Bangladesh: The Bottom of the World-Capitalist Pit

By Dr. Abu Mahmood

The Marxian and Rousseauian traditions are so strong-in the world of the second half of the twentieth century that no doctrine or interpretation which is inconsistent with them is capable of general acceptance. Moreover, a culture of private power and affluence give such stress to mercenary values- and resist accountability to law and order. In his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau attempts to describe the origin of evil. The first man who dared to take from the common ownership of a plot of ground, fence it in, and say "this is mine" - he is the villain responsible for the end of the state of nature. Rousseau does not explain why the child of nature acted so unnaturally. Neither the idealists, Fitche and Hegel, the positivist, Comte, the liberal, Mill, nor evolutionary nationalist Spencer, regarded themselves as social revolutionaries or as renegades from the underlying cultural tradition in which their own philosophies had been conceived and nurtured. They were critics and reformers who sought only to clarify, purify, and amend tradition; they had no intention of breaking with it altogether. Their philosophical disagreements (the idealists and the positivists),serious as they were, may still be viewed as phases of a continuing parliamentary debate between tolerably well-bred liberals and conservatives, all of whom were committed in greater or less degree, to the developing institutional life of bourgeois Christendom. When we come to Marx, we find those lines have become obscured and that philosophical oppositions of a difficult and more radical kind begin to emerge. Marx was not contented merely to amend tradition; in his own way he tried to destroy it, what he sought to accomplish as a philosopher was not just a new way of ideas or a new critique of reason, but virtually the creation of a new kind of man where there will be an end of exploitation of man by man. So different both in form and substance are his writings from those of his predecessors that many academics, historians have scarcely recognized that he was a philosopher at all. Yet it has been his doctrines, his approach to social reality rather than the "respectable" theories of his more conventional contemporaries that have had the greater impact upon the effective thought of our age.

It seemed increasingly clear to Marx, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, that any cultural synthesis or compromise between Christianity, positive science and political liberalism is impossible, because they were not interested in not being simply reasonable but in salvation or success or to put to an end the recurrence of human suffering. The philosophical problem, said Marx, is not to understand the world but to change it. For Nietzsche, "truth" itself becomes virtually a term of decision; where truth is of no avail Nietzsche resorts to noble lie. The philosophically important questions, for Nietzsche, are not so much, "What is true?", "What is right?", but "What do I want to do?" and "What do I want to become?" Kierkegaard is equally intransigent. He simply turns his back upon the "rational" theologies of our tradition. In his way, they were merely so many unchristian attempts to rationalize the idea of Christ and hence so many ways of accommodating its inner subjective meaning to the irrelevant demands of the secular (capitalistic) order. For him, there is no more possibility of reconciling the idea of a Christian life with the demands of the historical institutions with which Hegel identifies "objective truth" or "reason" than there is of equating spiritual freedom with historical necessity. His break with theological rationalism is not at the same time a radical break with the bourgeois institutional life of the 19th Century, and it is as radical and final a break as that of either Marx or Nietzsche.

But for Marx, the problem does not end there. He has to discover ways and means of getting out of the traditional methodology of social research with its elaborate strategy to mystify and obfuscate social reality. It was the hey day of neo-classicals which tried to mystify further by introducing abstract mathematical model pre-fabricated to arrive at acceptable explanations of the social reality. Bourgeois social science perfected itself as positivists and empiricists pursue their goal of studying the surface phenomenon which skirts any deeper analysis of social phenomenon to find out the basic structure of the society, and the fundamental relationships, which through class struggle provide the dynamics of change and growth. But he could not run down the social research which end up with empirical findings of surface phenomenon and try to delude public and researcher by equating appearance with reality. But if appearance were the reflection of reality, there was no need for science, intuition, technology and manipulations of those to capture reality. In natural science, the dialectical relations between component elements of a thing is clear but it is not clear in the social science, how the struggle between opposites explain a social phenomenon. Nor, could he explain the influence of historically rooting religious influence, geographical constraints through the conventional concepts, methods and models used in current social research. It is one of fundamental belief that Marx's greatest contribution has been his approach to social reality via historical rooting, structural locations and cultural situating of a particular society by using dialectical materialism as tool of analysis.

"As an economic theorist, Marx was first of all a very learned man", Schumpeter observed. In the descent from Ricardo, the Social Darwinists were an eddy to the right. Marx was a massive eruption to the left. Marx built socialism on Ricardo's orderly arrangement of economic ideas and on his bold conception of the problem of income distribution, and came to Ricardian conclusion - "the inevitable impoverishment of the masses, the progressive enrichment of those who own the natural means of production, the inevitable conflict between wages and profits and the priority of the latter for progress", but unlike Ricardo, Marx was a man of passion and those conclusions culminated in a call to revolution.

Marx's conception of capitalism was no more gloomy than that of Ricardo, or Malthus, but Marx's "mission was to identify fault, place blame, urge change, and above all, to enlist disciplined belief". He subscribed to the iron law of wages but in a modified form where the worker is kept on the margin of destitution less because he breeds up to this point than because of his utter weakness in dealing with the capitalist employer and because the system won't work if he is well paid, this partly so because the labour force is a reservoir into which with the passage of time, independent craftsmen and farmers are also forced. Helpless is assured by the industrial reserve army - by the rising and falling but enduring margin of unemployment which is a part of the system. Any worker at any time can be flushed into this reserve which insures that he will be cooperative and will accept the wage that is offered to him.

But, he was more than an economic theoretician. .The breath-taking grandeur of Marx's achievement profoundly affected those who did not accept his system, and his influence even extended to those who least supposed they were subject to it. For "no one before, or for that matter since, had so many strands of human behaviour and woven them together - social classes, economic behaviour, the nature of the state, imperialism, and war - were all here and on a grand fresco which ran deep in the past to far into the future", thus records Galbraith in his book, The Affluent Society. Our economists are studiously silent about imperialism, and would not behave in a manner that they have come across this term. Even in the developed country of this day, the principal alternative to explaining imperialism in terms of economic self-interest is to argue the benevolence of the imperial power; its commitment to the white man's burden,, and its feeling that the natives are not ready for independence.

