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March,2001
The Capitalist Market
Our supposedly free market is really a fundamentalist religion, with
the strengths and weaknesses of any faith-based system. Its foundation
is equal parts mythology, creativity, greed and stupidity. Only the
last two can explain the belief that private energy, private health
care, private education and countless other fixations on our private
part are , despite increasing signs of failure, superior to social
control of such life supporting institutions.
The main argument against social power claims the suppression of
individuality inherent in big government , and it has some element of
truth. But what has passed for governmental control has never been an
expression of democracy, whether in capitalist social democratic states
or in nations that have attempted to create socialism.
The first always perform for the benefit and under the direction of
private capital, and the second always under the heel of a global
system whose opposition would not allow them to achieve the ideals they
professed. Socialist states have been forced into compromises that
often made them little better, and sometimes worse than what they wanted
to replace.
Neither social democracy nor socialist attempts at humanizing reality
have been able to rise above the capitalist market, but merely to
exercise some local controls that briefly fine tune its murderous
contradictions .
The collapse of attempted socialism in the Soviet Union and the
abandonment of social democratic capitalism in the west have seen a
return to the fundamentalist faith in market forces as the arbiter of
all human affairs. Of course, with private, corporate capital
exercising the controls formerly the responsibility of government. It
has been a disaster , and it gets worse every day.
In their pre-capitalist form, markets involved social relations that
played a major role in advancing communication and trade among people.
Markets were building blocks in the structure of human organization into
larger social entities, but they depended on person to person
encounters. Barter, trade and deal making involved interpersonal
relations between producers and consumers that increased a notion of
community, while bringing goods and services to more people.
When that system became dominated by ever larger commercial forces, the
market was transformed into something less communal and more mercantile.
As wider varieties of goods became available, smaller groups became more
dominant in markets, leading to exploitation of actual producers and
consumers , with financial control exercised by absentee forces.
What is presently called globalization is nothing new , but merely the
age old process of market control by private capital becoming greater,
faster , and more damaging to the social and natural environment than
ever before .
Under the domination of ruling elite minorities, life has always been
dangerous for the majority . But the danger has never been so great,
and , conversely, the possibility for overcoming it and achieving
success for most of humanity never greater.
The anti-social nature of private capitalist command of markets makes
the threat so deadly. It creates a world in which humans starve while
pets overeat, in which militaries are housed while civilians are
homeless, in which drug firms make billions of dollars while sick
people can’t afford medicines . It is a world in which the natural,
social and political environments are under the control of forces with
no purpose other than the creation of profits for investors that
guarantee losses for everyone else.
And it is the hopeful signs of growing social consciousness and
democratic demands in the world at large that make the possibilities of
success so much greater. But the global crisis is such that there really
isn’t much time for those social forces to get their act together. If
the world is, as Shakespeare said, a stage on which we perform, the
majority cast members need to take over the production, before the
minority stockholders bring about a disastrous flop that won’t just be
financial.
Before we create a global gas chamber that threatens to asphyxiate us
all, we need to change this system that controls the creation and
distribution of resources, all on the basis of first creating private
profit. The present romance with markets, individuality and
privatization of public forces is a renewal of age old fundamentalist
beliefs. With the use of mass media techniques of modern mind control
, relative paupers have been convinced that success means simply buying
some stock in one or another “new” company and waiting for the money to
pour in .
The reality is that for all the minority paper wealth being generated
by alleged ‘new economy’ high-tech stocks, the country’s entire
structure rests - precariously - on an ‘old economy’ foundation of oil
, gas and other non-renewable fossil fuels.
Americans upset by increased energy prices need to understand that
domestic and foreign sources are finite and drying up . But under the
dictates of wasteful profit marketeering and planned inefficiency,
demand everywhere continues to rise. What is to be done?
The social democratic urge to slowly reform by presenting a more human
face to capitalism, has been replaced by old market values, revived as
neo-liberalism. First promoted by the Reagan-Thatcher regimes and
more recently by their stepsons, Clinton-Blair , this revival has seen
the market become god, individuality the son of god, and government ,
social responsibility and democracy become satanic demons, interfering
with divine profit accumulation.
The profit dreams of minorities have become the nightmare loss of
majorities , with social, political and environmental systems
simultaneously threatened by an organizing domain gone berserk.
Markets may someday become human places again, as flea markets, farmers
markets and even garage sales give example. But Capitalism cannot be
reformed, anymore than a carnivore can become a herbivore. It is a
cannibalistic system that will ultimately devour humanity and the planet
if it isn’t stopped by a democratic movement aimed at more than reform .
If humanity is to survive, capitalism must be abolished .
Copyright (c) 2001 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
This text may be used and shared in accordance with the
fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be
archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that
the author is notified and no fee is charged for access.
Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on
other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the author
.
frank scott
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225 laurel place, san rafael ca. 94901
(415)457 2415 fax(415)457 4791
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