8/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
brings together the North's private banks; see glossary) dictate
their conditions to debtor countries (Chapters 10, 11, 14, 15
and 16).- Structural adjustment plans are an instrument for reining in the
countries of the Third World (Chapters 10, 11, 14, 15 and 16)
and Eastern Europe. The logic of these plans has been exported
to the countries of the North, whose populations have also been
subjected to austerity plans (Chapter 13). - The effects of these plans have in general been disastrous. In
some cases they have intensified terrible social crises, leading to
a spiral of so-called ethnic and so-called religious conflicts, and
even to the break-up of entire states. The list is already very long,
the number of deaths exponential: Somalia, former-Yugoslavia,
Algeria, Rwanda, to name a few. While structural adjustment
programmes have not been the central factor in these crises,
they have been powerful catalysts (Chapters 11 and 15). - The repayment of foreign and domestic debt has been a
tremendous mechanism for transferring the wealth created (or,
rather, a part of this wealth: the surplus) by the workers and
small producers of Third World countries and the former Eastern
Bloc, to domestic holders of capital (the South and Eastern
Europe's capitalists) and to the North's capitalists (Chapter 8).
This is not a mere draining of the periphery's resources by the
centre. Rather, a class analysis reveals that this transfer of
wealth is part of the aforementioned generalised offensive of
capital against labour. This offensive aims specifically to re
establish the capitalists' rate of profit - known as 'company
performance' - in the long term. - Debt is one mechanism among others for subordinating the
peoples and governments of the periphery to the centre,
symbolised by the Group of Seven (G7) most industrialised
nations. Other such mechanisms include: unequal trade and the
deterioration of the terms of trade for the countries of the South;
the control of world trade by multinationals and the industri
alised capitalist countries; military domination by the Northern
powers; capital flight from the South to the North; the repatria
tion of profits stemming from the operations of multinationals
from the North in the South; the 'brain drain' from South to
North; protectionist barriers put up by the North against goods