I
As we have seen, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC) study
on Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) documents that the large
enterprise of imperialism or of the great native bourgeoisie, at its service,
which is the one that dominates primary exports, plus the medium-sized or
national enterprises constitute the so-called modern sector of the economy, the
rest belonging in its vast majority to the pre-capitalist economy
(semi-feudalism).
This path of development based on imperialist
investment and oriented towards the export of primary goods is the path of
bureaucratic capitalism, the dominant path that imperialism imposes on a
backward country like ours, in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. In
addition, the State that directs that base cannot develop the productive forces
because it is at the service of the three mountains that oppress us: imperialism,
bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism. It is important to understand this
problem, because in this way we will be equipped to combat the thesis of the
capitalist character of the country and its political derivations.
This path is based on the extensive use of imperialist
capital, its experts and technology provided by this foreign capital, and “aid”
only serves to maintain backwardness and the domination of the three mountains
that oppress us. It is about breaking with imperialist domination, bureaucratic
capitalism and semi-feudalism through people's war to complete the new
democratic revolution.
The growth and accumulation of capital - in the
economy of bureaucratic capitalism - is at the service of imperialism,
therefore, it is oriented towards export as the primary objective, there is no
self-sustaining and coordinated growth of agriculture, domestic industry and
trade, but rather it is subordinated to foreign capital and the imperialist
world market and prevents the coordination of the national economy. We will not
be able to develop national industry without doing away with the three
mountains that oppress us, Chairman Mao teaches us. The Chairman Gonzalo has established, that: “The
bureaucratic capitalism in the Peru is anti-peasant, destroys the production
peasant and sinks more in the misfortune to the peasantry, tight the rural
industry, the craftsmanship”.
We know, according to Lenin, when he studies the
development of capitalism in Russia and in the agriculture of the United
States, that the rise of industrial development creates a market for
agriculture and determines its intensification and a more marked capitalist
character. The number of independent farmers in proportion to the rural
population as a whole decreases, while the number of dependent farmers, of the
exploited, that is, of wage earners increases. In the development of capitalism
without semi-feudal ties, the increase in the use of wage labor exceeds the
increase in the rural population and the number of farmers. This is the typical
development of capitalism freed from feudal constraints by the bourgeois
revolution.
In our country and other countries of Latin America
and the Caribbean (LAC), where there has not been a bourgeois revolution,
semi-feudalism has not been destroyed and, therefore, it only evolves and
becomes the main obstacle to this development; Thus, while the number of wage
earners (agricultural proletarians and semi-proletarians) is increasing due to
the development of bureaucratic capitalism in the countryside, based on large
estates, the number of small peasants and their economic units is maintained
and even increased.
Characteristic of this process of slow evolution from
semi-feudalism to bureaucratic capitalism is the increase in minifundia,
expressed in the number of small economic units (in Table 1 below, they are
listed as small farms) and the concentration of land in large estates (on the
other hand); see also the index of land concentration in Table 1.
Source: Structure and tenure of agricultural land in Latin America and the Caribbean, Germán Escobar, March 2016, Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
He states: “The countries of
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have an agrarian structure considered
among the most inequitable on the planet. One of the clear expressions of the
heterogeneity of LAC can be read in the agrarian structure itself (…) the
agrarian structure of the subcontinent shares some elements that are related to
the concentration of land and other resources of the rural sector in a few
hands, a high degree of legal insecurity of land tenure and uses of the
resource that configure indicators of low productivity (…) Likewise, the
products consumed in the region are produced, in their great majority, in small
farms.
(…) The agrarian structure of LAC
has changed over time and today presents a diverse and contrasting condition in
the countries of the region: the data indicate that there is a progressive
tendency towards fragmentation and minifundization in some countries, while the
existence of land concentration processes is noted in others (see table 1)
(…) Particularly striking are the
values and the trend of the land concentration index for some countries (see
last column of table 1). In general, all the values of the coefficient are
very high, which shows the high concentration of land (in fact, 12 countries
out of the 23 with complete information present Gini index values equal to or
greater than 0.8; 1.0 means a degree of total concentration). Among the
countries that register a tendency to increase the index, all have values
greater than 0.8.”
The quoted part of the study of
Germán Escobar, published by the foundation of the German imperialism, in spite
of the attempts to watch the reality by means of the use of the terminology of
the academician, sample with the facts contributed, that come affirming on the
character of our economy. The underlined ours serve to stand out the before
affirmed. Likewise, the underlined in the reports and annexes are ours, except observation
in contrary.
