{"id":2200,"date":"2018-02-19T13:05:16","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T11:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/navdanyainternational.org\/?post_type=post_publications&p=2200"},"modified":"2023-08-28T20:33:40","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T18:33:40","slug":"manifesto-on-economic-democracy-2","status":"publish","type":"post_publications","link":"https:\/\/navdanyainternational.org\/ca\/publications\/manifesto-on-economic-democracy-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Transitioning from Corporate Globalization to Economic Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This post is also available in: Angl\u00e8s<\/a>, Itali\u00e0<\/a>, Espanyol<\/a>, Franc\u00e8s<\/a>, Alemany<\/a>, Portuguese, Brazil<\/a>, Grec<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n

A Manifesto<\/strong><\/p>\n

Economic Democracy: People, Nature, Environment and Work<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Corporate globalisation is a war against the planet and people<\/strong><\/p>\n

Market forces, resource intensive and profit intensive systems are creating havoc in our world, disrupting the planet\u2019s ecosystems and society\u2019s systems of democracy, justice and equality. \u00a0\u00a0Climate change, is wiping out entire communities and earth\u2019s life-sustaining biodiversity, threatening the freedom of diverse species and diverse cultures to evolve.\u00a0 Species have disappeared at 1000 times the natural rate as monocultures and toxic chemicals are globalized through industrial agriculture. \u00a0Water is disappearing, and soils are being desertified, driving communities and people off their land.\u00a0 \u00a0Non communicable chronic diseases are emerging in epidemic proportions as our body is denied its essential biodiversity-based nutrition , and our vital gut micro-biome is assaulted by toxics. \u00a0The freedom of diverse species and diverse cultures to evolve is being threatened by greed and the extractive society and the totalitarian tendencies that hold it in place.<\/p>\n

This path is leading us to eventual self-destruction.<\/p>\n

Economy as a subset of ecology and society.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Economy is derived from Oikos which means home. Ecology is the science of the household, economy the management.\u00a0 \u00a0Trade is the subset of economy, the economy is a subset of ecology and society.<\/p>\n

Corporate globalisation has put corporate profits above people and the planet, and reduced Earth\u2019s home economy to the corporate economy.\u00a0 \u00a0Greed, corporate globalisation and free trade are producing a sick planet, dying democracies and dying economies.<\/p>\n

Governments, corporations and financial institutions are hiding this sick economy behind false measures.\u00a0\u00a0 Chemicals, derived from war, are being spread around the world through industrial farming, destroying the planet and contaminating our bodies.\u00a0 \u2018Growth\u2019 is used as a measure of the health of the economy \u2013 \u00a0an anonymous figure which tells us nothing in real terms of wellbeing and is used to justify the destruction of species and people\u2019s lives. \u00a0\u00a0It is a calculation of a fiction which is\u00a0 based on commodification and commercialization of everything that is life.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0GDP is based on the assumption that if you produce what you consume, you don\u2019t produce. Thus the real circular economies that sustain nature and society are reduced to zero.\u00a0 GDP is based on extracting resources from nature and wealth from society.\u00a0 This extraction creates the illusion that corporations, by extracting from nature and society and trading in goods and services which others have produced, are the \u2018creators\u2019 of what society needs and without them our needs will not be met.<\/p>\n

The polarisation of society between the 1% and 99% is a symptom of the economic war against society.\u00a0\u00a0 The 1% now controls 82% of the economy, robbing the rest of humanity of their rights and their share to the planet\u2019s resources, societies\u2019 wealth, livelihoods and basic needs. This system of \u00a0theft from the 99% \u00a0is built into the rules of corporate globalisation written by the controlling corporations for their unfettered profits and undermine all democratic systems that ensure justice and equality.<\/p>\n

Free trade and corporate globalisation are based on privatising public goods, enclosing our commons, dismantling welfare systems and dismantling regulatory processes created for the protection of nature, workers, and vulnerable groups. They are based on the subversion of democracy. \u2018Free market democracy\u2019 is an oxymoron which really means complete freedom for corporations and no democratic rights for people.<\/p>\n

When globalisation was imposed on the world in the name of free trade, leaders created the illusion that it would close the gap between rich and poor and create equality. They proclaimed free trade was like \u201ca rising tide which lifts all boats\u201d. \u00a0Instead, corporate globalisation has created a steady \u00a0tsunami that has wiped away small businesses, small farmers, small communities, local economies and local and national democracies everywhere.<\/p>\n

This greed based polarised economy and free trade system has also divided society along lines of religion, race, gender, a convenient tool that is distracting the public from the absence of common good and institutionalising a divide and rule policy based on violence. \u00a0Women and the most vulnerable bear the brunt of this violence through displacement because of war, climate change and competing interests in land and resources control.\u00a0 \u00a0This covers the spectrum of climate refugees, war refugees, economic refugees, farmers, unemployed youth, small artisans, all of which the billionaire 1% class is now labelling the 99% of \u2018useless\u2019 people. These globalisers are also \u2018pink washing\u2019 and justifying their greed by claiming that free trade empowers women and promotes feminism, the latest illusion to come out of the WTO conference in Buenos Aires in December 2017.<\/p>\n

The 1% does not represent society, economy or democracy. They only represent their limitless urge for profit, accumulation, extraction, and dominate and control. The levels of wealth accumulated through illegitimate means and writing the rules of trade and economy in violation of all democratic imperatives is now a cancer in society threatening the very systems it feeds on.\u00a0 Only the cancer cell does not know when to stop growing. \u00a0All living systems from the tiniest microbe and cell to the largest mammal and the planet as a whole are self organised systems and are regulated to maintain their health and wellbeing. \u00a0Regulation is vital to democratic and living systems.<\/p>\n

Economic democracy is now a social, political, ecological imperative<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 Sowing the seeds of the future demands that we participate in democratically shaping our economies and our systems of production and consumption, replacing competition with cooperation.<\/p>\n

With this manual we invite you to participate in the decisions that shape our lives and take back our power to stop the present destruction.<\/p>\n

Principles for economic democracy include,<\/strong><\/p>\n