NATIONAL FRONT a bourgeois maneuver by CARLOS RODRIGUEZ The Bonapartist regimes of Laureano Gómez and Rojas Pinilla, which held power in Colombia from 1950 to 1957, succeeded in opening the way to foreign investments in industry by according these investments excellent conditions. This was done through the state tradeunionism of the Unión de Trabajadores de Colombia (UTC - Workers Union of Colombia) and the Confederac ión de Trabajodores de Colombia (CTC — Workers Federation of Colombia), which aimed at maintaining extremely low wage levels. Under these conditions, industrial production costs were lowered so as to permit greater competitive copacity on foreign markets. This favored not only foreign capitalist industrialists, but also Colombian industrialists in the sectors of textiles, food products, carbonated beverages, beer, and clothing, Foreign capital penetrated the sectors of chemicals, pharmaceutical products, paper, and plastics, that is, all industry producing intermediary products, If was in these sectors that the greatest productive capacity of all industry was concentrated in an amalgam of interests between the Colombian bourgeoisie and foreign capital. Nevertheless, these conservative Bonapartist regimes were marked above all by the big rise in coffee exports during the decade 1950-1960, a rise that guaranteed the support of the mountain peasants for the regime. The currency accumulated through coffee exports flowed into funds that were to fatten the coffers of a powerful financial bourgeoisie and satisfy the needs of small and middle-sized industry. The basic problem of the Colombian bourgeoisie was the agrarian question. The backwardness of agriculture and the importance of agricultural products and agrarian production as a whole in the development of a neocolonial capitalist economy determined the choices of the bourgeoisie, in relation both to its system of internal rule and to its links with imperialism. Liberal finance capital, linked to foreign investment in that it served as a fransmission belt in raising national capital, could not afford to see its links to the countryside break down. During the decade 1950-1960 liberal landed
COLOMBIA and its consequences proprietors tacitly supported the liberal guerrillas of the eastern plains, Tolima, and the Cauca Valley, at least so long as these guerrillas did not attack the property system and acted solely as a sort of permanent guard for the landholders. Through the guerrillas in these regions, the liberal bourgeoisie succeeded in securing bargaining conditions that included the fall of the Rojas regime and the establishment of the National Front, with the two parties holding the presidency alterately and sharing out government posts. Thus, there was a Liberal president from 1958 to 1962, a Conservative one from 1963 to 1966, a Liberal from 1967 to 1970, a Conservative from 1971 to 1974, and finally, a Liberal since 1975. The agreement was reached on the basis of the interests of the financial bourgeoisie, which bestowed its favors on the Conservatives through the rise in coffee exports and on the Liberals through intensive agriculture and ranching. In the first sector we find the Bank of Bogotd, led by the Ospina family; in the second the Bank of Colombia, heoded by the Lopez family. Politically, the agreement entailed the Liberals' abandoning the guerrillas and the Conservatives' cessation of support to violence in the coffee regions. This provided the basis for a conjunction of interests that were in harmony with the stabilization of an overall economic project and of a political project that involved the return to representative democracy through an extremely narrow system that allowed no other choice than Liberalism and Conservatism, while still relying on the effects of the strengthening of the organs of repression that had occurred during the Rojas period. The Colombian Communist party, which did not understand what the liberal bourgeoisie really represented, was perplexed when confronted by a situation that could have impelled the struggles of workers and peasants toward assuring their political independence from the bourgeoisie. But it succeeded only in salvaging a faction of the peasant guerrilla movement in the Fuerzas Armodas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC - Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).
