Blow to legitimacy of the capitalist system

It is acknowledged by serious bourgeois economists that the global economic crisis — the worst since the 1930s—has dealt a devastating blow to the international legitimacy of the capitalist system.

Protecting the ones who harmed many

After Word War II the North Americans did not mind to bring over the great ingenious engineers  to bring the knowledge about rockets into the United States of America to make it a world power. In exchange, by allowing some Germans to be unpunished for war crimes they gained German industrial know-how and could build up a prosperous country.

P-icon for the United States of America (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They did not mind getting in the superior power and  having one eye closed for the many Nazi refugees to Latin America, because they also thought they could be for further use in their White supremacy over the world.

They found it best to warn the people against any form of socialism or communism because this would take away the earnings and power of those who got most of the money in their hands and wanted to keep it that way. Frightening people for any form of socialism would secure their position of power, so a cold war would also give them enough reasons to start producing more weapons and find them an industry booming and bringing in more money.

The American ruling class, fearful of socialist revolution in Europe and Japan, organized the economic reconstruction of world capitalism. The basic structures and mechanisms of this reconstruction were formulated at the Bretton Woods conference in August 1944.

united states currency eye- IMG_7364_web (Photo credit: kevindean)

In 1952, nearly 60 percent of all industrial production in the advanced capitalist countries was located in the United States. On a per capita basis, total economic output in the United States was nearly double that in the United Kingdom and France, nearly three times that in Germany, and four times that in Italy. As late as 1957, 43 of the largest 50 companies in the world were based in the United States. Its dominant position found expression in its ability to maintain substantial trade and payment surpluses, even as the United States financed European and Japanese reconstruction.

Two body control techniques in the battle

One of typical Kounovsky and Pilates exercise positions

Having been thought the Vaganova technique, or Russian Ballet, I had the opportunity to come in contact with many Russian ballet teachers, choreographers and dancers, both faithful and dissidents from the the Soviet Union. Hearing contradicting stories from the Western press and my Russian friends I started also reading the Soviet Weekly and got to see the propaganda and misrepresentation and misleading information on both sides of the channel. In the seventies I also was blessed to come to see the marvellous medical treatment and advancement to bring paralysed people of those with many physical problems back into good condition. Their work with harmed bodies proved to me the advantages of the Aleksander Kounovsky technique, which I learned and became an adept of to help those people with problems with their body. Later I got to see how the man who stole may thoughts of Kounovsky managed to get the world on his side and became more popular. To be sure I also studied the Pilates technique and recognised all the stolen bits, but the ones who knew what happened lost the battle to the west and Joseph Pilates won the race.

A smoke screen

The West created a smoke screen giving everybody the idea they were living in the best word where every body got the best chances.  From everywhere they could they ‘borrowed’ or just took what they could use for the best purposes.
The West wanted their citizens to believe they gave their people the best opportunities to make the best of their lives. They proclaimed that our Western Community was the only one which could give all people the best ways to develop and gave every body the same opportunities. Strange that nobody challenged those sayings and do not wonder why in that world where all people have equal chances to succeed that there is so much inequality going on and many will never have the change to get the education they want. Nobody seems to be willing to open the eyes and ask why in that equal opportunity world there are so few being called powerful and wealthy?

Income difference

Minimum wages in EU Member States, Croatia, Turkey and the USA, in July 2011, in EUR

Some may think every body has the right to do more work and earn more money. And I would not disagree with that. But how come that in our United Europe 1 on 4 youngsters never get some work. How can Europe justify minimum-wages between 123€ and 400€ in their community while those people have to work more hours than in the other states and also have to pay a lot of money for rent and food? In Bulgaria having the minimum wage 270€ while in Belgium it is 970€ and in Luxembourg 1.477€?

Great Depression unemployment ciphers are not far of.

How does it come that in Belgium many workers do have to work with two or even three in one household to keep up the family, pay rent, food, health care and still find it difficult to pay for ways to relax, doing many hours of hard work, while others who do not have to work so hard can earn 300 (three hundred) times more than they?

Mass media industry

The media create a ‘would be’ and ‘would like to live in’ community where many people can find their dreams pictured in beautiful colours on broad screens.

On the growing screens in the sitting rooms images and words can be introduced a few years we did not dare to speak out or would have our cheeks do flush.

Death is presented every day as would it have become a natural thing of this world which would be far from us and when it occasionally is closer by it can be so sensational that most people enjoy talking about it and would not mind boasting about it that they could witness it.

The capitalist world presented its serial killers as a ‘piece d’ occasion’ which would be not bad for the seed of one or other tv-production or film where murder turns into a kind of labor by mass producing dead bodies. The capitalist world managed to introduce the hack writers and bloodthirsty actresses trapped inside Hollywood’s profit-mad storytelling machine. When we look at what that capitalist world created we can wonder how that  free-wheeling market economy turned human beings into monstrosities.

