once you start to operate in a system where the goal of all economic activity is to grow, you are forced to grow unless you want to be swallowed by your competition. A large company always has the upper hand in a market economy, simply because it is larger. Therefore, in order to survive in the capital system, you have to continually grow. And that means incurring debts. Thus, capitalism is inherently a system that shackles us to debt, that forces us to rely on the benevolence of others, more powerful than us.

However, there’s a second aspect of this that is more sinister. For given that the economy continually grows, that means there are bigger and bigger debts to pay. Where to get all that money? Of course, here one runs into the question of what, in essence, economic value is. Classically schooled economists tend to think of value as something somehow free-floating, something that can be constructed out of thin air. But if we look at the things we value (economically, i.e., are willing to pay much money for), they all have one thing in common. They’re all complex. Cars, electronics, household machinery, refined food, high standard living — they all require a big deal of complexity. As everyone knows who have studied thermodynamics, complexity does not arise spontaneously in nature. Complexity, order, structure all represent very unlikely configurations of matter and energy. The opposite of order — disorder, or chaos — is the “natural” state towards which everything tends. This truth is expressed in the third law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy of an open system will tend to increase.

Every transfer of energy in the universe increases the global amount of entropy. When I say “global”, I use this world on a grand scale, referring to the entirety of the closed system in which we live, that is to say, the universe. Locally, entropy can decrease. The light from the sun provides the biosphere with low-entropy energy, by the help of which most of the amazing complexity and beauty of the living world has been created. Such low-entropy energy is not ubiquitous in the universe, and consequently, most of the volume of the universe is rather dull and empty — uniform, disordered.

When man seeks to imitate nature by creating complexity, he needs a source of low-entropy energy. It does not matter whether this energy is in the form of raw sunlight, from crude oil, or from the chemical bonds that hold together much of this worlds amazing features, whether they be minerals or living creatures. It can be the energy expressed in the work of our own human muscles, or the potential energy of the river that runs down the mountains, or the energy trapped as fossil fuels deep under the earth. What we need to create complexity is energy. What we need to create economic value is energy. What we need to pay off our debts, is energy.

The problem is that energy is not necessarily a limitless resource. Surely, the light from the sun is nearly endless in its abundance, but we can not yet effectively enough harvest the sun, and many of the sources we have presently to rely on are urgently non-renewable. Not only oil and coal, but arable land, and the minerals we use to fertilize our fields, and fresh water, and the ecological variation that is a prerequisite for a functioning ecosystem — all are now quickly running low. And if this wasn’t enough, the ecological exploitation of the earth creates unforeseen side effects, like global warming, caused by human emission of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, which is set to deal a huge blow to our civilization.

Once again, the logic is one of debt. We make loans against the security of our future. We gamble on the earth’s quickly diminishing resources. The cycle of debt shackles us to a system — the capitalist system — in which we cannot but be parts in this machinery, which threatens all mankind. We are indebted to this systems, we are its pawns.

So what to do? We must realize that all true emancipatory struggles begin from below. The goodwill of the ruling elite will never set us free, it will only put us deeper in depth. When we look at an international issue, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the Palestinian question, or global warming, it behooves us to ask “cui bono?” Who stands to benefit? Who stands to benefit for the exploitation and death of civilians? Who stands to benefit from the propaganda that is peddled to us in media and from the pulpits of demagogues? Who stands to benefit from preserving the status quo? Most often, the answer is “the powerful”. They are not our friends, and they have never been. When we look at vectors of possible change, like the Hamas in Palestine and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, and are appalled by their methods and their beliefs, we must remember that we are not the ones to learn these people about methods and beliefs. They have to learn it for themselves! Hamas and similar organizations are very natural responses to subjugation. The worse the subjugation, the more violent the response. We do not have to agree with the Islamistic policies of a Hamas, but we must realize that they represent the fighting will of the people, and that this fighting will is strong in all peoples. Let the Palestinians throw off the yoke of oppression — next, they will be able to throw off the yoke of Islamic fundamentalism. But they must to it on their own. We cannot bring freedom to them. The only thing we can bring them is more exploitation, more colonialism, and more war.

The drama of the world has always been a struggle between those who have, and those who have not. It is a struggle for freedom, for recognition and for dignity. There is nothing dignified in receiving aid. There is nothing dignified in being a beggar. There is nothing dignified in submitting under a master that has no claim to your loyalty except for by virtue of his superior power. That is not the world we want to see. If we want change, it has to come from below — deep below. It might not always be nice, but the status quo is not particularly nice either. The left in the Western world must not sit idly by and provide fatherly advice from above. It must get into the struggle with poor people all over the world, a truly International struggle. And this struggle can not be allowed to fall into the hands of individual strongmen like Hugo Chavéz. He represents but another status quo. The revolution must be a people’s revolution.

“Go to hell with your aid!” We can free ourselves from our own Hitlers. We don’t need your benevolence. We don’t need indebtedness. This should be the rally cry of emancipatory movements all over the world. To quote Van der Graaf Generator, “Every bloody emperor claims that freedom is his cause”. We don’t need you to set us free. Your kind of freedom always comes at a price, and its always a heavy and gruesome price. It often entails slavery, it occasionally entails death. We can free ourselves. From poverty, from misery, from exploitation, from hunger, from loneliness, from abuse, from suffering.

Few documents sum up this sentiment better than the one from which I have taken the following quote. I’m sure you will all recognize it:

No saviour from on high delivers,
No faith have we in prince or peer.
Our own right hand the chains must shiver,
Chains of hatred, greed and fear.