Its effects, according to Busuncian (2018), range from the loss of legitimacy of governments, credibility of institutions, and efficiency of the administration, to the threat to the democratic system, national security (certainly, clear links have been found between the corruption and organized crime, the internal destabilizing factor par excellence), and general welfare (at least insofar as there is no equitable distribution of wealth, which means that trillions of euros often end up in the hands of a minority at the expense of the majority), which is why it is considered that the level of social exclusion that it stimulates would not have been reached in other circumstances, constituting, therefore, a serious violation of human rights9. This narrative has made it possible to establish a clear differentiation between what kind of private interests can be considered normal/legitimate or pathological/corrupt in the political and economic spheres, ultimately contributing to normalize the omnipresence of all those agreements, instruments, and measures that are convenient for the capitalist class as long as they are done following a series of procedures or formalities previously prescribed by it.

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According to Bratsis (2014), Marxist theory can help us understand the ideological biases that the supposedly impartial and neutral mechanisms of the bourgeois State entail when conceiving and regulating the fight against corruption in our societies10. If it has become a key issue for the international community11 in recent years, it is precisely due to the insistence of transnational capital to reduce the costs of its transactions and calculate more accurately the benefits that can be derived from certain investments, very line with Max Weber's concept regarding forms of government that alludes to instrumental rationality, basic to achieve a consistent, intelligible and predictable application and interpretation of the law, devoid of informalities and potential confusion12. Simultaneously, the aim is to increase the autonomy of state bureaucracies with respect to national interests and their local elites, in order to act against the will of the people, on the one hand, and the wishes of domestic capitalists, on the other, but always in favor of their particular class interests, although for this they must also use, as a reinforcing complement, the resort to police violence, austerity plans, the threat of economic sanctions, and legal battles. In any case, according to this author, this phenomenon is perfectly illustrated by the rise of the European Union and its role as decision-maker of the most relevant fiscal and monetary policies, now outside the direct control of any democratically elected representative in each one. of the member countries; hence, for example, the gradual privatization of most public companies or the massive elimination of agricultural subsidies13. This would be achieving, no more and no less, that the initiatives that may affect transnational capital are much more predictable and transparent for foreign companies, while the barriers prior to the globalization process are collapsing at a faster rate.

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On the other hand, thanks to this fixation on corruption, it is possible to offer an interpretation of global inequalities in terms of development that does not challenge the current imperialist order at all, by framing them as the natural product of the relative inferiority of ethical standards and frameworks. political or legal characteristics of certain regions, thus serving as a justification for the normative supremacy enjoyed by the advanced countries of the northern hemisphere. Thus, we know that, since the founding of Transparency International in 1993, there have been several anti-corruption campaigns led by USAID, the World Bank14, the UN, the OECD, the IMF, and the Open Society Foundations, among other institutions15, which have problematized it fundamentally in its bureaucratic aspect, judging that this would only constitute a deviation from the principle of indifference —whose absence in countries such as the People's Republic of China, Venezuela, or Vietnam seems to be equivalent in their eyes to a potential volatility that prevents achieving the expected rationality by transnational capital, being that in the so-called clientelism and populism, for example, institutional mediations practically disappear, since the bond between the decision-makers of the policies and those affected by them are much closer16— in the application of the law and the policies by officials (for example, the police or tax inspectors) closest to the c citizenship) because of bribes and personal connections. On the other hand, political corruption would concern above all the process of elaborating public policies, generally far from the life of the common citizen, since those involved usually run into few limitations17 as it is practically impossible to subject private motivations and interests to any control. (which often include those of the institutions cited above) that affect or underlie it18.

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In the era of globalization, the bourgeoisie has set out to reassert its hegemony by taking moral and intellectual leadership by popularizing a particular conception of corruption (that is, as opacity) and trying to modify the various forms of corruption to its liking. of State around the world under the pretext of protecting the public interests of the majority. However, as we can see, the ideal of transparency is not directed at citizens —who generally only have the information provided by the corporate media—, but rather at businessmen in inter-capitalist competition19. In fact, interest in fighting this scourge initially arose as a result of complaints from US politicians and exporters who did not consider it fair to compete with OECD countries in a position of advantage due to the existing legal vacuum regarding bribes to foreign officials. and its tax relief. It is no coincidence, on the other hand, that there are studies on this problem aimed at examining the degrees of arbitrariness and prevalence of corruption in certain countries with the ultimate goal of giving those who head private businesses a clearer idea of the real possibility of encountering a request for a bribe, first, and receiving the preferential treatment promised at the beginning of the transaction, later, because it is only from such uncertainty that real losses can derive. Thus, the more ubiquitous —and, therefore, visible— corruption is, the easier it will be to identify it and decide in advance whether it is worth actively incurring in illicit conduct in order to catch up with said competition. As we will see later when we examine the case of South Korea, the plurality of actors with discretionary power is always associated with greater ambiguity regarding the nature of the results and costs that may derive from these bribes, at least to the extent that an official could inadvertently raise the price of favored treatment or even be uncoordinated with other corrupt government agents and lack sufficient authority to make certain decisions in a given area21.

