THE BIG LIES OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM 1. Capitalism generates jobs. Right? WRONG.

Competition may initially create jobs but leads inevitably to over-production of the same commodities or over-provision of the same services by competing companies, resulting in takeovers, redundancies or export of jobs to countries providing cheaper labour. This is what is casually accepted as the economic cycle . Worse still, jobs are created in one country at the expense of another, or exported between countries creating the illusion of job-creation whilst increasing unemployment. 2. Competition offers greater choice and diversity. Right? WRONG. Everyone knows the multiplication of television channels just creates more of the same. Similarly competition among manufacturers of cars and most other commodities leads not to greater diversity but to greater standardisation. That is why vast sums of money need to be wasted on ludicrous advertising to create a grand illusion of distinctiveness between virtually identical products and services. Brand identity replaces true diversity and choice. 3. Competition results in cost-efficiency. Right? WRONG. The pursuit of profit and low-cost production results in the greatest imaginable wastage of natural resources and human potentials. For example the production of one ounce of gold produces thirty tons of toxic waste and depends on labour so cheap it is a form of slavery thus also wasting the productive human potentials of every worker involved. 4. Capitalism can create full-employment. Right? WRONG. Capitalism can only ever create anything near full-employment by massively underemploying the potential skills and social contributions of its employees - instead employing ever more people in low-grade, low-skill, low-paid McJobs which cannot even pay a living wage. 5. Capitalism protects women s rights and the family. Right? WRONG. An economy such as America s, in which millions of mothers have to leave their children alone and travel long distances to do two or more minimum-wage jobs and still not afford decent housing or medical care - is hardly family friendly . Protecting women s rights and the family means protecting the right of women to be minimum-wage slaves. 6. Capitalism values the individual. Right? WRONG. Capitalism buys the individual, and values them according to their market value alone. What made capitalism different from earlier forms of the market economy is that

people don t simply sell products they make themselves. Instead they sell themselves as employees they sell their bodies, brains and time to be employed as instructed by their employer. Capitalism is economic prostitution of the individual. 7. Capitalist societies are mostly democratic. Right? WRONG. The most politically powerful and important institutions in capitalist states - and the ones in which most people lead their lives - are private companies in which there is no democracy, no elections of any sort and rule is principally by management decree it is determined by financiers and corporate shareholders. 8. Capitalism can cope with ecological problems with the right will. Right? WRONG. No gas, oil or nuclear energy corporation would ever tolerate losing their profits to community groups or towns that decided to declare energy independence - to go off-grid and generate energy from their own wave- or wind turbines, solar energy sources, energysaving programmes, agricultural and industrial waste burners. The only choice is between the end of capitalism or the end of the planet. 9. Capitalism promotes free trade and a free market. Right? WRONG. Capitalism can t cope with free trade, and globalisation is the biggest attempt to restrict it for example through unfair trading agreements which restrict imports from developing countries, the enforcement of exports on them which ruin their domestic industries and food production, and the enforced privatisation of their public services and national industries in favour of ownership by multi-national corporations. Global capitalism certainly can t cope with an international free market economy for that would mean free movement not only of capital but free movement of labour across countries and continents. Not even the European Union can allow a free market ever tried getting low-cost mortgages or loans from Germany or lower-cost cars from Europe? 10. Capitalist societies are free societies. Right? WRONG. Capitalism forces individuals to sell their time to their employers. Freedom means being free to use one s time to engage in freely chosen creative activity that fulfils an individual s unique potentials and allows them to contribute to society through them. But the only types of productive, creative activity or work allowed in capitalism are those with market value in the creation of profit for employers. Education in capitalism does not cultivate peoples talents so that they can make a valuable contribution to society. Instead its focus is only on skills with a market value in the creation of profit. 11. Capitalism is wealth creating. Right? WRONG. Not only is more than 90% of the wealth of capitalist economies owned by less than 10% of the population, but is gained by creating general time-poverty and by

