Campaign common good!

Together from lack to abundance

III. A Way Out of Profit Economy

In our time industrialisation reached level never before known. Industrialisation itself, however, was driven by an economic system that puts profit for the private owners or shareholders above the common good. Multinational concerns dominate the international markets. Competition is the principle of choice, not cooperation. Growth is the mark of a booming economy, not the principle of sustainability and of recurrent production. On closer inspection the growth myth emerges as a mask for a permanently advancing process of monopolisation. Ever fewer multinational concerns command ever growing areas of human life.

From this stem these main targets:

  • Decartelisation of the multinational concerns – conversing them to associations
  • Promotion of regional and production through cooperatives near the points of sale

The growth of multinational concerns at the cost of humanity is helped by a capital market that today is largely disconnected from what generally is known as Real Economy. Immense phantom values are daily running around the globe, representing a multiple of the achieved goods on offer. These phantom values are based on interest profits and other finance deals not stemming from any productive endeavour and support one single goal: to secure profit for a small group of banks, hedge funds and private-equity companies that enable a still small group of immensely rich persons a life in luxury and a commanding market-dominating role worldwide t the cost of the overwhelming majority of people on this world.

A tiny class of multinationally active capital jugglers are moving levers with the help of which wealth is systematically moved from below to above. At the same time have the globally acting stock exchanges, where originally only shares were dealt with, degenerated to veritable casinos and betting shops. The major speculators dominating the international financial markets show in today’s Euro crisis that they do not shirk from driving whole states into bankruptcy in order to pocket copious profits. Today’s capital market has reached a degree of hostility towards the requirements of the world at large that decisive action towards the common good is unquestionably required.

From this stem these clear demands:

  • Ban on all activities of the financial industry that surpass the supply of credits
  • Promotion of all endeavours to install cooperatively organised banks on a local, regional and branch levels
  • Annulment of the interest charging system as main cause of devaluation

For the production of a range of goods that cover the needs of the consumers all those cooperatively organised small- medium-sized companies coming up everywhere may be the role models. These cooperatives issue a participation certificate for every member of the company making that person a co-owner. Unlike shares these participation certificates may not be sold unless the owner of the certificate leaves the business. In that case the company buys the participation certificate back.

In these companies the difference in salaries of the managers and those of the producing personnel shall be small.  The founder of the business shall see himself as a responsible servant for the good of his collaborators as well as the clients. The hierarchy in such a cooperative business shall be flat, and the company motto shall be:

The Team is Boss, and the Team Serves the Common Good!

There shall be no competitiveness between the cooperative companies of any sector, but cooperation based on the consensus of advancement of the Common Good on a local, regional, national, continental and global level.

Act Local and Regional – Think Global!

From this stem the following central demands:

  • Advancement of small- and medium-sized businesses with a cooperative structure
  • Introduction of company-internal participation certificates – ban of stock exchange trading

 

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