After the formal independence of India and Pakistan a new rationale was needed to justify the perpetuation of the colonial relationship. Such a neo-colonialist ideology which was trotted out by the American professor and administrator W. W. Restow was gobbled up by the successive generations of rulers of Bangladesh for maintaining their comprador rule at the behest of the U. S. imperialist hegemony.

The first challenge to the obfuscating jargon-ridden writings with their false concepts of "modernization", political development and "economic development" and so on, came from Stanislav Andreski, who called the modern research in social sciences as sorcery not only for the inadequacy of the positivistic persuasions arid the perniciousness concealed in the ideology of "end of ideology" and bankruptcy of behaviourism, but for its complete inability to explain contemporary socio-economic situations in the developing countries today. Political science studies the conflict in power in a given social milieu, but it does not explain how and why such a milieu emerged, nor does it explain how this conflict can be resolved so that the society can get rid of all antagonistic contradictions whose fountainhead was discovered by Marx to be private property. A social system is not like a simple arithmetical equation so that the innumerable complexities can be understood from its quantitative relationships. For mankind lurches along in an unquantifiable mix of historical determinism, human will and accident, and even historians cannot agree how much of each went into, say, the Russian Revolution. It can be comprehended fully or more satisfactorily only by taking into consideration the social relation of production and power. The political organization and state machinery though belonging to the superstructure, is deeply in reciprocal relationship with the economic base, which can be handled simultaneously by following the Marxist method of analysis and outlook.

The Freedom Fighter's objective was national liberation and to create conditions to make social progress possible. Mujib and his gangs intervened with the help of India and the USSR. But, internal pressure within Mujib's party were such that despite his avowed allegiance to private property and U S hegemony, he had to take certain economic steps to follow a non-capitalist path of economic development. For example, development of the public sector as the dominant force in the economy, his declared intention to bring about land reform and a change in rural power structure through a scheme of multi-purpose cooperative system at village level, which envisaged to be the de facto owners of all available lands, orchards, fisheries and other economic properties and institutions concerning the rural economy: 65,000 multi-purpose cooperative societies, one in each village. He had a policy of checking the spread of capitalism - the type which could not touch the fringe of the problem of poverty, and which was seen to be responsible for social polarization.

He had nationalized the key industries including banking and insurance. Jute industry and trade, which are the mainstay of Bangladesh economy were nationalized. Workers' participation was introduced and to check the growth of private sector out of all proportion, proper restriction in the form of ceiling on investment were imposed and the right of nationalization was reserved with government. It terrified the exploiting Classes of Bangladesh both in the urban and rural areas, and scared the imperialists who resolved to teach him a lesson by withholding food shipments in 1974 and causing a toll of human lives to the tune of 600,000. One taking the advantage of hindsight may argue that "the coup d'etat of August 15, 1975 was indeed the triumph of the vested interests and the reactionary forces of Bangladesh who operating on the behest of U S imperialism tried to kill the forces of nationalism, independence, democracy and socialism". Otherwise, the ruling junta must have to explain why they set up a task force to study the economic situation which came out in post-haste with a "white paper" criticising the public sector and the controlled distribution system and recommended that government initiate the process of de-nationalization of the public sector. For whose benefit? Was not the ruling-class conniving all these years with overwhelming powers at their disposal to ruin the jute industry and the jute trade? To help this process of ruining for the class benefit, they de-nationalized raw jute trade at once and for whose benefit such a major policy change was initiated is known by all, by now. In order to encourage private trade and investment, the ceiling of investment in private sector has been increased from Taka 3 crores to Taka 10 crores and now it has been abolished for whom we can guess. Holiday, a weekly, in its February 1, 1976 issues made a point: "The successive regimes since August 15, 1975 have been trying to create favourable conditions for the accumulation and expansion of private capital.

During Mujib's regime, foreign capital was avowed grudgingly to obtain foreign aid, the present regime has opened the floodgate through which more than half a dozen multinationals entered the country, monopolized medicine, food processing, electrical goods, and a host of others.

The present regime has also launched a policy of massive propaganda and diplomatic maneuver to create confidence in the foreign investors, promising adequate compensation to the old foreign investors whose concerns were nationalized and assuring full compensation in case of future nationalization. The President instructed his bureaucratic machine to posit to the public the image of capitalist growth of South Korea, Formosa, Indonesia, Singapore, and have entered into joint ventures at the behest of imperialism with countries mentioned above. For whose benefit these measures are being taken by a dictator is known to all, and it will be indicated in the subsequent paragraphs that despite their rhetoric of production-oriented measures, the economic conditions of Bangladesh have become worse at an accelerated rate. Why this hurry? To make hay while the sun shines;

This regime which came after Mujib's killing through a process of successive coups Latin American style, has already evolved and added to Ayub's tax-incentive measures, priority in import and land allocation, rigid labour laws, a duty-free zone just to invite foreign investment - to make Bangladesh attractive to foreign exploiters and world capitalism. He went one step further than Ayub's regime to satisfy U S imperialism- its main foreign-aid donor. It has adopted the policy of developing the private enterprise not independently, but with the help of foreign capital, multi-nationals and state support, thus providing the happy hunting ground for foreign capitals and their junior, bootlicking indigenous partners, dependent capitalists like Zuhurul Islam and his cohorts.

This regime came into power by coup and clamped martial law and ruled by ordinances for three and a half years, and took a stance of democratizing itself. It held an election at gun-point, got a thumping majority in the Parliament, regularized more than 7000 ordinances without any discussion into laws of the country, and did not allow any kind of discussion of the budget by the opposition. Immediately after the budget session, the Parliament went out of session. News media, and TV are state-operated institutions, and no private newspaper can survive without government's sanction and patronage. Prices of all commodities kept their long march, and prices of utilities were stepped up by the government without consulting the Parliament. And yet there is no end of stout claim by the "forty" ministers which were created overnight to scurry over the country and spread the message of democracy, self-reliance, and independence, of the nation from foreign .dependence.

