Blog on Capitalism

Exploring the Nature of Capitalism
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In 2001, 924 million people, or 31.6 per cent of the world’s urban population, lived in slums. The majority of them were in the developing regions, accounting for 43 per cent of the urban population… In many cities, there are more poor people outside slum areas than within them.
^{(UN Agency for Human Settlements, The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003 p. xxv,xxvi)}

Is the sweat-shop the destination of human beings involved in deregulated, globalised capitalism, or is it a first step in a ‘take-off into self-sustained economic growth’?

Are we really headed for a world in which the number of  slum dwellers doubles in the next thirty years, with “unprecedented urban growth in the face of increasing poverty and social inequality”?

Unless something remarkable, and unlikely given present economic conditions, happens, the trends described in the UN-Habitat report will bring enormous problems in the next few decades:

The locus of poverty is moving from the countryside to cities, in a process now recognized as the “urbanization of poverty.” The absolute number of poor and undernourished in urban areas is increasing, as are the numbers of urban poor who suffer from malnutrition…

In some cities, slums are so pervasive that rather than designate residential areas for the poor, it is the rich who segregate themselves behind gated enclaves.
(2003 p. xxvi)

In this discussion we will examine the experiences of Third World nations as they became “unhinged” and attempted to “emerge into self-sustained growth” (to use Rostow’s (1961) colourful, optimistic phraseology); as they attempted to ‘develop’ into capitalist success stories over the past 60 years.

In the 1^st decade of the 21^st century, most Third World communities are transient. Most of them are in various stages of change. They are slowly, but inevitably, metamorphosing into communities which exhibit similarities with the pre-colonial communities from which they came.

Western peoples are faced with a difficult decision:

ignore the changes and continue to assert with Rostow and his many followers that Third World communities are still in the process of metamorphosing into capitalist nations — it’s just taking longer than we expected!
attempt to prevent the changes;
accept the changes and live with the consequences.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 1:27 am and is filed under Capitalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.