Modern state-corporate capitalism is stripping the environment bare through unsustainable levels of consumption. It is\u00a0legitimised by a deceitful ideology that attempts to justify and sell a system which by its very nature is designed to benefit a minority at the expense of the majority.<\/p>\n
This model thrives on the exploitation of peoples and the environment by powerful transnational corporations. Look no further to see how\u00a0intellectual property rights<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0agricultural subsidies<\/a>\u00a0and the WTO serves the interests of these corporations, for instance, or the roles that\u00a0‘free trade’\u00a0agreements<\/a>,’structural adjustment<\/a>‘ and\u00a0the\u00a0undermining<\/a>\u00a0of non-compliant governments play. Moreover, economic neoliberalism strides the world hand in glove with militarism. The outcome is a programme of endless destabilisations, conflicts and wars over finite resources to\u00a0enrich elite interests<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the area of food and agriculture, there has been a\u00a0programmed eradication<\/a>\u00a0of indigenous, productive farming across the planet.\u00a0This dovetails with an urban-centric model of \u2018development\u2019 underpinned by \u2018free trade\u2019 and the appropriation of wealth by a select number of individuals and powerful private corporations, on the one hand, and increasing hardship, austerity and poverty for the rest of the population on the other. These corporations, with the full backing of the state (we are not talking about some notional\u00a0form of \u2018free market\u2019 capitalism<\/a>), seek to mould the very essence of existence, from cradle to grave and from patented genetically modified seed to plate.<\/p>\n All this is sold to the masses as the part of the ongoing quest to achieve human well-being, measured in terms of endless GDP growth. It\u2019s based on an ideology that conveniently associates such growth with corporate profit, boosted by stock buy-backs, financial speculation and bubbles, massive arms deals, colonialism\u00a0masquerading as philanthropy<\/a>,\u00a0manipulated and rigged<\/a>\u00a0markets,\u00a0corrupt and secretive<\/a>\u00a0trade deals, outsourced jobs, job automation and a resource-grabbing militarism. That such a parasitical system could ever bring about a \u2018happy\u2019 human condition for the majority is unfathomable. Yet state-corporate capitalism\u2019s great con-trick is to fool people that it can.<\/p>\n Happiness and well-being<\/strong><\/p>\n It is interesting to note that 10 years ago, the first ever \u2018Happy Planet Index\u2019 (HPI) measured happiness across 178 countries. The small south Pacific island of Vanuatu was the happiest nation. Germany ranked 81st<\/sup>, Japan 95th<\/sup>\u00a0and the US 150th<\/sup>. The index was based on consumption levels, life expectancy and reported happiness. Although Vanuatu was top, it only ranked 207th<\/sup>\u00a0out of 233 economies when measured against Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2009, Costa Rica topped the list of the World Happy Planet Index.<\/p>\n This is not to imply that material wealth does not impact well-being or feelings of happiness. Many other surveys indicate it does. However,\u00a0less wealthy countries often do well in these types of surveys because in these societies (and certain surveys) cultural priority is placed on family and friends, on social capital rather than financial capital and on social equity rather than corporate power. This might explain why nations\u00a0such as the US and UK, which are highly unequal and are the drivers of neoliberalism, don\u2019t always fare too well in such surveys when compared to other rich nations.<\/p>\n According to the UN World Happiness Reports of both 2013 and 2014, Denmark was the planet\u2019s happiest country. Denmark is not just wealthy, but its people feel safe because emphasis is placed on social equality and robust welfare policies. Indeed, Scandinavian countries usually come out near the top of quality of life and well-being surveys.<\/p>\n Over the last 60 years, material living standards in the West have improved, but how wealth is distributed is what really matters. For example, take the case of the UK. Much of manufacturing has been outsourced to cheap labour economies; welfare, unions and livelihoods have been attacked; massive levels of tax evasion\/avoidance persist; neoliberal policies have resulted in privatisation, deregulation and national and personal debt spiralling; the cost of living has increased as public assets have been sold off to profiteering cartels; taxpayers\u2019 money has been turned into corporate welfare for the banks; and the richest 1,000 families in the UK have seen their net worth\u00a0more than double<\/a>\u00a0since 2009, in the worst recession since the Great Depression, to \u00a3547bn, while \u2018austerity\u2019 is imposed on everyone else.