In the News (from the Centre for Research on Globalization): “The expansion of world capitalism (globalization) depended on a global cheap labor economy.

“The development of industrial colonies in the Third World resulted in the relocation of industries to these countries, leading to job lay-offs and the outright closure of a wide range of productive industries in the developed countries.

“In the absence of meaningful state regulation, this relentless process of minimizing labor costs led to a dramatic compression of society’s capacity to consume.

“The exploitation of the huge labor forces in China, India and elsewhere — and the pillage and transfer of billions from ex-communist Russia and ‘neo-liberalized’ South America — filled the coffers of old financial institutions.

“Huge surplus profits spilled over into finance, real estate, and insurance, giving capital greater social and political power. This dwarfed the organization of labor, limiting its bargaining power and multiplying profits.

“The state and state policy became their instrument as public enterprises, land, resources, and banks were privatized.

“This speculative onslaught, a worldwide scramble to appropriate wealth through financial manipulation, has been the driving force behind the crisis.

“The incapacity of the capitalist system to reinvest capital in productive ways led to large scale growth of speculator capital in many forms.

“Profits were bolstered via inflated real estate based on expanded credit, highly leveraged debt and outright fraudulent ‘financial instruments.’

“Real estate speculation was extended into the working class as wage and salary earners took advantage of easy loans to join the speculation frenzy based on an ideology of irreversible rising home values.

“Having caused the financial meltdown, they have cashed in with windfall gains through the bailout money provided under the Bush and Obama administration bank bailouts. This has furthered their control over the real economy, by buying up and acquiring real economic assets; as once highly profitable companies collapse, the money managers pick up the pieces.

“The Bush/Obama bailout measures will contribute to a further destabilization by transferring large amounts of money at taxpayers’ expense into the hands of private financiers, resulting in a spiraling public debt and an unprecedented centralization of banking power.

“State-owned assets and everything under state jurisdiction is up for private acquisition as the financial establishment calls for the restructuring and privatization of state assets.

“What we are dealing with is a large-scale process of appropriation, unprecedented in history.”

My Comment: All this should explode, and the outcome depends on the awareness of what is happening. Undoubtedly, the entire system of social and economic relationships has to be re-built. But this is impossible to accomplish without a completely new approach to the meaning of the existence of society—for the sake of accumulation and consumption (an imaginary fulfillment through wealth) or for the sake of moral ascent (a feeling of reciprocity and love).

Nature (the evolutionary development of people and society) pushes us to unite. The awareness of the need allows a smooth transition to a new level of existence. Will humanity understand this?
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