Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Fix the economy, not Wall Street

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, April 30, 2010

Fix the economy, not Wall Street

by David Korten from Yes! Magazine.

Korten has been a popular critic of corporations in the US for quite some time. However his insights and solutions to corporate control of US society has been, in my opinion, very limited and short sighted. He appears to be a classic libertarian--an advocate of reforms to the advanced financial form of capitalism that exists today. The reforms take the form of turning back the clock on capitalist development to a 19th century economy when small capitalism is seen as beautiful.

But this is like complaining about an adult person who has turned out to be a criminal, and wishing that he could return to his childhood when he was such a cute, well-behaved little guy. This kind of thinking has infected so much of "progressive" thinking in the US and threatens to derail any real solutions to the various crises of capitalism.