Immediately after capturing the power, the regime initiated a two-pronged policy: establishing law and order and increasing production to decrease dependence on foreign help. Law and order situation has progressively deteriorated after a lull for a while, while the economic situation, marginalization of the peasantry, employment opportunities, nutrition of the people, all have massively worsened to culminate to the present engulfing famine in Bangladesh. Mujib lost his grip and his life due to his inability to cope with famine. It is yet to be seen how the present regime handles this colossal problem of hunger of 65% of the 80 million population. This famine comes into being due to unprecedented drought in this century. Both foreign and domestic experts cautioned the present regime at least one & a half years ahead of time and suggested measures to tackle this situation. But the regime, instead of paying heed to these warnings instigated its clowning cohorts to ridicule the experts, and one of them who successfully ridiculed this cautionary proposal from the editorial of a local daily has been awarded with a ministerial job in-charge of the country's youth who are supposed to supply the president with the vanguards of his kind of "revolution".

PART II

Empirical evidences:

That Bangladesh is one of the poorest or the poorest country of the world is not yet an established fact. The gross domestic product (GDP) of the country in 1976-77 was estimated at 56.6 thousand million Taka at 1972-75 prices. (It is our standard practice to shift the base years closer to recent years just to tell our success story.) This implies a per capita income of US$85 or 87 at 1972-73 exchange rate. This compares with the per capita GDP in 1970 of 100 dollars (US) for India, and 107 for Indonesia, the other two poorest and populous countries in Southeast Asia. Further, over the period 1949-50 to 1976-77, the growth in per capita income in Bangladesh has not been significantly different from zero, the annual rate of growth in GDP was 2.7 percent over this period compared to a rate of population growth of 2.6%

Since 85 to 90% of the total population lives in the countryside, let us try to find out who owns the means of livelihood there. The record clearly presents a high degree of land concentration in non-cultivating strata of rural population: the top 9.67% of the rural households own 40.68% of the total agricultural land whereas the lowest 77.67% of the rural households hold only 25.17% of the total agricultural lands.

Successive military and bourgeois governments attempted to solve the problem of land-tenure, land ownership, rural indebtedness by appointing royal or non-royal Commissions, and tidal waves of rhetorics were spurted by all governments in a much more effective and colourful way boosted by conferences, seminars, and workshops with banner heads in the news media, with always an attempt to surpass the past efforts to be poverty-oriented, production-oriented, and to bring sunshine in the lives of country people: To that end since the days of Ayub regime, we have Commilla Experiment, basic democracy. Food for Works programme, and finally culminating in the Integrated Rural Development Programme, but all of them mainly benefited large farmers and the small farmers that the cooperatives were originally set up to help have largely been left out of the KSS/TCC Structure, and are being forced into an ever more marginal position. The effects of the government's "poverty-oriented" rural development programmes on those who have been excluded from the cooperatives - the landless have been disastrous. The following empirical findings are likely to be fairly indicative:

33% of households in rural Bangladesh are landless and another 15% own less than half-an-acre of agricultural land which is far less than subsistence requirements.

The proportion of landless households in rural areas has increased from an estimated 18% in 1961 to 33% in 1977; this during a period of consistent agricultural growth.

The rate of increase of landless households over the past decades (4-5% per annum) was higher than the population growth rate (3% annually) and is likely to increase further.

Current un- and under-employment is estimated at between 30 and 40% and is growing rapidly.

Because of a combination of an increasing supply of labour (growth of landless) and decreasing demand for labour through sub-division holdings (due to lack of any other means of livelihood besides landholdings) which concentrates lands in hands of smaller peasants who are less likely to hire in labour, there was a decline of about 50% in the real value of agricultural wages (prices of wage-goods were increasing sharply due to agricultural stagnation and massive inflationary pressure on domestically produced goods) between 1965 and 1975.

As a result of these trends, the proportion of “absolutely poor” households increased from 52 to 87% from 1963 to 1973-74 and the proportion of “extremely poor” households jumped from 10% to 54%.

About malnutrition, the University of Dacca's Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology conducted two surveys. Director of the Institute Dr. Kamal Ahmed in a statement to the local press in the month of October, 1979 gave the following factual data: Food shortage and its mal-distribution in the country are working havoc. Most of deaths from stomach disorders, fever, phthisis and other diseases are basically rooted in hunger and eating of garbage and non-foods. The first survey conducted during 1962-64, and the second in 1975-76 reveal disastrous fall in the level of nutrition of the rural people. About 59% of the households are far below the breadline. In 1962-64, per capita calorie consumption per day was 2,251. It fell to 2094 in 1975-76, a fall of 7% and protein shortage has affected more than 60% of the households. In 196264, per capita intake was 840.7 gram. It declined to 807.3 grams in 1975-76. The death rates among landless peasants are much higher than among other groups, primarily because most of these people fall into the 41% of the population who consume less than 80% of the food required for sustenance. Virtually all the health resources of the public sector are spent on providing services to the small urban middle class. It is no idle coincidence that the people who eat too little food are the same people who are denied access 'to adequate health care. All of the immediate causes of the ill-health of the majority are manifestations of a single underlying cause, namely an international and national system which exploits and oppresses the people. A program for improving health and save 80% of the people from certain death thus must be a program for changing society.

Foreign aid and loan:

Aid currently finance 4/5th of the development budget and provides approximately half of the government's total finance. Aid is now equivalent to more than 10% of the country's gross domestic product. Aid fills the country's large trade deficit which is almost double its current level of export-earnings. This dependence on aid tends to undo initiatives, if any, towards self-reliance despite government's rhetorics for it. The government finds it much easier to rely on the flow of capital from abroad than to make the hard decisions necessary to develop the economy from local resources. Aid also prevents political change by keeping all kinds of regimes afloat which would otherwise sink under the weight of popular discontent. "In Bangladesh, aid has financed narrow, elite-based governments which cling to power by suppressing political dissent." (See International Policy Report, Washington, D.C. May 30, 1978, p. 10.)

