What follows is the essence of David Korten's message in his recent book, Agenda for a New Economy.

Defenders of capitalist excess insist that capitalism is synonymous with markets and private ownership.  It is not.  In fact, this claim is seriously misleading, for it obscures our ability to see an obvious alternative to capitalism.

The theory of the market economy (not in itself capitalism) traces back to Adam Smith, who was long dead before the term 'capitalism' even came into popular usage.  Smith's seminal work, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations articulates the powerful and wonderfully democratic ideal of a self-organizing economy that creates an equitable and socially optimal allocation of society's productive resources through the interaction of small buyers and sellers making decisions based on their individual needs, interests, and abilities.

In modern capitalist society, the term "free market" serves mainly as a code word for a largely unregulated market that allows the rich to consume and monopolize resources for personal gain, doing it in a manner that is free from accountability for the broader social and environmental consequences.  More often than not, such a "free market" rewards financial rogues and speculators who profit maximally from governmental, social, and environmental subsidies, speculation, the abuse of monopoly power, and financial fraud, thereby creating an open and often irresistible invitation to externalize costs and increase inequality.

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Markets work best within the framework of a caring community.  The stronger the relations of mutual trust and caring, the more the market becomes self-policing.  Here the need for formal governmental oversight and intervention is minimal. 

In contrast to this, 'capitalism' is based on an economy of powerful corporations governed by a culture of greed and a belief that it is their primary legal duty to maximize returns to shareholders.  It is basically an economic and social regime, very difficult for even the strongest governments to control, in which the ownership and benefits of capital are ever more deftly appropriated by the few to the exclusion of the many who through their labor make capital productive.

With bits and pieces of market theory, capitalism's defenders preposterously argue that the public interest is best served by giving globe-spanning megacorporations a license to maximize their profits without public restraint.  In this way, capitalism has distorted market theory beyond recognition, for the purpose of legitimizing an ideology that has no logical or empirical foundation, all in the service of a narrow class interest.

Wearing the mantle of "the market," capitalism's agents vigorously advance public policies that create conditions diametrically opposed to those required for markets to function in a socially optimal way.  Like cancer cells that attempt to hide from the body's immune system by masking themselves as healthy cells, capitalism's agents attempt to conceal themselves from society's immune system by masquerading as agents of a healthy market economy.  Capitalism has become so skilled in this deception that we now find our economic and political leaders committed to policies that serve the pathology at the expense of the healthy body. 

To restore health we must first recognize the diseased cells for what they are and either surgically remove them or deprive them of access to the body's nutrients.

Under a socialist system, government consolidates power unto itself.  Under a capitalist system, government falls captive to corporate interests -- and then, as its captive and servant, facilitates the consolidation of corporate power.  In a true market system, on the other hand, democratically accountable governments provide an appropriate framework of rules within which people, communities, entrepreneurs, and responsible investors self-organize in predominantly local markets to meet their economic needs in socially and environmentally responsible ways.

In today's WallStreet-based capitalist economy, on the other hand, money is both means and end, and the primary product is phantom wealth, i.e. money that becomes increasingly disconnected from the production or possession of anything of real value.

Contrast this with a truly market-based "Main Street" kind of economy that is largely engaged in creating real wealth from real resources to meet real needs.

Wall Street is very good at making rich people richer, but it has no concern for the health of people, community, or nature -- except insofar as they can be exploited, as sources of short-term profit and phantom wealth.

Our recent credit collapse has drawn back the curtain to reveal the inner workings of Wall Street, and it begins to look less like legitimate business enterprise and more like a criminal syndicate running a lucrative extortion racket.  The nearest equivalent in nature is a cancer that drains the body's energy, but produces nothing useful in return.  You don't 'fix' a cancer; you excise it and rebuild the healthy tissue that surrounded it, from which it drew its strength.  "Main Street" is the healthy tissue and the foundation of the New Economy.

