«The economic crisis? It is all the fault of consumerism»
Raj Patel talks to Sara Hejazi 21 June 2010

Mr. Patel, has your own life, and the fact that you spent your youth in many different countries, influenced the ideas you have been developing in your studies?

These are not my own personal ideas. I simply adopted and developed then and this was certainly linked to my personal experiences with poverty in India when I was very young, which made me want to ask and answer questions such as, “Why are so many people poor and some not?” Actually, I have spent a great deal of my time trying to find a reason for this, but there is no good reason, although there are many bad ones. So, to fight it, one first needs to understand how unequal economic development works.

How did the capitalist system come to crash in 2008?

Today’s financial crisis is no mere anomaly, but a continuation of a struggle over resources, property and government that dates back to the privatization of common lands in the early decades of England’s Industrial Revolution. And, although there’s a widely shared opinion that normality will ultimately return to the world economy, the fact is that today’s financial crisis is the normal consequence of a system that cannot work the way it is structured. So our faith in a gentle return to reality is misplaced, for there is not, and never has been, any solid ground beneath our feet. The perpetual quest for economic growth has turned humankind into an agent of extinction, through the systematic undervaluing of the eco-systemic services that keep our planet alive. In short, the consumer economy takes a great deal for granted, wanting things for free, and is constitutionally unable to pay for them. This is at the root of the economic crisis we are experiencing right now.

Do you think in some way religion is related to land-grabbing and the battle over resources?

Religion and economics have throughout history allied themselves with wealth. I am speaking of the great religious institutions, and not about local religious cults. So in the end you find reactionist Buddhism as well as Christian radicalism, because through institutionalization, religion becomes a form of justifying land-grabbing.

Which nations are currently those most responsible for fighting over resources?

The United Kingdom and China. And the country that gets most land grabbed is Africa. So, in this sense, struggling over resources has nothing to do with culture or religion. There is no religious flag under property and government of a land, but there is an ideological flag; capitalism, that says, “we will buy your property and use it more efficiently and produce more products”. So the arguments they are presenting state that capitalism is a good thing.

What is the future of economics? And what does the future of capitalism hold?

I am not under any illusion regarding the way the world looks right now. But, on the other hand, I see many kinds of resistance and changes to this system that are already happening. In our new book, my colleague and I are working on this; on what concrete examples one can find all over the world as an alternative to capitalism and private property.

What is your opinion on nuclear energy?

Nuclear energy runs risks, which are not so high, but would have catastrophic consequences if they happen. The same applies to the financial industry. Having evaluated the risk of implosion as very low, it then happened and we all are paying a huge cost for it. The risks related to nuclear power are uninsured and uninsurable. So it does not seem to be a smart thing to do. And in terms of opportunity costs there seem to be better ideas, in the developing countries as well. We need to move away from the model we have right now of one big station generating power and smaller stations depending on it. The alternative is a more variously distribution systems of power generation, the result of which should be a network of micro-power generators.

Translated by Francesca Simmons

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