Communitization:

It's an ugly word, but we'd better start using it.

Communitization: A Synopsis

• Corporate-driven consumerism has produced countless economic, biological, ecological and sociological catastrophes around the globe.
• Many of these more recent failures stem from efforts by transnational corporations to "harmonize" economic, political and environmental conditions in order to maximize corporate profitability, while minimizing any potential costs to the corporation.
• The economics of globalization assume that any resource endowed with a perceived "market value" is a fair target for corporate exploitation and profit maximization.
• Likewise, anything that adds to the corporate cost burden--such as taking financial responsibility for any community and/or environmental destruction caused by their activities--must be avoided at all costs.
• From a community perspective, corporate-led globalization resembles an invasive pathogen similar to cancer. "The Global Borg" or "Aggressive Transnational Corpo-Military Sarcoma" are a couple names communities might use to describe this malady.
• The concept for "communitization" is to create a framework to identify the economic, sociological and ecological challenges globalization presents, and to marshal the strength of a global web of interconnected communities to counter globalization's deleterious impact on our communities and our environment.

These days, what is commonly called "the global marketplace" bears little resemblance to the thriving markets found in communities scattered across the globe in earlier times. On nearly every continent, in countless village centers, community markets shared many common attributes. In this marketplace, an artisan might bring handicrafts to trade for produce brought by a farmer. Somebody else might arrive to prepare food or drink for the farmer, the artisan, or for any other hungry or thirsty trader to consume that day.

This activity was not terribly efficient, and it was often far from idyllic. But when functioning as designed, it was essentially sustainable. In other words, it was marketplace activity that theoretically could continue forever. That's because the energy required to produce goods for trade, such as animal or human labor, simple fuels like wood, and so on, was usually about the same as that energy's natural ability to replace itself. Again, when functioning normally, everyone living in a particular community had a "job" or some other productive role within that community.

That's not to say that all preindustrial humans basked in easy living, prosperity and universal happiness. Far from it! Perhaps most hunter-gather societies enjoyed happier living than, say, medieval serfs suffering under the brutal tyranny of an evil overlord. But our ancestors were capable of acting just as vain, brutish, nasty, evil and murderous back then as we are today. We are, after all, the same animal.

But that is not the point. The point is that preindustrial humans in general, and pre-agrarian or pre-civilization humans in particular, were far more limited in their ability to permanently alter their natural surroundings. Even in the worst case scenario, when a destructive and environmentally-exploitive preindustrial civilization did collapse, it may have left behind deforested deserts or garish pyramids. What it did not leave behind were wastelands toxic enough to kill for hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.

The so-called Industrial Revolution obliterated this fragile balance of power between nature and human ingenuity. Humans invented machines capable of gobbling up nature's gifts far more quickly than nature could ever hope to replace them. These machines produced countless products. Soon these product-producing machines were housed in factories, where the machines could toil without letup. The factory-machine collaboration ratcheted up the tempo of productivity as never before. New "professions"--investors, managers, marketers, distributors, and sellers--sprang up to do something with all these new products. In doing so, they organized themselves into corporations, and turned their fellow citizens into consumers.

All this happened at great cost. Animals, plants, minerals, habitats, and ecosystems were depleted or destroyed. Whole species of living things were driven to extinction. Human communities were invaded, assimilated, enslaved or otherwise destroyed. And tiny numbers of so-called "captains of industry" exploited the productive capacity of everyone and anything else to enrich themselves with more material stuff than they could ever hope to use.

These pirates of industry invented a new ideology, capitalism, to justify their behavior. Wealth, prosperity and the "free market" stood as the holy trinity for this new theology. Thus capitalism, apparently devoid of all shame or humanity, began to indoctrinate others with notions like "greed is good," and that it is the civic duty of each individual to contribute toward economic growth by consuming as much as possible. Even if that individual is required to go deep into debt to keep up that consumption, or at least the appearance of consumption.

Capitalists also began to employ their theology to excuse any privation their dogma inflicted on folks living at the bottom of the wealth ladder. Thus, horrifically unequal allocation of wealth and other resources is not what brings misery to the poor. Impoverished people heap troubles upon themselves by allowing "bad government" to represent their interests. Or perhaps they're just lazy, shiftless, and lack an entrepreneurial "can-do" spirit. The fact that the plight of these folks grows more acute, even as their numbers grow exponentially, is all just part of god's plan.

Continual innovation has fine-tuned corporate capitalism's industrial process. Even more remarkable has been its success at promoting its theology. The majority of Americans arguably accept corporate capitalism's definition of the "free market" as our society's lord and economic savior. The fact that strict adherence to the corporate dogma has resulted in a terrible "opportunity cost" for many Americans in the form of reduced or non-existent health care coverage, curtailed funding for public education, abysmal public transportation services and so on, is lost on many of us.

In the United States individual corporations have also long enjoyed "person" status. This gives them constitutionally-protected liberties like the right of free speech. When exercised by normal, human-type "persons," a right like free speech competes with the same free speech rights of one's peers. In the clutches of well-funded corporations, however, this right allows those with specialized, narrow interests to overwhelm other voices in the community. The numbers of corporate hired guns--Washington lobbyists--have doubled in the past five years. This fact helps us human-type citizens understand why corporate appointees and their apologists appear to have overtaken the White House and both houses in Congress. It also shows us how corporations have grown ever more sophisticated at exploiting their rights as "people."

