Thus, the real fundamental question is not whether it is possible to build a sustainable society, but rather whether it is possible to do so without sacrificing the fundamental values of the West and people’s well-being. If by ‘fundamental values of the West’ we mean things such as global rights, and political and civil liberties, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. If we instead mean unchecked capitalism and a lawless market, then the answer is ‘realistically, no’.

Progressively evolving means a new information-age of a global culture, Global Community, and a new proactive civilization, the Global Civilizational State, of strong bonds and affinity between people to people. Global Community is neither blind, nor inept, it defines its own purpose, meaning and identity for peace, harmony, and solidarity that the established institutions of governance, in America or Europe or elsewhere, miserably failed to recognize or value their importance in global political affairs. Given the inherent systematic deficiencies, moral and intellectual corruption in worldwide political governance, and policy formulation toward the international community, Global Civilizational State is actively organized and morally and intellectually powerful to halt all the belligerent nightmares planned and orchestrated by the few war lords now governing the world. Making the needed change is never easy, and can challenge our ingenuity, and unfold the best in us to open the new vistas of human, intellectual and global opportunities.

Capitalism will slowly evolve into a Democratic Socialist system that will be able to provide the structures for maintaining democratic substance and resolving the challenges of a difficult future. Theory and logic indicate Socialism’s possible superiority. If centralized planners, especially in the technological age of data mining and artificial intelligence, responsibly control the processes, allocate resources, create an agreeable work ethic, and capably enter into the international trading system. Severity of forecasted global problems indicates that neoliberal Capitalism cannot meet the challenges, and a new socioeconomic system is demanded. Pure Socialism is an economic and political system, where the government owns much of production and controls most prices.

Democratic Socialism defines an economy and society that is politically democratic, allows private enterprise to generate surpluses and uses government controls to assure profits are optimally reassigned for both business (profit reinvestment) and public needs (taxation). Government policies, such as subsidizing, regulating, and distributing, help shape the economy. Social ownership of businesses is encouraged. These include worker-owned cooperatives, publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives, and workplace democracy, where workers sit on corporation boards. Some inefficient and vital industries necessitate some form of state ownership, but most industries are best run as private enterprises. Democratic Socialists consider central planning for major  public industries such as mass transit, housing, and energy, and permit market mechanisms to determine the demand for consumer goods.

In recent weeks, the bankruptcy of global capitalism has been exposed to millions as the system has gone into deep crisis and its representatives have failed to take the measures needed to stem COVID-19’s spread. This has been no accident. As scientists and health care professionals shouted themselves hoarse over the need for an urgent response, Trump and the political establishment were slow to act out of a desire to defend business-as-usual and Wall Street profits. At the root of the U.S.’s vulnerability to coronavirus has been not only Trump’s breathtaking failures but also the lack of a Medicare for All style health care system. Both parties have long fought fiercely against public health care, their determination to put profit before human lives didn’t begin with the current crisis. In reality we need to go further than Medicare for All, toward a socialized medical system in which the hospitals, health care, and pharmaceutical industries are taken into democratic public ownership, and run by the workers on the basis of human health and not profit.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the monetary value of all finished goods and services, is a distortion that needs fixing. GDP distorts reality by giving an appearance of real economic growth even as living standards stagnate for lower/middling classes. GDP totally misses ecosystem collapse by abuse/misuse/overuse, which is only noticed by the general public after it’s way too late when it’s easily noticeable, even by those of low self-esteem that blindly follow tyrannical maniacs.

Politicians see positive GDP numbers, which inspires them to continue with the status quo, meaning they do not focus on key aspects for sustainability, as well as human well-being. GDP does not compute environmental degradation. GDP does not register societal divisions that build tension over massive wealth disparity. And, GDP overlooks calculations of lowered standards of living for the abandoned middle class, as they increasingly deploy mountain-loads of debt to support bogus lifestyles. GDP does not paint a true-life picture. Rather, it’s a wobbly ghostly statistic that measures business activity without consideration for humanity or ecology, begging the question: What’s really important in life?

GDP numbers do not hint at issues with (1) sustainability of resources, (2) climate crises, or (3) the well-being of the people. Yet, all three are crucial issues under stress like never before. Furthermore, GDP totally misses crucial points supporting societal existence from an ecological perspective. GDP does not calculate, does not represent, and does not hint at the scarcity value associated with overuse/abuse of natural resources accompanied by egregious planet-wide degradation, e.g. the gooey tar sands in Alberta, Canada. The missing GDP calculations result in cultural upheaval as people increasingly “hit the streets” in protest, aware that “something is not right.”

