Is Capitalism the Answer, Problem, or None of the Above?

Mega greedy transnational companies agro-export till the Latin American workers drop from pesticide-induced cancer so you can have that perfect chrysanthemum. Alternatively, the foreign-based company offers developing countries a mechanism to support themselves besides scrounging and drug trafficking. The rampant mismanagement of the environment stems from impoverished people left with no other choice for feeding their family. But are they kept this way due to the global economic system? Or is the does the problem with the environment and thus society and its people lie in something deeper than economics, trade, property rights, production, development and consumption?

Latin America provides the unfortunate narratives common throughout emerging markets. Poverty, disease, malnutrition, and lacking infrastructure are widespread. Among other worries, pollution becomes so chronic it is a prime public health hazard. Even in urban centers like Mexico City, most garbage and waste is not disposed of properly. This leads to problems like fecal dust, which blow dangerous organisms throughout the air. Many people miss numerous days from work due to being chronically ill.

Fortunately, some areas are improving. Non-traditional agricultural exports are on the rise. They have helped bolster economic output in places like Ecuador, which has had a 27-fold increase since 1985. Thanks to Western aid from institutions like the World Bank, where there was once simply subsistence, small farmers are successfully growing and finding markets for products like snow peas and quinoa. In other countries like Colombia, many peasants are finding they do not have to cultivate cocoa or work processing labs in a brutal civil war fueled by the drug trade.

The future is not nearly as bright as these transnational corporations and their capitalist benefactors present. These entities are monolithic onto themselves, with their sheer numbers increasing seven fold in the last 30 years. They control 90% of product patents and 70% of the international trade. The overwhelming majority of the top 500 companies in the United States vie for multiple national markets. As such, they account for 63% of our Gross Domestic Product. Their political power is also growing with their profit margins. In the 2000 elections, they contributed a record $200-400 million. The resulting return was $85 billion in tax breaks and public subsidies. With over 250,000 foreign subsidiaries, production primarily occurs in poor communities where wages are low. They support politicians, think tanks and global banking institutions which espouse "free market" neoliberal policies that call for an end for all environmental regulation.

Their inherently monopolistic and profit-hungry nature undermines the sovereign rights of people and causes unquantifiable environmental harm. Take for example the instance of Texaco in Ecuador. The transnational sought to extract oil in an area known as the Oriente, home to many indigenous communities. Despite the protest of these people, the state barred any taxes and environmental regulation against Texaco, who was left to self-regulate. Thirty spills and 16.8 million gallons of oil waste later, 30,000 indigenous people were stricken with diseases and cancers. Miscarriages ensued and the population declined.

Both of these orientations claim that the effects of the current capitalist economic order is either beneficial or harmful. But how about the third choice? Suppose the problem lied not merely in the rationality of actors or the value-judgments of those who hold power, but in the nature of how ideas like power and rationality are conceptualized, implemented, and practiced. Currently, it is considered "irrational" to work for a more democratic manner in which to "maximize" yourself through something like sharing power through increased participation by all those involved. While it would certainly would entail immensely increased organization and awareness in order to reverse this, it also more importantly requires increased creativity and imagination. If one believes an end is unlikely to materialize or even impossible because of the difficult means, one will not even consider working towards that end. If people collectively wish to democratized their life and society, will not participatory government and economics be possible?

Whatever the means, certainly no one would freely choose to degrade themselves and environment if alternates were available. The problem is with removing dehumanizing ideologies, like positivism and its essentialist products like determinism, that reify the current relationship between society, individual, and environment as perpetual and any alternative as chaotic. The external and autonomous foundations which positivists justify the existence of the current order must be exposed as the social constructions they are. Only then, where there is a will there will be a way.