Lust for profit

Lust for profit seemed to be the key to allow everything even if it went against all ethical rules. In certain countries the gain of money became the most important element and it did not matter at what cost. Fraudulent actions became a sport and often it was considered cool if you could be able to rib of the state or some people.

Many did not mind to exploit others to create more opportunities for themselves to fill their pockets. Lots of people in charge or having high positions did not mind to exploit workers. Many did not bother that whole nations got enslaved.

For many the capital gain became a play more interesting than Monoply, and to compete with other capital to do all this even more viciously in a game of survival of the most ruthless. Who would take care that in other places, best as far as possible away, or if it was in the back-garden, best good hidden behind the walls, children had to work and have their childhoods are stolen just to give some lucky ones, who have enough money to spend on luxury goods, the pleasure of showing off?

At the source of the problem they would be the first to say that those children and their parents had their own free choice to go working in the sex trade.

UNICEF estimates that 5.7 million children are working as bonded labourers (essentially slaves while they pay off debts), that 1.2 million children are or have been trafficked, and that 1.8 million are prostitutes or are used to make child pornography.

Human Rights Watch estimates that somewhere between 60 to 115 million children are working in India, and that as many as 85% of them are working in agriculture, being part of the 175 million children around the world working in agriculture. In 1998, the General Accounting Office estimated that there were 300,000 children working in agriculture in the U.S. alone — a job that, along with forestry and mining, is one of the three most dangerous jobs in the country.

1.75 million children are employed in domestic work. Child labourers are trafficked from poorer countries, India in particular, to wealthier Middle Eastern countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia where many luxury buildings and projects are done on the back of the modern (Indian) slaves.

Port of Dubai Emirate, located on Jebel Ali district. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

High placed persons or CEO’s did not mind to be the parasite on the ones who had to be doing the dirty or heavy work, as long as they could enjoy their golf, their cruises and share some nice pleasure time with cocktails with equally wealthy friends.

Private Profit

What went wrong in the capitalist system is that certain people found that private profit for capitalists inevitably meant deprivation and death for workers. It should not be so. when every body is willing to satisfied with some honest partition, a fair deal and an equitable distribution of income the restructured capitalist system could work. With just laws and a rightuous system where respect is given to all members of the community a liveable system can be made where everybody can enjoy the growing wealth, make their own private  profit and can share a nice life in a community where every body may have their own property of good living conditions.

Not wanting to know

Many people today who buy the luxury gadgets do not want to know what was necessary to make them or who had to do what at what price to be able to create those pleasure things of our capitalist world.

Some think it would be better not to think to hard or not to ask too many questions about certain things. They prefer to let the thinking to others, and consider that it are the teachers, religious leaders, politicians and economists who have to take up their responsibility and have to do all the necessary work to have the community working as it should. Though they forget everything starts in the small cocoon of the own family and by leaving it to their friends they will wind up with second-hand beliefs and values.

Economic parasitism

Many busyness people see some interesting opportunities in the actual crisis. I do agree that for many people it should be the moment now to buy shares and to give a boost onto the economy again so that it can jump again.

So far this year, US mergers and acquisitions have totalled $158.7 billion, double the figure for the same period last year.

Andre Damon and Barry Grey write in ‘The corporate buyout surge and economic parasitism‘:

Far from heralding a genuine economic recovery, these mergers and acquisitions are entirely parasitic. They do not add one iota of real value to the economy; they do not expand the productive capacity of society; they do not provide new jobs. They are purely financial operations enabling speculators to grow richer through an expansion of paper values that only add to the already existing mountain of debt.

The actual economic and social impact of these types of mergers and buyouts is destructive. They are the prelude to downsizing and cost-cutting involving the closure of facilities and elimination of jobs, inevitably accompanied by new demands for wage cuts and speedups.

These financial manipulations are the means by which the ruling class redistributes wealth from the bottom to the top of society. The ballooning debt that sustains the obscene personal fortunes of the financial aristocrats must, in the end, be paid back. And it is the working class that is to be made to do the paying—through brutal austerity policies backed up by state violence and repression.

Where to go

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times wrote on March 8:

It is impossible at such a turning point to know where we are going… Yet the combination of financial collapse with a huge recession, if not something worse, will surely change the world. The legitimacy of the market will weaken. The credibility of the US will be damaged. The authority of China will rise. Globalization itself may founder. This is a time of upheaval.

Bernie Sucher, the head of Merrill Lynch operations in Moscow, wrote in the same good newspaper:

Our world is broken—and I honestly don’t know what is going to replace it. The compass by which we steered as Americans has gone. The last time I saw anything like this, in the sense of disorientation and loss, was among my friends [in Russia] when the Soviet Union broke up.

