Submitted by Pachamama
For more than forty years some of us have been predicting the end of capitalism and its trappings of ‘democracy’ as represented in their latest manifestations within the Anglo-American Empire. The Athenian project, though originally well-intentioned, has degenerated into a pappy show, a trick, a mirage, an hypocrisy. Its twin brother capitalism was always destined to collapse under the enormous pressures of internal contradictions and lies. There is little doubt that in order for us to survive as a species, capitalism must die. What is unknown at this time however, is what should replace capitalism. And this is where Barbados is being ill-served by its ‘so-called brains’ in academia and the scholarship ‘winners’ who have been accepting money from the central government under false pretenses for too many decades.
Political democracy in Barbados is little more than a plutocratic dictatorship where the major parties play musical chairs with the population. The Barbadian political and academic elites seem incapable of fashioning an alternative or even removing the vestiges from the colonial ‘epoch’, as a necessary but insufficient pre-condition for a new paradigm. In the United States of America, Barbados and most other countries in Europe economic democracy is currently almost always limited to the rapacious printing of money that even ignores the rationalization by binary economics. It is the equivalent of printing currency that was one of the central causes for the collapse of the Roman Empire and that has the modern representation of Empire tottering right now. This hegemon has been skilful in erecting the window dressing of democracy all over the world but has NEVER had any real interest in democracy itself, cannot be properly defined as a democracy in political science terms and is working day and night to scuttle any semblance of popular democracy in the MENA (middle-east and North African) countries. At home it is already resorting to subterfuge in relation to the major existential challenge of the ‘Occupy’ movement that is making a persuasive and legitimate case for FUNDAMENTAL economic and political change.
In the USA, the masses of peoples who have been slumbering or sleep-walking under illusions of a non-existent or anachronistic ‘American dream’ have finally arisen. Anyone who has travelled to the inner cities of the United States is well aware that the endemic levels of poverty and its attendant evils, at their extremes, reaches levels not dissimilar to some of the poorest countries in the world. But the rich everywhere continues to get richer. The political system is bought lot, stock and barrel by moneyed interests to the extent where it is impossible for any collection of politicians to delivery on any of the needs of the masses of people who elected them in the first place. It is the lobbyist to whom the American politician pays absolute devotion. These antidemocratic vultures know well that American politicians cannot be elected or re-elected unless they have money and that raising campaign contributions is the first and only priority of local, state and federal politicians. The Barbadian culture is slightly better in this regard.
Several years ago this writer suggested to the local thought leaders that both capitalism and the American hegemonic Empire were collapsing and as such the country needed to fashion a strategic response – a survivalist response. One academician dismissed this forecast. He saw this over 500 year capitalist project as invincible. Several years later the country is displaying the same colonial mentality. Barbados seems to be waiting for some international finance institution to guide it back to ‘prosperity’. The country seems to be thinking that somebody who tells them that tinkering with the central macro-economic models can fix this problem. We are sorry that our forecasts were right but none of these old ideas will be helpful in the future. The Occupy Movement in the USA is not particularly burdened with this colonial mindset and displays a clarity that belies their general youthfulness. The economic and political establishment in the USA however, seems incapable of digesting that this movement is aimed at removing them from power and establishing another system and they are not particularly interested in tinkering. And unlike Barbados the citizens of the USA have a constitutional right to seek to replace any government which does not act in the interest of the people. They are also empowered to use all necessary means in this pursuit.
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