JUST recently we heard of the news about thousands of people encamping at Times Square in New York City. People are protesting against corporate greed, the obvious result or consequence of promoting Capitalism. Like in the movie Matrix Revolution, people have awakened from their stupor and realized they are being sucked up by a privileged group composed of a few individuals; That the world they knew as real is just a 3D mockup of the true reality of the human condition. Like in the Philippines, the human condition is worsening due to the stresses in the economic systems of the world. Many have realized it and have now taken some action by joining these protests now spreading like wildfire to different modern cities of the world. From Times Square, the realization has now spread to Rome, Italy. Italians are themselves protesting against the existing system of exploitation called Capitalism.
Former US President Bill Clinton himself admitted that we live in a world of extreme injustice. Most of the world's resources are being controlled by a silent few. Corporate greed has widened the chasm between the rich and the poor such that the poor now dominate the world. And the silent few, those who control the levers of our society, remains apathetic to the suffering of the rest of the world.
Credit that to a system that allows greed to be replaced by more greed. Capitalism, supposedly the ideology that triumphed over Communism after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the ‘90s has become a self-destructive ogre that eats up the world’s resources and enslaves most of us.
The nature of Capitalism itself means destruction. Imagine allowing thousands to exploit virgin forests and lakes, and pristine rivers of the world, to extract those riches beneath and the living from their habitat to be sold, in the name of Capitalism. In capitalism, every single thing is game. Even human beings are just commodities under this enslaving system.
Capitalism knows no limits -- it is only the creativity of the world that limits its expansion. In the next few years, capitalist greed will overcome even the skies and the exploitation of space is in the horizon. What will prevent capitalists from taking over the moon or the nearest star or even the nearest galaxy? Greed knows no bounds. Right now, everything has a price tag. The water we drink, the air we even breathe and the ground we tread on have their price tags. Nary has a soul moved without paying something.
It is time for us to break the chains and create a more environmentally sound system, a system which allows every soul to feel free, and which breaks the boom-bust cycle, of uncertainties and of unbridled greed. End Capitalism now and create a Socialist society that respects the rights of the individual for enterprise without forgetting the welfare of the many.
(Issue of Oct. 24-30, 2011)
