Part 1: Debt, a means of domination

Although not all debt is bad in itself, the reality is that debt has been, for more than two centuries, a mechanism for transferring wealth created by workers to holders of capital on the one hand, and an instrument of political and economic domination on the other.

1. Is debt as such an evil?

The CADTM is an international network present in more than 30 countries which acts at local and international level to achieve two objectives: the immediate and unconditional cancellation of the whole debt of the countries of the South, and the cancellation of all illegitimate debts in the world.

For the CADTM, debt cancellation is not an end in itself. It is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to guarantee the satisfaction of human rights. If the World is to evolve towards greater social justice in the respect of the environment it is necessary to go well beyond the cancellation of public debt.
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Calling for debt cancellation does not mean refusing all forms of public debt. Even if it is preferable to finance human development through resources that do not generate debt, public debt can be a financing instrument for public authorities, on condition that it be used to promote large-scale social or ecological projects, such as:

1. investment in public health and services;
2. replace fossil fuels and nuclear energy by environmentally friendly renewable sources;
3. finance a transformation of current agricultural practices;
4. finance a vast programme of home building and renovation in order to create homes of better quality that consume less energy;
5. greatly reduce road and air transport in favour of socialized rail systems.

To come out on top of the current economic, social, health and climate crises, it may be necessary to incur some public debt. But it is fundamental that the borrowing policy be transparent and democratic, i.e. under the control of the citizens, and that it be aimed at serving the interests of the community. Who do we borrow from? What conditions may be acceptable? What for? What are the alternatives to indebtedness? These are all basic questions that need to be asked. They are not being asked at the moment.

2. How does debt become a mechanism for appropriating wealth?

Debt is a powerful mechanism for transferring wealth to the holders of capital, who, especially by charging interest, siphon off a significant part of the wealth produced by the workforce. This mechanism is programmed to continue indefinitely, in particular through “rollover”: a refinancing technique that “allows” States to repay old loans that have reached maturity by subscribing new loans of the same amount. Rollover, which is practized by governments worldwide, is very convenient for banks. On the one hand, it allows them to continue to receive the interest on the debt indefinitely. On the other hand, it allows them to maintain pressure on the States: if the latter dared to implement policies to the detriment of the banks, they could increase the debt burden by raising interest rates, or worse, they could decide to block the rollover, and so, financially strangle the country.

This wealth pumping mechanism has deprived socially useful and environmentally sustainable policies of much needed resources. Over the period 1980-2008, the countries of the South transferred $4.4 trillion in debt service payments. This also represents enormous amounts for the countries of the North: between 2010 and 2019, the 19 countries of the euro zone paid the major banks €2,496 billion in debt interest, an average of €250 billion per year (source: eurostat).

“National debts, i.e., the alienation of the state... marked with its stamp the capitalistic era... The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter’s wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury.” Karl Marx (1867), chapter 31, book 1 of Capital.

3. Why is the debt a means of political and economic domination?

Indebtedness as a means of imposing free trade and subordination on Latin American countries

From the 1820s onwards, European, but especially British, bankers actively sought to put the newly independent South American States into debt. These States needed funds, in particular to finance war efforts and to strengthen their independence. But this recourse to external debt proved disastrous, these loans were contracted on leonine terms including excessive interest rates, and, abusive commissions. In The Debt System – a history of sovereign debts and their repudiation, Eric Toussaint shows that, for an issued security worth £100, the debtor country received only £65 pounds, the rest constituting retainers and commissions for the issuing bank. However, the debtor State had to pay rates of up to 6%, calculated, of course, on a debt of £100, to be repaid in full. Debtor countries very quickly entered a vicious circle of indebtedness.

In 1825, the first great world crisis of capitalism broke out, as a consequence of the bursting of a speculative bubble on the London Stock Exchange. European bankers then stopped granting loans (end of rollover) and very quickly all independent Latin American countries found themselves financially strangled causing total or partial suspensions of payments. The Western powers, especially Great Britain, then used debt as a means of pressure and subordination, to impose policies in favour of their interests, in particular: free trade agreements opening the economies of the new states to British goods and investment, while Britain continued to protect its industry and trade; “conditioned” loans to oblige States to use the money from the loans to buy English goods, so returning the money lent directly back to England) and privatizations (in 1825, Simon Bolivar, President of Great Colombia, had to sell off Peruvian mines to pay debt premiums.

George Canning, an important British diplomat at the time, wrote in 1824: “The deed is done, the nail is driven, Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English.” Thirteen years later, Woodbine Parish, British consul in Argentina, speaking of a pampas gaucho, wrote: “Take his whole equipment— examine everything about him— and what is there not of raw hide that is not British? If his wife has a gown, ten to one it is made in Manchester.”

So, after freeing themselves from the Spanish and Portuguese colonial yokes, the Latin American States entered a new cycle of dependence, subordination and spoliation, guided by the interests of British and French big capital.