<\/p>\n Wealthy Western elites use up vast quantities of the world’s scarce resources and become richer, but many citizens who live in Western nations\u00a0live in misery<\/a>. And this is not even accounting for the tens of millions elsewhere who in places like Libya, Syria or Iraq whose countries were thrown into conflict and chaos by the designs of a US-Anglo elite for the sake of\u00a0pipelines, resources or geopolitical motives<\/a>.<\/p>\n Self-interest or public good?<\/strong><\/p>\n It is clear whose happiness and well-being matters most and whose does not matter at all. Consider the following extract from an article by\u00a0Andrew Gavin Marshall<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cAt the top of the list of those who run the world, we have the major international banking houses, which control the global central banking system. From there, these dynastic banking families created an international network of think tanks, which socialised the ruling elites of each nation and the international community as a whole, into a cohesive transnational elite class. The foundations they established helped shape civil society both nationally and internationally, playing a major part in the funding \u2013 and thus coordinating and co-opting \u2013 of major social-political movements.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n While mouthing clich\u00e9s about \u2018democracy\u2019, ‘growth’ and individual \u2018freedom\u2019, just who actually controls the world (and for what purpose) is not an issue the mainstream media and mainstream politicians like to raise.\u00a0In 2008, David Rothkopf published his book ‘Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making’:<\/p>\n \u201cThe superclass constitutes approximately 0.0001 percent of the world\u2019s population. They are the Davos-attending, Gulfstream\/private jet\u2013flying, money-incrusted, megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world, people at the absolute peak of the global power pyramid… They are from the highest levels of finance capital, transnational corporations, the government, the military, the academy, nongovernmental organizations, spiritual leaders and other shadow elites.\u201d\u00a0Project Censored<\/a>\u00a0(‘Exposing the transnational ruling class’)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n These are the people setting the agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, G-7, G-20, NATO, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. They decide which wars are to be fought and why and formulate global economic policy.<\/p>\n In India, in a headlong rush to urbanise (under the advice of the\u00a0World Bank<\/a>), its cities are increasingly defined by their traffic-jammed flyovers cutting through fume choked neighbourhoods that are denied access to clean drinking water and a decent infrastructure. Privatisation and crony capitalism are the order of the day.<\/p>\n For all the talk of India\u2019s high GDP growth in recent years, India has\u00a0slipped down<\/a>\u00a0the World Happiness Index from 111th<\/sup>\u00a0in 2014 to 117th<\/sup>\u00a0in 2015. Again, the Nordic countries were at the top but with Switzerland having displaced Denmark for first place.\u00a0The index takes into account not just economic measures, but also social and cultural capital, including positive social relations, characterized by values such as trust, benevolence and shared social identities that contribute positively to economic outcomes as well as delivering happiness directly.<\/p>\n Away from the cities, the influence of transnational agribusiness and state-corporate grabs for land are leading to violent upheaval, conflict and ecological destruction, all to fuel a model of development which effectively such the lifeblood from rural communities and drive an unsustainable \u2018nine-day wonder\u2019 (how Gandhi described it) model of \u2018development\u2019.<\/p>\n The links between the Monsanto-Syngenta-Walmart-backed Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture and the associated US sanctioning and backing of the opening up of India\u2019s nuclear sector to foreign interests have shown what the models of \u2018development\u2019 being pushed onto people really entails, not least in terms of the powerful corporate interests that really benefit and the ordinary people that lose out [see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>].<\/p>\n But we are told that this is \u2018development\u2019 and \u2018good\u2019 for \u2018the country\u2019. It depends on just \u2018who\u2019 the country is meant to be and therefore whom all this turmoil (development) happens to be good for. Aside from transnational corporations, we know who it is good for: the\u00a0combined wealth<\/a>\u00a0of India\u2019s richest 296 individuals is $478 billion, some 22% of India\u2019s GDP. This is larger than the GDPs of the UAE, which stood at $402 billion, South Africa ($350 billion) and Singapore ($308 billion).