En su cobertura de la segunda vuelta de la elecci√≥n presidencial en Chipre, el Wall Street Journal resalta la jaqueca para los funcionarios europeos e internacionales ocasionada por la crisis financiera de la isla-nación.

El sórdido mundo de los rescates bancarios y la explosión de la deuda gubernamental no son nada nuevo para las primeras planas de los diarios. Desde el 2008 nos hemos acostumbrado a imaginarnos a un montón de banqueros, políticos y burócratas internacionales sentados en mesas redondas, supuestamente navegando economías entereas entre Escila y Caribdis.

La relación entre el crecimiento desbocado de la deuda gubernamental y la plutocracia corporativa es malentendida por la mayoría de los analistas tradicionales, cegados por la aceptación del mito de que el estado y las grandes empresas tienen intereses fundamentalmente encontrados. Una de las bases sobre las que descansa ese mito es el axioma según el cual el gobierno es venevolente, pero torpe e ineficiente, mientras que las poderosas corporaciones son metódicas, racionales y eficientes, a pesar de ser rapaces.

Entre las fallas que tiene esta forma de ver las cosas, una de las más importantes es que abstrae al estado de lo que son sus propias motivaciones e influencias básicas, en contraste con el análisis basado en el interés propio al que sometemos a otros individuos e instituciones. Como resultado, la mayoría de nuestros políticos, burócratas e intelectuales públicos — tanto en el sector “privado” como en el “público”, tanto consciente como inconscientemente — tienen una idea equivocada sobre el rol que la deuda gubernamental juega en los sistemas económicos de clase.

En Chipre, al igual que en el resto del mundo, la porción de deuda gubernamental atribuible a los programas de bienestar social para los indigentes, ancianos, descapacitados, etc. es muchísimo menor que la deuda contraída para financiar el gasto militar y los subsidios, rescates y planes de estímulo que favorecen a los grandes negocios con fuertes conexiones políticas.

Los activos de los bancos chipriotas, que requerirían hoy en día aproximadamente 20 millardos de dólares para su rescate, equivalen a más de 800% del PIB del país. Y como para terminar de dejar claro el carácter perverso e incestuoso de la relación entre el estado chipriota y sus bancos, éstos tienen en sus carteras más del 90 por ciento del importe total de la deuda gubernamental.

Si los políticos chipriotas optan por tomar prestado el dinero del Fondo Monetario Internacional y el fondo de rescates de la Unión Europea, la deuda gubernamental pasaría del 140% del PIB. Dadas las muy concretas conexiones entre los bancos comerciales y el estado formal, es razonable considerar a los unos como extensiones de facto del otro, y consecuentemente considerar al estado como el sirviente de la clase regente. Pero la substancia fundamental de este arreglo es la misma independientemente de como decidamos caracterizarlo.

Cuando se imponen duras medidas de austeridad como resultado de los problemas de deuda de los gobiernos, la mayor parte del impacto cae sobre los hombros de la gente común y corriente, y nunca sobre los grandes bancos, que son los verdaderos parásitos succionadores de fondos de bienestar.

Los funcionarios estatales, manejados como marionetas por plutócratas ricos e influyentes, deciden como gastar el motín estatal (el cual es a final de cuentas saqueado de los bolsillos de la gente trabajadora), y cuando las cosas parecen estar yendo bien, se llevan el crédito, trompeteando la genialidad de su bacanal de gastos.

Pero cuando la crisis y el desastre inevitablemente caen sobre las economías adulteradas y corporatistas, siempre se pretende que sea el pueblo el que le saque las papas del fuego a los políticos y sus patrones corporativos. Como siempre, los beneficiarios de la estafa estatal-corporativa son unos pocos, mientras que los costos se dispersan en el resto de la sociedad.

La competencia libre y abierta es la única alternativa sólida al sistema capitalista de privilegios que está desolando a la economía mundial. La situación de Chipre es representativa de ese sistema. Solo liberándonos y liberando nuestras relaciones económicas de las garras de la autoridad política — en otras palabras, del estado en sí mismo — podremos tener la estabilidad y equidad que los “líderes” políticos y corporativos siempre prometen, pero nunca proveen.

Artículo original publicado por David D’Amato el 25 de febrero de 2013.

Traducido del inglés por Alan Furth.

The sordid world of bank bailouts and staggering government debt is by now nothing new to the front page. Since 2008, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea of bank execs, politicians and international bureaucrats sitting around tables, ostensibly navigating whole economies between Scylla and Charybdis.

