Capitalism is considered the best system to produce abundance because the free-market competition stimulates entrepreneurship and focuses the human creative imagination on transforming ideas into businesses opportunities in the legitimate pursuit of economic-financial success and the much deserved personal enrichment.
Described like that, sounds pretty fair: hard work, right decisions, sense of opportunity and good partnerships have good chances to succeed.
Most people desire success, recognition, health and happiness, but is it legitimate to achieve these goals through legal exploitation and the commodification of everything?
Where can we recognize moral value and long-term sustainability in commodifying people, animals, natural resources and causing environmental destruction and unnecessary production of waste (including hazardous waste)?
The legitimacy of freedom of initiative and entrepreneurship should never take precedence over the common interest and the precautionary principle that warns us to look at the medium-long term consequences before we implement economically viable projects.
According to the capitalist mentality, the precautionary principle is nothing more than an obstacle to the exercise of individual freedoms, opportunities to solve problems generated by previous solutions, creating conditions to generate new problems in a spiral of complexity driven by profit must never be obstructed because that’s how society evolves.
Over time, the rentier class ends up acquiring the power to design the legal codes that guarantees the control of the system that allows them to continue increasing the influence over society's strategic and foundational institutions.
The capitalist system is in fact productive because it uses abundance as a bait to motivate citizens to fight for what in theory is the ideal of prosperity, sacrificing the present to achieve future success.
As success is considered a personal achievement, and all benefits, privileges and entitlements associated with it are like spoils of war, unquestionable reward for all real or fictitious personal sacrifices made to make capitalism a better system, people are entitled to “improve” the capitalist system but never doubt about its effectiveness much less question its existence.
The capitalist discourse proclaims individual freedoms as the pillars of democracy, but the concentration of wealth and consequent abduction of politics by entrenched economic and financial interests runs the show and dictates the rules.
In theory capitalist highest value is the free-market open economy but in practice capitalism boosts the conditions for the development of monopolies and the rise of oligarchs and plutocrats and over time society becomes dominated by a rentier class.
The independence of the legislative, executive and judiciary powers is pure fiction under the dominion of the capitalist regime.
The economic power reigns supreme and the long-term interests of the deep state dictates the governance that will provide the guidelines for the legislative branch, legislation is designed on behalf of the wealthy class to protect and enhance their interests.
Decentralization of power is not the same as liberalizing the economy, much less when it means opening the economy to foreign investors by attributing tax benefits and creating special economic zones that are nothing more than a means of codifying in law ways of restricting or abolishing the regulations that are in place to protect the national economic sovereignty.
Neither absolute protectionism nor absolute liberalism serve an healthy economy. Economic cooperation has to be mutually beneficial and strategic sectors have to be kept under state control. The idea that foreign investment is necessary for economic development because domestic investment is not enough to stimulate economic growth for job creation to lift people out of poverty is wrong and dangerous.
The predominant economic ideologies that currently run the world economy and finance are not only wrong they are harmful. The dependence on foreign investment and indebtedness to international financial organizations should be highly restricted to prevent loss of sovereignty and neocolonization.
The IMF, World Bank, investment funds, vulture funds, big banks and alike use recurrently the tricks and traps of debt enslavement to gain control of the local/national political class making sure that every piece of legislation protects the interests of the global capitalist rentier class.
Neoliberal globalized capitalism was designed to destroy national sovereignty, the legislative, executive and judicial branches are lobbied, bribed and corrupted by powerful national and globalized interests, with this type of order in place, the society as a whole loses the ability to demand accountability, therefore a functional societal system becomes a mirage.
The electoral process of today’s democratic regimes have become a parody, the deep state agents responsive to the globalized capitalist imperialist class don’t allow the will of the people to be heard. The system is corrupted to the core and is irredeemable, we need to extirpate the roots of the problem, cosmetic reforms will end up reinforcing the old order. It is time for revolution, for structural system change, we need to recognize it in large numbers and get organized to make it happen.
The current global order promotes a corrupt kleptocratic political class thriving at the expense of widespread impoverishment and environmental destruction while the financialized globalized capitalism takes control of every bit of the economy and now they want to financialize nature.
This international order is heaven for the globalized imperialist neoliberal class but is hell for the ordinary citizenry. Global south, global north, it doesn’t matter anymore, disaster capitalism hits us all indiscriminately: economic adjustment, privatizations, deregulation, austerity for the poor and tax cuts for the rich, the enclosure of the commons, the financialization of the ecosystem services, and so forth…
Green capitalism is just another neoliberal imperialist scam to make us believe that this time is different, we just have to trust them and everything will be fine. Yes, sure!
Decentralization means democratization of power in the interests of regional and populations. But by delegating more power in local and regional elected officials and institutions doesn’t mean that decisions become more democratic automatically, decentralized democratic responsibility can be disrespected when people don’t have or demand political agency to participate actively in the political process.
Democracy will always end up hijacked by economic interests if the democratic elucidation is not carried out by the population. We can delegation power and responsibility in third parties but preserve the right to have a saying before the decision is made and reverse the situation whenever a decision proves to have relevant negative impact in the community.
Corruption is like rust, it never sleeps. Democracy is a process, not an achievement, maintaining constant vigilance is the only way to guarantee a healthy democracy accompanied by active participatory politics.
It only makes sense to delegate power with full accountability because representative democracy and the illusory separation of powers alone are not enough to prevent their appropriation by economic and financial interests.
I think this should be crystal clear. We have to stop demonizing and neglecting politics, politicians are not all the same and different political projects will give different outcomes. What makes little sense is thinking that voting is the only responsibility we have, because voting only makes sense if we have political agency to make the elected comply with the electoral programs.
In the current "democratic" conjuncture, the political class presents electoral programs and when elected, the government seems to have the legitimacy to implement political measures that are in total opposition of what was promised. If democracy is equivalent of giving lies a free-pass, we don't live in democracy, we live in shamcracy.
The triumph of deceit is also the triumph of the manipulation of perception to manufacture consent, the tag democracy is as good as any other to justify the ignominy of using power with the aim of making society an inhospitable place for the lower classes.
To have representative democracy we must have transversal participatory democracy. Many people still don't realize that power really corrupts and that not even the best cloth is protected against stains.
