Ghanaians have been crying incessantly for radical change in socio-and political economy of the country for years. Although Ghana has advanced tremendously, both politically and economically since it gained freedom from the clutches of western colonialism and slavery, it’s far from realizing even the lower quartile of its collective potential. Like many other emerging economies around the world that have been gripped by the neoliberal order, there is enervation or total break down of trade unions; workers are unable to effectively protest against employers or the government for their welfare. As the global movements against racism, police brutality and institutional injustices towards minorities in the US and elsewhere, sparked by the death of the African-American, George Floyd have shown, even with weakened unions, protests can be organized successfully to demand for improved well-being.The death of George Floyd that stirred up these global protests is in so many ways not similar to the welfare of workers. The extreme agony that he went through until his death is a damnation that a chain murderer may not even deserve, and can therefore not be compared to worker struggles. The perpetrators, empowered by a privileged sense of superiority, meted out such a malice to him. This assumed superiority, of mostly white nationalists, towards black persons
and other people of color, is no doubt vestiges of the centuries of slave trade that plagued the African continent, as well as fuelling liberal capitalism. The world has long moved on with such dehumanizing establishments. Slavery is frowned on and any imperialist attempts are despised. However, the psychological imprints that the past had on both the oppressor and the oppressed live on to date, perpetuating an assumed superiority on the one hand, and oppression on the other end. To make matters worse is the institutionalization of a militarized police and surveillance system that serve as conduits for these thoughts of supremacy towards minority groups, especially in the United States.The struggles andtorture that enslaved persons went through for centuries were indeed horrifying. The abolitionist and slavery escapee, Frederick Dauglass had described some gory treatments slaves received at the hands of their masters or overseers in his notes, publishedas “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Dauglass“. For one incident that involved an overseer named Plummer, he described as follows: “No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she[the victim was a woman] screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest.” This isn’t a peculiar incident in his narrative, but such cruelties were thematic in Dauglass’ account. These kinds of treatments that the enslaved received in the past were indeed not any different from the treatment George Floyd, and countless other black persons in United States receive at the hands of the police today. These police brutalities and violence against black persons make people wonder if, perhaps, these institutions were mounted as bogeymen to the oppressed and any other coalitions that resist capitalist interests. Just as the overseers instilled fear in the enslaved to ensure that they did not protest, or engage in any activity that did not profit their masters.Profiteering is deeply rooted in economic modernization. The modernized global economy, wonderfully explained byBenjamin Studebaker,is characterized by neoliberal capital accumulation and free trade, which has launched a movement of labor to regions where capital is highly concentrated, at the detriment of other regions, mostly regions that were bedeviled by the slave trade and western colonialism. Young, ambitious persons from the latter regions emigrate to the former regions to find ‘greener pastures’ that will foster their ambitions, as they, in turn, add to the pile of capital in these regions.This flux of labor towards accumulated capital is similar to osmotic movement, where particles move from lower concentrated regions to a more concentrated region through a membrane (in the case of labor mobilization, these membranes are artificial borders that divide nation-states) until the particles are uniformly distributed. Unlike osmotic movement however, capital never becomes uniformly distributed.Often times, capitalists who have accumulated enormous wealth engage in philanthropic acts that seem to advance the welfare of individuals living in exploited areas, but, as the Brookings Institution fellow, Vanessa Williamsonpointed out, such philanthropy only serve as cover for extractive capitalism and an avenue to perpetuate aristocracy. She clearly stated that, “however benevolent a philanthropist’s intentions, to donate money to others is to exert control over their lives.” Indeed, individual charity or institutions such asthe IMF, designed to provide bailouts or loans to struggling economies, in an attempt to reduce worldwide poverty have only facilitated the widening of the gap between wealthy and poor countries, by serving as passage for infusing global neoliberal order.