The most daring attack to multilateralism during the outbreak came, as was expected from Mr. Trump who levelled a stinging charge on WHO, of being China-centric and in the same breath, called for stopping the funding to the agency for mismanaging the outbreak. What we see happening in the world is resurgence of geopolitical competition between the big-powers, declining respect for international rules and go-it-alone strategies of populist leaders who for their narrow political ends sing the songs of unilateralism and protectionism.  The picture that emerges is an increasingly atomised international system, devoid of global cooperation and solidarity, with no respect for rule-based international order. Interestingly, if we are to cope the challenges in the post-pandemic world, solidarity is a must or else, a Hobbesian world order awaits us, involving unrestrained, selfish, and uncivilized competition among nations.

Corporate capital is unleashing a systematic disruption in the collective bargaining power of the workforce. That is, on account of the specific character of the service sector, that today comprises more than two-thirds of the global GDP, having relatively more white-collar professions, digitalization with its emphasis on home-based work, has made it easy for capitalists to deal with employees on an individual or personal basis. Together with this, digitalization coupled with the new advancement in processing technologies that makes it possible to decentralise or decompose production into several stages has enabled corporate capital to devise a neoliberal version of the putting out system of transplanting ‘toxic’ and cheap labour-based stages of production to the dependent countries. This is speeding up  a new division of labour in material production both at the global and regional levels  leading to super-exploitation of workers and toiling masses through various arrangements for organising labour such as ‘flexible specialization’, outsourcing, assembly lines, etc. To be precise, through what is called  ‘informalisation’ or ‘disorganisation’, of the workforce, digital imperialism is swiftly reinforcing its global reach ensuring the highest rate of profit at minimum cost mainly through pushing down wages using digital platforms and tools.

Probably, the most crucial issue that accelerates the decline of US imperial reach is with regard to dollar itself. Omnipresence of the dollar that provided American finance capital an unparalleled opportunity for neo-colonial control has also been the most conspicuous expression of US hegemony. Being the only generally acceptable currency for international transactions, countries had to hold dollar as unit of account, medium of exchange and store of value. While other countries have to forego real resources for dollars, as the issuing country of dollar, the US could print any amount of dollar and purchase from or invest in any part of the world. US could finance its aid programs and military adventures out of the printing of dollar. Governments and central banks the world over were bound to keep their reserves in dollars and so on. However, obviously and logically, there is another side of the picture. That is, this dollar-denominated international arrangement has become an obstacle and at many times came in to conflict with the interests of other imperialist powers contending with US imperialism. Moreover, the underlying and badly needed symbiotic relationship between dollar as vehicle currency on the one hand, and US as world’s leading trader and capital exporter on the other, has already been broken—a repetition of what happened to pound sterling during the final decades of colonialism when Britain was still continuing as formal colonial leader. To be precise, today dollar continues as the international currency not based on the economic strength of US but only because of the absence an alternative arrangement.

It is in this context that imperialist China’s efforts to deal with US interference in international monetary transactions assume strategic political importance. China had already started using its currency Yuan along with local currencies in trade with its closest partners comprising almost half of the global trade volume. The transactions here are settled through the CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payments System bypassing the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications headquartered in Belgium since 1973) network payment system that uses dollar as the medium of cross-border settlements and therefore alleged to have a partisan approach to US in sharing financial information.  Along with this, China is in the process of launching a digital or crypto-currency called e-RMB (e-Renminbi) for circumventing the role of dollar in global transactions. The digital currency/cyber money developed with the involvement of Chinese digital giants like WeChat and Alipay has already become acceptable in many Chinese cities and is widely used for almost all transactions including salary payments. In the present international monetary system in which dollar is the numeraire, many countries are already fed up with US interference in their transactions.  For such countries, the internationalisation of digital Yuan will be very attractive.

Revealingly, with the application of ‘digital intelligence’ through such technologies as blockchain, the Chinese digital currency is designed in such a manner as to accomplish total non-interference from the Chinese Central Bank and this is expected to strengthen the general acceptability of ‘Chinese digital Yuan’ among the international community. If the Chinese initiative becomes successful and digital Yuan starts functioning, it will erode the role of dollar as world’s main reserve currency. Parallel to this, China is also planning to divest its trillions worth of dollar-denominated foreign exchange through outright write-off of loans of its closest partners or purchase of foreign assets or as OBOR investments abroad.  Meanwhile,  as per reports, the US also is planning a counter-offensive by developing a digital dollar project.  No doubt, as manifested in the assassinations of Saddam Hussein and Gadhafi, US imperialism will go to any extent to eliminate any threat attempting to replace the dollar with another viable international medium of exchange. The multi-faceted and concerted China-bashing and Sinophobia now unleashed by Trump administration is to be viewed in this perspective. However, according to latest information, France has successfully tested a digital euro, and similar experiments are going on in Japan, Canada and UK. No doubt, the outcome of such simultaneous emergence of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) including their use in global interbank settlements will be nothing short of a gunning for the dollar from rival contending centres.