1O E
COLOMBIA The working class, which came out of the industrializafion process in a strongly controlled condition, remained the prisoner of its inexperience, of its lack of revolufionary leadership, and of the administration of bureaucrats bought off by the bourgeois state in order to control the radicalization of the workers. Since the National Front began with Lleras Camargo, the workers lost a good part of the gains they had been conceded by the Lopez Pumarejo regime. The working class lost rights it had not even begun to utilize, like the unlimited right to strike, and even the minimal right to strike such as existed in the banking sector. The National Front was formed around three major axes: the consolidation of finance capital, which included the leading sector of the Colombian bourgeoisie; the development of an industrial base of production of intermediary goods in liaison with imperialist capital (on the basis of imperialist capital's tendency to link itself to the manufacturing sector in Latin America), and, last but not least, the attenuation of the polarization in the agricultural sector between production of coffee and production of cash crops like cotton, rice, sorghum, and other high-yield crops. These three axes were closely linked to one another, from which derived the necessity of rationalizing state activity through programs generalizing the state's intervention in the economy. But not only did the agrarian situation suffer from the traditional evils, there was also a constant deepening of the contradiction between the agrarian sector and industry. During the 1960s, the growth rate in the agrarian sector was only 3%, while the size of investment in machines and equipment as a percentage of total gross investment in all industry rose to 33.6% and an industrial growth rate of 6% was maintained. According to recent figures, "in the Colombian manufacturing industry the greatest growth rates have been achieved in industries in which the dominant firms are owned by foreign capital, which allows us to conclude that the process of industrial expansion has been accompanied by the denationalization of industry. During the period 1958-68 the percentage share of foreign firms in the gross domestic product in manufacturing industry has risen. " (Gabriel Misas, Degree of Concentration in Manufacturing Industry.) Although there is a quantitative predominance of national capital per factory unit, the foreign companies surpass the national enterprises in terms of capital intensity. In general, industry tended to be concentrated in the intermediary goods sector. The sector of industry that has experienced the most rapid rate of development has been construction (where national capital is mainly concentrated), with an investment of 60% in machinery and equipment, compared with an average of 33.6% for industry as a whole. Two striking facts emerge from an examination of the relations between the financial and industrial sectors. Capital markets have not functioned around stock-exchange values, which is the mechanism by which indus26 try appropriates public savings in order to convert them into investment capital. The decline of the stock market has been constant, and industry has had to resort to bank loans in order to support itself. Nevertheless, in the framework of the program of replacing imports and protecting industry, the state ordered a ceiling on interest rates, which remained at about 24% per year. The difficulties of industry in obtaining credit through the stock market were transferred to the financial sector, which had to maintain a cheap credit policy and thus found itself caught in a straitjacket as far as obtaining savings funds was concerned. Through a policy of growth of consumption, industry was able to maintain certain levels of stability and even growth, to the detriment of the accumulation of finance capital. The low interest rates offered industrialists good possibilities of increasing the organic composition of capital S- DE LOSYA LAS JUS- ADOS VIVA LAS PRES- DEL PETICIONES LAS JUS TAS'SALO POPULAR RAPOPULAR PETICIONES: FARA
VLAPLE SINT RAPOPU AR Y PAR BINTRATOPULAR ARAJO DEL GARR ITE A TRAD
TA TEXIGIMOS ME ILE BARRANGUELA 57 TRES SALARIO VIVA NUESTRO TRA PURGO INTRAP 1-60 Colombian bank workers strike for higher wages. in their enterprises and thus of increasing productivity without resorting to additional hiring. From another angle, inflation favored the industrialists, who paid off their industrial loans with depreciated money. In general terms, it can be concluded that during the period of the National Front there was a tendency toward a reduction of the relative weight of finance capital compared with that of industrial capital; but in any event, it must be noted that the latter continued to tail after the former, and all that was needed to tum the balance definitively in favor of finance capital was a change in financial policy. For its part, the state played a clear role defending industry through labor legislation, wage freezes, the maintenance of rigid interest rates, and subsidies to export industries through the CAT (certificates of fiscal payment), which deducted a portion of industrial taxes in negotiable instruments, It is certain that finance capital was among the most favored by state policy, since bank employees were exempted from the minimum wage, which kept wage levels in the banking sector well below those prevailing in the other sectors of economic activity.