The Chairman Gonzalo says:
“The division of the land, the
parcelling out, leads to minifundism and this determines a setback in the
cultivation of the soil because the possibility of applying new forms of
agricultural production is restricted. On the plot, the whole family works
until exhaustion, a great labor force is invested but the net product
progressively decreases as the gross product increases.
The same
applies for all the small production, as we have previously analyzed, the more
gross consumption, the less net consumption and no one escapes this law,
but this is optimal for imperialism because it buys at a lower cost, exploiting
immensely. This phenomenon in the countryside also has repercussions against
the proletariat because the countryside has to consume less, production has to
fall, workers' wages are reduced and there is a lot of room for unemployment.
In another text, Marx tells us that small property is condemned by history”.
It is necessary to see, in the
report on the MSMEs, although it only deals with formal enterprises,
an interesting comparison (see graphs I.1 and I.3), which allows us to
differentiate the productive structure of our countries with that of the
developed or imperialist capitalist countries, starting, for our part, from the
fact that we cannot erase the differences between the large enterprise of
imperialism and the large enterprise of the countries of bureaucratic
capitalism. We cannot say that “everything is a monopoly”, although both have this
character, the large imperialist monopoly enterprises play the dominant role,
while the large monopoly enterprise of bureaucratic capitalism (native) are
intermediaries of the former, that is, economic agents of imperialism.
The aforementioned report also
allows us to document that we cannot see imperialism as a whole, as Lenin
warned in his polemic against Bukharin (see appendix), because there is no such
whole, but rather the conjunction of the two contradictory “principles” of
competition and monopoly; this is all the more true for its sick child,
bureaucratic capitalism, that is, the dominant path that imperialism imposes in
a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. There is not only the large company,
but also the medium or national, the small and even the so-called
micro-company.
Chairman Mao specified:
“A handful of monopoly
capitalists occupy the dominant position in these (imperialist) countries.
Together there is a large number of medium and small capitalists. It is said
that American capital is both centralized and decentralized” (Notes on the
Manual of Political Economy of the USSR).
“China has already of a modern
industry that constitutes roughly the 10 percent of his economy; this is a
factor of progress, this differs of the ancient times (…)
China still has an agriculture
and a craftsmanship disperse and individual that constitute roughly the 90
percent of all his economy; this is a factor of retard, this does not differ a
lot of the ancient times; the 90 percent, more or less, of our economic life
remains still in the level of the ancient times (…)
The modern industry of China is extremely
concentrated, although the value of his production arrives only to the 10
percent roughly of the global value of the production of the national economy;
the greater and more important part of the capital is concentrated in hands of
the imperialist and of his lacayos, the bureaucratic capitalists Chineses
(…) The capitalist industry
deprived of China, that occupies the second place in the modern industry of the
country, represents a strength that does
not have to be overlooked. The national bourgeoisie of China and his
representatives, oppressed or restricted by the
imperialism, the feudalism and the bureaucratic capitalism, often have taken
part or kept a neutral position in the fights of the popular democratic
revolution.” (President Mao, Report in front of the II Session Plenaria of the
CC, 5 March 1949).
The report of the ECALY on the
* MSMEs, as we will see, refers to our countries as having a “heterogeneous
productive structure”, trying to conceal the true nature of the same. We
will leave aside, for the moment, the part of the report that refers to the
category of companies and employment. Let us see:
“In relation to the European
Union, the most relevant differences refer to the greater relative weight of
formal micro-enterprises and the consequent lower participation of other categories
of companies, including large ones, which in Latin America are
0.5% of the total, while in the European Union they reach 0.2%”.
Then, further on, it says:
“The participation of large
companies is very high in the areas of mining; electricity, gas and water,
and financial intermediation (...), which are the three sectors of
greatest productivity in Latin America: compared to the average of the
economy (...)
(...) in Latin America (...) smaller
companies in low productivity activities. This suggests a heterogeneous
productive structure in which a small number of companies concentrate a
large part of the regional GDP, in sectors with very high productivity,
while the rest are in activities whose performance is quite poor. In this
sense, it is worth highlighting that, in the region, the three sectors with
the highest productivity represent 26.9% of the added value, but only 8% of
total employment and 1.8% of the number of companies.”
Then, it shows us graph 1.1
and 1.3, where a certain similarity can be seen in terms of the companies
structure of both types of economy:
Chart I.3 European Union: distribution of companies by size, 2016
(Percentages) Micro-enterprises Small Medium-sized Large 92.9 5.9 1.0 0.2
Source: Prepared by the authors, based on official data.