In July 1944, a group of world leaders and thinkers assembled in New Hampshire, US for the Bretton Wood Conference that led to the birth of the World Bank and the IMF. In attendance were the British economist, John Maynard Keynes, whose macroeconomic ideas have largely been celebrated, particularly after the 2007-08 financial crash, and the US treasury official, Harry Dexter White, whose ideas of a US Dollar-centric global economy will ultimately prevail, and be imbedded in the establishment of the World Bank and IMF. The IMF “ensures the stability of the international monetary system”by providing loans to help countries rebuild their international reserves, stabilize their currencies and continue paying for imports. These loans and bailouts, to mostly emerging economies, are accompanied with austerity measures that, in many cases, penalize the poor in these emerging economies, as they stabilize the economies to enrich multinational corporations, usually for a short period of time.Inausterity blues, the Pakistani journalist based in San Francisco, US, Meher Ahmad made the case of how Pakistan’s 60-year cyclical dependence on bailouts from the IMF has only deepened socio-economic gap between the few privileged elite and the working class, as well as failed to improve the economy of the country in any meaningful way. Also, he noted that the de facto role of the US Treasury Department in deciding which non-European countries benefit from IMF programs serve as a medium for US to assert its hegemony on global economy, in a way that promotes US economic self-interest. More crucially, such economic assistance from the IMF, controlled by western industrial powers is only imperialism camouflaged as aid. This camouflaged imperialism is deeply planted in the rhetoric of a global South, which is unable to manage its own affairs, needing help from its patriarchal global North.Indeed, the cyclical dependence on the IMF programs isn’t exclusive to Pakistan. Majority of the countries in the so-called global South have turned to these programs for survival, or at least carry on the interests of global capital. In Ghana for instance, both N.D.C and N.P.P governments, the two political parties that have ruled the country for the past few decades, have previously resorted to several bailouts from the IMF to sustain its economy. Like elsewhere, these programs in Ghana included austerity measures that mostly punish the market woman at Makola or the cocoa farmer in Sefwi-Juaboso, that is, the average working class, while rewarding local corporates and their global overlords with enormous profits. Enfeebled through the debilitation of trade unions, the working class is stripped off the power to fightback the whips of global capital, and will have to accept the terms determined by capital, regardless of how dehumanizing they may be.Auntie Pokuaa, a single mother of three children, wakes up at dawn every day and boards a trotro to Makola market to sell tomatoes, pepper and many other foodstuff to the ever growing working population in Accra. Makola is a ‘stock market’ for all kinds of foodstuff and commodities required for the subsistence of the people living in Accra and its surroundings. Yet, the welfare of the people who frequent this stock market to keep it alive are largely neglected, or even sacrificed to profit corporate lords, usually through austerity measures imposed on governments by most foreign aids and bailouts. After bathing in her sweats throughout the day, Auntie Pokuaa goes back home at dusk, and after taking out her expenses, she’s left with nothing to save. She has to resort to loans, which come with exorbitant interest rates, to pay the tuition of her son in the university. Her son, a final year Sociology student at the University of Ghana, cognizant of her mothers struggles and the plights of numerous Sociology graduates,
decides to find a way to go abroad to find better opportunities, which further drains the country of talent and potential.To bring down the loss of such talents, it’s important, or even imperative to improve the conditions of the working class, especially conditions of newly graduated university students who are brimming with innovative ideas. There should be a very exhaustive channel to reduce graduate unemployment, and the salaries of those who are employed should be highly regulated so that corporate bodies do not underpay them.Another approach, as I have writtenelsewhere, will involve an increased investment in higher education, scholarship, research and development. The heavy investment in academic research and scholarship by the Chinese regime in the years between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution in the 20th century has been the bedrock to China’s upward economic surge around the world today. Of course, the bloodbaths and repressions associated with these revolutions should be condemned, but what drove the country’s economic surge: an investment in higher education, research and scholarship, can definitely be embraced. To be sure, China’s situation isn’t exclusive. Other nations that have suffered imperialism and other cataclysms and later invested in higher education have seen tremendous economic growth.An investment in higher education or research in Ghana means that lecturers will have access to enough funds to defray the huge fees that most masters and PhD students have to bear, as the students in turn conduct research that will help in understanding the problems of the country, and also come up with innovative ideas to solve them. Supporting PhD students will reduce graduate unemployment in the short term, and enormously lead to innovation in the medium to long term. This investment in research, together with a plan to reverse brain-drain will no doubt advance our country.Although these are not exhaustive list of approaches to innovate our country (a more complete list will only be possible after an increased investment in research), these points, convincingly show that the dependence on foreign aids and bailouts, consciously or unconsciously continue to undermine the welfare of the working class. As well, the austerity measures stringed to these aids cripples investment in ventures that would have contributed to advancement of the country, such as investment in research and scholarship. It’s time to cut them loose.It is therefore reasonable to argue for stratagems that promote equal distribution of capital such as nationalization of production,but the protests that his death incited around the globe presents an opportunity for coalitions of workers to re-imagine ways to organize in the absence of trade unions. bseto fight for their welfares cannot be likened to the welfare of