A radio discussion of the New International Economic Order:
Harry Targ
“The Progressive International
inaugurated a global process to build a New International Economic Order fit
for the twenty-first century at a multilateral summit in midtown Manhattan in partnership
with UN Permanent Representatives, sitting and former ministers from eight
governments across the Global South. You can watch the proceedings.” (No. 49 | Build the New International Economic
Order in Havana).
The Third World Demands a New International Economic Order: History of an
Idea
The brutal overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1973 was
reminiscent of traditional US. activities as world policeman. The impact of the
coup on the Chilean people in terms of economic justice and political freedom
was negative in the extreme. The bloody victory of counterrevolution in Chile
and elsewhere, however, came at a period in world history when the rise of
Third World resistance to U.S. imperialism was reducing the prospect of more
Chiles in the future.
By the 1970s, the worldwide resistance to U.S. and international
capitalism was growing. The revolutionary manifestation of this resistance was
occurring in Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle
East, and Central America and the Caribbean. During the Nixon-Ford period, the
United States and its imperialist allies lost control of the Indochinese
states, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. South Yemen, Nicaragua, Iran,
and Grenada would follow later in the decade. The Rockefeller Foundation and
leaders of colonial powers and multinational corporations and banks formed the
Trilateral Commission in 1973 to strategize about how to crush rising dissent
in the Global South.
Along with the rise of revolutionary victories and movements throughout
the Third World, a worldwide reformist movement began to take shape around
demands for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). Its predecessor, the.
nonaligned movement of the 1950s and 1960s, had been nurtured by leading
anticolonial figures such as Nasser of Egypt, Nkrumah of Ghana, and Nehru of
India. Their goal was to construct a bloc of Third World nations of all
ideological hues which could achieve political power and economic advantage by
avoiding alliances and political stances that might tie them to the United States
or the former Soviet Union. The nonaligned movement saw the interests of member
nations tied to the resolution of "north-south" issues, which in
their view were of greater importance than "east-west" issues.
After two decades of experience with political independence from formal
colonialism, revolutionaries who believed that economic exploitation resulted
from the structure of the international capitalist system were joined by Third
World leaders who saw the need to reform international capitalism. Consequently,
a movement emerged, largely within UN agencies, such as the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), increasingly populated by Third
World nations, that addressed Third World poverty and underdevelopment (https://unctad.org). This movement presupposed the
possibility of reducing the suffering of Third World peoples without
necessarily bringing an end to capitalism as the internationally dominant mode
of production.
To counter the declining Third World percentage of world trade,
fluctuations in prices of exported commodities, foreign corporate repatriation
of profits earned in Third World countries, technological dependence, growing
international debt, and deepening crises in the supply of food, Third World
leaders were forced by material conditions and revolutionary ferment to call
for reforms. The inspiration for a NIEO movement came also from
the seeming success of OPEC countries in gaining control of oil pricing
and production decisions from foreign corporations.
Two special sessions of the General Assembly of the UN in 1974 and 1975 on
the NIEO "established the concept as a priority item of the international
community" (Laszlo, Ervin, Robert Baker, Jr., Elliott Eisenberg, and Raman
Venkata, The Objectives of the New
International Economic Order, New York, Pergamon, xvi). The NEIO became a
short-hand reference for a series of interrelated economic and political
demands concerning issues that required fundamental policy changes,
particularly from wealthy nations. The issue areas singled out for action
included aid and assistance, international trade and finance,
industrialization, technology transfer, and business practices.
Paradoxically, while the NIEO demands were reformist in character and, if
acted on, could stave off revolutionary ferment (as did New Deal legislation in
the United States in the 1930s), the general position of the Nixon, Ford, and
Carter administrations on the NIEO were negative. European nations were more
responsive to selected demands, like stabilizing Third World commodity prices
and imports into Common Market countries, but the broad package of NIEO demands
continued to generate resistance from the wealthy nations, which benefited from
the current system. Nabudere correctly understood the interests of Third World
leaders in the NIEO when he wrote that:
"The demands of the petty bourgeoisie of third world countries
are not against exploitation of the producing classes in their countries, but
of the domination of their class by monopoly. The demands therefore for
reform—for more credit to enable the petty bourgeois more room also to exploit
their own labor and extract a greater share of the surplus value. This is
unachievable, for to do so is to negate monopoly—which is an impossible task
outside the class struggle." (Nabudere, D.Wadada, Essays on the Theory and Practice of
Imperialism, London, Onys Press, 1979).
Therefore, the NEIO, commodity cartels
like OPEC, and other schemes for marginal redistribution of the profits derived
from the international economy would not go beyond increasing the shares which
Third World ruling classes received from the ongoing economic system. But minimal
benefits to workers and peasants would accrue. Third World successes against
monopoly capital, however, would serve to weaken the hold the latter had on the
international system. Ironically, while opposing channeling Third World
militancy in a reformist direction, such as the NIEO, had the opposite effect of
generating a new militancy among masses of Third World peoples where it did not
exist before. Those workers, peasants, and intellectuals who gained
consciousness of their plight in global structural terms through their leaders'
UN activities realized that NIEO demands were not enough. It was feared that they
would come to realize what Nabudere argued, namely:
“But in order to succeed, the struggles cannot be relegated to
demands for change at international bodies, mere verbal protests and
parliamentary debates, etc. Therefore,
demands for a new economic order are made increasingly impossible unless framed
in the general context of a new democratic revolution; the role of the working
class and its allies is crucial to the achievement, in any meaningful way, of a
new international economic order.” (Nabudere, D.Wadada, Essays on the Theory and Practice of
Imperialism, London, Onys Press, 1979.180).