But, beyond the similarity,
the same report talks about the differences between companies in our LAC
countries (oppressed nations) and companies in the imperialist countries of the
EU:
“In the European Union, the
relative weight of MSMEs in formal employment is even greater than in Latin
America and reaches 69.4%, although this is not the main feature of the
differences between the two regions, as will be seen later.
The information on production
shows more clearly the heterogeneity of the productive structure in Latin
America. MSMEs account for only 24.6% of production (24.9% in 2009),
despite representing 61.2% of employment and 99.5% of companies.
The situation is very
different in the European Union, where in 2015 MSMEs accounted for
56.2% of added value.”
However, the broadest base
is made up of micro-enterprises, where self-employment is found. The report
does not mention this, but self-employment in Latin America is not subject to
dependency (wage) relations, while in the EU, the wage relationship of the
employment contract is disguised as a service contract between companies, which
the International Conference of Labour Statisticians of the ILO calls “atypical
forms of employment” (CIET, 2018, Resolution I). In the countries of the
European Union, around 25% of “non-salaried workers” are, in fact, salaried
workers, economically dependent on a client or a very small number of them”,
according to EUROFOUND, 2017. That is, legal ways have been created to
circumvent their own labour regulations and those of the World Trade
Organisation, so that companies can employ workers as if they were independent
entrepreneurs, disguising the employment contract as if it were a service
provision contract. In the USA, self-employed workers are around 6%.
Bearing in mind the above
clarification, let us continue with the report, which says:
“The biggest differences
between the two regions can be observed in the micro-enterprise segment.
In Latin
America, micro-enterprises correspond to 88% of formal
companies and contribute 27% of employment and barely 3.2% of production,
while in the European Union they represent 93% of companies, 30% of
employment and 20% of production.”
Furthermore, it is necessary
to clarify, in order to see the depth and extent of the differences: that in
Peru, 78% to 72% of employment is informal, therefore, adding all the
categories, formal employment varies from 22% to 28% of the employed EAP; this
further shows the backward character of our economy, its semi-feudal character,
like the other LAC countries.
Continuing, the report shows
the following graphs:
This situation reflects the characteristics of microenterprises in the regio“n (as well as some MSMEs), since they are companies that operate in limited local markets that depend on the evolution of internal demand, in sectors with low barriers to entry and exit, that have high birth and death rates and that, many times, respond more to self-employment and survival strategies than to a dynamic of business development.”
The above clarifies the
pre-capitalist character, not only of micro but also of small and even some
medium-sized companies, “high birth and death rates”, they are created and die
because they operate in closed or limited markets, that is, with little
development of production because the machinery, equipment and even the inputs
come from abroad, therefore, limited markets, internal demand limited by the
vile exploitation of the immense mass of small agricultural producers, who
produce below the physical limit and, but, who supply the internal market with
80 or 90% of internal consumption, thereby keeping wages and demand low. This
serves to keep wages low in the large companies of imperialism and its native
economic agents, the big bourgeoisie. It is not a problem of rising or falling
prices but of an exchange of unequal values.
The small farmer allocates
part of his production to self-consumption and sells the rest on the market,
which together constitutes the return on his production costs, but without
obtaining the parts of the price destined to cover the profit. In this way, the
surplus product, the part to return the surplus work, is appropriated as
pre-capitalist (semi-feudal) rent from the land by the State, the landowners,
the big bourgeoisie, all for the benefit of imperialism through unequal
exchange in world trade and, mainly, the investment of imperialist capital in
its various forms. “ (…) In what consists the
exploitation, see the difference, of a way explodes it to him: like class organised
the bourgeoisie explodes it through the State by means of taxes; and like
capitalists, in the modalities of the usury, of the loan, of the capital, of
the interest, those that no paid earn
with the mortgage. And how it explodes it the Landlord? By the income.
Like this it is as it differentiates the
semi-feudalidad” (President Gonzalo). All on the basis of
imperialist oppression over our countries, economic monopoly of imperialism
over our economy.
The report, elaborating on the
differences, goes on to say:
“The various sectorial
specializations and productive structures that differentiate Latin American
MSMEs from European ones are also evident in the participation of these
companies in exports. Here the dominance of large companies is even greater
than with regard to production (see Table I.5).
While in the countries of the
European Union, smaller companies can generate more than half of exports, in
Latin America, if we consider the few cases in which reliable information
is available, large companies easily exceed 80% of foreign sales.”