So what's the point of this seemingly anti-corporate diatribe? It certainly is not to simply rail against corporate abuses. That's just about as useless as harshly critiquing a virulent cancer for destroying a loved-one's health. Cancer is unquestionably a destructive disease, but it is one that is merely "doing its job." That's the way cancer is designed: to invade a host, destroy its immune system, then kill it.

Our society has given corporations the same rights as those enjoyed by its human citizens. But we neglected to design their functions to ensure that they also adhere to the rules and responsibilities of good citizenship. Instead, corporations have but one allegiance: to their owners and masters. In other words, to their investors. This compels them to demand subsidies of the same communities from which they extract their wealth. It causes them to casually discard loyal employees in order to hire cheaper labor elsewhere. And it makes them refuse to acknowledge responsibility for any social or environmental damage they cause as they pass along the high costs of these "externalities" to the communities who host them. In this regard, corporate behavior more closely resembles that of a sociopath than the behavior one expects of a responsible citizen.

In recent years corporate dominance has reached heights never before seen. Every aspect of our society--our culture, our politics, our media, our daily life--is, in one way or another, largely governed by the corporate "free market" ideology. And as we've seen, this ideology serves the interests of just one "god": a tiny clique of elite corporate "investors." These folks are the real ownership society. The rest of us are, at best, merely its landless serfs. As the corporate agenda plows forward with a seemingly unstoppable momentum, huge transnational corporations are set to bring the entire globe into conformance with their agenda. We must not let them.

In giving corporations all the rights of citizenship, without the burden this responsibility entails, we undermine the sovereignty of the flesh, blood and genuinely human citizens. How? By pitting ourselves against massive bullies that we mere mortals can't hope to match.

Large corporations can wield tremendous wealth and power to exert influence over our political representatives, community leaders and our local, state and national institutions. Their ability to push an agenda almost always outclasses any tiny speck of pressure most divided-and-conquered human citizens can hope to mount. As in any unfair fight, when push comes to shove the hulking, steroids-addled bully will usually kick the scrawny ninety-eight pound weakling's ass. Particularly when the weakling is as blind, deaf and dumb to what is happening to her or him as is the average human citizen living in our republic.

And why are we so deaf, dumb, blind and uninformed? Partially because the "information" we receive--presented to us each day as "news"--is synthesized and delivered largely by for-profit corporations. These companies exist to sell widgets and make a profit, not to distract consumers with information that could momentarily interrupt consumption. That could undermine profits and result in "opportunity costs."

Thus loudmouthed demagogues spouting worthless invective are sold to us as "fair and balanced" news commentators. Daily newspapers, long considered "history's first draft," suffer deep and relentless newsroom staff cuts. The few hapless professional journalists who remain scramble in a valiant-yet-doomed effort to maintain high journalistic standards in the face of declining readership, shrinking budgets and a cost-cutting climate imposed on them by their corporate masters.

So who will rescue us? To whom do we turn for our salvation? We must turn to ourselves and to our communities. We are the only folks with an immediately recognizable interest in our own welfare.

Corporations profit by encouraging us to behave like gluttonous consumers; our physical, spiritual, financial, societal and environmental health be damned. Most of our political representatives are stuffed deep down inside the corporate pocket. And too many of our religious leaders seem more interested in keeping tithes--filthy lucre--flowing in by constantly focusing our attention on the "eternal reward" awaiting us in some mystical hereafter. Yet they never fail to remind us of the "everlasting lake of fire" constantly nipping at our heels, threatening to engulf our mortal souls should we foolishly fail to get in line with their program.

But as we age and (one hopes) grow more mature, we arrive at a moment in our lives when we must acknowledge, on one level or another, that "no, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus." Nor is there a tooth fairy, a guardian angel, or a fairy godmother. The Good Ship Lollipop will not ferry us on a good trip to the candy shop. The frog won't transform into a prince, no matter how often we kiss it. And we're not going to win the lottery. It's doubtful that a mansion situated alongside streets paved with gold awaits us in some heavenly hereafter. And, should martyrdom be our fate, we'll spare ourselves bitter disappointment by avoiding any expectation that seventy virgins will attend to our every carnal whim. The good news is that any real hell surely exists only in our minds.

Honestly facing our responsibilities as good, proactive citizens is what communitization is really about. As with any cancer in metastasis, transnational corporate capitalism is killing our planet, killing our communities, and is killing us. It can't help itself, for that's how this machine was designed. The capitalist machine must maximize its profits while ruthlessly cutting every expense. It must grow relentlessly, and it must do so at any cost. Even if doing so results in its own destruction, and the destruction of every living thing in its path. That's how cancer works.

But wholesome, holistic and living communities are expensive. They're inefficient and require enormous effort to keep up. Communities are not machines; they're organic. They are designed to nourish us, actual people, as well as the natural environments we live in. And after decades of neglect, it is our responsibility to breathe new life into our communities. Then we must nurture them at every stage. And we must begin that process right now. Our lives, and the lives of every other living thing on this planet, depend on it.