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Thursday, November 17, 2011

The lies of free market democracy

Date: Thursday, November 17, 2011, 9:03 AM



The lies of free market democracy








By fighting against the doomed system, the 99 per cent have nothing to lose but their disposability and dispensability.




Vandana Shiva
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2011 10:42






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On May 15, 2011, young people occupied the squares of the cities in Spain. They called themselves Los Indignados
- "the indignant". I met them in Madrid where I was attending the 
meeting of the scientific committee that advises the Spanish prime 
minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Their declaration states: "Who are we? We are the people; we have 
come here freely as volunteers. Why are we here? We are here because we 
want a new society that gives more priority to life than to economic 
interest."

In the US, the ongoing "Occupy movement" commonly 
cries: "We are the 99 per cent". This people's protest, inspired by the 
Arab Spring, is directed against the unequal distribution of wealth; the
"99 per cent" here refers to "the difference in wealth between the top 
one per cent and all the remaining citizens".

The fact that they were supported by actions around the world when 
they were to be evicted from Wall Street on October 14 shows that, 
everywhere, people are fed up with the current system. They are fed up 
with the power of corporations. They are fed up with the destruction of 
democracy and peoples' rights. They refuse to give their consent to the 
bailouts of banks by squeezing people of their lives and livelihoods. 
The contest, as "the 99 per cent" describe it, is between life and 
economic interests, between people and corporations, between democracy 
and economic dictatorship.

The organising style of the people's 
movements worldwide is based on the deepest and the most direct 
democracy. This is self-organisation. This is how life and democracy 
work. This is what Mahatma Gandhi called swaraj.

Those 
from the dominant system, used to hierarchy and domination do not 
understand the horizontal organising and call these movements 
"leaderless".

Gandhi had said:

"Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. 
But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual 
always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for 
the circle of villages till at last the whole becomes one life composed 
of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance, but ever humble, 
sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral 
units. Therefore, the outermost circumference will not wield power to 
crush the inner circle, but will give strength to all within and will 
derive its own strength from it."

The general assemblies in cities around the world are living examples
of these "ever expanding, never ascending" oceanic circles. When 
everyone has to be included in decision-making, consensus is the only 
way. This is how indigenous cultures have practiced democracy throughout
history. Future generations are reconnecting to this ancient tradition 
of shaping real freedom because corporate rule has displaced democracy, 
and people's representatives have mutated into corporate 
representatives. 

Today, worldwide, representative democracy has 
reached its democratic limits. From being "by the people, for the 
people, of the people", it has become "by the corporations, of the 
corporations, for the corporations". Money drives elections, and money 
runs government.

Gandhi identified "modern civilisation" as the real cause for loss of freedom:

"Let us first consider what state of things is described by the word
'civilisation'. Its true test lies in the fact that people living in it
make bodily welfare the object of life ... Civilisation seeks to 
increase bodily comforts and it fails miserably even in doing so ... 
This civilisation is such that one has only to be patient and it will be
self-destroyed."

This I believe is at the heart of Gandhi's foresight. The ecological 
crisis which is a result of the intense resource appetite and pollution 
caused by industrialisation is the most important aspect of the 
self-destruction of civilisation. Industrialisation is based on fossil 
fuels, and fossil fuel civilisation has given us climate chaos and is 
threatening us with climate catastrophe. It has also given us 
unemployment.

Gandhi also refers to the fact that the sole 
objective of "civilisation" is bodily welfare and it fails miserably 
even in this objective and it fails in its own measure.

The new 
movements of the future generations are movements of the excluded who 
have been deprived of every right - political, economic and social. They
have nothing to lose but their disposability and dispensability.

'Free markets' mean freedom for corporations to exploit whom and what they want.

In spite of being the victims of brutal injustice and exclusion, 
non-violence is a deep commitment of these new movements. "Occupy" is in
fact a reclaiming of the commons. The park is the physical commons in 
every town. Today the parks are places for announcing to Wall Street, to
banks, to governments, that the 99 per cent is withdrawing its consent 
from the present disorder which has pushed millions to homelessness, 
joblessness and hunger.

Freedom in our times has been sold as 
"free market democracy". "Free markets" mean freedom for corporations to
exploit whom and what they want, where they want, how they want. It 
means the end of freedom for people and nature everywhere. "Free market 
democracy" is in fact an oxymoron which has deluded us into believing 
that deregulation of corporations means freedom for us.

Just as 
the illusion of growth and the fiction of finance has made the economy 
volatile and unpredictable, the fiction of the corporation as a legal 
person has replaced citizens and made society unstable and 
non-sustainable. Humans as earth citizens, with duties and rights, have 
been replaced by corporations, with no duties to either the earth or 
society, only limitless rights to exploit both the earth and people. 
Corporations have been assigned legal personhood, and corporate rights, 
premised on maximisation of profits, are now extinguishing the rights of
the earth, and the rights of people to the earth's gifts and resources.

The
new movements understand this. And that is why they are indignant and 
are occupying the political and economic spaces to create a living 
democracy with people and the earth at the centre instead of 
corporations and greed.
Dr Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecofeminist, 
philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. 
She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology 
and Ecology, and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and 
farmers' rights - winning the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel 
Prize) in 1993.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

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