Our Economic System Needs a Re-Write

When greed trumps need
Author: Capitalism needs a rewrite
By BRUCE ERSKINE Business Reporter
The Chronicle Herald
Tue. Feb 2 - 4:53 AM


Raj Patel: ‘Modern capitalism is the anti-market.’ (ANDREA ISMERT)





RAJ PATEL, author of The Value of Nothing, a critique of the market-driven capitalist system that came crashing down in 2008, is all for markets.

"I love markets," said the author, academic and social activist who wrote the best selling Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System, in an interview from Toronto on Monday.

"We need venues for exchange and co-operation and trust," he said.

"The trouble is that modern capitalism is the anti-market. . . . It enables a few people to concentrate a great deal of power and to shove onto the rest of the world not only the consequences of their ill-advised risks but also the certainties of the ways in which they exploit nature, exploit labour — and in particular women’s labour — and kick into the future questions around environmental sustainability that our children are going to have to suffer."

A London, England, native who recently became a U.S. citizen, Mr. Patel, 38, holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a doctorate in development sociology from Cornell University.

A visiting scholar in the Center for African Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who has worked for the World Bank and consulted for the United Nations, Mr. Patel will speak at Saint Mary’s University on Thursday as part of the university’s annual International Week, which is focusing this year on food security.

Through a wealth of historical data, some familiar and some obscure, The Value of Nothing traces the development of a capitalist system characterized by markets that are driven by profit rather than by need.

"The flaw at the heart of markets is essentially the idea that profit and corporations should govern the valuation of things and that everyone else should stand aside," he said.

Mr. Patel said the way to correct that situation, and the ills it has visited upon the world, is through more democratic control of markets as has been practised by La Via Campesina, an international peasant movement founded in 1993 by a number of American and European farmer groups that he cites at length in his book.

"The solution is to exercise more democratic control over markets by regulating, constraining and debating what it is that should be markets in the first place and allowing markets to proceed only after we’ve figured ways of living within our economic means and living with the consequences of our actions," he said.

Mr. Patel acknowledged that changing the current entrenched paradigm won’t be easy, but he sees encouraging examples of new market thinking all around.

"I’m certainly seeing a distrust of authority," he said, citing the anger in Canada about Stephen Harper’s unilateral decision to suspend Parliament.

He pointed to grassroots efforts to deal with the issue of hunger in North America as an example of new market thinking.

"In North America now, there are nearly 100 food policy councils where city officials and community activists and farmers and small businesses are getting together to figure out how to banish hunger," said Mr. Patel, who noted that one in six Americans goes hungry despite that country’s wealth.

"I’m realistic about the balance of power right now but I also see in this network of social movements that’s happening around the world real constructive solutions and the real force of organizing that I think is quite exciting."

( berskine@herald.ca)

‘The flaw at the heart of markets is essentially the idea that profit and corporations should govern the valuation of things and that everyone else should stand aside.’

RAJ PATELAuthor

About Haiti

Background thoughts from Stephen Hawboldt

Haiti is owed so much
h(' events lhat have unfolded in Haiti over
the past couple of weeks are numbing.

While the actual shaking of the earth was a
natural 1~"'(!nL, mo: l of the death and de struc-
tion is the ro ult of human acuviues.
Haiti is the poorest country in
the western hemisphere. Poverty
has forced il!< residents to cut the
forests tor cwood, build homes
t.hal could not 'withstand even a
minor earthquake and to do many
other things that. have severely
undermined their country's eco-
logical integrily. The country has
no reliable governmental institu- Environmental
lions. edu ation or health care. G I•
~lusl of the pr blerns lhal rem In
~aitjans are facing ,today arc a Stephen Hawboldt I
direct rc ult of actions by the
French, British and American governments
o rer the past 20() years. Their Imperialir Lie
gre~d et the stage for the hw dteds of thou-
ands of. hattercd lives we iin~ seeing daily n
the evening news.
First th Spanish and later ance e ploited
the wealth of Haiti. By the late 1700s, Haili
produced 10 per cent of the 'ugar and 60 per
cent of the coffee consumed in Europe. This
was more than all of the British 'Wes Indies
combined.
To run tile plantations, France imported
millions of African slaves, At one time, Haiti
received a third of the annual Atlantic trade in
•lave .. J3 'the 17908, upwards ()f f hree quarters
of a million slave ere Isuporviscdt by 3:!.OUO
whites.
On January I, 1804, followin a. slave upris-
ing. Haiti bccam thr worlcJ's first black
republic and the second-oldest republlc ill tile
\Vestcrn Hemisphere. after the United Sf ale ..
The American. Rriti"Ch and French slave trad-
ing countries imposed a brutal blockade

which was lifted only after Haiti compensated
France for the lost of its lost Isla, property .•
The new repuhli governed y former
slave was forced to borrow the monev from
American bankers. The ~90 million loan wa
not paid off until 19'17. 125 years
later! Maybe the, 1t!f1Ue1'8 were
Mafia IOQn sharks dressed in
banker's ~cuit8.
Little seems to have changed in
the past 200 years. 'faking a page
frum tile French colonial masters
in Haitj, toda r the US cont inues to
demand payment for lost iproper-
t}'l Iollowing the Cuban revolution.
Imperialism is alive and well.
1nstJy because former slaves
created Haiti, relations with t.he
es and other w . tern powers w r
not warm. F.a.rl.y ill the :lOth c ntury. the US
actually occupied Haiti for about thirty year
Ioll wed by a few more decades of direct and
indirect • upport tor some of the IDO t corrupt
and brutal dictatorships in the ' •... orld.
After more tJ 200 years ()f independence.
western intcrven Lion have dcstroved the
ucial, econorni and ('culogical structure of
Haiti. The earthquakes have served to under-
line the extend of this rape.
'1 he western world owes a great deal to
Haiti and l.he Haitian people. There are glim-
mers that a number of western countrie rnav
be interested in putting together a masstve aid
package LO rebuilt the 'udal, e onomic and
ecological structures in Haiti.
Ma be Can II da's Governor Gene' I,
Micl.aIUe Jean who has rnol: in Haiti. c 1 e
the considerable prestige of her office to ielp
facilitate thrs. Haiti is owed great deal.
Comments am always ~ •• relcome and c be
address ed to stephcnhawboldtgpannape r-
er.ca