That the government's dependency on aid financed counter-insurgency measures increases which has adverse impact on human rights in Bangladesh is also exposed by the same report in the following terms: "To secure his grasp of power, Zia has increasingly devoted scarce government resources to building up his security following" (See Table 5 of the Report). Expenditures for defense, justice and the police have grown from 20% of the reverse in Mujib's regime to 30% today. Fearing unrest in the army, Zia, in 1976 militarized the police creating a 12,500 men special task force to carry out "special drive mopping-up operations and . other activities requiring techniques and training.

Zia has received military assistance from both Great Britain and the United States. The British government is providing 1.3 million worth of telecommunications equipment to the Bangladesh police and eight senior British military officers are helping to set up a military staff college north of Dacca. The U.S. is channeling security assistance through the International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). The administration's fiscal year 1979 IMET budget request for Bangladesh of $250,000 (up from S200,000 last year) is intended to bring 27 Bengali officers to the U. S. to study "management techniques". In the context of Bangladesh martial law regime and the country's small military elite, such assistance acquires a significance far beyond the modest expenditure involved. By strengthening internal security forces, IMET funds could well contribute to a further deterioration of the human rights situation in Bangladesh.

The U S State Department is not unaware of human rights abuses in Bangladesh. In compliance with legislation prohibiting food aid to countries with "gross violations" of human rights (due to Carter's insistence) the State Department recently delayed the signing of a PL. 480 contract specifying that the food would go to the needy. The State Department's 1978 human rights report on Bangladesh, however, minimizes the extent of human rights violations in this country. For example, it estimates the current number of political prisoners as "up to 2,000 and reports prisoners' releases, while failing to mention fresh arrests which have led the Amnesty International to conclude that there is no ground" its estimate of 10,000 to 15,000 political prisoners.

Personalization of Aid:

"Bangladesh's poverty is rooted in the social order which benefits a small elite at the expense of the poor majority. The elite holds power from the national government down to the village level, and it is through this elite that foreign aid is channeled. Under such conditions Americans can expect their foreign aid dollars to perpetuate rather than alleviate poverty in Bangladesh." (Washington Policy Report quoted earlier.) "Though 90% of the population is rural only one third of government rationed foodgrains go to rural areas and often not to the needy. In a country where survival often depends on access to arable land, 33% of households are landless and another 29% eke out an existence from holdings of an acre or less.

"Within three years of independence, the new nation received 2.5 billion U S dollars in aid commitments, more than it had received in its 25 years as East Pakistan. Today aid flows to Bangladesh at a rate of almost a billion dollars per year. Much of it comes from the U S and U S-supported. In the fall of 1974, a Bangladesh Aid Group patterned on the aid consortiums for other developing countries, was formed under the leadership of the World Bank. The World Bank's position as chairman of the Aid Group adds to its considerable influences in Bangladesh. This it helps millions who live in what World Bank calls "absolute poverty"; "a condition of life so degraded by disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, and squalor as to deny its victims basic necessities".(See McNamara, "Address to the Board of Governors", Nairobi, Kenya, 1973.)But many Americans are puzzled by the fact that despite years of foreign aid involving billions of dollars, the world's poor are becoming even poorer.

The answer to this riddle lies in the following institutional set-up of world capitalism the imperial state network regulates through juridico-political and institutional mechanisms the functioning of the international economy. In this regard, the international economic and political entities of the imperial state network developed in the post-war years are parallel with the changes occurring in the process and structure of world capitalism. Imperial international economic policy which is partly implemented through the various economic entities of the imperial state network: World Bank, IMF, OECD, etc., is essentially oriented to devising the economic and institutional support mechanisms which sustain the internationalization of capital. In the economic sphere, the imperial state network is essentially concerned with a) the regulation of trade and of the international monetary system, b) the monitoring of capital flows, by the World Bank, for instance are directed in infrastructural investment projects in the periphery (for mainly population control, insurgency control, and building up civil and military organizations to contain peasant revolts and communist activities), which in the sophisticated language of the World Bank constitute "external economies" for private foreign investment. The role of the World Bank has to be understood in the context of the expansion of international capital in the Third World countries to integrate the peripheral agriculture into agri-business of the multi-nationals for entry into the global market for imperialist extraction of surplus for agriculture. Since the middle of the '60s and first half of the Seventies, it became increasingly clear that the multi-nationals have come to a limit in their surplus-exploitation function from the limited import-substituting industrialization policy of developing countries. The mid-60s famine of India and its impact on Indian planning have been crucial indicators of the imperialists' prospects in the developing countries.

Despite massive inflow of foreign aid and loan, agriculture is still under constant threat from flood and drought, and some years it takes such a disastrous proportions causing huge damages to crops, livestock, and even human lives. Agriculture accounts for about 55% of the GDP, but agricultural productivity is very low. For comparative purposes, it may be noted that in 1975-76, the yield of rice per hectare was 1802 kg in Bangladesh while it was 5962 in South Korea, 5954 kg in Japan, and 4281 in China. A cropping intensity of only 1.3 has been achieved. The whole period from November to April is practically rainless throughout the country and during the rainy period, comprising roughly the other six months of the year, there are the problems regarding the timeliness of rain, and its coverage over the different parts of the country. Irrigation, therefore, has been identified as crucial to our agriculture. But successive governments, despite their works programmes, and enthusiasm, and propaganda, participation of civil, military, students and public in countless programs, could not contribute anyway to affect the macro-position in agriculture. Our agriculture is still essentially rain-fed as modern irrigation covers less than 10% of the net cropped area.