exploitation of low-wage labour, both here and in developing countries. The type of labour that has the market value to create most monetary wealth tends to be of a purely selfserving, calculative or mind-numbing type that impoverishes the soul and distorts, demeans or denies time for human relationships. Wealth in capitalism means selling one s soul to the Devil in order to attain material gain. 12. Markets are needed to know what people want. Right? WRONG. How about just asking them? Today s information technology provides the perfect means of finding out what sort of products people want, in what variety, with what new features or changes, and at what sort of prices. Markets only offer them ranges of products to choose from over which they have no democratic choice. Worse still, it uses advertising to make them think they can fulfil their deepest psychological, emotional, sexual and even spiritual needs by purchasing branded material commodities. 13. A highly regulated or planned economy has never worked. Right? WRONG. The most efficient and affluent economy ever created was the highly regulated social-market economy created in West Germany after the war. Soviet-style planned economies only failed through over-centralisation, lack of computing power and overinvestment in arms manufacturing rather than consumer products. Their replacement by state capitalist economies in counties such as Russian and China has resulted only in greater poverty, wealth inequalities and the domination of corrupt plutocratic or autocratic oligarchies maintaining one-party rule. 14. Capitalism is economic freedom from reliance on the state. Right? WRONG. In all capitalist states, the private sector itself effectively relies on massive indirect and direct state intervention and subsidies - whether through the expensive and inefficient out-sourcing of previously public services, the exorbitant fees now paid to private consultancies, the bail- out of failed banks and companies, the bill picked up by the state for large-scale private sector redundancies, the use of governments and even military force to protect domestic markets, and to secure foreign contracts, trade deals and raw material sources by whatever means; not to mention the funding of educational and training that provides private companies with their pools of skilled labour. 2

THE NEW INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT The stark choice facing all those who are aware of it - and prepared to face it - is clear. It is a choice between the end of capitalism or the end of humanity, and of the planet as we know it. Only a new, internationally implemented anti-capitalist mandate can save the planet and save humanity from the economic, ecological and military catastrophes being

wrought by global capitalism. The primary aim of The New Internationalist Movement is simply to gather people willing to register their support for The New Internationalist Mandate for Change that is drafted below - thus helping to create an international movement that petitions for, promotes, promulgates and builds up worldwide pressure for the implementation of its proposals. If you wish to comment on or just register your own support (or that of your organization) for The New Internationalist Mandate for Change, simply subscribe here - and please mail this page to any other potential subscribers! .

THE NEW INTERNATIONALIST MANDATE FOR CHANGE Mandatory introduction of minimum and maximum wages in all countries, thus reducing consumption in rich countries, raising it in poorer countries and equalising wages in all countries. Mandatory abolition of all wage differentials for those in paid work, except on the basis of quality of work - otherwise equal pay for equal hours worked - irrespective of occupation and professional status. Mandatory creation of employee-elected works councils and CEOs in all large companies and corporations, thus creating democracy of the sort that counts most economic democracy rooted in the workplace. Mandatory abolition of all financial stock-holding, trading and speculation and its replacement by cooperative banking and investment on both international, national and local levels. Mandatory abolition of all armies, military research and expenditure, the decommissioning of military arsenals and the redeployment of military personnel for humanitarian missions and constructive projects. Mandatory abolition of all forms of advertising that exploit women or that offer fulfillment of human spiritual values and emotional aspirations through material commodities or marketed services. Mandatory financial support of individuals and groups engaged in original, culturally enriching and socially valuable forms of creative work, but which lack market value to provide income or funding. Mandatory investment in renewable energy resources and energy-saving technologies for homes, communities, transport and industry. Mandatory abolition of all prisons and their replacement by detention in centres of

learning, rehabilitation and education in awareness. Mandatory abolition of all forms of discrimination based on class, caste, race, age, gender, religion and sexuality. Mandatory abolition of all compulsory educational curricula beyond reading, writing and arithmetic, music and the arts. Mandatory education in emotional communication, human relationships and meditation. Mandatory freedom to question or reject the assumptions and validity of both religious and scientific teaching in all educational institutions. Mandatory censorship of all glorification of war in the visual media, whether film, television, the internet or computer gaming. Mandatory freedom of movement for labour as well as capital - for all people across all borders, from and to all continents and nations. Mandatory international abolition of all arms production, together with the banning of gun ownership and the carrying of weapons of any sort. Mandatory abolition and criminalisation of torture, punitive violence and capital punishment in all countries. Mandatory prosecution and/or exclusion from political office of anyone pursuing or promoting policies of war or political violence. Mandatory decriminalization of illegal drugs and the criminalisation of legalised prescription drugs with damaging or lethal side effects. Mandatory abolition of all forms of enforced medical or psychiatric treatment. Mandatory criminalisation of all forms of payment for sex. Mandatory abolition of all abusive animal rearing. Mandatory free health care for the sick and aged.

Source: http://www.thenewsocialism.org/