Capitalism in the Faith Crisis by Franz Segbers

CAPITALISM IN THE FAITH CRISIS By Franz Segbers [This essay published in a 2010 Rosa Luxemburg anthology on theology of liberation and democratic socialism is translated abridged from the German on the Internet, www.rosalux.de.] No one speaks any more of an "end of history" that was proclaimed twenty years ago with a victorious howl. Instead what was already immense at that time twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall was repeated intensively: the crisis-proclivity of capitalism breaks out in a severe economic and financial crisis. The economic system praised as victorious has failed. The traces of devastation can be seen worldwide. Argentina, Mexico and Southeast Asia were the first countries where the crisis-proclivity of financemarket-driven capitalism was manifest. Now the crisis devours its children in the US and Europe and from there infects the countries of the South. "Believers are running away from capitalism" (Freitag 47/2009). So Michael Kratke summarizes a worldwide study on acceptance of the market economy. The slim majority of the surveyed are convinced capitalism is shaken but can be reformed within the system and through more regulation. Turning to Germany, only a minority of 16% are diehards insisting capitalism is unbeatable – less than in the US but more than in Great Britain (13%) or France (6%). How can it be explained that neoliberalism has even intensified in a black-yellow garb rather than withdrawn despite its obvious failure and disaster? Hans-Jurgen Krysmanski has analyzed the mechanisms and functions of the financial power complex by which a small minority of super-rich hoard wealth and power as in the times of feudalism: "In its center, there is a linked ultra-rich clientele that has grown historically. This clientele is surrounded by corporate and financial elites who explore and investigate new possibilities of capital accumulation benefiting this clientele. Political elites transport social wealth from bottom to top as quietly as possible" (H-J.Krysmanski). According to a 2008 study of the World Institute for Development Economies Research (WIDER) of the UN, the richest ten percent of the population possess 85.2% and the richest one percent of the world population 40.1% of the worldwide wealth. The citi-bank group speaks openly of "plutonomies," wealth economies that split humanity into two categories: "the plutonomies where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by a wealthy few." The neoliberal epoch represents a glittering time for the minority of the financial elite and its official classes and doesn't run disastrously for everyone. Why should they change anything? The analysis of the financial power complex presented by Krysmanski describes the hidden mechanisms and functions of a global redistribution and acquisition caste. This