The manufacturing sector contributes about 11% of the GDP and absorbs about 5% of the total civilian labour force. The share of the large-scale industries in GDP is shown to be about 6% and that of the small-scale and cottage industries about 5%. The sector suffers from low productivity, wide-spread under-utilization of capacity. This urban sector is extremely small and owe their existence from their tied-aid-financed which are euphemistically called "large-scale" industries, practically all nationalized and operating at 30 to 40% capacity and are run at a huge loss yearly. Those "show" industries hardly contribute more than 4% to the GDP. "There is a scant market, at home and abroad, for built-in reasons. If anything, it is of an expanded decay rather than reproduction". For the purpose of indicating the trend and level of performance, the recent World Bank report is conclusive. It states that the average gross domestic product of the Low Income countries between1970-77 grow at the rate of 3.2%. Bangladesh scored a low 2.3% which was 3.6 between 1960-70. Other Low Income countries have achieved a growth rate in agriculture of 2.7%, but Bangladesh in this field also scored barely 1% between 1970-77, the growth rate for industries in Bangladesh were 4.2% between 1970-77 as against 7.9% between 1960-70. The empirical evidences so far provided for Bangladesh cannot suggest anyone to take an optimistic view of the future of the country, and yet there is no dearth of articles appearing in foreign journals from those who are in the academic service of imperialism.

Crisis and Renewal in the Student World

By Nathanael L. Cortez

CHRISTIAN STUDENTS AND THE ECUMENICAL RENEWAL

It is an indelible fact of modern ecumenical history that the ecumenical proposition is in large measure a product of the concerns and activity of youth and students. The ecumenical movement would not be what it is today were it not for the pioneering vision and sense of mission of youth and students who propounded the ecumenical idea as an expression of their "active shame" over the present state of the Church's life and their hope and commitment for the renewal of the Church's mission in a changing world. It is not surprising therefore that the early leading lights of ecumenism came from the student movement and the missionary movement both of which coalesced to form the nucleus of what is known today as the World Council of Churches. .

This coalition of student and missionary forces is perhaps best illustrated in the concern for "The Evangelization of the World in the Present Generation" - that slogan which propelled the ecumenical idea in its early beginnings. Here, student "activism" combined with missionary zeal - the former, providing the bulk of the personnel and the idealism, and the latter, providing the concern for the life of the world and the Church's mission within it - to challenge the churches and call them to a more manifest expression of their unity in Christian obedience. In short, the student movement, through its various expressions within the life of the Church, provided one of the pressure points that led to the expression and the active historical manifestation of the hope "That They May Be One". The discovery of the unity of the Church as a sine qua non of its mission did not spring from the innovation of those who have arrived ecclesiastically but from the vision and involvement of younger leaders of the churches who were in the frontiers of the churches' life.

The student movement, in other words, has been an indelible partner in the ecumenical enterprise from its very inception and has remained to be so as the ecumenical idea evolved in the face of new realities in the life of the world and in the light of the ever-expanding new theological discoveries about the life and mission of the Church. Indeed, a considerable portion of the agenda that the ecumenical movement has had to face in its history has been provided for it by the concerns of the student movement.

Thus, for example, the student movement contributed much in alerting the ecumenical movement to the meaning of its critical witness in the face of the rise of fascism and totalitarianism in Europe, and which threatened the whole world earlier in this century. It was also through the perceptiveness of students that as the ecumenical movement began to form itself organizationally around the theme of the Church's unity, it has had to come face to face with the surging political tides of nationalism that came with the birth of the new nations of the Third World and the concomitant new world of divisions and economic and political tensions which these brought.

In more recent times, as the contradictions of development began to surface with the disappointments over the results of the Development Decade, it was once more students who confronted the ecumenical movement to look more seriously at the ideological question and ask whether or not other ideological options may not be explored if the promise of development is to be fulfilled.

The concern for liberation and not only development - which has become so much a part of the theological landscape of the present, and the projection of socialism as an ideological option through which Christian witness may be expressed in the contemporary world have also been agitated in large measures within the ecumenical movement.

One can go on with other examples. The point here is not to give unadulterated praise and glory to the student movement in the development of the ecumenical idea. There have obviously been false hopes expressed and certainly some mistaken signals given. What needs to be said is that the ecumenical proposition would not be what it is today without the active participation of students. The ecumenical movement needed the student movement as a restless partner which in its freedom and daring -- even at times to commit mistakes -- was essential in calling the churches to ever-new theological frontiers and to ever-emerging unexplored areas of the world's life. Or perhaps all of this was not the students' doing at all, but only the result of their more active and freer response to the historical mandates that a pulsating world of change has brought to all. It is in the end man, the maker of history, who sets the agenda even for the Church to which we all belong.

UPSURGE AND DECLINE

The past decade and a halt saw, perhaps more than at any other point in modern ecumenical history, the rise of student power in almost all parts of the world In the United States, students were in the forefront of the struggle against racism and against the brutalities and misconceptions of American policies in Vietnam. Student protests to a large extent caused the political downfall of two American presidents. In Europe, demands for university reforms became the catalyst for larger demands for more far-reaching reforms in the total political and social fabric of European society.

In the Asian scene, the student milieu was no less volatile and dramatic in its impact. Student protests in Japan came close to causing a political crisis of major proportions in this center of capitalist development in this part of the world. The student revolt in Sri Lanka demonstrated the capacity of students to gain widespread support for their cause, although it also showed how the power of government can quickly overrun them. In Thailand, student activism scuttled a military regime and was instrumental in the setting up of a popular, though only temporary, government. In South Korea, students spearheaded the "revolution" that put down the decadent regime of Syngman Rhee and unleashed political turmoil that continues to the present. In country after country, students were part of various forms of social protest that called for the transformation arid renewal of society.

Many impulses generated this student upsurge. Embedded in these varied impulses, however, is the desire to see a society that is truly free of oppression and where all may enjoy the fruits of justice and peace. Clearly, there has been in these protests uneasiness and dissatisfaction with the kind of economic, social and political development going in their respective countries and the openness to explore alternate social systems within which nations may be able to forge a better life for their peoples.

Among Christian students in particular, the vision of a society where man is freed from oppression and exploitation by fellowman has been linked to and rooted in a theology - a reading of the Bible - that has been done in the context of their participation in the life and struggles of their people. The dream of a new earth becomes in this light a reflection of the new heaven r- the Kingdom of God - so that the molding of faith and social justice has been a common thread that runs through their interventions in Church and social affairs.