Political consequences of the National Front When the National Front began, the Liberal party was best equipped politically. It represented the landed proprietors and the financiers, who were grouped together in a bloc, and had the support of large numbers of workers in the urban areas, who had been hard hit by the conservative regimes and were discontented with their employer. The Conservatives, who represented the dominant economic sectors (finance capital linked to industry, had the support of the mountain peasants, who formed a great portion, but not a majority, of the electorate. Liberalism ordered a parody of an agrarian reform that essentially favored the landed proprietors; the Conservatives supported the reform, since it did not affect industrial interests and maintained a low level of development in the countryside. Behind the Liberal agrarian reform proposal lurked the intention to create an export economy in the countryside, the aim being to replace coffee with saleable goods produced by the landed proprietors who supported the Liberals. The promotion of the export of cotton, rice, and sesame, and the impetus given to the commercialization of meat were among the basic elements during the period 1966-70 under the Lieras Restrepo government. The rafionalization of the state with the 1968 reform aimed not only at a relative stabilization of the relafions between the state and the private sector, but also at assembling political and economic resources for the state through increasing taxes, The creation of the Nofional Savings Fund with the pensions of employees in the public sector and the abortive attempt to create Regional Capitalization Funds out of the pensions of the workers of the private sector represented an attempt to construct a state that could intervene in the economic domain. Thus, Liberalism succeeded in developing roots among sectors of the middle peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, which were encouraged by the "statist" policy, which was myopically considered a sign of the weakening of the capitalist sectors. For their part, during the rule of their most repressive government, that of Miscel Pastrana Borrero, the Conservatives made a turn in their protectionist policy toward basic industry. A regression to the conception of "Operation Colombia" occurred within the framework of optimal conditions for investment in the construction industry. The Ospina family, which also has interests in urban real estate, gave important support to the construction industry: the creation of the UPAC (units of constant purchasing power), through which finance capital converted itself into an intermediary between savings at interest rates readjusted to the increase of inflation and investment in the construction of housing units, the costs of which were assumed by the customers. The world crisis Colombian capitalism is in chronic crisis. The balancesheet of the National Front corresponds to what could be achieved under a completely dependent social formation with a "national" bourgeoisie that is unable to act alone but only hand in hand with imperialism. No matter how much the "patricians" seek to present an attractive face to the masses, the masses can only meet this flattery with a grimace of disgust. Per capita exports are among the lowest of the continent, which displeases the bourgeoisie; wages are among the lowest of the continent, which displeases the laboring masses. The industrialization on which the growth of the intermediarygoods sector is based concentrates capital that provides few jobs, since technical innovations were used which increase productivity and reduce utilization of labor. The industrialization plan fell short of the goals set. In spite of its slow growth, the agricultural sector remains at the head of exports, according to the following figures:
Agricultural exports as % Coffee exports as % of total exports of total exports 1970 80.1 63.8 1971 76.5 56.5 1972 69.2 49.3 1973 64.4 48.5 (Source: Bank of the Republic, ANIF calculations.) Actually, industrial growth surpassed the agricultural sector in relative terms, while in absolute terms the share of the agricultural sector in gross domestic product declined from 37.8% to 26% between 1950 and 1973. During the same period, while total gross product grew 217%, gross agricultural product grew only 118%. The diagnosis also indicates the effects on industry of the strengthening of the intermediary-products sector, which, in spite of its high productivity, did not create new jobs and which, moreover, utilizes a great quantity
Lopez Michelsen
COLOMBIA of raw materials and other imported components. On the other hand, the mass consumer goods sector created many jobs, since the organic composition of capital is much lower in this sector, and consumed a much lower. imported component. The world crisis, which presents the features characteristic of a recession in the advanced capitalist countries, accentuates the inequalities of foreign trade, with a decline in export revenues for row materials and the closing off of foreign markets because of the protectionist measures faken in imperialist countries, In face of this concrete situation, the choices of the Colombian bourgeoisie were as follows: 1. Abandon the industrialization project in the intermediary-goods sector. All Lopez Michelson's propaganda was based on the fact that statistics showed the negative aspects of the intermediary-goods sector, its inability to develop because of the closing off of foreign markets. This was a result of an objective situation. But López Michelson used this situation to develop a factional struggle against the industrial bourgeoisie. First he launched a campaign against the stimulants that were protecting industry and eliminated some of them, such as the CAT; be broadened the tax base of industry, and finally, he developed an ideological campaign against the "monopolization" of industry -Of course, there was no question of breaking with the industrial bourgeoisie, far from it, but rather of submitting to the interests of the financial faction. The government protects the industrialists as far as their relations with wage-labor are concerned, maintaining iron legislation in the social domain, authorizing layoffs in a hidden manner. 2. Establishment of a "realistic" policy for industry and agriculture. The plan of social, economic, and regional development, paradoxically entitled "To Heal the Breach, places special emphasis on agriculture, under the pretext that it has "now" been converted to the sphere of the bourgeoisie, that agriculture produces about 30% of domestic product, that about 80% of the total value of exports comes from agriculture and livestock, and that this same sector provides about 50% of the row materials used by industry. ("Para cerrar la brecha, " Planeación Nacional, p. 27.) As for the agrarian sector, the plan begins from the fact that there is a division in the countryside between the peasant population, which lives under conditions of backwardness and poverty, and the so-called modern agricultural sector, which is engaged in production of cotton, sesame, soya, etc. mainly for export. The plan stresses the necessity of offering credit and market facilities to the "traditional" sector and of giving an important impetus to production for export.