”Loans... are yet the surest ties by which the old capitalist states maintain their influence, exercise financial control and exert pressure on the customs, foreign and commercial policy of the young capitalist states” Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, chapter 30, 1913)

The indebtedness of Africa and other countries of the South during the 1960s-1970s follows exactly the same process and pursues the same objectives

The debt of African countries (but also of other countries of the South) increased sharply during the 1960s and 1970s for several reasons.

Let us begin by recalling that, on several occasions, the debts contracted by the colonial powers during colonization and used to plunder the resources of these countries and oppress their peoples, were bequeathed to the newly independent African states, a practice that is totally odious and contrary to international law.

The World Bank and the IMF lent massively to serve the economic interests of the colonial powers, either to impose a development model based on the export of commodities (oil, gas, minerals) and agricultural products (tea, cocoa, bananas, coffee), while the European countries could process these products and make huge capital gains, or to finance mega-projects to serve the interests of the Western powers, such as enormous hydroelectric dams to extract minerals (copper and uranium) and export them to the world market. These two institutions have also lent for the foreign-policy interests of dominant countries, in order to keep other countries in the capitalist fold.

“In many cases, the loans were intended to corrupt governments during the Cold War. The problem then was not whether the money served the well-being of the country, but whether it led to a stable situation, given the geopolitical realities of the world.” Joseph E. Stiglitz, in L’Autre mondialisation, Arte, 7 March 2000.

Northern governments also made “conditioned” loans: the money received had to be used to purchase supplies, goods, equipment and technology from the lending countries.

For their part, private investors were interested in lending money to countries that had significant raw material resources, because should these countries one day have difficulty repaying, this as yet unexploited wealth was thought to guarantee repayment.

What’s more, in the vast majority of cases, the governments of the South, rather than opposing this mechanism of subjugation of their country and people, preferred to take a commission and make arrangements with the local ruling classes, who had (and still have) an interest in perpetuating the debt mechanism.

Whether for the countries of Latin America in the first half of the 19^th century or for all the countries of the South in the second half of the 20^th century, debt was used by the ruling classes of the North to replace colonialism with a new form of colonialism, using debt to maintain their domination over the economies and peoples of the South.

In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit man (Plume, 2004), John Perkins describes the infernal process he was party to: they drove governments to contract debts they were unable to repay, then could easily pressure them into complying with their employers’ expectations such as selling their natural resources at a derisory price, voting for their proposals at a UN session or allowing a military base on their territory. If this method failed, they would use a more brutal approach (a coup or an assassination).

The 1982 global debt crisis: a weapon to impose austerity and neo-liberalism on more than 100 countries of the South

During the period 1960-1980, the developing countries, under strong pressure to borrow, increased their debt 12-fold, from $50 billion to $600 billion. The countries of the South had been generally able to repay their debts, thanks to their exports of raw materials. But from 1978 onwards, that changed very quickly. There were two main reasons for this:

• a rapid fourfold increase in interest rates which passed from 3% to 12% and so increased debt repayments;
• a sharp drop in commodity prices.

These two factors financially throttled the Southern countries and in 1982, the crisis blew up and more than a dozen countries defaulted on payments.

The IMF then weighed in, its logic is simple: in exchange for its emergency loans, it imposed neoliberal economic policies on the “beneficiary” countries. They became subject to austerity policies that cause reductions in the number of civil servants, wage freezes, drastic cuts in health and education spending, privatisation of natural resources and strategic economic sectors and liberalization of the economy by opening their markets to multinational corporations.

The outcome of these policies is entirely negative: debt increased, poverty and inequality worsened, human development remained at a standstill, the economic and social fabric has been disrupted and ecosystems have continued to be severely degraded. Moreover, this system of domination is still in place. It has changed its name several times (today we no longer speak of Structural Adjustment Policy (SAP), but of Strategic Document for Growth and Poverty Reduction (SDPGR)), but the logic remains the same and the States and peoples of the South continue to be subjected to the dictates of creditors, the IMF and the World Bank.

In the North, the domination by debt has been in full swing since 2009

Although done less violently than in the countries in the South, the global debt crisis of the 1980s also involved financial blood-letting and social aggression in the countries of the North.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, which, through massive socialisation of private debts, has turned into a sovereign debt crisis, the peoples of Europe, especially those of Southern and Eastern Europe, can feel in their flesh the devastating effects of the neo-liberal austerity policies that are being implemented in the name of public debt repayment. Increased privatisations, cuts in direct taxes, financial deregulation, fiscal austerity, attacks on social rights, weakening of trade unions, more flexible labour laws, all these offensives against social achievements are being carried out in the name of reducing the budget deficit and repaying the debt. In the North also, public debt plays this political role of domination: it is in the name of debt repayment and the reduction of public deficits that, for decades, all EU governments have been making massive cuts in public services, privatising strategic and/or profitable public enterprises, degrading public health systems, and carrying out an offensive against citizens economic and social rights.

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.” (John Adams, 1735-1826, second President of the United States)