As quickly and as dramatically as student organization and power rose in the sixties, however, as quickly and as dramatically it also declined in the seventies. For one thing, it seems evident now that despite the seeming popularity of the student protest movement, only a fraction of the student population - though certainly a significant one really gave it support, especially in its overall political thrusts. For another, and perhaps the crucial reason, the expression of student idealism into more organized forms of political protests naturally brought about more stringent government control and intervention into student affairs.

Now in country after country in Asia, student organizations are banned, student activities are severely curtailed, and even minor expressions of student dissent are immediately "nipped in the bud" before they could lead to larger expressions of social protest. Educational institutions have become some of the more closely watched in society and are under constant pressure to maintain order and discipline among their student populations. When one adds to these the cultural "blitz" that is imposed upon students not only through the control of the instruments of educational instruction but through the mass media as well, it should be a surprise that the period of activity has been followed by a period of relative reaction and decline, perhaps even of crisis, in the student world.

Thus, what was not long ago an active and alert student population has been so cowed and subverted so that a generation of citizens who refuse to think for themselves, who are silent, uncritical and who would easily accept whatever officialdom says as the truth is being raised much to the impoverishment of both Church and society.

Returning to Manila in late August this year, I came upon an issue of WHO Magazine which had two articles on "Campus Mood '79". In one of these articles, student power in the Philippines today was described as an "impotent rage". The author introduces the article with this enlightening statement: "People who think of the university years as a time for carefree joy and youthful optimism have better go back to the campus for a visit. They might be surprised. Today, across the nation, a complicated sickness is eating away at the souls of many Pilipino students. In huge educational factories, at religious schools, in exclusive enclaves and diploma mills, the anguish is felt. Some students seem to feel it more than others, some verbalize it while others just vaguely feel something is wrong." Asked to describe the students of the seventies, the editors of a number of university and college papers responded, "Suppressed", "struggling", "tamad"(lazy), "coerced", "passive", "dormant", "parang takot" (seemingly frightened), "uncritical", "apathetic". One even volunteered, "undefined".

The other article refers to a questionnaire posed to editors of school newspapers in which many responded that they are being "put on", They are being taught the ideals of democracy, they said, but "have found the practice of it full of sham and deception". They continued, "The school keeps us passive and disciplined and provides us with tools that may lead to a job, but what if the students' burning concerns are urgent social issues? For example, can you discuss the concept of imperialism and avoid talking of the presence of multinationals in the Philippines?

Is Shakespeare poetry and Heber Bartolome not? Will twelve units of Spanish teach you to cope with the high prices?" The interviewees likewise volunteered the observation that students today do not want to apply themselves to, nor are they conscious of, national issues; that they have developed an attitude of uncritical acceptance of everything they see and hear. When asked what may be the issues that students are more concerned about, they readily responded, martial law, and the absence of an independent student government on campus.

This crisis in the student world has infused a significant dent in the alliance between the student Christian movements and the organized expressions of the ecumenical movement. On the one hand, as concerned Christian students become more and more involved in the struggles for social and political renewal and transformation, they have felt that their partnership with relatively more conservative churches has become an increasingly difficult hindrance to their activities. They have often pointed therefore to the slow response of the churches and of the ecumenical movement to the task of national transformation and liberation. On the other hand, the churches have accused Christian students of uncritically espousing political positions that are antithetical to and have no warrants from Christian perspectives and have therefore lost their moorings in the life of the Church.

Thus, with the decline of student movements in general there has also come about not only the decline of the student Christian movements that have been the vehicle of student participation and partnership in the ecumenical movement but also the alienation and isolation of these movements from the main stream of the ecumenical enterprise. What has been a very fruitful partnership that has been beneficial to both has turned in many instances into a "benign neglect" of each other that can only be detrimental to each.

WHERE AND HOW MAY RENEWAL COME?

Where are the seeds of renewal and new involvement in this kind of a situation? For one thing, the student world is too important a sector of contemporary society to be left too long without a relevant Christian presence. For another, the ecumenical movement will soon realize, if it has not done so already, that it needs the participation and active involvement of its concerned Christian students if it is to remain relevant to God's imperatives in the contemporary situation.

The points of convergence and partnership however will have to be located elsewhere than they have been in the past. What must remain hopeful in a seemingly dismal situation is what has been alluded to already in the two articles referred to above. There is hidden in the seeming apathy of the present student generation the latent though suppressed concern for the renewal and transformation of society as a focal point for student involvement and participation in the life of the Church. In a real sense, renewal in the student world may come only when students themselves, be they Christian or not, shall once more take up their role of being a vanguard of change, of forging into new frontiers that shall break the silence of dumb consent, shake the rigors of petrifying apathy, embolden the timid voices of those who are awakening to the possibilities of a new tomorrow and the resources of the present which are already-with us.

In this sense, renewal can come only when renewal springs from the bosom of the whole country, engulfing the total life of the people, and molding us all to new dimensions in our history as a people and as a nation. The question will then have to be asked of the churches and of the ecumenical movement not so much whether they are willing to give support to the renewal of the student movement, but whether together with concerned students, they are open to .the renewal of the whole social order. It is this writer's conviction that the time to give an answer to such questioning is not far from the present. When it comes, the response will not so much be a response to the urgings of students as it will be a response to the urgings of God for the renewal of the whole Christian community in the light of the challenge which our depressed and depressing world brings to us all.

Asia Forum on Human Rights Declaration 1979

Adopted: on May 11, 1979

Manila, the Philippines.

one

There are many dimensions to human rights:

the rights of nations,

the rights of people, and

the rights of individuals.

All nations have the rights to national independence and self-determination, the right to choose their own path of development and the right to equality in relations with other nations.

All people have the right to freedom the right to shelter, to food, to work and to enjoy the product of their labour, to education, to medical care, to organise, to strike.

Peasants have a right to land. Workers have a right to own and control production. Women have a right to equality with men. Ethnic and cultural minorities have a right to freedom from racial oppression. In short, all people have a right to democracy and full participation in politics.

