By Steven
Miller
Every time Humanity reaches a critical juncture, the nature of property
starts to destabilize and transform. All forms of property are
transforming today, including personal, public and private property
(1). One form of property—corporate property, the most toxic form of
private property—is beginning to devour all the others. Global
corporations now dwarf the economies of virtually every country.
Personal property, in the form of homes, for example, is disintegrating
in the Mortgage crisis. National wealth, in the form of the vast
infrastructures, from ports to public universities to
telecommunications that were built in the last 50 years, is being
turned over to corporations worldwide. Even the US government has been
mostly privatized since 2001. Public space and therefore public access
is vanishing, even as income is polarizing faster than ever before in
human history.
Up through the 20th Century, most human relationships flowed from our
sense of community and culture, our recognition of our common humanity.
Now the process of Globalization, under corporate domination, is
systematically dissolving all previous social relations and
commodifying every aspect of everyday life and what it means to be
human.
All the traditional ways that people have used to define themselves are
being altered by corporations. These concepts include the ideas of
nationality, citizenship, race, class, language, health, human rights,
gender, career, family and virtually every relationship between human
beings. Every human need is being driven into the marketplace to be
bought and sold. Then our humanity is sold back to us at a profit.
Jeremy Rifkin describes the process this way: “Imagine a world
where virtually every activity outside the confines of family relations
is a paid-for experience, a world where traditional reciprocal
obligations and expectations mediated by feelings of faith,
empathy, and solidarity are replaced by contractual relations in
the form of paid memberships, subscriptions, admission charges,
retainers and fees.” (2)
The future of global capitalism is that each individual is a lone
production unit in a pay-as-you-go global marketplace where everyone is
an atomized consumer. Then you get to pay to experience life; the more
you pay, the better it is! No more human or inalienable rights here.
However there is a fly in this ointment. When the vast majority is
bankrupted and dispossessed, who is left to be a consumer?
Corporate power over human affairs flows from the simple fact that they
claim technology as their private property. Then they proclaim that no
one can have access unless they can pay for it. Demanding the right to
exploit and profit from human misery, corporations are now creating
billions of sick and miserable humans just as they are creating a
planet riddled with escalating environmental disasters.
The technology to produce true human abundance now exists, but it is
owned by the wrong class of people. In fact the only guarantee today of
personal property is to guarantee public property and abolish corporate
private property.
The US is putting $2.5 billion a week into privatizing Iraq. Imagine
what would happen if we spent $2.5 billion a week on ending
hunger and homelessness, creating free health care, providing education
so that every single human on earth could realize their true creative
potential? This is what a cooperative society means.
The profound world-historic step that confronts humanity today demands,
among other things, that human beings once again alter our self-concept
beyond all measure! Corporations are certainly working to change it
their way. Let’s just finish the job and do it right. Just as people
fought for centuries not to be slaves, we can fight not to be
commodities. Humans can be so much better than this.
(1)Many observers discuss the current transformations of property as
well
as the implications for human access and for society:
Mike Davis. Planet of Slums
Naomi Klein. The Shock Doctrine
Jeremy Rifkin. The Age of Access
William I. Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism
Dan Schiller. How To Think About Information
Gary Teeple. Globalization and the Decline of
Social Reform
(2) Rfikin, p 9
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We’re NOT For Sale! |
Protesting plans for water privatization in Detroit.
PHOTO/MICHIGAN WELFARE RIGHTS
|
How the Elected Servants of the People Serve the People in Illinois |
By
Sheridan Talbott
On this Democratic watch, our jobs continue to decline as globalization takes its toll. Difficulty continues to plague our schools. Healthcare remains a growing crisis. Seniors struggle on limited incomes and our younger adults face a daunting economic future.
Jobs are being lost to corporate profit. People’s homes are foreclosed on, others under threat, for corporate profit. Healthcare is denied, education of our children deteriorates, the scam of credit card debt, all for corporate profit.
We’re in a fight—whether we like it or not.
In 2006, Poverty levels increased in 85% of Illinois counties. 2007 promises the same. A million and a half Illinois residents now live below the poverty line. A third are children. 700,000 live in “extreme poverty.”
Supposedly, our leaders have a responsibility to us; to resolve the problems we face as a people, to act to enrich our lives, our culture, our society, to enhance our future and to end unnecessary want and hardship. If so, the Democrats are failing us miserably and, at times, betraying us.
In 2007 they had a clear, unambiguous opportunity to stand with us against Ameren and Com/Ed rate increases. Instead, they hid in a legislative chaos they created and substituted a “rate relief package” for real action. Their actions guaranteed Ameren and Com/Ed’s corporate profit at our expense. The rate hikes will siphon an estimated $2.3 billion out of our pockets each year and cost Illinois the loss of an additional 20,000 jobs.
Amy Rynell, Director of the Mid-America Institute on Poverty, has pointed out poverty in Illinois is deepening and widening. “…we’re talking about people who once considered themselves middle class but are now struggling just to make ends meet.”
A recent analysis by The Congressional Budget Office’s shows income for the top 1% of households almost tripled during the last 25 years. The bottom 20% has risen very little, if at all. And those in the “middle?” Most are in an economic slide toward the bottom.
The old “stereotypes” no longer hold any water—if they ever really did. Whites make up the largest group of those living below the poverty line in Illinois at over 40%. Africans Americans and Hispanics combined equal a little over 50%.
In their relentless pursuit for profits, corporations like Ameren, or Ford, or Whirlpool, all of them create real want and need. In today’s world, wealth for the few is made by impoverished the many.
On this Democratic watch $1.171 billion has been cut from the budget for public services. Time and again, the Democrats prove themselves to be corporate allies—just like the Republicans. Neither offers us any solutions. They have none. You can’t serve two masters.
It’s time, past time, to get off this Democratic plantation. The line’s drawn in the sand. It’s time to stand by those who truly stand with us. It’s time for “change,” real change.
This article originated in the People's Tribune
PO Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654, 773-486-3551, info@peoplestribune.org.
Feel free to reproduce unless marked as copyrighted.
Please include this message with reproductions of the article.
PO Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654, 773-486-3551, info@peoplestribune.org.
Feel free to reproduce unless marked as copyrighted.
Please include this message with reproductions of the article.
