In 1964 Che Guevara asked him to "fight against the flaws of capitalism". This is what the Swiss professor, deputy and writer Jean Ziegler set out to do all his life. Appointed Special Rapporteur to the United Nations for the right to food from 2000 to 2008, he is now Vice-President of the Human Rights Advisory Committee to the United Nations - functions which made him witness to poverty, misery and inequality around the world.
In the interview we conducted with him, he castigated capitalism, which he said was a "cannibalistic" order. How could the coronavirus crisis jeopardize this system? Could it reshuffle the cards and lead to a revolution? Jean Ziegler is certain…
Click: You wrote the book Capitalism explained to my little girl, hoping that she sees the end of it. Today, we realize that Western societies depend on growth, on the uninterrupted cycle of production-consumption balance. Has this system already been as fragile as at this time of confinement? Jean Ziegler:First of all, I would like to say one thing: we live under the dictatorship of the oligarchies of financial capitalism which dominate the world. I give you a figure from the World Bank: last year, the 500 largest private transcontinental companies, all sectors combined, controlled 52.8% of all the wealth produced on the planet. They dictate their laws to the most powerful states, which depend on them.
So yes, this capitalist order of the world is seriously questioned and has shown its fragility since the start of the current pandemic. Suddenly, the French government discovers that it totally depends on peripheral powers for substances that are vital for the population. For example, the fact that there has been a shortage of masks, the fact that there is a lack of drugs that are crucial to fight the virus, because they are made in India and China. Capital always goes where it makes the maximum profit, that is to say where production costs are lowest. So the principle of profit maximization is revealed to be a murderous principle.
What needs to be done is to de-globalize the health sector as quickly as possible.
We have seen this in the health sector, but also in the food sector. For example, at the moment, there are more and more supermarkets that stock up on French products. And around the world, countries that live on importing food are experiencing food shortages. Would achieving national self-sufficiency in health products and basic foods be a solution? Yes. The State discovers that its normative power on health is eroded. What needs to be done today is to de-globalize the health sector, the food sector and reclassify the salaries of those who ensure the well-being of the population. To get out of this disastrous law of profit maximization, production must be brought back. And finally, establish solidarity networks.
Relations with Africa must change radically. These are still neo-colonial exploitation reports.
I give you an example. The second poorest country in the world according to the UN is Niger. Niger is the second largest producer of uranium in the world. This country is ravaged by hunger, in particular because of the exhaustion of the grounds. But Niger has not the slightest penny to provide irrigation for its agricultural land. Because its primary resource, uranium, is exploited then exported by the company Areva which is a French company. Niger's uranium is exploited by Areva under pirating conditions, close to looting. This, of course, must stop.
At the start of the crisis, Pope Francis called for debt cancellation for the poorest countries, as did President Macron. How could this measure be decisive if it were applied?
It's amazing on his part. Once the pandemic is over, is it able to resist the real masters of France who are the financial oligarchies? I do not know. But for now, the intention he has expressed is quite remarkable. The foreign debt of the 122 so-called Third World countries, as of December 31, was $ 2.1 trillion. It is an absolutely incredible figure. For countries like Mali or Senegal, all of what they earn from operations goes directly to paying down the debt.
Debt is deadly in the sense that it prevents these states from investing in their economies, especially in agriculture. Result: permanent malnutrition of 35.8% of the African population according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. If Macron was able to free himself from the tutelage of the oligarchy which governs France through him and through the market, he would ask for the cancellation of the debt of the poorest countries.
Forbes announced that, since containment began, the world has lost 10% of its billionaires. Donald Trump would have lost $ 1 billion, or roughly a third of his fortune. Do you think this oligarchy will be really affected, or will it get away with it unscathed?
I think it all depends on public opinion. And I'm talking about the big industrialized countries of Europe. Because if we discussed, you and me, in Honduras or Beijing, it would be different. But in the great industrial democracies of the West, there is no helplessness: we all have constitutional rights and our freedom as citizens. Public opinion can impose an entirely different economic system by several means: by elections, general strike, demonstration, etc.
Public opinion considered that nothing could be done. I have lectured a lot on capitalism. Almost every time, at the end of the presentation, someone raises their hand and says, "Yes, everything you say is right, but I, a simple citizen, can do nothing" . One of the most dazzling victories of the oligarchies is the alienation which they imposed on the collective conscience: to make believe that only market forces make history, and that it is no longer Man who is the subject of his own story.
All that man can do is undergo the law of the market and reproduce it in his individual practice. This is alienation. If we can partially break this with this confinement, it would be incredible.
