[DEBATE] : (Fwd) More on Margaret Legum

[Mandi Smallhorne]

I am going to miss her!
Mandi
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Bond" <pbond at mail.ngo.za>
To: "debate at vodamail.co.za:SA discussion list" <debate at lists.kabissa.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2007 2:13 PM
Subject: [DEBATE] : (Fwd) More on Margaret Legum


> Journalist Margaret Legum passes away
>
> Zahira Kharsany | Johannesburg, South Africa
>
> 02 November 2007 05:20
>
> Margaret Legum, best known for her call to sanction apartheid South
> Africa, died in Cape Town at the age of 74 on Thursday. She died of
> complications arising from a cancer-related operation.
>
> She leaves behind two sisters, three daughters, five granddaughters and
> one grandson. She was widowed in 2003.
>
> Legum, who studied economics at Rhodes University and Cambridge, was a
> major advocate of social justice in South Africa. She lectured and
> worked as a journalist, often writing for the Mail & Guardian while
> residing in Kalk Bay in Cape Town.
>
> She co-authored the book South Africa: Crisis for the West, which was
> published in 1964. The book argued for economic sanctions to help bring
> down the apartheid government. She and her husband, Colin, were banned
> in from South Africa in 1962.
>
> More recently, Legum had criticised the economic situation in South
Africa.
>
> "There is the growing understanding that South Africa ... is suffering
> an economic decline, not of its own making. Our famous political
> 'miracle' is in danger of being undermined by the fact of our dependence
> on world economic factors over, which we have little or no control
>
> "I am outraged ... appalling poverty in the midst of unbelievable wealth
> and potential plenty for everyone"
>
> She also co-founded the South African New Economics Foundation (Sane).
>
> Vanessa Witbooi, director of Sane, described Legum as a humble, vocal
> and informed new economist.
>
> "She led Sane with vitality, goodwill and intellectual incisiveness,
> commitment and humour, qualities that she embodied throughout her life
> of service for the cause of economic justice," said Witbooi.
>
> Her granddaughter, Mariam Wheeldon, remembered Legum as an
> extraordinarily engaging person who was "concerned about economic
> justice and the poor".
>
> Wheeldon said that Legum had a great love for poetry, so much so that
> she published an anthology titled Learning to Saunter earlier in 2007.
>
> ***
>
> Sean Jacobs’ blog
> Thursday, November 1, 2007
>
> I got the sad news from a friend in South Africa this morning:
>
> 'The indefatigable Margaret Legum died last night.'
>
> Margaret Legum was a public intellectual, trained economist (she founded
> the South African New Economics Network, a group committed to creating
> '... a humane, just, sustainable and culturally appropriate economic
> system' in South Africa), opponent to apartheid (as early as 1964 she
> published a book that made the case for sanctions against apartheid
> South Africa), former political exile, partner to the equally
> indefatigable Colin Legum (he passed away in 2003) and poet (she
> published Learning to Saunter early this year).
>
> Condolences to her family.
>
> ***
>
> A brief paper Margaret presented at CCS on 28 Feb 2006:
>
> 1
> Capitalism In South Africa’s Political Economy
> Margaret Legum
> Capitalism, world-wide, is indeed in crisis, as it has been before.
> Previous crises
> have had their own characteristics. Today they are particular to today,
> for four
> main reasons, all of them linked to technological advance:
> · First, capital (money) has the unique capacity to travel – to desert one
> country for another – virtually at will. That happened before, about a
> hundred years ago, when, as now, governments opened their exchanges
> for capital to move; but the technical means to move money globally and
> instantaneously, by digital electronics, is new and more enabling to
capital
> owners. The result is that capital can call the shots globally: it can
tell
> governments what to do, and does so – without fail in its own interests.
> No other factor of production – not labour or the natural resource base -
> can move. Only capital has that leverage.
> · Second, The historic link between capital and savings has been broken by
> the way the banking sector creates new money through loans and
> secondary financial instruments like hedge funds and other derivatives of
> various kinds. Simply put, banks create new money and issue it into
> economies without reference to savings. They make loans by reference to
> profit considerations, not the level of savings, and those loans are made
> from thin air. The result is that the total money stock circulating in
> developed countries bears no relation to savings or the volume of goods
> and services. In the UK, for instance it rose from £2.8bn in 1948 to
> £586bn in 1996. The proportion created by government fell from 46% to
> 3.8% in that period; the rest is bank-created. It is a highly dangerous
> bubble, creating ever-increasing debt in all economies, and inherently
> unstable. It is not sustainable.
> · Third, the digital revolution ensures that jobs are lost quicker than
they
> are created. The industrial revolution technology created new jobs in
> manufacturing faster than it lost jobs through technology. Today, the
> faster the capitalist sector grows, the more employment it loses. The
> reason is simple: you cannot compete globally without top quality
> technology, and that means shedding labour. At the same time that
> technology multiplies the goods and services that it produces – which it
> cannot sell, because joblessness creates lack of demand – so it
chronically
> ‘over-supplies’ the market. There will never be ‘full employment’ in the
