"Austérité" perpétuelle pour 90% de la population, pillage croissant pour 1%: portrait de la "civilisation" mondiale au début du XXIe siècle par James Petras

Les riches ne sont inoffensifs que là où ils sont exposés au dédain d'une aristocratie.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Dis-Accumulation on a World Scale: Pillage, Plunder and Wealth

By James Petras

12.03.2014 :: Analysis

Introduction: Over the past 30 years, wealth has grown exponentially and has become increasingly concentrated foremost in the upper .01%, then the .1%, followed by the 1% and the upper 10% - 20%.

The large scale, long-term concentration of wealth has continued through booms and busts of the real economy, the financial and IT crises. Wealth grew despite long-term economic recessions and stagnation, because the so-called recovery programs imposed austerity on 80% of the households while transferring public revenues to the rich.

The so-called ‘crises of capitalism’ has neither reversed nor prevented the emergence of an international class of billionaires who acquire, merge and invest in each other’s activities. The growth of wealth has been accompanied by the pillage of accumulated profits from productive sectors which are stored as wealth not investment capital.

The dispossession of capital and its conversion to private wealth subsequently led to the rapid expansion of the financial and real estate sector. Capital accumulation of profits has been the source of private accumulation of wealth at the expense of wages, salaries, public welfare, and state revenues.

The growth of private wealth at the expense of productive investments is a world-wide phenomenon which has been facilitated by an international network of banks, political leaders and ‘regulators’ centered in the United States and England.

The single most important aspect of private wealth accumulation on a world-scale is criminal behavior by the elites in multiple locations and involves the violation of multiple laws and regulations.

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The plunder of the economy is accompanied by unending wars – because war contracts are a major source of illicit financial flows. Plunder oligarchs share with militarists a deep and abiding belief in pillage of countries and destruction of productive resources. The one reinforces the other in an eternal embrace – defied only by insurgents who embrace a moral economy and who proclaim the need for a total change – a new civilization.

Lisez la suite de l'article sur le site de James Petras: http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=2015

Sur le même sujet (Brésil): Brazil: President Rousseff Declares War on the Working Class by James Petras http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=2017

Introduction: The Brazilian working class is facing the most savage assault on its living standards in over a decade. And it is not just the industrial workers who are under attack. The landless rural workers, public and private salaried employees, teachers and health professionals, the unemployed and the poor are facing massive cuts in income, jobs and welfare payments.

Whatever gains were made between 2003 – 2013 will be reversed. Brazilian workers face a ‘decade of infamy’. The Rousseff regime has embraced the politics of “savage capitalism” as personified in the appointment of two of the most extreme advocates of neo-liberal policies

The “Workers Party” and the Ascendancy of Finance Capital

In early December 2014, President Rousseff appointed Joaquin Levy as the new Finance Minister - in effect the new economic czar to run the Brazilian economy. Levy is a leading member of the Brazilian financial oligarchy.

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