Re: torn

I was struck by a few lines in a recent posting to a list I'm on, lines
reflecting loathing, disgust and accusation, and perhaps even a dose of
arcane knowledge:

>What's the need for all this trade (as if i didn't know !! >Most/much trade
involves trash - processed foods, guns, gas, drugs, the >grunge of
capitalism - all to impoverish people, destroy families, exploit >animals,
destroy democracy, trash the planet, (shut out god ?)

This had me wondering whether the sorry state of the world could indeed be
attributed to a particular source — the owners of capital.  It would seem
that two words, "capital" and "capitalism", have become synonyms for all of
the evils of the world. Everything has become the "grunge of capitalism".
The writer of those lines is not alone in his view.  Many of the bulletins
coming out of Seattle during the past week suggest that many share it.

Is capital and its owners, the capitalists, really responsible for the sorry
state of the world?  It would seem to me that even where there is little
capital —  in the remote outbacks of the world (or the "periphery", as some
would call it) —  people do nasty things to each other.  But then perhaps
capital plays a role.  What role might it have played in the killings of
Rwanda, or Sierra Leon, or Kosovo, or Afghanistan or any of the other places
in which people have engaged in mass slaughter?  What role is it playing
currently in the destruction of the Chechyns?  It may have supplied the
guns, bullets, bombs and machetes, but would it have supplied the
intolerance and animosity that compelled people to do what they did?

Capital was almost certainly present in the slaughter of six million Jews
during World War II.  You could not have done that without capital or
capitalists to provide it.  But capital also played another role there.  It
provided a credible reason for genocide.  Jews were, after all, the owners
of large volumes of capital, especially finance capital, and they were using
it to attempt to dominate the world, much like the capitalists of today.
The "Protocols of Zion" said so.  It was only right and proper that the
world was rid of Jews because a life under their domination would have been
intolerable, except of course to themselves.

It is possible that far more than conflict and genocide can be laid at
capital's doorstep.  It must surely be playing a role in the falling water
tables of densely populated third world countries, the pollution from
automobiles in densely populated cities, the destruction of once remote
rainforests, and the growing desertification of parts of Africa.  Population
growth and the fact that growing numbers of people need water, want
transportation to increasingly distant places of work, and want to continue
to live even if it means scraping out a subsistence living in the desert or
the jungle have little to do with it.

Capital does of course play a role.  It provides the water pumps that drain
the water tables, the cars and buses that provide the transportation, and
the hoes and other equipment needed for subsistence agriculture.  And,
indeed, in some parts of the world, it has displaced subsistence agriculture
with large cattle ranches and coffee plantations so that people in the rich
world can have their coffee and take their kids to Macdonalds.  But, surely,
if rich world people were aware of this they would stop drinking coffee and
stop eating hamburgers.  Wouldn't they?

The nefarious nature of capital has me wondering how we might bring it under
control.  Rioting, dressing up as sea turtles, carrying placards, or even
just jumping up and down waving one's arms in the air may give people a buzz
but may not be too helpful in the long run.  Asserting our rights as members
of a civil society is always bothersome because it raises the rather nasty
question of how civil we really are, a question which many of us might not
want to examine too closely.  Setting some rules around the behaviour of
capital, especially its international behaviour, now also seems to have been
roundly rejected.  This may leave us with little more than a good old
fashioned scapegoating and witch-hunting.  The necessary ideology and
fervour may already be there: capitalists are evil and must be hunted down.
And if you can't go after the big boys, you can surely smash the windows of
the guy that runs the coffee franchise down the street.  Doing that may be
better than putting on a brown shirt, dragging him into the street and
giving him a beating, but it's only a difference of degree.

Ed Weick