Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.
Global Capitalism
by Richard K. Moore
In two centuries the Western world has come full circle from tyranny to tyranny. The tyranny of monarchs was overthrown in the Enlightenment and semi-democratic republics were established. Two centuries later those republics are being destabilized and a new tyranny is assuming power - a global tyranny of anonymous corporate elites. This anonymous regime has no qualms about creating poverty, destroying nations, and engaging in genocide.
Our elite rulers did not lead us into tyranny and environmental collapse because they are evil people, but because they were forced to by the nature of capitalism. Capitalism must continually grow in order to survive. If investors have nowhere to increase their funds then they stop investing and the whole system collapses like a house of cards.
Propaganda myth tells us that capitalism and free enterprise are one and the same thing. They are not. Under free enterprise a business can provide a service or product, make a profit in the process, and continue on stably for many years. Under capitalism such a business would be considered a failure - it does not provide a growth opportunity for an investor. Under capitalism society is forced to continually destroy old ways of doing things and adopt new ways - not because it is good for society but because that is how wealthy investors can increase their wealth still further. That's why General Motors and Firestone banded together to destroy excellent urban transit systems throughout the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s - so that people would be forced to convert to automobiles and create growth for the automobile, tire, and petroleum industries. For exactly the same reasons, and during the same period, rail systems were destroyed in Great Britain and Ireland.
The history of the past two centuries can be understood as a process of creating new growth vehicles as required by the capitalist system. Imperialism provided immense room for capital growth and enough wealth was generated to be shared with Western populations. This process continued up until the late 1960s. At that point growth through external imperialism began to slow down. Neoliberalism permitted growth to continue by consuming the nest of capitalism - by dismantling Western societies and subjecting them to intensive capitalist exploitation. Globalization takes this process even further - creating capital growth through intensive exploitation on a global scale. The new-world-order system of global tyranny is a necessity for capitalism - in order to force the world's people to submit to the exploitation which globalization represents.
Humanity can do better than this - much better - and there is reason to hope that the time is ripe for humanity to bring about fundamental changes. For the past two hundred years capitalism has employed an unbeatable formula to maintain its stranglehold over the world. That formula has been based on the relative prosperity of Western populations. Popular support maintained Western regimes and those regimes had the military might to dominate the rest of the world. That formula reached its culmination in the postwar years when Western prosperity reached unprecedented heights.
With neoliberalism and globalization, this formula has been replaced by another. Western populations and democracy have been abandoned and capitalist elites have bet their future on the success of their WTO new-world-order tyrannical system. In a few years this regime may be so thoroughly established that it will be invincible. But in the meantime - if Western populations wake up to the fact that they are being betrayed - they have the opportunity to rise up and assert the democratic sovereignty which they in theory yet possess.
Maintaining the status quo is no longer an option. The nature of capitalism is forcing revolutionary changes. Those of us in the West have a choice. On the one hand we can acquiesce to global tyranny so that capitalism can continue its insane growth. On the other hand, we can assert our rights as free peoples - we can oust the elites from power and reorganize our economies so that they serve the needs of people instead of the needs of endless wealth accumulation.
This is our Revolutionary Imperative. Not an imperative to violent revolution, but an imperative to do something even more revolutionary - to set humanity on a sane course using peaceful, democratic means.
From:
Globalization
and the
Revolutionary Imperative
Capitalism
by William Blum
(or government of the Exxons, by the Duponts, for the Chryslers)
Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their
worst motives, will somehow produce the most good.
"The twentieth century has been characterized by three
developments of great political importance: the growth of
democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of
corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power
against democracy." Alex Carey, Australian social scientist
Shooting your boss is guaranteed in the Declaration of
Independence, under the provision for "the pursuit of happiness".
"Politics is the shadow cast on society by big business." John
Dewey
"The drive for profit that determines capitalism at the end of
this century fits like an iron mask on our cultural output."
André Schiffrin, publisher
John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath": "Just who are these goddamn reds, anyway?"
"A goddamn red is anyone who wants 30 cents when I am paying
25."
Most of us have made our personal compromises with the workings
of capitalism, not because we're bad people, but because we've
come to believe that these principles are all that could ever
govern human life.
General Electric and other defense contractors are essentially
ex-convicts regularly charged with cheating the US government.
If you lose at gambling, you can't take a tax deduction. But you
can if you lose in the stock market. The latter is thus
subsidized by the taxpayers
"He [the American Indian] had never fully grasped the principle
establishing private ownership of land as any more rational than
private ownership of air, but he loved the land with a deeper
emotion than could any proprietor." Dale Van Every, author
Conservatives take for granted that the society exists to serve
the economy, and not the other way around.
... turned away by a hospital because his wallet biopsy showed a
low green count
I buy. Therefore I am.
American leaders insist that you must take the system whole.
Soviet leaders used to believe the same.
Jay Gould, 19th century robber baron: "I can hire one half of the
working class to kill the other half."
A vision of the future: 1/4 of the population employed in
security work of one kind or another in behalf of another 1/4
who are investigating and protecting against the remaining half."... pushing man off the earth and putting the customer in his
place ..." Clifford Odets, The Big Knife, 1949
Capitalism as practiced in the US is like chemotherapy: it may
kill the cancer cells of consumer shortages, but the side effects
are devastating.
"The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the
American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in
Germany or Mexico or Japan."
Lewis Lapham, editor of Harpers
"Advertising is a racket ... its constructive contribution
to humanity is exactly minus zero." F. Scott Fitzgerald
Advertising is like god -- it's everywhere.
Is there any hope for a society which habitually prices its goods at
$9.99, $99.98, $999.95, $1499.99?
Get the Ribbon
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