Marxism introduced into Western philosophy the knowledge that many injustices in the world were due to an economic system based on exploitation and greed. Communist systems didn't worked very well, but nearly 130 after the death of Marx and twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall many of the evils of the world are still the result of the greed of a few.
What is happening today in many poor countries is quite similar to what happened in Europe centuries ago, when capitalism took over lands expelling the local population. And that's what happened in Mexico because of NAFTA, the Free Trade Treaty between the United States, Canada and Mexico. U.S. farmers, as well as European ones, receive huge state subsidies, which directly harms farmers in Mexico and Africa that haven't these grants. Because the West believes in free market, but only when it's convenient. And the result is that Mexicans and African farmers often have no choice but to emigrate to the north, as happened to the peasants of Europe in 1700 and 1800, who emigrated to the large cities. Something similar is happening in Nigeria or Peru, where major Western companies have agreed with local governments to exploit and pollute the land without restraint to the detriment of local populations, and in many other countries, especially to the detriment of tribal peoples, who have less means to defend themselves.
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It happens all over the world and in many ways, but on the Western media these stories rarely are covered, because they might disturb the audience while watching TV.
Yet the men who get richer with indiscriminate exploitation of other men are few, a small part of humanity, and can get away with it because many don't know and don't care. We tend to believe that Western civilization is superior to the others for the wealth and prosperity that has reached, but in reality the rest of the world knows well that our alleged superiority is only the ability to apply more organized violence and exploitation. And so at the end the victory of capitalism as the only economic and social system more than a victory of freedom has often been a victory of gold on the dignity and lives of human beings.
But even in the West in the last few years we have noticed a steady widening of the gap between the few rich and everyone else, and the alarm has even been launched by the italian bishops.
The last great genre of science fiction, cyberpunk, imagine our future as an increasingly dark, polluted and unjust world, emptied of all ideology, dominated by a minority of rich corporations more powerful than any state and populated by an impoverished humanity at the outskirts of cities. The heroes of these stories are usually the hackers,who fought in the web the power of companies. It's a future that each day becomes more likely if humanity will not find the strength to react and allow gold to win over men.
Francesco Defferrari
The Corporation, a canadian documentary.
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