<\/p>\n The model of neoliberal state-capitalist development being imposed on the world (under the benign title \u2018globalisation\u2019) serves the vested interests of an increasingly globalised and integrated elite.<\/p>\n Could GMO help?<\/strong><\/p>\n There is much rhetoric about a brave new world of crops engineered to eradicate disease, boost yields, fight pests and adapt to climatic conditions (etc), but the reality is hundreds of thousands of farmers in India have killed themselves as a result of economic distress. Many of these suicides are\u00a0directly linked<\/a>\u00a0to GM, while many are also\u00a0associated with wider issues<\/a>, such as the growing of cash crops for export and the exposure to international markets and trade rules which serve the interests of global agribusiness.<\/p>\n The reality of GM is also\u00a0‘ecocide’ and ‘genocide’<\/a>\u00a0in South America. The reality is a\u00a0flawed<\/a>\u00a0technology that might appear to work in some respects within the controls and confines of a laboratory but which is pushed by an industry and powerful think tanks that drive a global GMO agenda (both commercial and geopolitical) by\u00a0infiltrating<\/a>\u00a0research institutes, trade deals and public bodies,\u00a0corrupting practices<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0manipulating<\/a>\u00a0data and by employing rhetoric about \u2018feeding the world\u2019, which disregards the\u00a0actual evidence<\/a>\u00a0pertaining to the root causes of poverty and hunger.<\/p>\n This technology is integral to a model of food and agriculture controlled from laboratory to plate by a group of major transnational\u00a0seed, pesticide, food processing and food commodity trading companies and giant retailers. This group is tied to and fuels a system of export-oriented, urban-focussed agriculture, underpinned by trade rules, deals and agreements that major members of this cartel\u00a0help draw up<\/a>.<\/p>\n And science is pressed into serving this agenda. Many molecular biologists make an excellent living on the back of lavish career-building funding by touting the supposed virtues of GM. And they too often like to promote the technology on the basis of\u00a0uniformed personal opinion<\/a>. Like the companies themselves, these figures also have a vested interest in expanding the use of this technology.<\/p>\n We constantly hear about how GM and the company and scientists behind it are serving the public good, as if science and GM exist in a political and economic vacuum. But any talk about funding, power relations and the ownership and control of this technology is to be dismissed with shouts of \u2018conspiracy theory\u2019 or some tirade of smear-ridden abuse.<\/p>\n Could GM (or even synthetic biology for that matter) ever be a viable addition to the food and agriculture? Possibly, if it were ever to be shown that it had no adverse environmental, ecological and health impacts and could perform better than non-GM; and only if it were not to be used as a strategy to sideline the need to tackle poverty, hunger, inequality and the undermining of food security by eradicating a globalised system of food and agriculture controlled by large corporations that fuel and benefits from that system.<\/p>\n GMO and the bottom line<\/strong><\/p>\n Unfortunately, GM is being used to reinforce the status quo. As it currently stands, it is a political and ideological device: a bogus techno quick-fix being promoted by vested interests that neatly diverts attention from the need to address the structural factors that drive inequality, poverty and food insecurity and which those interests profit from and helped to create.<\/p>\n And the aim is not just to reinforce the status quo but to extend it further: to bring nations under the control of a few corporations by getting countries to rely on their patented seeds and chemical inputs: for instance, read\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0on Monsanto in Ukraine,\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0about US aid and El Salvador and\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0about Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n Insert a gene into an already high-yielding conventionally bred seed and patent it and get a country to plant it and rely on it, and you insert a (financially lucrative) mechanism of political leverage over that country. Because what is the purpose other than that, given GM currently provides no discernible, sustainable benefits when compared to non-GM options?<\/p>\n The GM project and the model of \u2018development\u2019 it is tied to a mindset that regards other (non-westernised) social systems as deficient because they do not comply with Western notions of what life is and how it is to be lived \u2013 or, more specifically in this case, what food is and how it should be grown.