Their World Or Ours?

The paper, “Policy Challenges for the Next 50 Years,” published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,  (OECD), a club of the the world’s most developed countries along with a few large developing countries, can be considered as an authoritative representation of elite thinking.

Economic stagnation is forecast. World economic growth, from an overall 3.6 percent (but only 1.2 percent for OECD countries) in the 2010-2020 decade to 2.4 percent (0.5 percent for OECD countries) in the 2050-2060 decade. The implications mean more unemployment and more inequality because capitalism is a system that requires growth. A system based on endless growth can’t function without it — slow growth (worse still,  no growth) means misery for working people as the recent years of so-called “recovery” from the 2008 economic collapse has demonstrated.

Among the remedies prescribed by the OECD:
“Worker mobility (e.g. pension portability” which is code for privatizing public-retirement systems. It also presupposes that working people have pensions connected to their jobs, but in the United States that is a relic of the past for the vast majority of employees. At best, a worker might have a “defined contribution” plan such as a 401(k) that mostly relies on the employee’s own contributions and shifts the risks from employer to employee. A public retirement system has no need for “portability”; only a privatized system free of employer responsibility and job security does.

“Enact social insurance reforms to maintain labour supply in the face of rising longevity and an ageing workforce.” means advocating people work more years before being eligible for retirement and receive less money on which to retire.

“Flexible” labor markets that are “pursued in a way that cushions their potentially negative impact on equality.” Another way of saying speedups and layoffs continually introduced by capitalists subject to relentless competitive pressures as more and more new technology is introduced. But just how are the falling wages and substitution of part-time work for full-time generated by labor “flexibility” not going to create a “negative impact” on equality?

Capitalism already fails to produce jobs. Professors John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney calculate that the “global reserve army” — workers who are underemployed, unemployed or “vulnerably employed” (including informal workers) totals 2.4 billion. In contrast, the world’s wage workers total only 1.4 billion!

The new view is that the working poor are not “deserving” because they are “too lazy” The majority of poor non-senior households in America have someone who works (62 percent). Further, roughly one in five poor households has a full-time, year-round worker. Eighty percent of families with children receiving means-tested assistance for food, housing or health insurance have a worker in the family. Or they did not put in the effort in school they should have – so they “deserve” low wages. Among families with children receiving means-tested assistance, 40 percent have some college coursework, an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree – or more.

 Martin Luther King Jr:
 “In the simplistic thinking of [the early part of the 20th Century], the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We have come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands it does not eliminate all poverty.”

Martin Luther King then concludes:
“We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking. The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”

 To criticise capitalism and to suggest there an alternative and better way of life, more relevant to the times, is to be branded as a utopian dreamer.

A rational economic system designed to meet human needs, rather than profit, would have no need to keep growing. But capitalism is designed for profit, and requires continual growth to maintain itself. This calls for harsher austerity and the increased coercive force that will be necessary to implement it. This is what is on offer by the world’s elites. Together with profit, competition is the driving force in business and are behind a plethora of  conflicts and corruption, to the land-grabbing from indigenous people and the abuse of migrant workers.

“Competition good, it’s part of human nature; it’s the only means to motivate and regulate.” So say the fundamentalist believers in the profit system. “Without competition, mediocrity would prevail, apathy and indifference triumph.” argue the apologists for exploitation. All attention is focused on the end result – on winning, ignoring the means. ‘Succeeding’ is all that matters, no matter the impact or effect – human or environmental. The inevitable collateral damage is seen as an acceptable side effect of far-reaching division and separation, leading to conflict, suffering and violence. If, for example, driving costs down entails employing child labour to work in sweatshops, that’s fine as long as prices are competitive and sales increase. Politicians are ideologically driven to secure votes and climb the greasy pole. Their manipulative motives distorted and dishonest, their campaign promises hollow.

Humanity and the planet need to imagine new ideas and revolutionary ways of living.  We live in a world of abundance; there is food and water enough for everyone, there is no need for a single child to go hungry, or die of hunger related illnesses, as around 22,000 do today. All that is required is that we cooperate with one another instead of constantly competing. Cooperation and sharing unites, encourages trust and builds relationships; competition divides, it sets people against one another. Cooperation and sharing are key requirements in bringing about social harmony justice and peace.