Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy.
Interpretation
The quote distinguishes between capitalism and market dynamics, arguing that capitalism undermines both market mechanisms and democratic values.
David Korten asserts that capitalism and the market are often wrongly considered the same; in reality, capitalism can conflict with the principles of the market and democracy. This perspective highlights the complexities of economic systems, suggesting that the profit-driven nature of capitalism can lead to negative consequences for both free markets and democratic governance.
In practice
In a discussion about economic reforms, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for a more careful consideration of how capitalism affects democratic processes.
When the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity.
We can have democracy and a prosperous, just, and sustainable human future. Or we can have corporate rule. We cannot have both.
In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.
As corporations gain in autonomous institutional power and be-come more detached from people and place, the human interest and the corporate interest increasingly diverge. It is almost as though we were being invaded by alien beings intent on colonizing our planet, reducing us to serfs, and then excluding as many of us as possible.
Living capital, which has the special capacity to continuously regenerate itself, is ultimately the source of all real wealth. To destroy it for money, a simple number with no intrinsic value, is an act of collective insanity - which makes capitalism a mental, as well as physical pathology.
The proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
What happens is consciousness operates in mysterious ways. One of those ways is that the old paradigm suddenly starts to die.
Choice not chance determines your destiny [my family motto...credited to Aristotle]
The Human Species could have been great but instead we became satisfied with lights on our tennis shoes.
When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the supreme state will come to you uninvited and unexpected.
There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.
One side of me is very busy paying attention to the details of life, the humanity of people, catching the street voices, the middle-class, upper-middle-class secret lives of Turks. The other side is interested in history and class and gender, trying to get all of society in a very realistic way.
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