A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

aggravated the economic disaster. This is the result of a ‘capitalism of
generalized monopolies’, as described by Samir Amin, 182 that imposes
its own political solutions.
As regards the climate crisis, the United Nations has organized several
conferences: Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancún, Durban, not
to mention conferences on specific themes like the oceans, biodiversity,
etc. Precise measures have been proposed to reduce the emission of
greenhouse gases and diminish environmental destruction. But the industrialized
countries have put brakes on the decision-making and refused
any kind of international agreement (in particular, the United States
of America). Nevertheless in this sector, too, acceptable regulations have
their limits: they must be market friendly.
The food crisis, as Jean Ziegler 183 has so well illustrated, is the result of
the logic of the economic system. In a world in which has produced
more wealth than ever before, the political will is lacking to apply effective
measures. The United States, for example, with fewer agricultural
surpluses, is indeed reducing its assistance to the World Food Programme
(WFP). The integration of agriculture into the logic of monopolistic capitalism
requires the growing concentration of land, the development of
monoculture and the disappearance of family agriculture, and all this
greatly increases the food problem.
The social crisis resulting from the growth of inequalities needs solutions
for structural, agrarian, financial and political reforms that go further than
would be acceptable by the bourgeois classes. The system that they
dominate is so dogmatic that only light and provisional regulations are
tolerated, such as programmes to combat poverty to reduce social pressures
and ecological measures when environmental destruction affects
the rate of profit.
182 Samir Amin, Audace, plus d’Audace, website of the World Forum for Alternatives,
2011
183 Jean Ziegler, Destruction massive – Géopolitique de la Faim, Le Seuil, Paris, 2011
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