A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

ments for building the Common Good of Humanity today. This is why
we should begin by illustrating the fundamental and systemic nature of
the crisis and its principal elements.
The multiple facets of the crisis
When more than 900 million human beings live below the poverty line,
while their numbers keep increasing (UNDP, 2010); when every 24 hours
tens of thousands of people die of hunger or its consequences; when,
day by day, ethnic groups, ways of life and cultures are disappearing,
endangering the very heritage of humanity; when the inequality between
men and women is reinforced in the formal and informal economic system;
when the climate is deteriorating: when all this is happening, it is
simply not possible to talk only about a conjunctural financial crisis, even
though such a crisis exploded violently in 2008.
The different crises
The financial and economic crisis
It is a fact that the social consequences of the financial crisis are felt far
beyond the borders of its origin and that are affecting the very foundations
of the economy. Unemployment, rising costs of living, the exclusion
of the poorest, the vulnerability of the middle classes: the number
of its victims is expanding all over the world. This is not a matter of some
accident along the way, nor is it only due to abuses committed by some
economic actors who ought to be sanctioned. We are dealing with a
logic that has persisted throughout the economic history of the last centuries
(Fernand Braudel, 1969, Immanuel Wallerstein, 2000, István
Mészáros, 2008, Wim Dierckxsens, 2011). From crisis to regulation,
from de-regulation to crisis, as events unfold they always succumb to
the pressure of the rates of profit: when these rates increase, regulations
are relaxed; when the rates diminish, the regulations increase –
but always in favour of the accumulation of capital, considered to be the
engine of growth. What we are seeing now is nothing new. It is not the
first crisis of the financial system and there are many who say that it
will not be the last.
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