Implosion of a screwed system

It is widely recognized that the implosion of the sub-prime mortgage industry, the collapse of asset values, and the freezing up of credit markets are significant components of the crisis that have brought the American banking system and, with it, the world economy to their knees.

But all should start seeing the underlying circumstances and the ways why it could go wrong. We all have to look further than the so called “root causes” of the crisis.

According to me it is wrong to say that fundamental viability of the capitalist system, particularly within the United States, and its historical immutability cannot be questioned. Those who think the cause of the crisis is not to be found in the essential nature of the profit system turn their eye away from the real virus which continues to grow. They could say the problem rather lies in the environment within which it presently operates, but when they want to hold such a superficial view they should recognise that their environment became drunk and got a hangover from that greed and aim for capital gain.

Preferring to go back to the Old Imperialist times

Founding fathers of the United States of America in debate

Sometimes I can not get rid of the impression that several Americans would like to go back to the time of the flight of their founding fathers, forgetting why the escaped from the Old World. Those very conservative evangelist so called Christians who think the Caucasian race is the greatest and most superior seem to forget that several American colonists didn’t merely wring their hands over their misfortune of suffering under British monarchy and colonialism and they threw off the chains of British imperialism — political and economic oppression. They forget their founding fathers argued against Britain’s actions, did not like the way of living in France, Britain, the Low countries or Scandinavia.

All their efforts for working at a free state where every body could have their own profits and grow as they wanted to grow in a developing country are now undermined by those who say two and three centuries ago the aims were to create a capitalist empire.

The Tea Party conservatives, who are typically not part of the 1%, face their own financial stresses, and tend to oppose all increases in social spending that they see as mostly benefiting the poor. They see their own class interests as being distinct from, and often opposed to, the have-nots at the bottom, who are highly reliant on social safety net programs. {Roger Baker in Wait… so, Karl Marx was right? Terminal capitalism / Part 1}

No reason to be afraid of social measures

For lots of capitalist people social measures are like oil on fire or like water on burning oil.

Many countries who shout they are free, are not as free as they crop up. The United States of America poses as a free democratic country where everybody is treated equally. How does it come then that there are still so many differences in white and coloured people their living circumstances? How does it come that so many retired people still have to work hard and fight to stay alive? How does it come that so many veterans who risked their lives for their country are treated as shit and a useless waste?

Pilates classes help keep European military communities fit – FMWRC – US Army – 100924 (Photo credit: familymwr)

Is it not that in those so called democratic industrialist countries just only a few have the strings in their hands? Very few people own the land and materials required for manufacturing, factories, machines and other instruments of production and they let other people work hard for them at the cheapest price. They do not feel any shame for using those workforces at any cheap cost so that they may gain as much money as possible.

From the West coast of Florida there is a sound voice which correctly points out that we live in a world where we have Capitalist who do not have to work but may be rich-lazy and ignorant of history.

Pmespeak’s Blog writes:

They are government and cowards and never-to-be-trusted and speculators and the living worthless sector of our Societies anywhere and everywhere. They create wars to both decrease excess populations and to increase their wealth…

His compatriots and our European citizens, better should follow his advice:

Examine South America and ask why during the 20^th century dictators where fashioned and favored in these places.

Remember; corporations are legally not people and are ‘hiding’ trillions of dollars and paying wage-slaves as little as possible to still be able to sell their wares to the slaves of low-wages and lowering hope.

If the world’s people have equal chances to succeed than why are so few being called powerful and wealthy? Rulers look the same…They all lie-steal-cheat and owe those placing them in positions of power…Call them presidents, senators, congressmen, dictators, kings and other names religious or blah-blah-blah.

wages are never fair or just rewards for these necessary efforts. Why? To a Capitalist; lust-for-profit is more powerful than truth, justice, love and life.

Where are the values we learned from our mothers? Why is greed the prime motive of Industry and its future development? For the standards of friendship and family and our world, Capitalism is the antithesis. It adheres to competition at all costs. It dismisses cooperation, help for fellowman, responsibility to society, the benefits of others and love.

Capitalism is not freedom…It is slavery for us all…It is war and a savage waste of precious life…It benefits no one except a few. It destroys Society…It forces revolution and revolution is bloody. Why is Religion also an industry? Why not just…Lust of life—not of Riches?

Times have changed

People should remember that our situation is now different than in the time of the foundation of the United States of America, but the human race is still the same and should still require the same attributes and values as in the previous times, only adapted to the modern tools.

There is no reason at all not to believe in a union or a federation of many states trying to work with each other instead of against each other considering themselves as competitors. We should end the competitive struggle. The rivalry does more harm than good. Cutthroat competition does not serve anybody.

We should not be against individual liberties as long as everyone understands that they have to respect the freedom of the other person as well. But everyone should help to create a free and liveable state for everyone, where certain elements to reach such a level would demand money of the community and therefore would demand taxes.