Thus, the point is to create two complementary economies in the countryside, one producing for domestic consumption, the other for foreign markets: The financing of this plan has been undertaken by the World Bank and its agencies. About $200 million has been alloted for generating a productivity increase among the poor peasants in the countryside and for developing technical facilities in the agricultural export sector. Needless to say, the World Bank, directed by Mac Namara, is especially interested in such plans throughout the underdeveloped world, partly in order to create an effective complementary base for industrial production in the imperialist countries and partly in order to prevent the peasant revolt from provoking "another Vietnam, " which cost North American imperialism so dearly. The plans for the traditional agricultural sector are being stimulated through the DRI (Integrated Rural Development), which concentrates all the financial, technical, and educational means of the sector of agricultural production destined for domestic consumption; there is also an attempt to organize the peasantry into cooperatives and communal associations set up by the government, with an obvious political aim. If the plan seems to have lent priority to the poor peasantry, the real economic benefits will be reaped by the landed proprietors who control the cash crops and are in the best position to seize the advantages that derive not only from the greater export revenues but also from the increases in prices on the domestic market that result from the monopoly on these crops, which has been guaranteed them by the state. As for industry, the emphasis has been placed on small and middle-sized industry through credit and state assistance in the realm of technological innovation. The point is to develop the consumer goods industry and food products through credit and technical advances. While this plan for small and middle-sized industry is developing, monopolist industry has oriented itself toward particular productive sectors such as automobiles, petrochemicals, and steel. This complementary character of industry will accentuate inequalities; the most dynamic sectors will be given an impetus through enormous factories (which already exist) in the three abovementioned sectors, creating a narrow sector controlling the greatest portion of productive capocity and leaving food, drinks, and textiles as bases of development for small and middle-sized industries. 3. Concentration of state powers. The strengthening of the national state through the executive is a continental strategy that has specific features within each country. In the context of the Colombian nation, these specific features come together in a basic element: the strengthening of the financial faction of the bourgeoisie. Within the financial faction, there are subfactions. The first corresponds to the interests that are very closely
linked to the industries of national private capital; it is this faction that has maintained a policy of low interest rates for industrialists. This subfaction has also odvanced the creation of the UPAC as flux mechanisms between savings and investment in construction. In the financial sector, the present situation is characterized by the predominance of interests that lean toward the strengthening of the banking system within this sector through the placement of forward deposit certificates at "realistic" interest rates linked to the monetary correction of the UPAC in order to bring their capacity to attract savings into line with the accounts controlled by the banks, increases in interest rates on these same savings accounts, through increases in interest rates on these same savings accounts, and through the investment in emergency semiannual loans and development bonds. These latter two elements, which flow into the government's accounts, are intimately linked to the others, which flow into the accounts of the banks. It is no accident that financial policy occupies first position in the plan, nor that the bourgeoisie presents an impressive consensus, not only within the banking system but also in relation to the government plans. The credit mechanisms adopted are intended to stimulate the development of industry with a very high level of concentration of capital and technique, industries that are consequently monopolist, A good part of the sectors of intermediary industry will find their credit resources reduced, and since it will be impossible for them to get funds from the stock market, they will remain backward. The Liberal policy in command The economic panorama presents a picture of clear Liberal hegemony resting on the interests of finance capital in alliance with the capitalists of the agrarian sector and big industry. What remains of Conservatism are the electoral votes that the Conservatives have attracted in the coffee zones up to now; but the peasantry of these regions, which is integrated into the DRI, threatens to turn to the Liberals. The entire Liberal project may be characterized as "thinking a little" about agriculture and industry but "thinking a lot" about the leading role that must be played in this process by the bankers, landed proprietors, and big industrialists. The polarization of the economy into well-differentiated wholes fits in with the Colombian bourgeoisie's desire to absorb the shock of the world crisis of capitalism and provide a more solid leadership for the critical processes. The calls for "Colombianization" of the banks and the insistence on Andean capital, which limits foreign intervention, are part and parcel of the process of the Colombian bourgeoisie's readjustment to the crisis. It would be wrong to believe that the liberal bourgeoisie is trying to develop a program of independence from imperialism. Just the opposite. The point is to reduce the sector that can negotiate with imperialism, to the detriment of the interests of the masses and