The edifice of neo-liberal capitalism is finally crumbling. The end of Cold War with one ideology being triumphant was declared the ‘end of history’. Seems, history had not quite ended and might be unravelling now.
The classes being exploited had had enough. It has long been maintained that you can’t tax the rich too much because then they won’t invest their incomes which will hamper the growth of the economy. By such mangled logics, the rich have progressively gotten richer, the poor poorer. People have had enough of corporate greed, financial mismanagement and the status quo has to change.
What would one say of management that gives bailouts to banks so that can pay corpulent bonuses to their corpulent CEOs while spending on health, and benefits for the poor are cut off. The governments around the world are more responsive to big business than they are to their voters. This is why that the people in representative democracies have also come out because they feel disillusioned and disenfranchised.
This movement is more rabble than revolutionary but it has alerted the government that it must change its pro-rich policies. They might not have a clearly defined agenda but they have hit a world wide nerve and will not give until something else gives.
KAMIL HASSAAN
Lahore