MORE ON GLOBAL DEMOCRACY.

         Further to the post "Manifesto for a global democracy" which was first posted on Federal Union,  Paul Feldman has come back with the following. 

 Democracy is more than a governance issue.

     The fanfare launch of a Manifesto for Global Democracy backed by significant thinkers ought to be a cause for celebration. Unfortunately, its content is so weak that at best it’s a missed opportunity and at worst a step backwards. 

     Among the signatories are democracy expert and professor Daniele Archibugi, Noam Chomsky, the writer and journalist George Monbiot, globalisation expert Saskia Sassen and scientist and activist Vandana Shiva. They and others wrote and signed the manifesto. Much of the document states the obvious, though it’s none the worse for doing so. You can only nod in agreement when the manifesto says:

In spite of their many peculiarities, differences and limitations, the protests that are growing all over the world show an increasing discontent with the decision-making system, the existing forms of political representation and their lack of capacity for defending common goods. They express a demand for more and better democracy.

      It portrays the “emergence of regressive and destructive processes resulting from the economic and financial crisis, increased social inequalities, climate change and nuclear proliferation” and concludes: “Global crises require global solutions.”  

      However, the assertion that the failure of national and international leaders to deal with global events shows merely that “existing forms of global governance are insufficient” is superficial and wrong. That’s because the 872-word document avoids, omits, ignores, rejects or sidesteps the nature of our current social system, aka capitalism.

Read his full article HERE: 

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MANIFESTO FOR A GLOBAL DEMOCARCY.

 

        June 27 saw the launch of a manifesto for a global democracy. What's your take on it, where would you criticise it, what would you add, what would you take out. If it is to be a global democracy, your voice must be in there somewhere. If you are pissed off with the way things are run at the moment and think we the people should have the controlling saw on what happens to us, then you have to raise your voice, join in the debate, let your voice be heard or it will never happen.

We hivty hiv a say in this.

MANIFESTO FOR A GLOBAL DEMOCRACY

       Politics lags behind the facts. We live in an era of deep technological and economic change that has not been matched by a similar development of public institutions responsible for its regulation. The economy has been globalized but political institutions and democracy have not kept pace. In spite of their many peculiarities, differences and limitations, the protests that are growing all over the world show an increasing discontent with the decision-making system, the existing forms of political representation and their lack of capacity for defending common goods. They express a demand for more and better democracy.

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THE GREAT LONDON RIP-OFF.

           The corporate world's latest suction pump for sucking public money into their coffers, starts in about three weeks, this time it goes by the name of "The Olympics". Not only is our millionaire government spending £14 billion to get the corporate greed feast rolling, but it has also allowed certain firms tax free trading for the period from March 30 to November 8 at an estimated cost to the public purse of £700 million. Yep, it's austerity time and we're all in this together.                                       This from A World to Win.

 

London 2012 corporate sponsors cash in

         Human sporting talent and achievement? Inspiration? Yes, that’s the Olympic spirit – or rather what’s being exploited to the hilt by corporate sponsors, backed by new laws, when London 2012 opens in 25 days.

        For the “biggest thing this nation will have delivered in living memory” (Seb Coe) is being done at the expense of the people of London and the UK and their rights.

        The justification for spending some £14 billion of taxpayers’ money is that corporate sponsorship makes up the rest of the cost. But association with their brands will reap them much more than the paltry £1bn that GE, McDonalds and BP, for example, have coughed up so far. New tax rules mean that these companies will not have to pay tax on their Olympic operations between 30 March and 8 November. The loss to the Treasury is estimated at some £700 million.

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IN CAPITALISM, THIS IS HOW IT IS DONE.

  We all know that capitalism is all about deals behind closed doors, maximising profit, increasing market share and reducing costs. So we all know that deals will be done to get rid of the opposition, to get the edge on the competition. That's capitalism, underhand deals, back-handers and anything else that might up your share value, and increase that sacred profit margin. Barclay's latest little scam is just business as usual, normal practice, how it's done, another wee trick for the book. What it is not, is something out of the ordinary for capitalism. It is a system that can't be reformed or modified to benefit all in our society, it is a gambling casino rigged for the rich.The following is a short extract taken from  A World To Win, which puts it very eloquently:

 

I earned it all honestly, fair and square and transparently!!

