An interview with The Ink, about where we are, how we got here and where we need to go.
from thefreeonline on 25th July 2024 George Monbiot, interviewed by The Ink – ( on Telegram:t.me/thefreeonline )
Authors and activists George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison want to tell a better story for humanity’s future
Ebook HERE… Invisible Doctrine – The Secret History of Neoliberalism
TI: Can you walk us through how you define neoliberalism” — the “Invisible Doctrine” of the book’s title. And of “capitalism,” for that matter?
GM: Let’s start with capitalism. It’s often portrayed as if it were some kind of natural law, a basic property of human relations. It is nothing of the kind. Capitalism is a very particular form of economic organisation, which, following the work of the geographer Jason Moore, we date to the island of Madeira in roughly 1450.
This was arguably the first time and place in which land, labour and money were simultaneously commodified. The success of the Portuguese colonists, the first capitalists, set in train a particular mode of extreme and rapid exploitation, which led simultaneously to the explosion of colonial seizure and to the cascading collapse of ecosystems. We define capitalism as follows:
“Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting. It operates on a constantly shifting and self-consuming frontier, on which both state and powerful private interests use their laws, backed by the threat of violence, to turn shared resources into exclusive property, and to transform natural wealth, labour and money into commodities that can be accumulated.”
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Capitalism expanded with few constraints in its early centuries. Its advocates demanded that governments “laissez-nous faire”: leave us alone. But then it ran into a problem, a problem it has sought to solve ever since: democracy.
When most adults got the vote, they sought to use it to improve wages and labour conditions, demand a greater share of productivity gains, and make other outrageous requests, such as not poisoning the air and rivers, adulterating food or charging extortionate rents.
They even went so far as to demand the redistribution of wealth, effective public services and an economic safety net. Neoliberalism was hatched as a means of solving the problem of democracy.
Continue reading “How to Change Everything – Rewriting the Fairy Tale of Capitalism – key Monbiot Interview /Trailer/ Book link-“
The Free 