Neoliberalism, the 20th century construct that advances the proliferation of capitalism over the measured policies and social provisions of the State, is for the most part the ideology that influences how we as a country define the way we trade, conduct business, strategise our growth and establish our foreign policy.
This ideology, the West’s answer to socialism, was foisted on developing countries by international bodies, such as the Intentional Monetary Fund (IMF) among others, as a precondition for the struggling economies to receive funding, as was the case with Guyana during Hoyte’s Administration in the 1990’s. The funding, however, came with austerity measures that the donor countries would have to implement. Measures such as trade liberalisation that saw the reduction of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, the removal of foreign exchange restrictions and the removal of import monopolies, in addition to a host of other measures aimed at promulgating neoliberalism.
The neoliberalist ideology is premised on quantifying human interactions from a Capitalist perspective. As Monbiot asserts “it redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning…Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers.”
It is against this backdrop that the recent upheaval – when information came to the fore – of Guyana’s manufacturing sector not being able to effectively compete against the flurry of imports lining our market shelves has to be analysed.
While there are many additional militating factors that can be argued for the apparent disparity of imports against local produce, paramount among them was an ideology that we were forced to adopt, essentially relinquishing ourrequisite control over the types of products lining our shelves.
Burnham, who many agree did more harm than he did good, was on to something when he banned the importation of certain staple commodities in favour of utilising local alternatives. He was in essence incorporating import substitution as a model that would see the utilisation of local produce, the aim of which was to develop and possibly export,as a value added product. However, his execution of this idea was tyrannical, hence it never succeeded.
Ironically, when Guyana incorporated IMF’s austerity measures within its framework for growth, it had to relinquish import substitution as a model in favour of trade liberalisation.
There is no questioning the benefits that countries accrued from liberalising trade, but the ideology was always stacked in favour of those countries that were already industrialised and wealthy, as opposed to poor and developing countries that were primarily subsistent agricultural economies, like Guyana for example.
As many scholars would rightly posit, neoliberalism was premised on allowing those who were entrusted with wealth the opportunity to maintain it through polices that allowed for unfair competition. How else could a poor country with no industrial prowess, hence no streamlined value added manufacturing sector compete, efficiently, on a global scale, with industrialised countries be explained.
What this predicament highlights is the need for developing countries to be unified. And is therefore, a subsequent justification for the Caribbean Community (Caricom) Single Market and Economy (CSME) to be fully implemented.
As a unified single market economy, apart from being able to be heard more effectively on the international stage, local markets would become more resilient and efficient in competing against foreign imports because of the comparative advantage that the different countries would benefit from once unified.
Neoliberalism, by its nature economists posit, has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises. Crises such as the global financial recession of 2008, in addition the offshoring of wealth and power, a classic example of which would be the Panama Papers scandal. They also posit that it is responsible for the concentration of the world’s wealth into five per cent of the global population and it will continue with the proliferation of globalisation.
It therefore begs that question, isn’t it time for us to adopt a different ideology that would fix the disequilibrium between the haves and the have not’s?
