Monday, October 30, 2017

The Nightmare of Capitalism

"For us capitalism is not a dream to be pursued, but a nightmare come true. Our challenge lies not in privatizing the state but in deprivatizing it. Our states have been bought up at bargain prices by the owners of the land, the banks, and everything else. And for us, the market is nothing more than a pirate ship - the greater its freedom, the worse its behavior. The local market and the world market. The world market robs us with both hands. The commercial hand keeps buying from us ever cheaper and selling to us ever dearer. The financial hand, which lends us our own money, keeps paying us less and charging us more. 

"We live in a region of European prices and African wages, where capitalism acts like the kind of man who says, 'I'm so fond of poor people that I never think there are enough of them.' In Brazil alone, for example, the system kills a thousand children a day by disease or hunger. With or without elections, capitalism in Latin America is antidemocratic - most people are prisoners of need, doomed to isolation and violence. Hunger lies, violence lies:  they claim to be part of nature, they pretend to belong to the natural order of things. When that 'natural order' becomes disorderly, the military steps in, hooded or barefaced. As they say in Colombia:  'The cost of living goes up and up, and the value of life goes down and down.'"

-----Eduardo Galeano, "We Say No - Chronicles 1963-1991" p. 278

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