Rigging markets par for the course

      The way Barclays and several other banks colluded to fix inter-bank interest rates is a blatant example of what is actually par for the course in big business. Price fixing, secret agreements to divide markets, cartels and other nefarious goings on are as old as capitalism itself.

     How could it be otherwise within a system where the benchmark is the maximisation of profit by any means, fair or foul? Dividend payments to shareholders are based on total profits, which, if they don’t rise year on year, indicate failure. Share prices tend to fall as a result.

    So if so-called retail banking doesn’t create enough profits, then use depositors’ money to speculate in a rigged market. Irresistible for Barclays, RBS and the other banks caught in the spotlight.

       This kind of underhand activity is not the exception but the rule. Only today, the UK Office of Fair Trading alleged that Mercedes-Benz and five UK dealers of its trucks and vans were involved in price fixing and the sharing of commercially sensitive information between 2007 and 2010.

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IT'S NOT THE 30's - IT'S FAR WORSE!!!

       

             As the "financial crisis" rumbles on with the pundits looking for growth, and in some case looking with a microscope to get some encouragement, there is the tendency to spout figures about the future recovery and give percentages. This isn't science speaking, this is guesswork and it is also based on the theory that we got out of it last time, so we will get out of it this time. Not always a sure bet. Capitalism develops, it changes and morphs into a different type of exploiting beast. What happened after the 30's can not be taken as standard procedure. After all it took the second world war to drag the old capitalist beast out of the depression. I doubt if even that would work this time round. Like I said, today's big fat capitalist beast is a different animal all together.

        In an interesting article on "AWorld to Win", Fawzi Ibrahim argues that the present crisis demonstrates that global capitalism has for the first time reached the “critical zone” – the point of “capital deficiency”. Below is a short extract from his article. Well worth a read.

         In a boom, profits are high; capital accumulates, yielding even more profits which are then invested to produce more profits and so on. However, if for any reason the rate of profit falls, then profits would follow suit unless more capital is invested to counterbalance the fall in the rate of profit. The amount of additional investment necessary to compensate for a fall in the rate of profit would depend on the original or baseline investment.

         For instance, a small initial capital of £10m at an annual rate of profit of say 5% would yield a profit of £500,000. If the rate of profit fell by 1%, to 4%, the profit would drop to £400,000. To compensate for this drop and keep profit at the same level of £500,000, investment must go up to £12.5m, a rise of £2.5m, and a relatively small amount which may not be too excessive for the market to provide. However, if the baseline investment was £10bn instead of £10m, then the additional investment necessary to maintain profits for the same drop in the rate of profit would be 1,000 times greater at £2,500m. If the rate of profit fell by more than 1%, an even greater additional investment would be necessary.

         In a highly developed economies such as those of the USA and the UK in which the baseline capital investment is in trillions, even a relatively small drop in the rate of profit would necessitate additional investment in billions if profits are to be maintained. If profits are to increase, as it is the aim of all corporations, the additional investment would have been even greater.

In general, therefore, as capitalism develops and capital accumulates, the baseline investment increases and with it the additional investment necessary to counteract a fall in the rate of profit. At some time, when capital accumulation reaches the astronomical levels we have today, a tipping point is reached at which the increase in investment necessary to counterbalance a drop in the rate of profit becomes prohibitively high, greater than the amount the market can provide. This is the “critical zone”, the zone of capital deficiency.

         While the outward symptoms of the great depression of the ‘30s and the present financial/economic meltdown are very similar – bank failures, economic downturn, unemployment, hardship and near-collapse of the system – the underlying terrains are anything but; in fact they are polar opposites. The 30s’ depression was one of abundance, capital abundance; that of 2008-09 is one of deficiency, capital deficiency.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.

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