Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The End of Poverty ?

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

Monday, August 16, 2010

The End of Poverty ? - Movie Review

by Ron Wilkinson from CADTM. I've seen this film recently and regard it as a must-see film.

The international banking industry and the international corporation have joined forces to create what is the modern large scale version of the old American “company store.” Best known in isolated mining towns, the corporation would build the company store to provide the necessities of life to its workers in the town. The wages of the workers and the prices in the company store would be aligned so that the workers never had any money left over at the end of the month. This ensured that the workers would never have the capital to be independent of the company or, even worse, to compete against it.