For
many in the South and elsewhere, the arrival of international corporations to a
town is looked upon as a joyful moment; ‘Now economic progress can REALLY
begin!’, they think to themselves.
Not
only is this not the case, but these corporations, whose loyalty is to
themselves alone, also bring with them agendas that deliberately undermine the
traditions of the ‘backwards’ locals.
. . .
Where
a few decades ago one heard in the globalist agenda the names of Rockefeller
and Rothschild, today one hears more often Goldman Sachs. As the Australian
columnist Angus Whitely, in the above quoted article, also commented, Goldman
Sachs is filling political positions in the USA and elsewhere. Craig Isherwood
of the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia, when commenting on Turnbull
becoming Prime Minister in October 2015, stated that his background with
Goldman Sachs is a “black mark”, the bank having a record of causing “misery
and economic destruction throughout the world”. The Greek debt crisis is cited
as an example. (“Is Malcolm Turnbull another Goldman Sachs hit man?”, http://cecaust.com.au/releases/2015_10_07_Turnbull_Goldman_Sachs.html).
Goldman Sachs does not hide its role as a factor in
politics. Goldman Sachs Australia
and New Zealand
states that its “corporate advisory team” advises corporations and governments.
Goldman Sachs in what is called among plutocrats “good corporate citizenship”
is proactive in engineering social change.
In
the world of corporate globalism “social change” is inherently whatever
destroys the traditional foundations of a society, with the aim of creating a
world without boundaries, where people, resources and capital can be moved
internationally without hindrance. Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman
Sachs, is particularly noted for his homosexual advocacy. In 2012 he joined the
Human Right Campaign to support same-sex marriage. Jason Farago, writing for
The Guardian was scathing of Blankfein’s pro-gay activism, questioning its
sincerely, and regarding it as a PR stunt:
“As
Karl Rove taught us in 2004, same-sex marriage is an uncommonly useful tool to
distract citizens from questions of economic justice or political
responsibility. Eight years later, the public view of equal rights for gays and
lesbians has shifted. But the use value of same-sex marriage in the political
sphere remains: it shifts the focus of political discourse away from tougher,
more fundamental questions of economics and power. And in this moment of
anti-elitist consolidation, that is just as the lords of finance would like”.
(Jason Farago, “Goldman Sachs’s CEO shows gay marriage is a no-risk trade”, The
Guardian, 7 February 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/07/lloyd-blankfein-gay-marriage-spokesman)
Malcolm
Turnbull, like New Zealand’s
John Key, imbibed the liberal moral relativism that is an essential part of
corporate culture which the plutocrats avidly promote across the world. As
Blankfein stated when endorsing same-sex marriage, “equality is just good for
business”. Turnbull has a specific focus in promoting same sex marriage. (See: http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/survey-results/same-sex-marriage).
Turnbull has long been an outspoken supporter of abortion liberalisation, while
touting his Catholic background. (“Turnbull defends abortion”, 8 November 2008,
http://www.smh.com.au/national/turnbull-defends-abortion-20081108-5ki8.html).
Turnbull
is also an avid Republican, having served as Chairman of the Australian
Republican Movement. Such traditions as monarchy are seen an anachronistic in
the “progressive” world of globalisation, where trading blocs are to take the
place of blocs based on shared culture and ethnic kinship.
. . .
Source:
Kerry Bolton, http://katehon.com/article/australian-elections-results-ex-banker-will-form-new-government,
accessed 29 July 2016
But
groveling at the feet of the corporate oligarchs for jobs is not the only
option for those who oppose the communist, government-controlled model. There is still the distributist model of
wide-spread ownership of productive property.
Here is what Dr Ovidiu Hurduzeu, a Romanian economist and advocate of
distributism, had to say about it in a recent interview (note: the reference
below to ‘Christian-orthodox’ is another way of saying ‘Orthodox Christian’):
Why distributism?
To
understand the importance of distributism, we need to compare it to both
communism and capitalism, the two systems that distributism is opposed to. In a
distributist society there is wide and equitable distribution of property and
ownership. In communism you have collective ownership and collective redistribution
of property. People do not have economic freedom; they are wage-slaves to the
state. In the so called "free, democratic and capitalist" society,
the capital, and most of the property, belong to a small class called
‘capitalists’, while the mass of the citizens are obliged to work for the few
capitalists in return for a wage. Distributism does not separate ownership and
work any longer. It seeks to establish an economic and social order, where most
people have real, debt-free productive property. (In capitalism, the
"property" of the common person is mortgaged or purchased on credit;
it is merely a rented good). In practical terms a distributist order is
achieved through the widespread dissemination of family-owned businesses,
employee ownership, cooperatives, and any other arrangement resulting in
well-divided property.
. . .
