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I want to develop a very simple linear line of thought about one point. Why in our economy
charity is no longer just a idiosincracy of some good guys here and there but the basic
constituent of our economy.
I'd like to start with the future of so called cultural capitalism, today's form of capitalism,
and then develop how the same thing applies also to economy in the narrower sense of term.
Namely if in the o times, by old times I mean something very precise before this 68 transformation
of capitalism, into as we usually call it, more cultural capitalism postmoderm caring
for ecology and all that.
What changed? What changed is that before this time there was a simple, more or less
simple, opposition between: here it's consumation, you buy it you speculate and so on. The on
top of it comes what you do for a society like Soros. He's still the old type here I
claim.
In the morning he grabs the money, if I simplify it, in the after noon he gives half of the
money to back to charity and soporting things and so on.
But they claim in today's capitalism more and more the tendency is to bring the two
dimensions together in one and the same gesture.
So that when you buy something, your anticonsumerist duty to do something for others, for environment
and so on is already included into it.
If you think I'm exagerating you have them around the corner. Walk into any Starbucks
coffee. and you will see how they explicitly tell you. I quote their campaing: 'It's not
just what you are buying, it's what you are buying into'
And then they describe it to you. Listen: 'When you buy Starbucks, whether you realize
it or not, you are buying into something bigger than a cup coffe, you are buying into a coffe
ethics. Thru our Starbucks shared planet program we purchased more fair trade coffee than any
other company in the world. Ensuring that the farmers who grew the beans receive a fair
price for their hard work. And we invest in and improve coffee growing practices and communities
around the globe'
It's a good coffe karma. And a little bit of the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee
helps furnish the place with confortable chairs and so on and so on.
You see this is what a call cultural capitalism at its purest. You don't just buy coffee,
in the very consumerist act you buy your redemption for being only a consumerist. You know.
You do something for the environment. You do something to help the starving children
in Guatemala. You do something to restore the sense of community
here and so on and so on.
I could go on. Like the almost absurd example of this so
called Toms shoes. An american company whose formula is one for one.
They claim for every pair of shoes you buy with them they give a pair of shoes to some
african nation and so on and so on.
One for one. One act of consumerism but included in it you pay for doing something for the
environment and so on and so on.
This generates almost a kind of semanthic overinvestment or burden. It's not just buying
a cup of coffee at the same time you fulfil a series of ethical duties.
This logic is today almost universalised. Let's be franc when you go to the store you
prefer buying organic apples. Why? Look deep into yourself. I don't think you really believe
those apple that costs the good old genetically modified apples that we all like that they
are really any better.
I claim we are cynics there skeptics. But you know, it makes you feel warmer. I'm doing
something for our mother earth. I'm doing something for the planet. ASO ASO.
You get all that. So my point is this very interesting short circuit where the act of
egotist consumption ASO already includes the price for its opposite.
Based against all of this I think that we should return to good old Oscar Wilde who
still provided the best formulation against this logic of charity. Let me just quote a
couple of line from the beginning of his "The sould of modern man under socialism".
Where he points out that, I quote, "it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering,
that it is to have sympathy with thought. People find themselves surrounded by hideous
povery by hideous ugliness by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be moved
by all this. Accordingly with to admirable though misdirected intentions they very seriously
and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remeding the evils that they see.
But their remedies do not cure the disease they merely prolong it, indead their remedies
are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance by keeping
the poor alive. Or in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not
a solution it is an agravation of the difficulty.
The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.
And the altruistic virtues have prevented the carrying of this aim. The worst slave
owners were those who were kind to their slaves. The core of the system being realized by those
who suffer from it. And understood by those who contemplain it. Charity degrades and demoralises.
It is immoral to use private propertgy in order to alleviate the horrieble evils that
result form the institution if private property.
This line are more actual the ever. Nice as it sound basic income this kind of trade with
the rich is not the solution.
I see here another problem again. This is the last desperate attempt to make capitalism
work for socialism. Let's not discard the evil. Let's make the evil itself work for
the good.
You remember, you are not old enough I am, how we were crazy 40, 50 years ago. We were
dreaming about socialism with a human face.
It is ethic today the most radical horizon of our imagination it's global capitalism
with a human face. We have the basic rules of the game, we make it little bit more human,
more tolerant, with a little bit more welfare ASO ASO.
First my attitude is here let's give to the devil what belongs to the devil. And let's
recognize that in the last decade. At least till recently. At least in the western europe.
There is no *** in here let's admit it. I don't think that in any moment in human
history such a relatively large percentage of the population live in such a relative
freedom, welfare, security ASO ASO. I see this gradually but none the less seriously
threatening.
When I gave an interview for HARDtalk yesterday. The guy Zucker, who is a bright guy he's not
just another sucker. He told me: "But are basically misanthropic". I told him "Yes"
and then I praised the British nation. You know very well that there is a certain type
of misanthropy which is much better as a social attitude than this cheap, charitable optimism
ASO ASO.
I think a mixture not the hardline apocalyptic vision but let me call it soft. Gianni Vattimo
speaks about soft thought. I don't agree with him but I would say soft apocalypsis. It's
not 2012 but we are approaching a certaing zero point. Things are unfortunate. Ecologically,
socially with new apartheids ASO. We approaching a certain point biogenetics ASO where, I'm
not saying, off course I'm not an idiot, that it will be return to the old leninist party
absolutely not; 20th century communist experience was a mega mega ethical, political, economical
ASO catastrophe.
I'm just saying that if all the cherished values of liberalism, I love them, but the
only way to save them is to do something more. You know what I'm saying, I'm not against
charity my god, in the abstract sense off course is better than nothing. Just let's
be aware that there is an element of hypocresy there.
I don't doubt people that told me Soros is an honest guy but there is a paradox. He is
repearing with the hand right hand what he ruined with the left hand. That's all I'm
saying.
For example, off course we should all help the children. It's horrible to see a child
whose life is ruined because of an operation which costs $20. But in the long term is Oscar
Wilde, would have said: If you just operate the child then they will live a little bit
better but in the same situation which produced it.