This refers to the fact that
the majority of medium-sized, small, etc. companies in the imperialist
countries of the EU are integrated into the different supplier networks of the
large monopolies. While in our countries they have little connection with large
companies, as can be seen from the following quote, which shows the
heterogeneity of the economy, that is, a modern (capitalist) sector and the
rest, the majority, the backward sector, the semi-feudal base of the country,
the Report says:
“When the dynamics and
composition of the economy are considered, the explanation for this
productivity gap can be found in the concentration of production in a few
activities intensive in natural resources (agriculture, fishing, mining and
some industrial sectors), which generate a very large amount of foreign
currency through exports but operate with very few connections with the rest of
the productive structure and do not have relevant effects in terms of
technological spillovers, creation of local capacities and territorial
development. At the same time, there are also dynamic productive chains, as
is the case of the automotive industry in Brazil and Mexico and, to a lesser
extent, the aerospace industry in these same countries and the electronics
industry in Mexico. But these are isolated cases, whose success is questioned,
or at least incomplete, and does not manage to modify the general economic
panorama of Latin America.”
We clarify that the report
here is referring to that industry integrated within the so-called value chains
- or vertical integration of imperialist monopolies -, in general with the same
impact on the rest of the country's economy as the large exporting company,
therefore, it is not a national industry, but rather a maquila industry.
Continuing with the report:
“These differences and
sectoral specificities help to understand the structural heterogeneity of Latin
America. However, the characteristics of the companies allow us to
visualize other equally important aspects of the same phenomenon.
(…) the analysis of
internal relative productivity (Internal relative productivity refers to
the quotient between the value of the productivity of the work of each segment
of the MSMEs and the value of the productivity of the work of the large
companies in a given country or region).
(…) In this sense, in Latin
America the difference between micro-enterprises and large companies is, on
average, seven times greater than that recorded in Europe. Likewise, the
differences in performance between the different segments of companies that
make up MSMEs are much more marked in Latin America than in the European
Union. For example, in the latter, the productivity of a medium-sized
company is less than double that of a micro-enterprise, while in Latin
America it is more than seven times higher.”
“(…) E. Insertion in
the productive structure. The differences that can be seen between MSMEs
in Latin America and the European Union reflect different productive systems,
in which these companies are clearly not inserted in the same way. In the
first case, insertion is secondary, given that a small number of large
companies control and produce the majority of the GDP and almost all exports,
while in the other case the role of MSMEs is central to guarantee the
functioning of the productive structure, the creation of added value and
the sales of goods and services abroad (…)
The experiences of productive
articulation, both in the form of networks and chains of suppliers, are
relatively scarce in Latin America and also suffer from serious limitations,
even in the most successful cases (…) a poorly articulated productive system
dominated by a small number of large companies.”
The productive structure of
the imperialist countries is “coordinated” and subject to the large
monopolistic companies generated by financial capital, “centralized and
decentralized” (Chairman Mao).
“In the countries of the European
Union, most MSMEs are linked together in networks, they are part of
supply chains of large national and foreign companies, and they produce
specific goods and services that do not compete with the mass-produced products
of large companies.
The report on MSMEs in Latin
America agrees with what, as we have seen, is summarized in the “Current
economic-productive profile of the country” (The challenges of productive
transformation in Latin America, National profiles and regional trends, Volume
1: Andean Region, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, CHAPTER V Peru —Luis Angel Rodriguez
Salcedo), when it refers to the “primary export and service character”
“oriented to the world market” of the same and its lack of linkage with the
whole economy: “enclave economy”, which does not generate employment, etc.
This “model” corresponds to the
late capitalism that imperialism promotes in our countries on a semi-feudal and
semi-colonial basis, which generates more backwardness, submission and
deformation of the productive structure of the country.
Let us remember that the
development of capitalism has followed the opposite path both in Europe and in
the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, that is, from the
inside out. For this reason, Lenin, in order to study the development of
capitalism in Russia, allowed himself the abstraction of the foreign market
following what Marx established in Capital.
Demarcating himself from the Economic Commission for Latin America and
the Caribbean (ECLAC) study
on the Micro, Small and Medium-Sized enterprises (MSMEs)
Micro and small businesses,
like small farmers, are subject to sinister oppression and encompass a large
amount of labor force; As the reactionaries themselves say, they serve as a
"social cushion", since the policies of imperialism and reactionary
governments are based on these masses to impose their policies of plundering
and new capitalist accumulation, apart from aiming to have a social base of
lackeys or followers or deceived masses for a time.