The relationship between ever-burgeoning government debt and corporate plutocracy is misunderstood by most mainstream observers, their misapprehension tracking very closely to their acceptance of the myth that the state and big business work at cross purposes. A central piece of that myth is the general assumption that while government is benevolent, but clumsy and inefficient, powerful corporations are methodically streamlined and cost-effective, yet rapacious.

Among the failings of this view is that it abstracts the state away from its own basic, motivating influences, contra the analysis regarding self-interested behavior to which we subject other individuals and institutions. As a result, most of our politicians, bureaucrats, and public intellectuals — in both the “public” and “private” sectors, consciously or unconsciously — have the wrong idea about the role that government debt plays in economic class systems.

In Cyprus, as everywhere else around the world, government debt attributable to actual social welfare programs for the indigent, elderly, unable to work, etc. is dwarfed by debt racked up on military spending, and subsidies, bailouts, and stimulus plans for favored big business players with close ties to government.

The assets of Cyprus’s banks, which would now require almost $20 billion to save, equal more than 800% of the country’s GDP. Further demonstrating the perverse and incestuous character of the relationship between the Cypriot state and its banks, the latter hold almost nine-tenths of government’s outstanding debt.

Should Cyprus’s politicians borrow the required money from the International Monetary Fund and the EU bailout reserve, its debt will surpass 140% of GDP. Given the concrete ties between the commercial banks and the formal state, it’s reasonable to regard the former as a de facto extension of the latter, and correspondingly regard the latter as the handmaiden of the ruling class. The substance of the arrangement is the same regardless of how we choose to characterize it.

When harsh austerity is imposed as a result of the government’s debt woes, its impacts fall heaviest on the shoulders of ordinary people — not of the actual welfare-siphoning parasites, the big banks.

Policymakers, held on the strings of influential, rich plutocrats, decide how to spend the state’s booty — all of which is ultimately pillaged from working people — and when things seem to be going well, they take the credit, trumpeting the genius of their spending bacchanalia.

But when crisis and disaster inevitably befall their doctored, corporatist economy, it is the whole populace which is expected to bail out the policymakers and their corporate masters. As always, the benefits of corporate-state skullduggery conduce to the benefit of a few, while the costs are dispersed over the whole society.

Free and open competition is the only sound alternative to the capitalist system of privilege that is leaving the world’s economies desolate. The situation in Cyprus represents that system. Only by freeing ourselves and our economic relationships from the clutches of political authority — in other words, from the state itself — can we have the stability and equity that politicians and corporate “leaders” promise, but never deliver.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, El Capitalismo de Rescate, Episodio 34721: Chipre.

Those who benefit the most from an economy woven through with state coercion tell those at the bottom to make sacrifices and accept getting less in return for their acquiescence. Social programs are cut while the security-industrial complex gets new contracts and the managers of favored firms are protected from the consequences of their actions. The poor are expected to shoulder all the blame for their condition at the same time that workers are expected to be grateful to have any job at all. The drill is, “Appreciate what you’re given and let the important people do important things.”

We could argue about whether the system is broken or just working at abnormal intensity, but either perspective raises an important question. Should the system be fixed? Should a different system be adopted?

Wherever states exist, they will always try to drive producers toward serfdom. The powerful have the easiest access to the state, and politicians need a stable power structure to administer society. Reformers can at best make the state less destructive by placating conflict or pushing deprivation to the margins. Better conditions are won by forcing concessions or by playing different ruling class interests against each other.

But is entrenched power a necessary evil that must be negotiated with to attain the essentials of life? No.

Entrenched power brings with it bureaucracy and cronyism. No matter how much funding is increased for anything from schools to security, the flow of money will be dammed up by excessive administration and siphoned off to the pockets of crony contractors. But reducing funding while leaving the system in place often means that administrators will continue taking their cut and just leave less for those at the bottom — the people who are supposed to be helped by programs in the first place. Without fundamental changes people pay and obey as much as they are forced to, but get less in return.

Even worse, reliance on power structures dissolves personal autonomy and social bonds. It conditions people to await orders and devote their time to carrying out orders. Initiative often becomes a matter of how effectively one can get around requirements. And relying on distant powers means dependence on people who probably know you as a statistic or as work material, instead of creating reciprocal relations with people who know you as a person.

The resources exist to dispose of the system altogether. Authority rests primarily on the idea that it ought to be obeyed. If a large number of people were to dispense with this idea and support each others’ efforts in enacting new ideas, then change would be more than a campaign slogan.

The best way to resolve disputes over how to use the state against people is to abolish the state. No system will be perfect, but an order based on the flourishing of each individual instead of on subordination to elites, where people make their own lives instead of having their purpose given to them with commands, certificates, or clubs, is a world that allows the best systems to emerge.