Communism didn’t Work, Capitalism doesn’t Work, You Work

Shame on me! I just missed joining Blog Action Day, where thousands of bloggers joined to write about poverty. Sitting in a funky train to Frankfurt, no time to be busy with this issue, ignoring the beggars and homeless as usual, but chatting about financial crisises and joking about the comeback Marxism instead.

Jo, this topic is too serious. Despite all effords, the gap between rich and poor has widened, and more people live a live frigthening poor lifes. And where developing countries get more excess to the global economy and profit from it, the increase of income of the middleclass creates extra problems for the poorest. What’s the answer.

Communism: failed project. Although neomarxists claim communism never existed and all communisms were fake, the core of the class-war-thought in my opinion has dangerous, agressive sides, that don’t deal with solutions but with problems. Although Marx stayes important for the moral perspective on poverty issues, he’s not our man. Definitely not to solve our environmental problems, and one can’t fight poverty without solving our greedy push on nature. But untill now, all other solutions and approaches seem to be neoliberal and , may they be packed in social-democratic flags, conservative policies or populist visions, tend to tell us we can fight poverty just by handling a good market approach.

But how can we ever fight poverty when we give so much space for greed, for terrorizing common properties, for leaving our nature so unprotected, for patents on lifesaving medicines and even human DNA?

We need generally a totally different approach, a transformative one directed on common goods, cooperation, sustainability. As poverty strikes harder then ever, there are also more positive initiateves then ever, and it is incredible how strong this grassroots movement is becoming. As Loesje states: Communism didn’t work, capitalism doesn’t work, you work. And so it is. Wether it is microfinancing based on the ideas of nobel price winner Mohammad Yunus or community based environmental actions like those of Vandana Shiva, I have the strong feeling that we are in a strong, shifting period, where the values of individualism melt with values of community cooperation into a new syergy. Bottom up, grassroots organizing is stronger than ever.

This movement is changing the strutures of our society, crushing the one way dominance of Western society and culture within just a few years, and changing our global values dramatically. I don’t know if it will reduce poverty in the end. But I believe what we an do is support just where we can, fighting greed and corruption in our societies with innovative forms of cooperation and businesses in balance with community values. And the only way in the end is to act, as humans, within our communities, from the grassroots, with human dignity, because that’s what binds us all together.

Image: Vandana Shiva

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