Thursday, April 28, 2011

Manufacturing Poor People

Click here to access article by Vi Ransel from Global Research.  [She is Senior Editor of anti-capitalism on Thomas Paine’s Corner, a private blog, and is also a researcher and poet.] 

This author provides the best description of how neo-liberal capitalism functions throughout the world that I've seen in quite some time. The more accurate reports I've read are usually written by academics who treat the subject in rather abstract terms. This article contains real substance, the real blood, sweat, and tears of the effects of neo-liberal capitalism on working people. 

My only criticism is that she places too much emphasis on what I believe was true in recent decades: the exploitation of Western corporations of 3rd world countries to the benefit of Western countries. To be sure, this continues; but the point that I have been arguing for some time is that the world is entering a new phase where national boundaries are much less important. (She hints of this trend in the last paragraph.)

Neo-liberalism has been smashing through national boundaries in order to better exploit all workers of the world. Boundaries exist now mostly to contain and control working people. Capitalists can and do move workers easily to any place on the planet to serve their interests, just like they move their factories, farming operations, and money to anyplace where they can extract more profits. 

The end result will be a world where a tiny 1st world will exist on little islands of heavily guarded gated communities scattered throughout the world, and surrounded by huge populations of barely subsisting and heavily policed working people. This dystopia need not be our future, but it will be if we don't organize in some fashion to stop it.