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[h=2]Power as capital[/h]
May 29th, 2012 |
Author: sanjay
The mystery of capital is one thing that Marx dedicated his life in trying to solve, but the way it is manipulated and used till today gives it a mystical quality that may surpass that ascribed to scriptures. The bottom-line as to why there is the surge to gain, accumulate and wield capital is not because it is productive in itself but because it is used as a source of power and control.
For instance, two broad patterns emerge with regards to the national brandishing of capital: The excessive use of it and the resulting indebtedness; and the hoarding of it as assets and the unwillingness to reveal what it all amounts to. But in either case, don’t be fooled: Not for one moment is it suggested that you can ever get the actual gauge of what is owed and what is stashed away. That is a mystery beyond seven seals.
Look at America, which has a phenomenal debt – and only an assessment — of almost US$16 trillion; it is estimated that the debt increases at almost US$4 billion per day. And so much of this debt has been incurred due to all the wars it has been embroiled in, maintaining and enhancing its military and security apparatus, and the countless favours showered on corporations etc.
However, a country which has plenty of financial assets and jealously guards that information — lest it be misused against the interests of the state somehow –- would not only insist on lack of transparency, but also come up with the claim that it might take decades of man-years to fix the actual value of total assets. Again, it could be counter-argued that rough estimates are what most are asking about.
But underlying both scenarios is one thing — power as expressed via capital. That is why you have billionaires and the mega-wealthy who want to be even wealthier — not because they can float off into the seventh heaven on a nano-technology built chariot, but because it gives them a hold on people, governments and countries. If you doubt this, just list down what exemptions are given to wealth: How much infrastructure, policies and politicians will morph in any way to accommodate-capture that wealth.
Everyone else who objects to such arrangements should be grateful that they can get a national wages council recommendation for a $50 increase in salaries, and importantly, drop to our knees in obeisance that we don’t have to pay for the air we breathe.
Power as capital is ‘real’ because we have made it real. We have given away our power to it. It is this perception and co-created reality that gives the controllers the ability to continue their illusory hold on people — backed by fear, lots of it.
We are willing to believe and react to what we can never in its totality ever touch or see; yet we have faith that it can destroy us: Understandably so, as it is used as a means for countless wars (if you don’t have enough, just ‘borrow’ and post it on the ledgers as ‘owed’ for an indefinite time frame). It is used to give the confidence to wielders of power that they are in charge because they have this invisible stockpile in their bank accounts and national coffers to draw from to try and counter resistance.
Capital has a greater hold on people than all abused religious teachings put together. Some need proof of the spiritual to believe in the Divine, but we don’t have to see capital and can still shrink in a corner from the threat it can pose.
Capital is the biggest scam in human history, and the economic crises going on will ultimately reveal this to be the truth.
There is an effective scene in Sergio Leone’s Once upon a time in the west where a crippled railway/property magnate is held hostage in his own carriage by the henchmen of his erstwhile gunslinger. The magnate sits down at the desk where the gunmen are playing cards and asks to join them. They agree and he takes out a wad of money and deals it out note by note, like cards, for the men. The latter ask, ‘So how do we play this game?’ The next scene involves the same gunmen bought over trying to kill the gunslinger who tried to buy them out earlier with his smaller base of capital.
But no one knows the actual worth of the magnate; all that is needed is the mystique that he has tons of the stuff and can keep you employed in perpetuity. This is the point: All the capital in the world is fictitious. It is based on credit and interest and leveraged on assets and gambles on the world stock markets, stakes in corporations, and what have you – it also depends on currency fluctuations.
No wielder of vast capital can ever produce it to prove it other than electronic records in databanks. If we want physical evidence then it would have to be literally printed out and printing money for whatever reason has to be done carefully; if wage increases terrify the moneyed class about loss of their income through higher taxes and/or wage freezes (not forgetting inflation), just imagine printing out a trillion dollars – what would you do with it anyway but store it back in vaults. So the electronic vaults on computers are ‘safer’ (but it is just virtual money).
