Leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the U.S., and UK will meet at Lough Erne in Northern Ireland for the G8 Summit June 17-18, 2013. These international negotiations among the world’s largest economies provide opportunities to discuss the fluidity of trade between nations but also provokes public protest. All over social media, various groups are set to organize protests about the global trade conference because capitalism and international trade are viewed as evil.
For example, the “Stop G8 Network” developed the following set of guidelines “that were agreed by anti-capitalist resistance movements from across the world who came together to form the ‘Peoples’ Global Alliance'(PGA):
1. A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism; all trade agreements, institutions and governments that promote destructive globalization.
2. We reject all forms and systems of domination and discrimination including, but not limited to, patriarchy, racism and religious fundamentalism of all creeds. We embrace the full dignity of all human beings.
3. A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organisations, in which transnational capital is the only real policy-maker.
4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements’ struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples’ rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism.
5. An organisational philosophy based on decentralisation and autonomy.
StopG8 seeks to fight against capitalism because “capitalism rules the world we live in today. It is an economic system in which the wealthy few oppress and exploit the many.”
Anyone who knows the history of free markets has to wonder where this definition of capitalism comes from. It is the standard zero-sum fallacy. In fact, this is not the definition of capitalism so much as it describes exactly what happened within the context of communism. Concentrated political and economic power has historically proven to be oppressive and exploitative, which is exactly what free-markets protect people against.
Among the other oddities in protest movements like StopG8 is the glaring fact that the group is only able to organize their protests because of the success of capitalism and international trade. The computers used to type their ideas, the software platforms that allow them to create websites, the social media platforms used to gather followers and disseminate information, the cell phones used to text each other, the clothes they will wear, the food they will eat, the airplanes they will fly in, and so on are all available to them because of the very thing they are ignorantly protesting: international global trade. It is almost laughable to think about.
Because capitalism historically has contributed to more economic growth and human flourishing then any other system in world history, one would think that the source of protests at the G8 would be for all of those nations to eliminate the tariffs and in-country subsidies that are currently stifling more economic growth and opportunity all over the world. What StopG8 wants has proven to be a failed solution, however, as Pope John Paul II argues in Centessimus annus what is needed is capitalism defined as a “system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom–the core of which is ethical and religious.” In this sense, the world does not need less free trade and open markets but more and we should all be encouraging the G8 countries to keep their governments from interfering in global markets for the sake of the common good.