In addition individuals have certain rights. These include religious freedom, freedom to speak, freedom of political thought, and the right to a fair trial. However the rights of individuals cannot be seen as ends in themselves. No individual has the right to exploit and oppress others.

two

Western oriented individualistic human rights campaigns cannot deal with Asian reality. Human rights in Asia must be seen in the context of the historical forces which have shaped and continue to shape relations between nations and peoples in this region.

Colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism, feudalism and semi-feudalism are the historical forces of oppression. Dominant among them is imperialism. It develops new structures and builds relations with existing forces of oppression and exploitation. As a result of this, people and individuals are denied their rights.

The vast majority of people, the peasants, the workers, the urban poor, the fisherfolk and the cultural minorities are born into a world of hunger, disease, illiteracy, debt and repression.

State power is abused in order to silence all forms of public debate and dissent, to arbitrarily arrest and detain citizens, to subject them to political imprisonment with or without trial, to torture and to murder.

Even though they have political "independence", nations are denied genuine independence and are forced into unequal treaties, exploitative relationships and dependence. This is the basis of oppression. Most Asian nations are subjected to exploitation and oppression by imperialism. Dominant among imperialists are the United States and the Soviet Union.

Imperialism exercises its dominance and control in the politics, economy, culture and state apparatus of Asian nations.

In the Third World, it finds abundant source of raw materials, cheap labour and a market for manufactured goods which it seeks to control.

This is done by lopsided economies and by maintaining semi-feudal relations in the countryside and by depriving peasants of their land.

The introduction of transnational corporations in both town and countryside, the development of export processing zones and the destruction of local industry are manifestations of this.

Political control is exercised by the creation of dictatorships, military regimes, undemocratic and compliant governments.

Local elites are coopted to assist in developing the political institutions of oppression and dependence.

When other persuasive options are not available or convenient, direct military force and coercion, either external or internal, is used to establish control over the peoples and nations of Asia.

Control of cultural and educational institutions is an essential element in the strategy of domination. An educational system is created which implants values that reinforce existing oppressive structures. The mass media is controlled and encourages pattern of consumption which enrich the exploiters.

This system is operated by intellectuals and bureaucrats trained by imperialist countries to serve their interests. By these and other means people are conditioned to accept their oppression.

Against these forces the people struggle for national independence, social: justice and democracy.

Throughout Asia, movements are developing and uniting people in this struggle. The greater the oppression the more people will be determined to free themselves.

The Asia Forum on Human Rights recognizes that it must support these movements.

There will be no social justice or democracy without genuine independence; there can be no genuine development without liberation.

three

The struggles of peasants and workers, of women and cultural minorities, are part of a common battle to transform our societies to free the people from exploitation and oppression.

Our struggle for human rights cannot be dissociated from the struggle to transform society.

If it has to have any meaning it must be based in the great mass of peasants and workers who seek a society in which:

There is maximum participation by all people in the decisions which affect their lives.

The people themselves control the resources for the production of wealth, in which the wealth and resources are equally shared and distributed and in which there is no discrimination on the basis of property or social origin.

Consumption of resources by the community is in balance with the capacity of the environment and society to meet the needs of all its people-

A security of life is guaranteed against the abuse of authority by the state and against the pressure of social intimidation.

There is freedom to express beliefs openly and publicly without fear of reprisals and in which it is possible for those beliefs to be communicated to others privately and through public channels such as the media and the peoples' associations.

Human rights are exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, birth or other status.

It is possible for people to cooperate fully and creatively with each other and in which the roots of intolerance, prejudice and discrimination are eliminated.

Only the people can achieve such a vision and the Asia Forum on Human Rights must therefore build links of solidarity and support genuine movements of peasants, workers, fisherfolk, minorities women, students and intellectuals throughout Asia,

The Relevancy of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in a Divided World

By K. Rala Kumar

One more year has passed since the United Nations organization proclaimed the much vaunted Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The present human rights situations in the world are the very opposite to the proclaimed aims of the Declaration. And once more we have been barraged by the empty speeches on Human Rights and we have witnessed the crocodile tears shed over the violations of human rights by the very same leaders of today's world who overtly and covertly violate the rights of the people day by day. The repetition of empty rhetoric and talk and the crocodile tears of these leaders year after year only confirms the impotency and irrelevancy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in today's world.

Considering the heterogeneous realities of our world, can there really be human rights which can be construed to be universal/neutral? Can such "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" of the United Nations have any practical value in today's sharply divided world? It is worth to raise and answer these questions to help us in a critical understanding of human rights in today's world.

When we understand or define human rights, we must primarily take into consideration the historical epoch and social structure in which we are living as historical beings; for, the content of human rights differs from time to time and its expression also differs from society to society. For example, in a slave society, which was a particular epoch in human history and which developed at different periods in different parts of the world, the content of human rights had to be abolition of slavery and its expression, the struggle for human rights during that particular historical slave society, had to be anti-slavery Struggle to smash the slave social system. All other forms of human rights like economic, political, religious, cultural, etc. had to be subsumed to this central question of abolition of slavery. The struggle for this basic human right was resisted by the slave-owners who wanted to preserve the slave system and who considered exploitation of the slaves as their inalienable right.

Likewise, in a colonial society, the content and expression of human rights must be understood and interpreted in the light of the colonial exploitation mechanism, on the one hand, and the anti-colonial struggles to overthrow colonialism, on the other. Similarly, in a neo-colonial exploitative system, which is characteristic of the societies in the Third World today, human rights must be viewed against the background of neo-colonial exploitation and anti-neo-colonial struggles.

These historical facts highlight a very important dimension of human rights, namely, that human rights can not be neutral but biased. There can be no neutral interpretation of human rights in a divided society on economic basis.

One more important factor to be taken into consideration when we analyze and understand human rights is that in all forms of societies divided on class basis, the interests of the classes who benefit from the prevailing social system contradict the interests of the rest of the affected classes in that system. Therefore, the perception and interpretation of human rights would vary according to different classes.