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Although we plan to address this issue in greater detail in the following sections, it is convenient to point out that from the Marxist analysis the importance of the transnationalization of work and capital is repaired as a necessary condition of the process of reproduction of the exploitation typical of the present mode of production, being imperialism, in the opinion of Bratsis (2014), consubstantial to the modern nation to the extent that the formal separation of the political and economic struggles that characterizes the autonomous bourgeois State must materialize in all the societies integrated in the circuit. international capital (now characterized by its superior scale and speed)22. Thus, the homogenization of political and legal forms throughout the world, beyond regional or local particularities, together with the strengthening of institutional capacities (especially judicial ones), would help guarantee the effectiveness of the principle of indifference to individual interests to which we alluded, this being an essential requirement to maintain the mechanisms and relations of domination of one class over another at a global level23. Be that as it may, from these campaigns it is often argued that the main reason why we must fight corruption is identified with the optimization of the material conditions of the most vulnerable and impoverished territories. Official reports insist on the idea that this phenomenon is an impediment to economic development, hence, for example, the political turmoil in Western Asia, the humanitarian failure in countries like Haiti, and other crises in whose genesis it denies convenience the crucial role of Western imperialism. Such a point of view, representing nothing more than a conceptual tool of ideological manipulation, fails miserably when it comes to explaining the real causes of North-South inequality, since it pretends to imply that, in reality, this is only part of a deficiency of character or nature of those disadvantaged peoples. Your arguments? They are not entirely civilized, they lack self-control, they are incapable of  defer short-term gains, its rules or institutions are not rational enough…25 The goal here is to push the narrative that since the market can do anything, it is counterproductive to try to steer it in any way; poverty is nothing but a direct result of the lack of faith in the miraculous nature of liberalization by the ruling heretics of the third world. The main weakness of this approach, however, is that it ignores the fact that high rates of private profit are not usually accompanied by social prosperity, rather the opposite; the faster a country heads towards ruin, the greater the profits made by the capitalist class. In the words of Bratsis (2014):

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[It is absurd] that anyone should try to answer such questions today without taking into account the history of colonial wars and imperial power (or, to use Rosa Luxemburg's term, "accumulation by dispossession"), or current patterns of property ownership. of natural resources […], as if poverty in resource-rich countries had nothing to do with the use of military power, fraud, and the oppression exerted by the states of the capitalist epicenter26.

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An example of this same exercise in neoliberal myopia can be found in the debt crisis in Greece, which, despite having affected a wide range of countries at the same time (each with its respective corruption index), its causes were blamed to what some perceived as a corrupt, hedonistic, lazy and undisciplined culture of southerners, apparently endowed with overly generous salaries and pensions and excessive public spending27 (reasoning that reminds others of Russia's communist past, Russia's corporatist heritage Latin America, or the tradition of a strong and interventionist state in Turkey28). Again, similar approaches prevent us from understanding the structural and systemic causes that led to such a disaster, since their intention is none other than to justify the intervention of external control instances in a threat of subtracting agency from certain countries by virtue of their alleged vices. undemocratic29, when concrete advances are not required in the structural reforms imposed in exchange for financial aid (donations, foreign investments...) to avoid obtaining the —clearly unfair— status of a kleptocratic regime30. If we take into account that the average Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) in 69% of the 176 countries analyzed was less than 50 on a scale of 0 (very corrupt) to 100 (not at all corrupt), and that, In general, the application of external monitoring and verification mechanisms is proposed as a solution to this problem - since, apparently, the possibility that observers is not trusted  independent nationals without any affiliation can investigate impartially and without fear of reprisal31—it should not be too difficult to reach an accurate conclusion about the main beneficiaries of the design and implementation of such a system32.