You have been a rapporteur for the United Nations with regard to food rights issues. Can you give me a concrete example of the destructive consequences of capitalism and the responsibility that the rich countries have in this system that you call "cannibal"?
25% of the world's food production is destroyed every day. It ends, among other things, in the garbage cans of rich countries. Basic foods, corn, wheat and rice cover about 75% of world consumption and are subject to stock market speculation. It is a central problem.
Let me take an example: in the first Chicago commodity exchange, you can speculate on rice, wheat and corn certificates ... Speculators make astronomical profits every year on these foods. However, in the slums of the world - I saw that in Peru especially - mothers with very little money have to buy food for their children. When prices soar, they can no longer support themselves. Many children perish because of this situation, which is caused exclusively by soaring food prices, which have an impact on local food prices.
In other words: stock market speculation has deadly consequences for the poorest populations in the Third World. It is because of this system, among other things, that every five seconds a child under the age of ten dies of hunger.
Almost one billion people out of the more than seven billion that we are are permanently severely undernourished. But this is also the case in France. We are starting to notice it today with this crisis: it is the poorest who are being hit hard.
These speculations could be banned tomorrow morning, the National Assembly of the Bourbon Palace and the American Congress could introduce an additional article in the law on the stock exchanges saying: "is prohibited the financial speculation on the basic foods which are rice, wheat and corn ” . Within a month, millions of human beings would be saved from destruction by hunger. Currently, the law of capital decides who will live and who will die on the planet by pressing the buttons. The Stock Exchange kills.
Today, in your opinion, are there still things on Earth that have no market value? No, I think market value is the measure of everything.
There is this idea which would like that in almost all the times, there were dominants and dominated, and that there will always be dominants and dominated. Is it utopian to think that it could happen otherwise? No, it is a totally fatalistic vision. History has meaning. As Jean Jaurès said, "The road is lined with corpses, but it leads to justice" . Capitalism is a system created by men and dominated by a few men. Oxfam says that the eight most powerful billionaires in the world have as much fortune as the 2.7 billion poorest people. These are sums that we can hardly imagine.
This cannibalistic order of the world has created an absolutely abysmal inequality, as never before had the world known. This is what is paradoxical in capitalism. There is both this production capacity which causes an incredible succession of electronic and scientific revolutions, which is an infinitely positive aspect, which has brought humanity out of objective lack.
And at the same time, the social order it establishes is a murderous order. Today for the first time in the history of the world, there are enough goods to ensure the material well-being of all the inhabitants of this planet. However, distribution is not organized in a fair and equitable manner. It would be possible today, and this is the horizon of our history
Inequalities, world hunger ... There are more and more people who are aware, who want to act and who do not really know what to do at their level. You told me earlier in this interview that there is no helplessness in a democracy, because you can demonstrate and you can vote. But there were demonstrations for more than a year every weekend in France, and that did not really change things. Could this crisis ultimately force change? Yes, I think, because it is something radically new. The shock is very deep. We are threatened with death by an enemy we do not know. The structures put in place by the state prove to be totally ineffective. Why ? Because these states were deprived of their true function, of their normative power.
There have been public investment policies completely invalidated by market value, by capital and its law which dominates society. And it is a law of profit maximization, for the benefit of a few and not for the benefit of the general interest. It shows in the anxiety that we have every day, because if we are infected, with the means we have today, we risk dying.
This shock will provoke revolution.
I give you the example of the Bastille. On July 14, 1789, the craftsmen of the faubourg Saint-Martin and the faubourg Saint-Antoine looked in the neighboring houses and they saw the pale women, the hungry children, who suffered because their husbands were locked up in the political prison of the King. And they said to themselves, this morning of July 14, that it couldn't go on like this. They walk on the Bastille then rush into the prison. They released the prisoners, massacred the governor and it was the start of the French Revolution.
If the evening of July 14 on the banks of the Seine, there had been a journalist from Clique who had taken an insurgent by the jacket and who had asked him to explain the text of the constitution of the first French Republic, which comes four years later, he would have been unable to respond. We can see that it is absurd. Because history is made by walking.
There is a very beautiful sentence by Antonio Machado which you quoted in your book and which makes me think of what you say, “Man who walks, do not seek your way; Your steps will do it. ” Exactly. So what's going to happen? The virus will cause the alienated consciousness to rupture and in one way or another, popular movements will be born and will destroy this cannibalistic system of capitalism ...
Well, we cannot decide on the path that the people will take, but the fact that there will be an insurrection, that is certain.
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