> private sector again: jobless growth is inevitable in the capitalist
sector.
> The result is that all enterprise competes for a larger share of a
> shrinking market; and growing numbers of people are excluded from
> 2
> participation, either as consumers or as producers. That is not
> sustainable.
> · Fourth, there is a current and accumulating crisis in the environment -
> resulting from the over-use of fossil fuels and their effect on climate
> change, together with the fact that those fossil fuels are not renewable
and
> are running out. That means that even if ‘growth’ were benign – did not
> result in job loss – it cannot continue without killing the way that the
> planet has sustained people for millions of years. The result is that
> capitalism’s reliance on growth to prevent financial collapse and keep
> the market expanding is a hiding to nothing.
> The result of all this is that capital (money) is sucked up to the
> richest segment of
> the population. Capital owners have increased their share of global
> wealth by
> over 100% in the past two decades. Everyone below the class that lives
from
> profits and financial bonuses is becoming both absolutely and relatively
> poorer.
> Worse, that money is in effect hoarded at the top. \Most of it is not
> invested in
> the real economy where employment and goods are created; but in the
> casino of
> the financial markets. It travels the world trading in shares, bonds,
> currencies –
> and latterly property. But putting these billions into these sectors,
> the owners of
> capital ensure that their prices continue to rise – until of course it
> crashes.
> Meanwhile it is more profitable to play with money in that way than to
> put it
> into the competitive world of production.
> New economics points out that the always tenuous connection between money
> and the real economy has been completely broken. Money – the means of
> trading
> – is being monopolized within the financial sector. People are poor not
> because
> they cannot contribute but because they do not have access to money.
> That is a
> systemic problem, and not a human one. Money – always tending to the
> abstract
> – becomes more useless and destructive the more global is becomes. The
> system
> is not sustainable.
> What is the future, given this latest version of capital accumulation
> and its
> positioning in a dangerous world? One thing is certain: the globalised
> competitive market in trade and capital is unsustainable, and the longer
> it lasts
> not only the worst the suffering it causes, but the more difficult the
> transition to
> something more sustainable. There are a number of possibilities.
> · The best is that a peaceful way will be found to restore a structured
> means
> for people to influence and contest the use of power by government for
> different ends. What that means is the restoration of effective democracy.
> We do not have that now, even in countries where ‘free and fair elections’
> are held, because whoever wins is held to ransom by the owners of
> capital. So there is little point in voting, and turnouts sink globally.
> 3
> Governments need to be able to respond to the wishes of electorates to
> create developmental, equitable and sustainable economies. They need to
> be able to finance employment in the public sector – where people and
> their skills are desperately needed – without having capital desert on the
> grounds that governments should not be active in the economy. As Guy
> Mhone pointed out, governments must get involved actively and critically
> in development. It is obvious. Only the self-serving ideological rhetoric
of
> the financial sector and big business – small business can be constructive
> in this arena – prevents us from understanding that dynamic. That is
> because the media are part of the financial and multinational business
> empires, and seldom question its ideology. The new economics movement
> globally works to change macroeconomic theory and practice, so that the
> market mechanism can become benign and promote progressive
> solutions.
> · There will be a gradual de facto localisation of economies as people and
> communities struggle to escape the suction of the globalised economy.
> There are plenty of signs of that happening already – food gardens, local
> cooperatives, local currencies, the use of local renewable energies and
> local transport systems like bicycles. In that scenario livelihoods will
> replace jobs as means of income; but they will be prosperous livelihoods
> creating and benefiting by local demand related activity. Export-led
> growth will be a thing of the past. Exports will be only one way of
selling;
> the local will be more common, more practical and less damaging to the
> environment. In the end that is the way that human being like to live.
> Whether it is happening fast enough to forestall what will otherwise be a
> nasty crash is moot. The global new economics movement works at this
> level on the ground.
> · There will be a financial crisis of some kind, which will destroy the
> grip of
> the financial sector. Who knows what will come out of that. It will
> certainly involve all of us, because sadly most of us are buttoned in to
> banks and insurance, even if only through pensions and cheque accounts.
> · There will be a class revolution, an uprising of the masses. Again, I
find
> that outcome difficult to predict. Historically it has resulted in some
> pretty authoritarian and conflictive leadership. I do not personally
> welcome the prospect for that reason, but it may be different in the
> light of
> historic experience.
> Either way it will be much contested. None of it can happen peacefully
> without
> tasking on the financial sector, and they are capable of battle royal.
>
>