Is Capitalism Putting an end to Humanity, Causing Economic Crisis

 

Capitalism has repeatedly failed the majority of the world's population. According to recent reports:

358 billionaires have more assets than the combined incomes of countries home to 45% of the world's people.

the richest 20% of the world's population gets 85% of the world's income. 30 years ago, the richest 20% only got 70% of the world's income,

Capitalism has failed the majority of our people too:

50,000 mainly White commercial farmers own nearly 99% of all private farming land in South Africa

5% of the population owns 88% of all personal wealth.

70% of the population lives below the breadline

This is what capitalism is all about- a profit system in which the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. And capitalism is also the major cause of problems like racism. 

Capitalism must go. So too must the State. The State is an undemocratic structure which that concentrates power in the hands of a small elite

The 7th Presidential Summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) finished on Friday with the rejection to the Summit of the Americas declaration, which will be held in Trinidad and Tobago.

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez read a 15-points document blaming capitalism for creating the current world economic problem as well as the imperialist policy of U.S. in Latin America.

The Obama administration dismissed the veto to the declaration of the Fifth Summit of the Americas as irresponsible and misplaced. 

1) Capitalism is putting an end to humanity and the planet. What we are living through is a global economic crisis of a systemic and structural character and not just one more cyclical crisis. Those who think that this crisis will be resolved with an injection of fiscal money and with some regulatory measures are very mistaken.

The financial system is in crisis because it is quoting the value of papers at six times the real value of goods and services being produced in the world. This is not a “failure of the regulation of the system” but rather a constitutive part of the capitalist system that speculates with all goods and values in the pursuit of obtaining the maximum amount of profit possible. Until now, the economic crisis has created 100 million more starving people and more than 50 million new unemployed people, and these figures are tending to increasing.

2) Capitalism has provoked an ecological crisis by subordinating the necessary conditions for life on this planet to the dominance of the market and profit. Each year, the world consumes a third more than what the planet is capable of regenerating. At this rate of wastage by the capitalist system, we are going to need two planets by the year 2030.

3) The global economic, climate change, food and energy crises are products of the decadence of capitalism that threatens to put an end to the existence of life and the planet. To avoid this outcome it is necessary to develop an alternative model to that of the capitalist system. A system based on:  

Solidarity and complementarity and not competition;

• A system in harmony with our mother earth rather than the looting of our natural resources;
• A system based on cultural diversity and not the crushing of cultures and impositions of cultural values and lifestyles alien to the realities of our countries:
• A system of peace based on social justice and not on imperialist wars and policies;
• In synthesis, a system that recuperates the human condition of our societies and peoples rather than reducing them to simple consumers or commodities.

"Is there an alternative to capitalism?" The short answer to the question is "yes." In fact, there are many alternatives, though not all of these are necessarily or equally desirable. I usually talk to Marxists, anarchists, Wobblies, greens, and assorted rare strains of retro-socialists, and so simply telling people that there are alternatives to capitalism, telling people that competition, exploitation, imperialism, ecological destruction, and hierarchy are NOT inevitable, is at best redundant, at worst insulting. At least for my usual crowd.

Marxism holds that class struggle is the central element of class struggle." In the present form of society, capitalism, the two main classes are the capitalists (or bourgeoisie), who own the means of producing the necessities of life; and the workers  who do not own those means of production, and therefore must work for the capitalists in order to survive. Marxism holds that such a system is exploitive as well as, in the final analysis, economically irrational. Marxism aims at the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a classless society in which goods are produced for their usefulness, not profitability. 

Attendees at the World at a Crossroads conference, held in Sydney on April 10-12 (2009), remarked that the conference could not have been better named.

As the world economy lurches into a deep recession, and the looming climate emergency reaches a crisis point, the world truly is at a crossroads.

The future will be decided in the conflict between the greedy capitalist elites and those around the world fighting for a far better world — a world free of racism, war and environmental plunder.

From six continents, 444 socialists, progressive activists and Marxist thinkers gathered to discuss, debate and learn from various struggles for human freedom, dignity and justice. More than 70 activists addressed 42 workshops during the conference.