It is ‘safer’ for a government to keep hold of a large sum of money, like state pension funds, rather than give the populace liberal access to it. For people may spend quite a bit of it and too much of that splashing around will be inflationary; and even more frightening, if people have a lot of the stuff: Will they still want to be ‘productive’ and work? Someone has to clear the trash.
Governments are willing to guarantee money in banks up to a certain amount against losses by banks, so that if the banks collapse only so much of it is insured for the majority of people. All other assets for most of us are fixed (unless you want to liquefy them) and their value depends on demand and supply etc. But the concept of capital and the figures that can be supposedly shown in account books is translated into the power that is used to give banking conglomerates, mega-corporations, governments and individuals that aura of control.
You are told that this is what the country owns and has control over, and it helps ensure that all is well and stable: Don’t rock the boat and lose it all. But in the life time of an individual you never always get to use or see that money when you think it is needed to help you. It is passed on in virtual form as individual (personal) and collective (societal) legacies: And it is expected that each succeeding generation will benefit from it.
But here is the question: If there is indeed an epidemic financial crisis on a global scale, what good is this virtual money when the crisis itself is financial? For instance, if there is a rise in sea level and most areas worldwide are thereby inundated, assuaging people that they have reserves of seawater stored for them somewhere in case of emergency – can have a further dampening effect.
If there is a crisis of catastrophic proportions, it is dubious if the capital can be used anyway or what good is it when most of the populace itself has been wiped out. It is not that the capital in this instance is being used deliberately in a deceptive way: Which would need to be proved, and that will be some doing — if it takes decades to account for things. Rather, it is the nature of capital that precipitates this.
Which brings us to the conclusion that many are still in denial of: That the real power and control behind governments and states are not the politicians themselves — who in many cases wittingly, or otherwise, are representatives of capital. The actual controllers are the groups who have control of the international banking and financial arms of the world. Governments are hostages to the idea of capital to which we have surrendered our sovereignty as countries and peoples.
It is akin to colonizers coming to a land just discovered, and in order to take out the gold there and extract the labour from the natives (so that they do all the work while their exploiters are free to do what they choose) — these colonizers offer shiny beads and slips of paper. The natives use this for exchange and as a means to expand the local economy which has been monetized. Those who control the supply, loans, interest rates, financial games and speculation of this new money have introduced a form of control.
And the ultimate form of control is to build this reserve of capital through fractional reserve banking, use credit (and its instruments) to monetize the population and formulate new avenues of expenditure, and thereby consolidate your hold on things. And once you’ve built up this reserve which can never be fully accounted for, you but have to wield sets of digits in computer files that give you power over others.
The problem with all forms of power is that when you extract from the environment and all life forms without giving back in a compassionate and nurturing way, you become destructive. Hence, wars, economic collapse, unemployment, poverty and vicious income imbalances. And we have a host of economic theories to justify this tragic farce of humanity; theories, which we have great difficulty in trying to admit, that are among fundamental causes for our economic and social problems.
The most dangerous and destructive extremism of our time is free market fundamentalism.
That is why, shocking as it seems, the answer to our problems is on the higher paradigm of human decency and spiritual values. Procreation can be said to be biological, but life is a miracle. Money has nothing to do with it as it does not generate life; however, the taking of life in many cases can be traced to this entity.
Instead of using capital as a tool it has made us mere tools. It has made us a means and not an end that should be sanctified. It has made us beings alienated from our true natures — it has commodified existence.
We have to regain our power by going within to see what it is that keeps us in thrall and fear: The time will come before long to speak, stand, and act out our truth for the highest good of all. But we must remember that even those whom we disagree with now are still our brothers and sisters.
Until we can work towards a unity consciousness without the stumbling block of fear and anger, we will be consigned for life on a prison planet.
