With the revolutions in America and France, the West moved the first step toward modern democracy. The nobility was swept away in the huge enclosed and states began to separate the political powers to eliminate the figure of the king, who embodied the ideal gentleman.
The project succeeded in part. Today, in states like Italy, it happens that although there is no longer a king, parliament, the representative body of citizens, is peopled by characters who over time have used their power due to numerous privileges and to change the rules to their advantage. The task of the parliament should be to enact laws for the people and take care of the needs of the state: now (at least in Italy) is the place where we took refuge to escape the hand of justice and to ensure a princely salary and pension .
However, even where democracy seems truly democratic, there is something abnormal. And 'my firm belief that one can not understand anything about today's society if you do not count, along with legislative, executive and judicial powers, including the economic one. In our time, the economic power has a prominent role than the other three and radically affects the behavior, but to say that way he does and what affects the lives of men should explain what.
In modern society the power of an individual is determined by how much money they have. Money is just the power of conventional units that can carry a man on the society to which it belongs: the economic power is the sum of money you have, and coincides with the power.
The rules of the capitalist appropriation of money are those that govern the entire world (with few exceptions not significant) since the fall of the USSR began with the riots of 1989.
The mechanism basis of the capitalist economy is this: having a certain amount of money, called capital, you can buy a certain quantity of goods, which in turn can be sold at a higher price than it cost, and this determines the profit. The initial cost of the goods is determined by several factors: spending on raw materials, labor power, for any equipment for the electricity, to purchase a building in which to produce, and so on. Once produced the goods, this will have a price that will be the sum of production costs plus the profit determined by the capitalist, that is, who pays the costs of production. With this mechanism, any capital increase by himself, his own entity. The ultimate goal of capitalism is precisely that of an indefinite increase of the capital itself, which results in the continuous pursuit of maximum profit. The enormous increase of wealth should ensure as a side effect on social welfare. In fact, large supply of capital means wide availability of goods for the people.
All this has serious repercussions on society. First, the entrepreneur has to deal with competition. To increase profits can not raise prices too much, or not to sell his wares. Must save money on production costs, leaving the goods at the price that the market requires. Now, what it means to save on production costs? Exploitation of cheap labor, without regard extraction of raw materials from the environment, pollution conscious and so on. Because honestly, that way, it seems a very indifferent, I feel obliged to cite an example that convinced of the truth of what has been said.
As for the cheap labor the matter is clear for us Italians, just think of the immigrants who pick tomatoes for a few euro and the Chinese who support working hours unthinkable. For multinationals, but the same holds true on a global scale: they bring in the work were very poor as Vietnam and sweatshops of the population for some penny. Some might argue that at least take work where there is only poverty. But I did not use the word "exploit" by chance: for one thing, the International Labour Organisation has estimated that only in developing countries 190 million working children aged between five and fourteen shared between Africa, Asia and America South, of which approximately 12 million work for industry. There are numerous documented cases of unhealthy working conditions, sexual abuse, inhuman hours and, needless to say, starvation wages (the names are always the same: Adidas, Nike, clothing industries, etc.). Any rebellion or trade union activity is suppressed in the bud.
Same speech to environmental conditions. Eni in 2006 voluntarily compensated the families of Syracuse who had malformed children because of mercury pollution between 1991 and 1993. This too is part of the logic of profit, someone should make good every now and then invest that money to lose in wastewater treatment plants. In the poorest parts of the world, the situation is even more dramatic because there are no reflectors and focused organizational measures to enforce the law (if there are, can do nothing or almost against the multinational giants.) Staying within Eni, in 2005 it was found that in Ecuador, near oil pumping station where they were farmland and pastures, the level of hydrocarbon contamination was five times higher than the limit allowed by law. Not only that those same lands have been the victim of "black rain" due to residual gas burned in the pumping station. This and many other cases are evidence that the indiscriminate search of profit is the enemy of humanity. The same mafia world are nothing but the most cynical expression and mechanics of capitalism.
congenital The other feature of the current economy is that, to increase your profitability, you need to increase consumption. Hence the widespread use of disposable and goods that perish easily. In real society, capitalism leads to growth exponential consumption of the goods and then created, and some exchange this wealth for social welfare. Not so: the logic of consumption, as well as being the source of many physical and psychological illness, is ravaging the planet. It should be noted that in the face of the rise of consumption there is an exponential increase in the extraction of raw materials, and raw material reserves are limited. Oil, as well as the gas is running out: it is estimated that within 50 years will end. Then maybe it will begin to extract uranium and uranium after, something else, until there will be nothing under your feet. The renewable energy sources rather have a big flaw: they are not monopolized. No one can own the sun, wind, heat from the Earth, the force of the tides. These energies do not bring high profits to energy industries, and not an alternative to hydrocarbons.