Though times may have changed we should remember the previous days and remember what happened when increasingly prosperous elite of wealthy commoners — merchants, manufacturers, and professionals, often called the bourgeoisie enriched themselves so much, while the populace was starving in France. By the 18th century’s economic growth those middle class owners resented their exclusion from political power and positions of honour so they start to revolt. Today the middle class is becoming the new poor class and the farmers see their land been taken off by those who want to bring more roads on the map and who are not concerned about the green environment but have their heart only by the industry to produce many hardware goods, which in away are not so essential for life. The cultivators and dairy farmers are fed up being fleeced. If the governing people are not careful and do not see that all those people will not have themselves squeezed dry, they could face in some time a similar situation as the one they are so frightened off, namely a revolution, which we need like we need a hole in the head.

We should take courage from the example of the American colonists who won their independence and begin planning now, before we drown, to take back our economic and political power as a people.

Like in the 18° century the French population participated actively in the new political culture created by the Revolution, today people should also be more willing to participate in the debate. As in that time they had dozens of uncensored newspapers which kept citizens abreast of events, and political clubs allowed them to voice their opinions, we have the many blogs and social media which can spread the news quickly and bring many ideas to the forefront or into the picture.

The horse is not yet bolted so it might not yet be too late to lock the stable door and to light a bright light of a better future.
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Preceding articles:

Angry at the greedy state

Do we have to be an anarchist to react

Re-Creating Community

Impact of the crisis on civil society organisations in the EU – Risks and opportunities

Eurobarometer: Citizens Engaged in Participatory Democracy

Citizen University and the difference between Citizenship and Activism

Daniel Guérin: Three Problems of the Revolution (1958)

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Good to read:

1. Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture
   Newitz shows that as literature and film tell it, the story of American capitalism since the late nineteenth century is a tale of body-mangling, soul-crushing horror.
2. We can no longer afford Vulture Capitalism
   The term “capitalism,” like any generic term, must be tied down to a particular application and practice. In theory, “capitalism” refers to a socioeconomic system in which the means of production are predominantly privately owned and operated for profit, through the employment of labor. The prices of goods, services, and labor are affected by the forces of supply and demand in a market. Decisions regarding investment are made privately, and production and distribution are primarily controlled by companies all acting in their own interest. Although most developed countries are regarded as capitalist, some of them have been called “mixed economies,” due to government-owned means of production and economic interventionism.
3. French Revolution, also called Revolution of 1789
   the revolutionary movement that shook France between 1787 and 1799 and reached its first climax there in 1789.
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   a time when the problem of maintaining food supplies had reached its climax infuriated the towns and the provinces. Rumours of an “aristocratic conspiracy” by the king and the privileged to overthrow the Third Estate led to the Great Fear of July 1789, when the peasants were nearly panic-stricken. The gathering of troops around Paris and the dismissal of Necker provoked insurrection in the capital. On July 14, 1789, the Parisian crowd seized the Bastille, a symbol of royal tyranny.
   
4. Contradiction-Imbalanced…
   America is still committing crimes against humanity to further the lust of profit and the horror of Capitalism…Sort through the history written by the people— not by the winners of war and find worlds different and still imbalanced. Examine South America and ask why during the 20^th century dictators where fashioned and favored in these places.
5. Again—Off To War We…
   Is the economic world ‘flat’? Or is just the top of this mountain squared off and pitched upward…Ledges are hard to climb over and greased governments angle away from the Working People of America.
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   You were able to climb aboard a fast moving and powerful engine of industry and technology.   Federal funding was available everywhere and a few wars kept the machine jimmy-jamming…LFSGD! Through research everything grew and unbridled wealth was enjoyed by a few—And! The lies of the American Dream were still—oops, can you hear a Revolution coming?
6. Mistakes of the founding fathers of the United States of America
   After the Declaration of Independence, when our founding fathers wrote the Constitution they did not include these important points:  that we were a Christian Nation, that freedom of religion was meant only within the Christian Faith and not any other faith or religion, and that only Church members could vote.  This oversight was no accident.  These were not stupid people.  These were the educated intellectuals of America.  When the Constitution was presented to the colonies they did not demand these continued standards before they agreed to and signed the Constitution.  They compromised. The colonies came up with the Bill of Rights to add to the Constitution which guaranteed freedom of speech, press and religion, but again they did not specify meaning only within the Christian faith and that only Church members could vote.  This left the door open for any religion and ideology to get a foothold in our country and say and influence our communities and national politics.  As a result, America quickly moved away from serving Jesus’ and His intended purpose and goals for her which was to exalt Him and spread the Gospel.  Instead, Idolatry quickly took hold of everyone’s daily life. Seeking Jesus’ will and what He wanted for the country was no longer in the forefront.

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