The Fallacies of Neoliberalism and the Emergence of Human Rights

Alberto Moncada

Translated by Louis Edgar Esparza

Introduction
How is it possible that an economic system that benefits merely ten percent of the populace is accepted by a plurality of the population?
How is it possible that well-regarded popular economists defend this system uncritically, especially now that there is an international reaction against it, translating into political transformations under the thumb of neoliberalism?

Neoliberalism is the ultimate and most extreme version of capitalism, begun by heads of state, Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States taking advantage of the moment of collapse of the communist system. This final version is accentuated by globalization.

But Globalization is the third chapter in the history of capitalism. The first was state capitalism, colonization, exercised by powerful states over other, weaker ones, to defend themselves against their own risks and to control their activity, generally preferring the use of force. This is the case between Spain and Latin America, between England and India, and between Belgium and the Congo. The protection of states against their own business enterprise will be the subject of the second chapter. The United States sends their Army to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company in Central America, founding the expression "banana republic." In another sense, this is the origin of the military coup in Chile and as usual, with the petroleum problem, with the crisis in the Middle East. In the third chapter, the protagonists are the multinational corporations that benefit from the protection of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and especially the World Trade Organization, to privilege their own interests over the interests of the states on which they are sitting upon. This chapter represents the moment of the most amount of liberty of capital, not so much to open up the borders to free trade, but more to impose upon those countries onto which the labor and environmental laws they exploit. This freedom allows an organizational reinforcement that goes from foreign direct investment to the creation of monetary paradises where they hide their money, leading to the overvalued financial sector and again, the exploitation of the countries in which this occurs.

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