recap: the current economic mechanism is a destructive process is from the man who respect the planet. In his sights is not the Man but the capital, and this can only bring discomfort and social injustice for all, including the richest, who are slaves to this mechanism as much as a worker who extracted tantalum mines in Zaire ( the current Democratic Republic of Congo). It 's a dehumanizing process that satisfied the gentleman who wants to possess a yacht, but refuses to answer those who have no money to prevent AIDS or to support their families.
to dispel a myth about capitalism is the "anyone can become rich." Except for some extraordinary exception, the rich become richer and the poor remain poor. The large capital can easily be multiplied through the establishment of the bag: you can buy the debt, invest in stocks that yield important interests, make money by betting on the failure of companies or entire countries. Obviously those who are not in possession of huge amounts of capital is cut off from all this, and swell the ranks of the army of workers. UN agency called UNU-Wider calculated that, with some unavoidable margin of error, 85% of the world's private wealth is held by 10% of the adult population. This is a significant fact that makes us understand how excessive wealth in reality will rest on someone else's poverty. Moreover, if there were no poor people there would be nobody willing to work in slavery conditions for foreign companies, who may not maximize profits. Poverty in the village is an essential characteristic and essential to obtain low-cost labor force and to make possible a great richness in some areas (such as the European or American). Poverty is an inescapable consequence of capitalism.
Because money gives power, individuals who have in large amounts can fold directly or indirectly, the political power to their advantage. To cite an obvious case, and we close in time: the war in Iraq was done because it was believed that Saddam Hussein had hidden weapons of mass destruction for use against the West. It was clearly a lie, and in fact were never found. The truth is that oil is running out and the last reserves are located in the Middle East, Iraq's economic policy was hostile to the United States, and so they have intervened militarily to change the government. Now they have won for the oil companies in a strategic area Middle East.
Modern democracies are in fact completely in the hands of capitalists. The people believe they can vote for a candidate who carries out different things from the other parties, but in reality anyone who represents the political power is a subject of economic power. In large countries like the United States, each of the two candidates (one Republican and one Democrat) is the lobby of economic power, and whoever is elected will have to respond to them before the public. If politics is populated by butlers of capitalists, then it is impossible to oppose the dehumanizing all'incedere economy. For example, it is impossible that the policy puts a ceiling on wealth or heavily taxed higher incomes, as men should do so intertwined with the capitalists. Let alone make any kind of tax on financial speculation ... pure fiction (see Tobin Tax).
Often when they do not obey the economy, politics legislates for itself: pensions, salaries, reimbursements, invulnerability by the judiciary and so on. When you get to this point, the democratic pact is effectively dissolved, and it is the duty of people to regain the its parliament. This is not an act of anti-democratic, far from it. In fact, if it happens that politicians
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deal themselves in government buildings;
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promulgated several laws that provide substantial privileges for themselves;
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do everything to stay in office by changing parties as underwear;
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immunize you from the executive;
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open the doors of parliament to corrupt men;
then it is necessary that the entire nation will rise up and deal with the institutional order to restore true democracy. The problem of the use of violence should not even be there because the police should defend democracy, and the uprising of the people occurs in the absence of it.
which should play the role of democracy in our times is to curb the economic power. It is to demand respect for individual freedoms, to put a limit on continuous net accumulation of wealth to redistribute evenly among the citizens, to tax speculative transactions and so on. It is not the man who must obey the economy but the economy is that the man must have an end. Economic issues can no longer be a matter only of economists, given that the coin touches virtually every aspect of human life, from the psyche to relations between nations. Philosophers, psychologists, scientists all have a say in regard to the economy. You must come to understand the mechanism of capitalism seemingly unstoppable actually works only with our consent. And the consent may be revoked at any time, provided that we do together.
As long as the policy will be occupied by men in the hands of economic power or, worse, rotten and corrupt men, none of what is hoped will be over. And then we wait for a more frightening future generations, where wealth is increasingly concentrated in few hands and the rest of the world's population will have to fight wars for the latest sources energy left, will fight against the shortage of food and water caused by desertification, will be the victim of outbreaks due to overcrowding and conditions of extreme poverty a part of it. The advantage is that the current generation has the opportunity to do something epic that will remain in history and that could change the fate of the planet, but we must do it now, or it may be too late.
If you want to take note of the failure of democracy, it is necessary to talk about alternative forms of society. Personally I hope that you will reread with the eyes of modern thinkers such as Nietzsche, Proudhon, Bakunin and Stirner. Their critical reading could lead to update anarchist theories of society are very interesting. Obviously anarchism is not what the populace thinks or think that is done, ie return to a state of "animal." Quite the contrary, men should organize themselves into free associations, each with its own rules and its responsibilities, and all interconnected by a network of relationships. The boundaries of the states would fall and crumble state power. The means of producing the goods belong to the individual associations in which they are used, the police would no longer exist, but any violations would be punished in accordance with rules established by the association. Thus abolishing the central political power of the state (each association set its own law) and economic power (due to the commonality of the means of production), the man will be fully master of its own destiny.
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