By Kebour Ghenna
October 31, 2019
I don’t know what books our elites read, but they seem not to realize the capitalist/free market system has failed on this planet. Today capitalism, rather than delivering sustainable and widely shared prosperity, is increasingly producing wage stagnation, leaving ever more workers and farmers in poverty, advancing ever more inequality, expanding banking crises, and promoting the convulsions of populism and the impending climate catastrophe.
Dear Readers,
Neoliberal and capitalism policies, perpetuated since the start of the 20th century are increasingly rejected. The policies of privatization, deregulation, lower taxes for business and the rich, more power for employers and shareholders, less opportunities for workers – are failing, despite the efforts to make them appear inevitable; to depict any alternative as impossible.
To say that capitalism is a failed system is not, of course, to suggest that it’s now in the verge of crashing. It may still gyrate for some time, like a chicken with its head cut off. For those few moments the chicken appears to be alive and even strong, before finally collapsing and dying. Yes, dear readers, capitalism has passed from being a historically necessary and creative system at its beginning, to being a historically unnecessary and destructive one today.
It appears that our leaders have not realized the world has changed!
Last month we read the simplistic “homegrown” economic policy, a dangerous text, completely blind to questions of global socio-economic realities. A corrupt text which, as much as possible, reflects what the big international patrons in financial oligarchy want.
Read it and judge for yourself whether this is an agenda working for the people or for big foreign companies, whether it’s a program that articulates a viable vision for a united and strong Ethiopia or simply a propaganda piece in best Soviet Party tradition, in this case, to satisfy irresponsible foreign financiers. Judge whether it favors short term gains over long term prosperity, whether the plan can feed, educate, house and cure Ethiopians, whether it can construct a forward-looking, optimistic and productive Ethiopia or opens the country to foreign capital, hence exploitation.
Judge for yourself!
In this increasingly unsettling environment, this government failed to bring together people of different ideological inclinations to work together and to skillfully re-engineer the system so that the pie is both divided and grown fairly. Instead it’s rushing to impose neoliberal policies that are everywhere beset by market failures.
While this goes on in the country, the news is dominated by ‘’Medemer’, or Jawar, the self proclaimed ‘activist’, who is the Rasputin of the Prime Minister. As near as we can tell, both are mostly distractions.
But distractions from what?
Distractions to ease the auction of the very strategic assets created to benefit the country to global financial elites in the name of efficiency.
My point in all this, is that while capitalism is not at its beginning and not at its end, it is definitely at the beginning of its end. Unless we put in place a coherent vision of a viable and desirable alternative to capitalism, then barbarism will take over, understood as a breakdown not only of the economy, but of an entire civilization on the order of what is already unfolding in our country.
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Editor’s note : This article appeared first on Kebour Ghenna’s personal social media page on October 31, 2019
Article by the same author : Privatization of key assets won’t make Ethiopia better
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Well all the prizes and applauds for the pm came without a reason.Among them are, him championing neiliberalism without questioning its flaws could be one.Capitalism has never cared for the poor, and will not in the future.our country is on the verge of collapse because nobody speaking up like kebour
This is the old aregument of the communists who ruined ETHIOPIA. PEOPLE don’t listen to this kind of failed communist ideas.
Ethiopia with good leadership can play like president Lula of Brazil, work towards economic growth from among the people, not from china or outside imposed development where the population work as slave rather than learn vocational and develop their country. Lula worked balanced with outside corporation as well empowered his people. You do need outside cooperation, yes cooperation not imposition. What we have been seeing now is the full scale enslavement of the Ethiopian people ending up house cleaning in Arab countries where they are killed most of the time, by the way we were respected in Saudi once under Haileselassie, Ethiopians were the privileged workers in Saudi. Tplf/Shabia strategy is destroy and be destroyed, but they think they can live take power, that will not happen they will just end up server of outside to enslave the rest of ethiopians.