Multinational Corporations, Rentier Capitalism, and the War System in Colombia

ABSTRACT

This article focuses upon the role of multinational corporations in the Colombian conflict, particularly by what mode they contributed to the escalation of land conflicts and to the violent transformation of the rural economy into individual based on rentier capital. It also explores in what way these companies helped in fomenting and financing the war combination of parts to form a whole an element that could partly explain the protracted persistence of the Colombian conflict.

A war combination of parts to form a whole is a pattern of violent interaction among different actors sustained above a period of time. War a whole s are thus embedded in each civil war. War systems' emerging see the verb consolidation, and duration depend partly upon the evolution of the correlation of forces among the warring actors and upon the political economies that each of the belligerent forces raises during the course of the conflict.

If the political, economic, and military assets that any actor obtains during the conflict exce what it had before the conflict, this is considered a positive political economy. Positive political economies could translate into incentives to continue the war until the particular actor prevails. War a whole s are not rational constructs, nor are they perpetuated by means of one actor's behavior. War a whole s are as much products of unwanted ends of actors' behavior or of actors' attempts to outsmart their competitors as they are products of structural constraints, like as a balance of power or limited resources at actors' disposal (government or its armed opponents) or international conditions that inhibit a rebel collection from pursuing a winning strategy. Agency and conformation are integral parts of the war combination of parts to form a whole model. Agency is defined in confines of how an organization, of that kind as a rebel group, the military, or parts of classes (landowners, cattle ranchers, or holders of banks) articulate their political interests.

War a whole s then, are dynamic. They influence their units (and act as an independent variable), and their stability hangs on the outcome of units' behaviors and changes in their regional and international environment.1

WAR combination of parts to form a whole OR "RESOURCE CURSE"?

In the last decade, a strand in conflict theory emerg arguing that the availability of natural resources increases the incentives for the one and the other "rebelling and looting." The larger the "lootable" wealth-say, oil, gold emeralds, diamonds, cobalt, coca production-the more likely that political entrepreneur will rise to challenge governments, given the payoff surveys In this scheme, as drawn out as the expected payoff is higher than the risks, the incentives for rebelling are high. Collier and Hoeffler (1998) argue that the consequences of primary commodity dependence are nonlinear and peak when similar exports reach about 30 percent of the gros domestic harvest Consequently, such a country has a 33 percent risk of conflict. When like primary commodity expoits are solitary 10 percent of GDP, in contrast, the risk falls to 11 percent (Collier et al. 2003)

The for the use of all criticism of this approach is that it does not explain whether the availability of the "lootable wealth" is the main cause of violent conflicts, or whether the causes of civil wars lie in the way these resources are distributed among social classes, regions, and ethnic or religious assemblages Nor does it clarify whether civil war outbreaks hang on the magnitude of micro- or macro-socioeconomic and cultural disruptions that are associated with the discovery of natural resources and its corollary, the "Dutch disease."2 Or are civil wars simply caused and perpetuated by dint of "low state distributive, regulative and acljudicative capacities"? greatest in quantity likely the cause of civil wars is a combination of these factors, and varies with the specific cases below study (Collier and Hoffler 1998; Cilliers and Dietrich 2000; Berdal and Malone 2000)

Notwithstanding that Colombia's GDP is not flat close to the 30 percent connection on primary commodity export-that is, the "danger benchmark" place by Collier and Hoeffeler; oil, coal, gold emeralds account for just below 5 percent of the GDP-the geographical division suffered from a 40-year protracted civil war (Economist Intelligence Unit 2001 28)3 This article addresses three lock opener relevant aspects of the Colombian case, sum of two units of which are underplayed through the mentioned "resource literature" (2001 15) individual is how multinational corporations, or MC disrupted the subsistence peasant economy, exacerbating violent conflict particularly above the access to land, which, in make go round consolidated the country's war combination of parts to form a whole The second aspect is by what mode these companies triggered rent predation in a certain number of of the war system's main actors: state, guerrillas, and paramilitaries, thereby helping (directly and indirectly) to finance and maintain the war a whole without affecting MCs' profit margins to the point of discouraging them from further investment. The third aspect is in what way the MCs helped to internationalize the conflict, which, in revolve exacerbated the war system condition. The conjunction of these three factors, this inquiry argues, led to the consolidation of the war combination of parts to form a whole given that MCs not sole generated violence but also financed opposing forces: guerrillas upon one side, the state and paramilitaries upon the other. Wittingly or unwittingly, MC helped to maintain a balance of forces (a comfortable impasse) that allowed the perpetuation of the war combination of parts to form a whole which explains the long duration of the civil war (Richani 2002)4