Sanjay Perera
The writer is editor of Philosophers for Change
The mystery of capital is one thing that Marx dedicated his life in trying to solve, but the way it is manipulated and used till today gives it a mystical quality that may surpass that ascribed to scriptures. The bottom-line as to why there is the surge to gain, accumulate and wield capital is not because it is productive in itself but because it is used as a source of power and control.
For instance, two broad patterns emerge with regards to the national brandishing of capital: The excessive use of it and the resulting indebtedness; and the hoarding of it as assets and the unwillingness to reveal what it all amounts to. But in either case, don’t be fooled: Not for one moment is it suggested that you can ever get the actual gauge of what is owed and what is stashed away. That is a mystery beyond seven seals.
Look at America, which has a phenomenal debt – and only an assessment — of almost US$16 trillion; it is estimated that the debt increases at almost US$4 billion per day. And so much of this debt has been incurred due to all the wars it has been embroiled in, maintaining and enhancing its military and security apparatus, and the countless favours showered on corporations etc.
However, a country which has plenty of financial assets and jealously guards that information — lest it be misused against the interests of the state somehow –- would not only insist on lack of transparency, but also come up with the claim that it might take decades of man-years to fix the actual value of total assets. Again, it could be counter-argued that rough estimates are what most are asking about.
But underlying both scenarios is one thing — power as expressed via capital. That is why you have billionaires and the mega-wealthy who want to be even wealthier — not because they can float off into the seventh heaven on a nano-technology built chariot, but because it gives them a hold on people, governments and countries. If you doubt this, just list down what exemptions are given to wealth: How much infrastructure, policies and politicians will morph in any way to accommodate-capture that wealth.
Everyone else who objects to such arrangements should be grateful that they can get a national wages council recommendation for a $50 increase in salaries, and importantly, drop to our knees in obeisance that we don’t have to pay for the air we breathe.
Power as capital is ‘real’ because we have made it real. We have given away our power to it. It is this perception and co-created reality that gives the controllers the ability to continue their illusory hold on people — backed by fear, lots of it.
We are willing to believe and react to what we can never in its totality ever touch or see; yet we have faith that it can destroy us: Understandably so, as it is used as a means for countless wars (if you don’t have enough, just ‘borrow’ and post it on the ledgers as ‘owed’ for an indefinite time frame). It is used to give the confidence to wielders of power that they are in charge because they have this invisible stockpile in their bank accounts and national coffers to draw from to try and counter resistance.
Capital has a greater hold on people than all abused religious teachings put together. Some need proof of the spiritual to believe in the Divine, but we don’t have to see capital and can still shrink in a corner from the threat it can pose.
Capital is the biggest scam in human history, and the economic crises going on will ultimately reveal this to be the truth.
There is an effective scene in Sergio Leone’s Once upon a time in the west where a crippled railway/property magnate is held hostage in his own carriage by the henchmen of his erstwhile gunslinger. The magnate sits down at the desk where the gunmen are playing cards and asks to join them. They agree and he takes out a wad of money and deals it out note by note, like cards, for the men. The latter ask, ‘So how do we play this game?’ The next scene involves the same gunmen bought over trying to kill the gunslinger who tried to buy them out earlier with his smaller base of capital.
But no one knows the actual worth of the magnate; all that is needed is the mystique that he has tons of the stuff and can keep you employed in perpetuity. This is the point: All the capital in the world is fictitious. It is based on credit and interest and leveraged on assets and gambles on the world stock markets, stakes in corporations, and what have you – it also depends on currency fluctuations.
No wielder of vast capital can ever produce it to prove it other than electronic records in databanks. If we want physical evidence then it would have to be literally printed out and printing money for whatever reason has to be done carefully; if wage increases terrify the moneyed class about loss of their income through higher taxes and/or wage freezes (not forgetting inflation), just imagine printing out a trillion dollars – what would you do with it anyway but store it back in vaults. So the electronic vaults on computers are ‘safer’ (but it is just virtual money).