To illustrate, the interests of the slave owners class were diametrically opposed to the interests of the slaves: The slave owners wanted to preserve the slave system while the slaves wanted to smash it. In such context, human rights had to have opposite connotations for the two classes in the same society.

In today's world, the exploitative interests of the transnational corporations and their local collaborators are just the opposite of the interests of the people in the Third World. While on the one hand, the revolutionary forces of the Third World, which reflect the interests of the oppressed people are struggling to destroy the exploitative socioeconomic order, the neo-colonial forces, on the other hand, consolidate their forces to preserve and perpetuate their neo-colonial exploitation. Here, the interests are contradictory and so the struggle between these two forces becomes inevitable.

In such context can there be neutral or universal rights? We can either defend the rights of the neo-colonial forces and its exploitation, or uphold the rights of the anti-neo-colonial forces and its struggles for Liberation.

To sum up, there can not be in reality any such Universal Human Rights in a world wherein there exist sharply divided classes with contradictory interests, heterogeneous structural realities and uneven development of historical forces. It follows then, that even if there exist one in paper, as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, there is no practical value in such a document.

The irrelevancy of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights lies not only in its lack of any legal machinery to enforce it in today's world or even a set of directive principles, but more basically because of the existence of antagonistic contradictions in the relationships between classes and nations. To understand and to recognize this fact, we have to analyze the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" in the light of today's unjust international economic order which divides the nations into the poor and the rich.

At present, the material conditions of the majority of the people in rich countries, mostly developed capitalist countries which export finance capital to the Third World, assure a reasonable degree of security to fulfill the fundamental needs like food, shelter and clothing to lead a human life.

On the contrary, the material conditions of the majority of the people in poor countries - mostly undeveloped countries with backward mode of production coupled with shortage of capital - assure least security to fulfill the fundamental needs like food, shelter and clothing for their daily life. Since the objective material conditions differ, the corresponding social perspective and ideas also differ in rich anc1 poor nations.

Thus, when the question of human rights is raised in the developed capitalist countries, the thrust is primarily on political rights and civil liberties. On the other hand, in the under-developed countries the emphasis is primarily on economic rights.

It is interesting to note here that very often some leaders of authoritarian governments in Southeast Asia, as an answer to the criticism on the issue of political prisoners raised by Western-based Human Rights organizations, argue that human rights in Asia must not be understood in Western terms. Since Asia is faced with acute problems like underdevelopment and poverty, and since economic stability under such conditions become an imminent necessity, the "subversive forces" must be crushed with iron hand in the interests of the people.

If we analyse their political actions to preserve economic stability, we are able to perceive that the "economic stability" they refer to means the economic stability of the minority classes who control the production and distribution system. Their strategy to assure economic stability has been to create a ''peaceful atmosphere" - free from labour unrest - in order to attract foreign investors and their local collaborators.

It is equally interesting to note that the revolutionary forces also emphasizes on the economic rights of the people in Southeast Asia and reject the western understanding of human rights. But the interpretation of economic rights by the revolutionary forces differ from the former: While the ruling classes basically reflect the economic rights of a tiny minority class to exploit the people, the revolutionary forces understand economic rights as the rights of the majority of the population of workers and peasants to control the production and distribution system of the economy.

In the Third World, a typical citizen or a common man lives under sub-human material conditions, i.e. without the basic necessities of life - enough food, proper shelter, sufficient clothing. In the perception of a common Third World citizen, human rights are basically economic rights. Whether we like it or not, his priority is for economic rights because his material condition forces him to do so. He knows very well that man cannot live by bread alone, but his material conditions are so inhuman that he wants bread first in order to survive.

It would be difficult for a typical citizen in the developed capitalist countries to digest the perception of the typical citizen of the Third World. One with filled stomach argues that man cannot live by bread alone; as a result, his emphasis is on political rights.

And the difference of the material conditions of the typical citizen of the Third World and that of the typical citizen of the developed capitalist countries is due to the unjust international economic order. Thanks to the dynamism of this unjust international order, it assures the typical citizen of the developed capitalist countries what the typical citizen of the Third World lacks;

In the Third World countries, which are the object of neo-colonial exploitation, the economic crisis sharpens year after year and every economic crisis manifests itself into political crisis. Due to the sharpening of this economic crisis, the people result to militant struggles. In such context, the ruling classes of the Third World, instead of attacking the economic crisis, or in some cases,, in the pretext of attaching the economic crisis,, resort to authoritarian and dictatorial means to suppress the struggles of the people. In this process, they replace the democracy of the minority into the dictatorship of the same minority over the majority. This process of economic crisis which leads to political crisis has been the cause-arid-effect theory behind most of the military coups, rebellions, and Martial Law administrations during the sixties and seventies in the Third World.

The violation of political rights, denial of civil liberties to the people, political prisoners issue, torture of political prisoners, repressive laws, etc. are the side-effects of this economic and political crises in the Third World. These are merely the manifestations that arise out of the deep-rooted economic crisis which is a product of the internal social structures operating in the under-developed countries of the Third World.

On the contrary, in the developed capitalist countries of today's world, even though economic crisis is a frequent phenomenon, it never threatens in the same way as it does the people of the Third World. As long as the capitalists are able to exploit the economy of the Third World countries, they are assured of several outlets to shift their economic crisis - on the shoulders of the people of the Third World. They shift their crisis in different ways ranging from selling arms to dumping out-dated drugs on the Third World.

In this context, we can say that the rich material conditions of the rich nations and the poor material conditions of the poor nations are the products of the same international economic order which favours the rich nations. Today's international economic order operates in such a way that the poverty of the poor nations becomes a pre-condition for the prosperity of the rich nations.

Are we not living in an inhuman world where the two super-powers spend billions of dollars in their arms race while millions of people go to bed without food? Are we not living in an inhuman world where millions of villages in the Third World go dark without electricity every night while millions of dollars are poured to illuminate the disco clubs in America and elsewhere?

If the people of the rich nations will not awaken to this unjust international economic order, they would share in the plunder of the people of the poor nations with their ruling classes.

In such a divided world, what relevancy does the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights have?

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