\u00a0Highly productive smallholder farming, organic agriculture, agroecology and a locally grown nutritious, diverse range of food crops are\u00a0to be cast aside in favour of a \u2018superior\u2019 system based on petrochemical-intensive industrial farms and agribusiness supplied and processed junk food. Throughout the world, \u2018corporate America\/Europe\u2019 is conveniently on hand to destroy the former and impose the latter all under the banner of \u2018progress\u2019 with devastating effects.<\/p>\n As with much of this \u2018development\u2019 strategy, GM is not being done for the public good, despite what its supporters say. The development of agribusiness is not the same as developing agriculture, despite what\u00a0Bill Gates<\/a>\u00a0or the industry might like to think.<\/p>\n Consider that Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant brought in just under\u00a0$12m<\/a>\u00a0in 2015,\u00a0and Vice-President Rob Fraley brought in just under\u00a0$3.4m<\/a>.\u00a0That\u2019s some income for two individuals who are not even the main shareholders. In January 2015, Monsanto\u00a0reported a profit of\u00a0$243m<\/a>\u00a0(down from $368m the previous year).<\/p>\n Consider too the following quote from\u00a0this piece<\/a>\u00a0on the Bloomberg website in 2014:<\/p>\n \u201cChairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant is focused on selling more genetically modified seeds in Latin America to drive earnings growth outside the core U.S. market. Sales of soybean seeds and genetic licenses climbed 16 percent, and revenue in the unit that makes glyphosate weed killer, sold as Roundup, rose 24 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In the same piece, \u201cGlyphosate really crushed it,\u201d Chris Shaw, a New York-based analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co stated: meaning the sales of glyphosate were a major boost.<\/p>\n The bottom line is sales and profit maximisation – and the unflinching defence of glyphosate, no matter how carcinogenic to humans it is and, more to the point, how much\u00a0Monsanto knows itis<\/a>\u00a0and has known it for years.<\/p>\n Noam Chomsky<\/a>\u00a0underlines the commercial imperative:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026 the CEO of a corporation has actually a legal obligation to maximize profit and market share. Beyond that legal obligation, if the CEO doesn\u2019t do it, and, let\u2019s say, decides to do something that will, say, benefit the population and not increase profit, he or she is not going to be CEO much longer \u2014 they\u2019ll be replaced by somebody who does do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Technology in itself is neither good nor bad. What determines its impact depends on how it is used, who controls that use and the economic system within which it operates.<\/p>\n \u201cAmerican foreign policy has almost always been based on agricultural exports, not on industrial exports as people might think. It\u2019s by agriculture and control of the food supply that American diplomacy has been able to control most of the\u00a0Third World. The World Bank\u2019s geopolitical lending strategy has been to turn countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops \u2013 plantation export crops \u2013 not to feed themselves with their own food crops.\u201d\u00a0Professor Michael Hudson<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Despite the promise of the green revolution,\u00a0hundreds of millions<\/a>\u00a0still go to bed hungry, food has become\u00a0denutrified<\/a>, functioning rural economies have been\u00a0destroyed<\/a>, diseases have\u00a0spiked<\/a>\u00a0in correlation with the increase in use of pesticides and GMOs, soil has been\u00a0eroded or degraded<\/a>, diets are\u00a0less diverse<\/a>, global food security has been\u00a0undermined<\/a>\u00a0and access to food is\u00a0determined by<\/a>\u00a0manipulated international markets and speculation \u2013 not supply and demand.<\/p>\n Food and agriculture has become wedded to power structures that have restructured indigenous agriculture across the world and tied it to an international system of trade based on export-oriented mono-cropping, commodity production for a manipulated and volatile international market and indebtedness to international financial institutions.<\/p>\n In itself, technology is neutral. But to understand how technology is used in the real world we must appreciate who owns and controls technology, whose interests it ultimately serves and how it is forced onto the market and functions in an economic system driven by profit and geopolitics and the compulsion to capture and control markets, while all the time hiding behind an ideology of ‘free choice’ and ‘democracy’.<\/p>\n\n
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