Author's Website: http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=JCpLDBUAAAC

Author's Bio: Several years after receiving my M.A. in social science (interdisciplinary studies) I was an instructor at S.F. State University for a year, but then went back to designing automated machinery, and then tech writing, in Silicon Valley. I've always been more interested in political economics and what's going on behind the scenes in politics, than in mechanical engineering, and because of that I've rarely worked more than 6 months a year, devoting much of the rest of the year to reading and writing about that which interests me most.

www.opednews.com/articles/Capitalism-as-cancer-and-by-Richard-Clark-090719-295.html

(Reply)

 To Bellringer: Please do not publish my email address if you post this. Thank you.

 Response to \"Capitalism as Cancer, and the New Economy that Could Emerge from its Eradication\" by Richard Clark

 Mr. Clark says:

 "Wall Street is very good at making rich people richer, but it has no concern for the health of people, community, or nature -- except insofar as they can be exploited, as sources of short-term profit and phantom wealth."

 Exactly! The logic-box of our thinking - both capitalists and the general population - is too small. The \"bottom line\" in that box is profit without caring, scruples, integrity, or conscience. It needs to be something more like \"profit without harm\".

 Let's face it, you can make money with ANYTHING, like the lady in China who\'s become a billionaire by recycling trash, so why do capitalists/industrialists continue to choose poisonous and destructive means to achieve their wealth? If they don\'t know any other way, they must learn a new way, even a new physics, and especially a new chemistry! There are many scientists who say our physics is wrong, which is why we get such harmful results by applying its logic. Until thinking changes at these levels, none of this will ever get any better.

 The evidence of our harm done -- of which there is plenty -- must cease to be dismissed and justified with self-looping logic like, \"Too bad we poisoned your water, but we\'re creating jobs.\" (And profit) That\'s what they always say, as if \"the economy\" and profit are more important than this planet and everything on it. This is skewed, self-serving logic, and as PEOPLE, we must stop accepting that answer!

 Logic can be used to support any conclusion you want, depending on the basic definitions that define the box of your logic. Look at our legal system - the end is not justice, but laws made to get the people in power what they want. How else did corporations become recognized under the law as "persons" - an absurd idea - except that this concept serves the rich and is backed up by threats of violence? How else can something as basic to health as vitamins become defined under the law as drugs? This is an aribtrary idea that does not serve anyone but the rich and should never have been enacted.

 Look at the logic of the Holy Roman Empire and all the death perpetrated under that set of beliefs. Look at Hitler. You can justify anything you want with "logic." The logic-box of this whole society has got to get bigger.

 The logic of capitalism as it is applied today is not holistic and a \"free economy\" has never existed. The market is and always has been controlled for the immediate, short-term profit of the rich without regard to the health of this planet.

 If a free market had existed, we would long ago have had clean alternative energy devices that do not poison our air, water, and soil. For the past 100 years, alternative energy inventors have been systematically killed, bought out, or their inventions confiscated to prevent them from getting to market. This place could be a paradise, but short-term capitalist logic has made it a cesspool.

 "Consumers" are, literally, the victims of this logic. Capitalists/modern industrialists are killing us as they take our money because most of what is produced harms the planet in some way. Petroleum and plastics (because all plastics are made from petroleum) are the supreme examples of that harm. Do they know they are doing harm? How could they not? There\'s more than enough research to tell them. Do they care? Apparently not. Under current capitalist \"profit as the bottom line\" logic, they self-justify themselves to the point that they don't have to care.

 They keep saying it\'s too difficult to change things, but every day that they don't change things, the poisonous conditions on this planet get worse. The kick-back, of course, has come. There are limits to the levels of poison that any living system can tolerate before it breaks down and is no longer able to heal itself. We have reached that point. Whole ecosystems are dying, animals and fish are dying or mutating, people are sick more than they should be, and with new "mystery" illnesses which are likely the product of all the thousands of poisons that have been put into the environment. All this is the result of uncaring capitalism, all those millions of investors who only want profit, apparently, without caring if their stocks are supporting companies that are destroying the planet.

 It the thinking were \"profit without harm,\" this planet would be an entirely different place, and there would still be rich people. Capitalists just have to stretch their minds and hearts and make a bigger box. The current logic-box is too small.

 FC