What distributist principles of organizing an economy are most
suitable to the orthodox countries? Is a "Christian-orthodox economy"
still possible?
A
Christian-orthodox economy is not only possible; it is the only way that could
lead to the transformation of our societies for the better. When communism
collapsed, the liberals injected the virus of a plutocratic economy and rampant
individualism into our societies. If communists dispossessed the populace in
the name of collective ownership and a communal monopoly, the liberals created
a dispossessed "lonely crowd" that was forced to work for subsistence
wages in the name of the "free market". Both communism and the
"new capitalists" instituted master-slave relations in the former
Soviet bloc. That is unacceptable from a Christian point of view. As
Christians, we cannot accept the neoliberal tenet that "there is no such
thing as society" (Margaret Thatcher). Individualism and ruthless
competition are utterly unchristian. A Christian orthodox society is a
cooperative one in which loving our neighbors is the norm, and the common rules
are enforced in a way that maximizes personal responsibility. Due to their
communal organization, there was simply no poverty among the first Christians;
they had no fear of becoming slaves in order to support themselves. Today, a
distributist society should challenge the neo-liberal economic model in the way
the cooperative society of the first Christians challenged the slave-based
economic order of the Roman Empire. We are not
talking here about idealism, utopia or socialist solutions in the form of
welfare and punitive taxation. We do not want to repeat the cycle of
disempowerment and dependency. We need to provide the conditions for social
justice through a widespread distribution of property, the remoralization of
the markets, and recapitalization of the poor.
Does Romania
have an intellectual tradition of non-liberal economic thought? What value does
this heritage have for today's economists?
Indeed,
Romania
had a solid intellectual tradition of non-liberal economic thought. A mention
must be made to the agrarian economists Virgil Madgearu (one of the leaders of
the National Peasant Party), Mircea Vulcanescu (one of Romania's
greatest thinkers ever, he died in prison as a Christian martyr), and Nicholas
Georgescu-Roegen, the founder of the ecological economy. They belong to
different economic schools and yet they share the same fondness for agrarian
and Christian values. Today's Romanian economists are too busy following orders
from the West to pay any attention to the great Romanian economists of the
past.
How can the distributist principles be implemented in real economic
policies? Are there any political forces in Romania that want to bring the
distributist ideas into reality?
The
country needs a new "Green rising" to complete what the Romanian
agrarians left unfinished. "If the Peasants' Party is to be victorious in
elections” - wrote Virgil Madgearu – “the shape of things would be changed.”
The National Bank would no longer be the economic fortress of the Liberal
oligarchy. Trusts would no longer enslave and exploit the state. Their selfish
and venal leaders would no longer be enthroned in overseeing positions over the
country's destiny. Civil liberties, nowadays suffocated, and stolen civil
rights would be fully restored, and the constitutional-parliamentary regime
would become a reality, benefiting the development of popular masses as well as
civilization."
Unfortunately,
I do not see any real chance for Romania of adopting sweeping
changes like the ones envisaged by Madgearu in the 1920’s. There are no
political forces in today's Romania
strong enough to challenge the dominance of liberalism.
Do you see any relevance of the distributist model to Russian society
in general, and the Russian economy in particular?
I
think that distributism is germane to Russian realities and not a foreign
import like communism and liberalism. And it is the only economic model that
can vanquish the Liberals on their own ground (the economy). Russia, like
the Third Rome, should not forget the lessons of Byzantine recovery. When
confronted with a series of serious crises in the 7th century, the Byzantine Empire adopted a brilliant distributist
strategy. As a consequence, it went from near disintegration to being the main
power in Europe and the Near East. The pillar
of this strategy was the peasant-soldier who became a producer rather than
consumer of the empire's wealth. Fighting for their own lands and families,
soldiers performed better. As staunch Christians, the Byzantines survived by
simplifying their social, political, and economic systems within the
constraints of less available resources. They moved from extensive space-based
development to simplified, local, intensive development. (That's the lesson the
Soviet Union did not learn, and failed as a
result.) "In this sense, Byzantium”
- writes Joseph A. Tainter – “may be a model or prototype for our own future,
in broad parameters but not in specific details."
Today's
Global Empire is an integrated hyper-complex system that is very costly to
human society. It has reached the limits of its expansion and faces collapse
because it tries to solve its problems in the same outdated way: investing in
more complexity and expansion. So far its growth has been subsidized by the
availability of cheap human and natural resources, as well as a "world
currency" that the Global Empire totally controls. A multipolar world and
a finite planet make investment in complexity no longer a problem-solving tool
– the costs exceed the benefits. If Russia could adopt distributism and
follow the Byzantium-like strategies of intensive development, the Third Rome
can save herself and become a genuine "prototype of our future".
Source: http://katehon.com/article/distributist-economy-orthodox-countries,
accessed 11 July 2016
