Capital has no need for people. Your mothers death, whether of old age, starvation, or industrial accident, is of no concern to Capital. Capital has its interest in stability at home and instability abroad. Stability at home, to the point of suffocating conservatism, yields the predictable return on investment in a predictable environment that Capital requires for its health. Capital must be able to depend on consistent patterns of currency valuations, stock market judgements, and maintenace costs. Then it can exercise its greatest growth. Abroad, this does not matter. Capital can send its profits "home" (wherever the necessary stability is found), selling whatever is needed, whether it be guns to the governement, butter to the humanitarian groups, loans to the local businesses. It happily takes in trade for paper currency the lands and future labors of the indigenous peoples. Capital is a cruel master. I cringe at the quotes attributed to the masters of our U.S. economy in these booming times. Interest rates are raised to stifle fears of inflation. Inflation is the result of people earning more money for their work while business refuses to cut its share of the profit. Higher interest rates make it more expensive for the ordinary person to buy housing of their own, for towns to build schools. But the stability in prices ensured by this action makes Capital growth strong and predictable. Capital in not concerned with starvation. Capital is not alarmed by people sleeping in the rain. Capital must have its profitable return on research and development of drugs, even if the maximum profit point prices many sick and dying people out of the therapy. Capital seeks efficiency, but not in solutions to human problems - it seeks efficiency in the rates by which it can be increased. It does not matter if human problems are caused, increased, ignored, or even articulated, in the marketplace. Capitalism is a handy way to generate needed wealth, but it is a terribly foolish way to organize an entire culture. 12/2/99 
© Huw Powell
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