A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

all kinds must be abolished, as well as bank secrecy – two powerful instruments
the dominant class uses in the class struggle. It is also necessary
to establish a tax on international financial flows (the ‘Tobin tax’)
to reduce the power of finance capital. ‘Odious debts’ must be denounced,
after due audits, as has been done in Ecuador. Speculation on
food and energy cannot be permitted. As said before, a tax on the kilometres
consumed by industrial or agricultural goods would make it possible
to reduce the ecological costs of transport and the abuse of
‘comparative advantage’. Prolonging the ‘life expectancy’ of industrial
products would allow to save raw materials and energy, and could diminish
the artificial profits of capital resulting purely from the circulation
of trade (Wim Dierckxsens, 2011).
From a positive viewpoint there are also many examples to be cited. The
social economy is built on a logic that is quite different from that of capitalism.
It is true that it is a marginal activity at present, compared with the
immense concentration of oligopolistic capital, but it is possible to encourage
it in various ways. The same goes for cooperatives and popular credit.
They must be protected from being destroyed or absorbed by the dominant
system. As for regional economic initiatives, they can be the means
of a transformation out of economic logic, on the condition that they do
not represent simply an adaptation of the system to new production
techniques, thus serving as means to integrate national economies into
a capitalist framework at a higher level. Restoring the common goods
privatized by neoliberalism is a fundamental step to be taken in public
services like water, energy, transport, communications, health, education
and culture. This does not necessarily mean the State taking them
over but rather setting up many different forms of public and citizen control
over their production and distribution.
Redefining the ‘Common Good of Humanity’ in terms of a new definition
of the economy is thus a necessary task to be undertaken, confronted
as we are by the destruction of our common heritage as a result of forgetting
the collective dimension of production for life-needs, and by the
promotion of exclusive individualism.
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