G20 - "I Can't Believe it" : Melbourne Indymedia

G20 - "I Can't Believe it"
by Joseph Toscano Wednesday November 15, 2006 at 03:15 PM
Repost from Anarchist Age Weekly Review No 716

The money men meeting at the Grand Hyatt have only one thing on their mind - how to stave off the next inevitable crises that bedevils an economic system based on the creation of ever increasing profits, irrespective of the human, social and environmental costs. Capitalism, whether controlled by private corporations as in the US or by the State as in China, creates monopolies that manipulate the mythical 'free' market to maximize their profits at the expense of the rest of the community.

The 43 delegates chatting to each other at a meeting at which no notes will be taken, are concerned about the long term viability of an economic system that promises so much to so many, but only seems to be able to meet the expectations of a shrinking minority. For every Chinese and Indian that has prospered from the recent economic 'reforms' in those countries, another five have been driven into further debt and poverty.

The delegates at the G20 meeting on Saturday know they face a revolt, not just from the growing numbers of poor, but from the new middle classes whose economic 'fortunes' are based on the accumulation of debt. They are concerned more and more people have lost faith in the market's ability to face any of the major problems we face both as individuals and a world community. Foremost in their minds will be the rising tide of militancy in South America where more and more people are demanding national assets be taken from the hands of private corporations and the profits made from these assets be re-distributed to the people, not sent offshore to line the pockets of the major shareholders of a rapidly decreasing number of powerful monopolies who dictate the economic fortunes of nation States.

The 43 delegates know that if they cannot put contingency plans in place to deal with the increasing global resentment their economic policies are creating, the days of the economic dinosaurs they are trying to blow new life into, are numbered. The eradication of poverty has nothing to do with maintaining the current economic system and everything to do with the creation of a new economic system based on the satisfaction of real, not manufactured needs - where the common wealth is owned by the community as a whole and is used to satisfy the community's needs, not increase the power and wealth of private corporations, the government of the day and the State.

What the G20 delegates are frightened of is the increasing number of people who are taking the first tentative steps to take power and wealth back from the hands of the State and private corporations and put it back into the hands of the community. No wonder they won't be taking notes or sharing their consensus with the rest of us when they finish their talkfest.