Mortal enemy of our spirit

April 15, 2001

There is a certain type of character, a certain type of personality, that has now become prevalent throughout the world. He/she is that professional manager, that highly-trained specialist and expert who, whether politician or priest or pundit, whether "communist" (whatever that may mean) or non-communist, sports enthusiast or "nerd", Christian or non-Christian, whether white, black or brown, is the bane and most natural mortal enemy of the creativity, self-expression, self-organisation and direct democracy of the masses of people. For this type, the masses never count.

This is the type who comes with the pre-ordained formulae and preconceived plans and structures developed in the world of academia and attempt to beat all and sundry into shape to fit their magical notions.

They are the management experts, decked in business suits, with MBAs from "Harvard", or graduates from the cadres-producing political party and trade union schools, who are destined to be either private managers or state bureaucrats running the capitalist production process with the sole purpose of generating and accumulating social wealth, to be dispensed and distributed as the system demands.

And, mind you, it is not only a question of the amount that is accumulated but, more importantly, the rate at which the accumulation is accomplished - "rate" meaning the proportion or ratio between amount invested and the amount gained at the end of the transaction. The system demands better and better rates of profitability in order to increase capacity to compete in the open market place.

By necessity from time immemorial, capital (ie money, machinery, expertise, etc as generators or "forces" of business activity) has been shifted to various areas of the world where better "rates" are anticipated.

This system of production has always been, in perspective and reality, a globalised system. As we have said many times, the slave plantations from 1640-1838 were key to this globalised accumulation process, managed by the metropolitan "Mother Countries".

It is amazing to hear people still talking about globalisation today as if it is some recent phenomenon. However, the concern in this column is with this particular modern management type that is now dominant internationally and in every single aspect of daily living, precisely because of the globalisation process and its inherent social relationships between people and people.

That management type of which we speak are most present as the leading "high-finance" officials in all the multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the IDB, all the recognised "think tanks" of both the Western and Eastern Hemispheres, as well as all the supposed service-oriented outgrowths of the United Nations programme, such as Unesco, OECD, WTO, etc. And they, having been nurtured with a specific way of thinking, are the ones that institute all the well-known "prescriptions" and conditionalities that have reeked havoc in the weaker economies of the undeveloped world.

And we say "prescriptions" deliberately because it was supposed to be universal medicine for all the weaklings of the world, regardless of their stage of economic development, their specific conditions and particular histories.

They now had to open up their economies, remove all forms of protectionism, open up to all kinds of foreign direct investment that in no way would serve to integrate the sectors of a local home economy and so deepen and extend the home market as its first reason for being, then to meet the world on its own terms.

It is as a result of the skewed approach to economic development forced on her why Africa today cannot feed itself. No country was to be allowed to develop their own path and process of social development as determined by their own parameters and the innate desires of their own people at each and every stage. It is all about the very essence of existence. Yet we are being told that "sovereignty" and "nationalism" are deemed to be dead.

In the same vein, when the "Iron Curtain" (USSR) fell due to its internal contradictions, because they had not developed any new system of social and economic relationships and were backward and barbaric and therefore could no longer withstand the pressure from the globalisation of the authentic capitalist production process, many pundits even began to say that "ideology" was also dead.

So people were supposed to stop thinking, moreso, stop thinking divergently. We were supposed to revert to the "Dark Ages" and succumb to a sickening sameness of seeing and doing all over the globe.

Ironically, we who say "no" to such developments are being accused of being "anti-intellectual". And we ask: since when is "intellect" and "robotics" one and the same?

Of course, the greatest weapons behind the globalisation process was/is American commercialisation as best exemplified by popular culture (Coca-Cola, film, music, fashion, etc) and the approach and style of modern professional management. These, therefore, are the two areas, popular culture and management, in which the fight shall be most bitter.

Our artistes as defenders of our space are not doing badly and they have already embraced all the modern technology of the information revolution to assist them in their cause. But, in the area of management, we are only now beginning to recognise the mortal enemy.

Interesting enough, two recent events, one concerning religion, the other, football, have helped to pose the question. The Pope in Rome has sent an American Archbishop to manage and administrate the local Catholic Church and this act by the Holy See has triggered much debate on the pros and cons of foreign-influenced and foreign-led management.

And just as "globalisation" is used as a blanket to beat nations of people into "structural adjustments" and "market" shape, so too the "universality of the Catholic Church" is being used to get people to accept unconditionally. Fr Henry Charles answers this tomfoolery best when he says:
"Universality is the communion of all particular churches, spread throughout the world, of different cultures, histories and customs. Universality is not a monochromatic identity, which is everywhere the same. A hallmark of the Catholic ethos has always been diversity - in spiritualities, traditions, customs and cultures."

Fr Charles also indicates that at certain crucial times in the history of the church there were demands for "organisational fidelity and a return to structure", but "persons" matter more than "structures".

He further warns the Catholic flock "...the vitality which drives renewal is never the child of structure. Structures are needed, but they are only instrumental. They convert and save no one. No one comes to God from structure."

To end his warnings, Fr Henry Charles added: "Nationalism may be dead, too, of course, as some commentators have noted, but the church should have its own reasons for being what it is. It seems clear that what we thought we had, we haven't."

In like manner, the foreign football coach is being criticised for his inability to develop our quality of play in harmony with our natural flair, style, spirit and rhythm.

He has his own English-style long-ball plan that does not utilise the natural strengths of our players. Familiar? Of course, that's the approach of modern managers the world over. Back in 1978, in a piece carried by the Vanguard, OWTU's paper, titled "What happen to the stars", I wrote:
"The prestige of the World Cup and the significance of winning has caused the emergence of these bureaucrat professionals into the forefront as administrators, managers and coaches of football teams. With Brazil, for example, we see the emergence of an ex-military trainer into the seat of control. Immediately we began to hear about certain star players not being able to 'fit' because of their 'attitude'. That to us is a political statement.

"What is this attitude? Is it that they do not fit in with the new plan? Each player is now a mere functionary robot following a pre-arranged plan trying constantly to do what he is told to do rather than what his creative instincts tell him in any given situation.

"That is what is missing in this World Cup. This is what has led to such drab and lifeless showing by usually great teams. We recognise the work of the professional bureaucrat easily... He shall 'kill' our future Peles..." Be it economics, politics, religion or sport, this said management type is the mortal enemy of our democratic spirit.