On the basis of this mass of
producers in the city and the countryside subjected to sinister exploitation,
who produce in the worst conditions and even below the physical limit of their
labor force, the dominant path that imperialism imposes in our country
(bureaucratic capitalism) develops, maintaining the low value of the salaried
labor force for the benefit of the big bourgeoisie and imperialism. The push of
imperialist institutions such as the ECLAC, as its report highlights, and of
the different reactionary governments of our country to the policies of
promotion of the MSMEs only serve to sap the energy of our people.
These types of companies, both
in the city and in the countryside, serve to lower wages and increase profits,
says Chairman Gonzalo. This is not surprising in any capitalist system, much
more so in the system of bureaucratic capitalism, it is part of its process and
those who benefit are the big bourgeoisie and imperialism.
Most of the companies
mentioned in the previous paragraph belong to the case of simple commodity
production, in which each producer is tied to his own means of production. It
is not a question of the naked producer deprived of means of production and of
life, even if these are miserable and typical of the state of backwardness
produced by semi-feudalism. In addition, in the case of the medium-sized
company, the organic composition of the capital is low, and its productivity is
much lower than that of the large imperialist company in the country and, much
more, is the difference with respect to the companies in the imperialist
countries. The same can be said of the large exporting company of mining,
agro-export, etc. of bureaucratic capitalism, which have low capital
accumulation, are rentiers and produce with salaries, by far, lower than the
large imperialist companies. The micro and small companies, formal and
informal, are in their great majority, as can be gathered from the Statita
report cited above, pre-capitalist, that is, they express the semi-feudal base
of the country.
The Report of the II Plenary
Session of the CC of the PCP, from the beginning of the 90s of the last
century, says: If we add micro, small and artisanal industries we would have 26%
of the GDP, the medium-sized industry contributes 28% alone, that is its
strength; and large industry contributes 46%, that is, the largest production
is contributed by large industries and comprises 12.3% of the industrial EAP,
with few workers it contributes the largest productive percentage, this is
typical of all capitalist systems, and also only with 0.14% of companies. So,
how can micro, small and medium production be the axis of economic development?
It cannot be the driving force, it is not real within its system.
Another policy: overcoming
structural disarticulation, particularly between small and medium-sized
companies and large companies. What imperialism, CEPAL and reactionary
governments are looking for is to tie both, small and medium, to large
companies through financial systems and low wages, systematically; All in
function of the big industry and this oriented to exportation in service of
imperialism.
Then the new model of
accumulation imposed by Fujimori at the beginning of the 90s, which continues
until now, according to the President: It is nothing but to concentrate in the
hands of the exploiters the greatest amount of means of exploitation by
dispossessing the small and medium owners and taking from each other, even part
of their own property; to increase and concentrate more surplus value, lowering
salaries; to appropriate state productive means that would be more than
5,000'000 dollars, according to the University of the Pacific. For this new
model, emphasis is placed on economic growth, which is nothing but the mandate
of the Cepal. As for jobs, they insist on small and medium production, it is
the mandate of imperialism.
With its development strategy
(Fujimori, the ECLAC and the Imperialism), “it contemplates the simultaneous
promotion of growth, inserted from the beginning in the development strategy of
the modern sectors, a policy of incentives to the export sector, foreign
investment and industrial development. In the traditional and informal sectors,
the development of micro and small businesses and the creation of rural markets
as well as rural industrialization will be encouraged. The role of the market
will be privileged. The State will be called upon to play a guiding role,
seeking to reverse a protectionist structure linked to import substitution. We
will put an end to the anti-export bias, to low rates of agricultural
investment, to capital subsidies and to the pro-urban and anti-rural bias.” In
the so-called modern sectors, they seek to produce for export; foreign
investment will be highly favorable to imperialism. What industrial development
are they talking about if they do not have energy production, which is
necessary to promote industrial development? How is the only steel industry
there is? How is the petrochemical industry? They have an outdated financial system,
a backward commercial system and an agricultural system that does not satisfy
the needs of the people; they produce for export and the productive base itself
is collapsed. Therefore, words.
The scientific Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
prediction of Chairman Gonzalo against the plan of the fascist, genocidal and
traitor Fujimori to re-launch bureaucratic capitalism has been fulfilled. It
has totally failed, as demonstrated by the report we have just seen on the
current situation (as of 2020) of MSMEs in LAC, which covers the case of Peru.
Then come the
annexes corresponding to this part
.....