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Any guesses as to what the great minds of Davos--most of them Harvard/Goldman Sachs folks--might come up with?

Capitalism is the Problem—Who Knew?



The perfectly named World Economic Forum--that is, an organization dedicated to the creation of a world economic system--is meeting in Davos again to discuss the problems of the day, and to propose solutions. Although the official problem-solving has not yet begun, a hint as to the direction of said solutions can be found in the definition of the main problem to be solved, offered by the group's leader: the "out-dated and crumbling" economic system, capitalism. Surprise!
Among the problem-solvers in attendance: the dean of the China European International Business School, a joint project of the Chinese communist and European socialist governments; the President of the European Central Bank, formerly the head of the Bank of Italy; the Treasury Secretary to America's first openly redistributionist President; and Tunisia's new Islamist prime minister, who recently stood with a Hamas Party deputy and called for the "liberation of Jerusalem." Who better to reform the world's economy? Nigeria's president, the unfortunately named Goodluck Jonathan, was due to appear, but may have to cancel in light of the Islamist bombings that have just killed hundreds of his citizens. His appearance under present circumstances would have to have a surreal aura to it, anyway, since the presence of Tunisia's prime minister would certainly make any kind of anti-Islamist rhetoric a social faux pas--not to mention grounds for further bombings targeting Nigerian Christians. At any rate, the one thing we know about this confab is that the big issue on the table is capitalism, and what to do about it. Klaus Schwab, the founder of the WEF, and a leader in the advancement of "social entrepreneurship," explains:

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"We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations."
All true, to be sure. The socialist/relativist deterioration of public and private morality is real. The corporate-government power brokers have indeed sold out the future with fiscal and monetary policy designed to destroy the economies of the Western world. And the anti-Western bias in philosophy and education over the past hundred years or more has certainly "undermined social coherence," as witness the West's inability to stand firm against an overt assault on its core principles via radical Islam. Well said, Dr. Schwab. Oops, that's not what he meant. It turns out that all of the problems he outlines can and must be blamed, not on conditions that actually existed during recent years, but rather on the one condition that decidedly did not exist -- freedom. Schwab explains:
"Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole. We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual.... Capitalism in its current form has no place in the world around us."
True again--capitalism in its current form has no place in the world around us. In fact, doubly true: Capitalism in its current form--on the world economy scale, that is--is not capitalism, but rather a creeping fascism, in which government manipulates the markets, forms alliances with certain pseudo-corporate entities, which entities thus become state protectorates, free of the risks of genuine free market activity, and in a position to have unnatural influence over public policy, which in turn results in more micro-managing of economic activity in favor of the joint vested interests of the presiding political and pseudo-corporate factions. But once again, I have of course misconstrued Schwab's meaning. When he proposes to wipe out "capitalism in its current form," he does not mean the bastardized monster that is passed off as capitalism today, but which has as much in common with economic liberty as Lady Gaga has with Ella Fitzgerald. No, Schwab means by "capitalism" what all anti-liberty manipulators mean by it, namely The Bogeyman. The chickens raised on the farm of post-Marxist politico-economic social engineering have come home to roost. As I argued in a recent article, "capitalism" is not the free market as understood by Adam Smith and the Founding Fathers; it is the Marxist term for the free market, reinterpreting freedom as a government "system" (an -ism) equivalent to any other. Through this distortion of language, the philosophical underpinnings of freedom have disintegrated, replaced by a vague notion that "capitalism" is merely a "useful" method of promoting economic well-being, but one which needs constant monitoring in the name of ensuring fairness. By maintaining the term in this way, through the endless regulations and reconfigurations of the "market" that have led to the current, singularly unfree "market system" which has brought the formerly free-ish world to the brink of extinction, the globalist forces have achieved a brilliant rhetorical victory. For it is now possible to hold up "capitalism" as the culprit at the heart of any problem. No rational person would mistake the current state of things--whether globally, or within any given nation--for a free market. But no one really understands capitalism to mean a free market anymore. If there are entities that look vaguely like businesses, then we have "capitalism." Thus, capitalism can be blamed for our problems. The solution? Well, if capitalism is "out-dated and crumbling"; if it is the source of the "morality gap"; if it is the cause of our being "over-leveraged"; and if it is the means of our having "undermined social coherence," then the solution must be something that is not "capitalism." Any guesses as to what the great minds of Davos--most of them Harvard/Goldman Sachs folks--might come up with? Whatever it is, you can bet they will call it "the New Capitalism." The language trick has worked wonders for them and their ilk for decades. Why change now? Thus, when they have run the world a little further into the ground through further leftward lurches, they will be able to convene again, and to call, yet again, for radical changes to the destructive and immoral "capitalism" that is causing all the problems. By the time they have achieved a UN-regulated, global socialist economic network, the "capitalism is the culprit" shtick may have worn a little thin. By then, however, it won't matter. On the other hand, by that time the Western world may well be the 6th Caliphate that Tunisia's "moderate Islamist" prime minister is calling for. And man's only hope might then be the likes of Goodluck Jonathan--men of the Third World who have come face-to-face with some of the enemies of freedom, and who, if the Lord has preserved any good luck for the rest of humanity, will refuse to follow the leaders off the cliff as the "developed world" has done.


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Daren Jonescu -- Bio and Archives

Daren Jonescu has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He currently teaches English language and philosophy at Changwon National University in South Korea.


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