THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM: A RADICAL CRITIQUE.
(5.11.06)
This is a 50+ page radically
critical analysis making clear why we cannot develop a satisfactory and
sustainable society unless we eventually change to a very different economic
system. (See The New Economy.)
|
Our
economic system is the basic cause of most of the serious problems evident in
the world, especially the damage to the environment, the poverty and
deprivation of the Third World, armed conflict and the social breakdown in
the richest countries. The
central faults in the system are:-- a)
making production for profit within a free market the basic
social mechanism, thereby producing grossly unjust and inappropriate
development and distributions, and b) making limitlessly affluent
living standards and economic growth the goals, and thereby ensuring that
our society is grossly ecologically unsustainable. . |
Contents:
This
economy must have growth.
The
Limits to Growth Analysis of our global situation.
It
is a Ògrowth and trickle downÓ rationale.
The
volume of wasteful and unnecessary production is enormous
(but essential).
Growth
here often causes loss there.
Growth
creates or intensifies all the big global problems.
The
environment problem
As
the economy grows the quality of life falls!
This economy fails to do what is needed, just or
ecologically sustainable.
Profit
ignores need.
The
marvellous free market
ÒThe market makes the most efficient
allocations.Ó
The
freedom of enterprise
ÒMove
over pal – Find something else to sell."
What
regulates? The market, or needs and rights.
Endless,
mindless, un-winnable competition.
Privatisation.
Public
vs private ownership of firms
Unemployment
Payment
for work.
Work.
Lousy
work
Wages
Inequality
Deprivation
and social breakdown FIX
Globalisation
Origins, nature and effects.
The grab by the corporate super-rich.
Third
World ÒdevelopmentÓ
Imperialism.
Class
war.
The
morality of the market is unacceptable.
3. MONEY,
CAPITAL, INTERST, DEBT.
Interest,
Debt.
The
money creation and banking system.
The
distortion; the warped understand that results.
Some of the essential definitions built into
conventional economics are
viciously misleading.
Taking
the GDP as the important measure.
Acceptance
of the market as the basic mechanism.
The
human nature assumptions within the theory.
It is not a general theory of economics; it is only
about a capitalist
economy.
Economic
theory as part of capitalist ideology.
We
should therefore study POLITICAL ECONOMY, not economics.
Economists.
We
should be very angry.