It is ‘safer’ for a government to keep hold of a large sum of money, like state pension funds, rather than give the populace liberal access to it. For people may spend quite a bit of it and too much of that splashing around will be inflationary; and even more frightening, if people have a lot of the stuff: Will they still want to be ‘productive’ and work? Someone has to clear the trash.
Governments are willing to guarantee money in banks up to a certain amount against losses by banks, so that if the banks collapse only so much of it is insured for the majority of people. All other assets for most of us are fixed (unless you want to liquefy them) and their value depends on demand and supply etc. But the concept of capital and the figures that can be supposedly shown in account books is translated into the power that is used to give banking conglomerates, mega-corporations, governments and individuals that aura of control.
You are told that this is what the country owns and has control over, and it helps ensure that all is well and stable: Don’t rock the boat and lose it all. But in the life time of an individual you never always get to use or see that money when you think it is needed to help you. It is passed on in virtual form as individual (personal) and collective (societal) legacies: And it is expected that each succeeding generation will benefit from it.
But here is the question: If there is indeed an epidemic financial crisis on a global scale, what good is this virtual money when the crisis itself is financial? For instance, if there is a rise in sea level and most areas worldwide are thereby inundated, assuaging people that they have reserves of seawater stored for them somewhere in case of emergency – can have a further dampening effect.
If there is a crisis of catastrophic proportions, it is dubious if the capital can be used anyway or what good is it when most of the populace itself has been wiped out. It is not that the capital in this instance is being used deliberately in a deceptive way: Which would need to be proved, and that will be some doing — if it takes decades to account for things. Rather, it is the nature of capital that precipitates this.
Which brings us to the conclusion that many are still in denial of: That the real power and control behind governments and states are not the politicians themselves — who in many cases wittingly, or otherwise, are representatives of capital. The actual controllers are the groups who have control of the international banking and financial arms of the world. Governments are hostages to the idea of capital to which we have surrendered our sovereignty as countries and peoples.
It is akin to colonizers coming to a land just discovered, and in order to take out the gold there and extract the labour from the natives (so that they do all the work while their exploiters are free to do what they choose) — these colonizers offer shiny beads and slips of paper. The natives use this for exchange and as a means to expand the local economy which has been monetized. Those who control the supply, loans, interest rates, financial games and speculation of this new money have introduced a form of control.
And the ultimate form of control is to build this reserve of capital through fractional reserve banking, use credit (and its instruments) to monetize the population and formulate new avenues of expenditure, and thereby consolidate your hold on things. And once you’ve built up this reserve which can never be fully accounted for, you but have to wield sets of digits in computer files that give you power over others.
The problem with all forms of power is that when you extract from the environment and all life forms without giving back in a compassionate and nurturing way, you become destructive. Hence, wars, economic collapse, unemployment, poverty and vicious income imbalances. And we have a host of economic theories to justify this tragic farce of humanity; theories, which we have great difficulty in trying to admit, that are among fundamental causes for our economic and social problems.
The most dangerous and destructive extremism of our time is free market fundamentalism.
That is why, shocking as it seems, the answer to our problems is on the higher paradigm of human decency and spiritual values. Procreation can be said to be biological, but life is a miracle. Money has nothing to do with it as it does not generate life; however, the taking of life in many cases can be traced to this entity.
Instead of using capital as a tool it has made us mere tools. It has made us a means and not an end that should be sanctified. It has made us beings alienated from our true natures — it has commodified existence.
We have to regain our power by going within to see what it is that keeps us in thrall and fear: The time will come before long to speak, stand, and act out our truth for the highest good of all. But we must remember that even those whom we disagree with now are still our brothers and sisters.
Until we can work towards a unity consciousness without the stumbling block of fear and anger, we will be consigned for life on a prison planet.
Sanjay Perera
The writer is editor of Philosophers for Change