even of some sectors of the bourgeoisie. In the case of the latter, it is important to note that although they have been hit by the Liberal policy, their reactions tend toward the right, against social demands and against socialism and communism, as has already been seen in the case of the industrial circles of Antoquia. This sector is the last remnant that remains in the Conservative party, which is divided over whether to support industrial capital in the intermediary-goods sector or to support the policy of the Liberal government. This is what accounts for the split of J. Emilio Valderrama from conservative progressivism and the divisions now taking shape within the faction of the Ospina family. In the countryside, the attitude of the peasants will be divided between the wait-and-see stance of the minifundistas of the regions affected by the DRI and the total support of the landed proprietors and ranchers to the government measures. Although the latter may at some time withdraw their support of the Liberals and shift to the ANAPO (which explains the growth of this movement in the peasant regions integrated into intersive agriculture), for the moment they remain adherents of the policy of Lopez Michelson. Perspectives The plan set in motion by López Michelson's policy would lead to a "rational" capitalist expansion if the factors of capitalist development were all located within the country and if internal development itself did not engender contradictions. One of the bases of capitalist development is inequality between the capitalist process in the advanced countries and that in the so-called underdeveloped countries, between agriculture and industry, and between various sectors of industry. The emphasis placed by the Colombian bourgeoisie on subsistence agriculture and the direct consumer goods industry represents no more or less than a sanctioning of backwardness and of the breadth of the gap between Colombia and the advanced capitalist countries. This does not mean that there is a regression to a semifeudal conception of the development of the Colombian social formation. Capitalism will deepen in agriculture and in the cities themselves, but it will be a capitalism controlled by the monopolist interests of the capitalists of the countryside, the big industrialists, and, above all, the knights of finance. Unemployment in the cities exceeds 12% for men and 19% for women. Massive layoffs in industry and the banks have been matched by similar measures in public administration, the aim being to rationalize economic activity. The intent is to drive down the wage levels of the workers in the consumer-goods industry and to lower the standard of living of the peasants engaged in subsistence agriculture, It is the typical mechanism of capitalism during a crisis: Make the workers bear the costs. The state protects itself from the fiscal deficit by printing money with no backing. The banks protect themselves from inflation through the UPAC and profitable interest rates. Industry protects itself from the recession through price increases and massive layoffs. The full weight of inflation and the other effects of the crisis is borne by the workers of the cities and the countryside. O
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UNITED STATES
TUGOSLAVIA
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URUGUAT by NATHAN WEINSTOCK
1. Few United Nations resolutions have generated as much passion in the West as the November 11, 1975, resolution of the General Assembly on Zionism. It would be simplistic to consider this purely as a result of the pressure of the pro-Zionist lobby on the mass media, although it is true that the influence of this lobby is not negligible, especially in the United States.
The UN decision - or rather, as we shall see, the manner in which the decision has been presented - gen-
30 erated great emotion among a broad sector of publie opinion and in particular in the workers movement, especially but not exclusively in Social Democratic circles. It thus offers a good opportunity to take a look at the attitude of western "public opinion" on the question of Zionism. 2. Let us say straightaway that for the majority of people in the West the question of Zionism is confounded with the Jewish question. First of all because a minimum of political education is required to know that all Jews are not Zionists, that Israelis and "Israelites" are two different things, and still more education to understand the process of the Zionist colonization. Second, because Israeli propaganda and the leaders of the Jewish communities attempt to give credence to the idea that Jew equals Zionist, and they are often aided in this by governmental Arab propaganda with racist overtones. Now, since the fall of the Third Reich, racism has become discredited as an avowed ideology and anti-Semitism is taboo. There is much ambiguity in this "immunity" that has been accorded the Jews. The scandalous treatment reserved for the Gypsies, another people victimized by Nazi genocide, suffices to demonstrate this. And the success of the campaigns of an Enoch Powell in Britain or a James Schwartzenbach in Switzerland also proves that there is a very real risk of foreign workers' becoming the target of a fascist campaign. But this has not prevented the Jews from constituting a sort of bad conscience for the West on the question of racism. Someone may odmit that he "can't stand" the Arabs or the Blacks, but would not dare say the same of the Jews. In addition, the struggle against anti-Semitism has given rise to antiracist consciousness (the two French, antiracist movements, for example, have conserved in their names specific reference to the fight against anti-Semitism). Thus, the struggle against anti-Semitism is part of an antifascist leftist tradition. This discrediting of open anti-Semitism explains why the actual anti-Jewish purge in Poland after 1967 was waged in the name of "