The stock market makes corrections which never really get rid of its mistakes, and always performs to enrich a few at the expense of many. It operates as a subsidiary of a larger system, which works in exactly the same way. From Wall Street to Main Street in the USA, and from the more developed nations to the less developed states of the world, this system has never been as threatening to the future of the race as it is at present.
The climate change debate between 90 percent of the science community which views it as at least partly a creation of human activity, and the 10% who blame everything on god or other invisible scapegoats, fails to name a cause other than "us". Even in that overwhelming majority, while there is mention of over production, greed, selfishness, rapacious use of resources and other euphemisms for capitalism, seldom is heard that identifying word. But whether we use the label or not, it is becoming clear that the pressures on nature, in all its forms, are pressing upon what nature, through humanity, creates as organizing principles that are the foundation of the global economy. These are placing all elements of survival under dangerously heavier burdens.
The stress factor in human life may be approaching that of the Honeybee, which seems to be vanishing at alarming rates and for some of the same reasons that people feel pressured. An economic crime against nature is creating massive strains on all environments, and on all creatures great and small, which depend on those environments. Commonly dubbed a globalization that is spreading wealth and democracy wherever it goes the blight on natural and a social environment is nothing but old fashioned capitalism.
The Honeybees are placed under perverse burdens by the economics of agriculture, which have been breeding them in special forms so as to assist in creating larger crops of food products to sell at markets. Under the domain of capital, the word product is far more important than the modifier, food. Whether it is food, clothing, shelter, medical care, consumer conceits or manipulated fancies, under the rules of capital accumulation it is the product and its sale that looms largest. That is the antihuman nature of a system that effects private profits by causing social loss.
Market capitalism demands subjects trained to think of their individual responsibility for survival, and to see social groups isolated in ethnic, racial or religious categories. Balkanized groups adhering to the special identity they are socialized to accept are fine, as long as they are in competition for what are deemed scarce resources. But they must never see themselves as part of a social organism that might function best for them if they cooperated, in politically and economically democratic ways. Rather, the isolated shopper is deemed the operative mechanism, in order to buy all the things necessary to make it a successful individual, even though that designation is denied most members of an alienated, anti-social planet of consumers.
Isolating people guarantees that even if a level of material comfort is achieved, the individual will remain anxiously stressed enough to warrant the marketing of therapies and drugs to substitute for the peace of mind that might be available in a less alienating environment. We thus have millions with physical security who still seek a psychological commodity labeled personal self-esteem. They have to purchase lessons, therapies, exercises and other psycho-religious products to feel genuine, primarily because they are denied membership in a social union of citizens that might create a less stressful and more balanced reality.
Material security esteem looms much larger than psycho-self esteem in the real world, but billions fail to achieve the first, so that millions can fail to enjoy the second. Global research done by the UN reveals the same results as national research done by the USA: The gap between the richest and poorest human beings is wider than ever, and the number of people reduced to poverty is increasing. Worldwide, billions live below the poverty line, while in the richest nation in the world, millions are consigned to physical destitution in a society that spends billions of dollars on its pets. This is not the result of a demon power ruling a nation, a corporation or an NGO. It is due to the proper functioning of a system, which works best, when it enriches some people, at the expense of most people.
Propaganda has made it seem that producing products for sale in a market in order to accrue private profit is the most natural way to organize an economic system. And it is as natural as a mother charging her infant five dollars a meal for breast-feeding. Making such perverse anti-socialism seem natural was easier to get away with in the past, but evidence is mounting that the world is under enormous pressure and facing dangerous survival problems for humanity. Not an individual, identity group, national, religious or ethnic subdivision is threatened, but the race itself. The Honeybee may be helpless under the domain of capital economics, but if the people remain so they may well go the way of the Honeybee.
It would be simplistic to claim that all of our problems are caused by capitalist economics. The truth is that only most of our problems are caused by capitalism. The sooner we stop looking for demons, angels, heroes and villains as the reasons for war, hunger and depression, or peace, a full belly and happiness, the sooner we may enlarge our focus to the organizing principles of our political economics. As long as we entrust the production of food, clothing and health care, or toys, stereos and skis, to simply creating a full bank account for one stockholder, the sooner we will end the hideous reality of empty stomachs for thousands of human beings. In a world where some overeat until they are forced to diet, while others starve until they are forced to die, it isn’t because of the universe, nor is it any individual leader. It is the minority created, majority sustained system of capitalism that must be changed, in order for humanity to have a hopeful future. That majority needs to act in its own interests, which calls for far more change than some individual at the top. It is revolution from the bottom, where most of us really live, that is necessary. Now, more than ever.