In a socialized system, an epidemic will not lead to economic uncertainty; the public will know that basic care will be provided. Nor will there be confusion of for whom, how, where, and when health services will be available.

With Covid-19, the very idea of American exceptionalism may have seen its last days. The virus has put the realities of wealth inequality, health insecurity, and poor work conditions under a high-powered microscope. Fading from sight are the days when this country’s engagement with the world could be touted as a triumph of leadership when it came to health, economic sustenance, democratic governance, and stability. The pandemic has laid bare the diverging gap between interests of the billionaire financial elite indulging in terribly destructive plunder of nature and labour on one side, and the needs and sustenance of the working class and broad masses of people on the other. Our present financial system is unsustainable, and it works for the interests of a few very rich people.  For the sake of the long-term future, we must build a sustainable, steady-state economic system, an economic system which reduces inequality, and which serves the broad public interest. Intolerable and unjust economic inequality is increasing rapidly, both within and between nations. Statistics show that half of the world's net wealth belongs to the top 1%. They own as much as the remaining 99% of the world's peoples, the other 7.4 billion of us. 

There are only 2,153 billionaires in the world, according to the report, but their wealth matches that of more than 4.6 billion people, or about 62 percent of the world’s population, estimated to stand at 7.7 billion. The gap between the wealthy and all those who fare less well looks even more prominent if to compare the combined income of the richest of the rich, the top one percent, to that of some 6.9 billion people. The only way to tackle inequality is to raise taxes. Taxing additional 0.5 percent of wealth of the top 1 percent over the next decade will provide governments with enough funds to create 117 million of jobs in health, education, elderly care and other sectors.

The Covid-19 epidemic has proven the final test for the capitalist system, which had a temporary rescue by neoliberal free enterprise. The capitalist system cannot responds to the crisis and falls apart in all its formations: economy dropped precipitously, shortages of medical equipment appeared, health institutions did not know where to obtain supplies, workers were stranded, industry did not know how to proceed, and the Republican government reacted too slow and too uncoordinated. In a Democratic Socialist system, the economic emergency only means a delay in production. No matter how long a crisis lasts, in a Democratic Socialist society the community’s basic needs are provided and citizens are secure in knowing full employment is eventually guaranteed. For neoliberal free enterprise, in which production and GDP are dependent on debt, the economic emergency means a drastic decline in revenue that prevents many from meeting credit payments, a prelude to bankruptcies of industries, financial sectors, small businesses, and individuals. Recovery will be punishing, and, for many, unemployment will be high and insecurity prevalent. The dollar will fall, inflation will increase as import prices increase, and much of U.S. export market will be lost.

The pandemic has made it clear that a society of self-seeking individuals is not a society.  A society is a social system. A successful social system is one that can support its members.  Once a self-sustaining social system exists, then there is a basis for people to branch out on their own.  But without a sustainable social system, there can be nothing. Appeals to corporations to exercise conscientious self-regulation do not work. The reason is simple. Mentally healthy living humans have a conscience. Corporations are constructs of law. They have no conscience beyond whatever responsibilities the law may require of them. Corporations that are under the control of individual humans, rather than the financial markets, may act responsibly when those individuals possess a deep concern for the common good. Most large corporations are captives of financial markets that drive the pursuit of short-term financial gain with no concern for the social or environmental consequences. Not only do they fail to serve the common good, but they are also driving us all toward civilizational collapse. Indeed, they are driving us toward human self-extinction. These conditions create an imperative for urgent structural change. Fortunately, corporations are entirely human creations. Indeed, there is no equivalent in nature. If they do not serve our needs, humans have both the right and the means to change them.

Governments must act now to build a human economy truly matters to society, rather than fuelling an endless pursuit of profit and wealth. Investing in national care systems to address the disproportionate responsibility for care work done by women and girls and introducing progressive taxation, including taxing wealth and legislating in favor of carers, are possible and crucial first steps. One reason for these outsized returns is a collapse in taxation of the super-rich and the biggest corporations because of falling tax rates and deliberate tax dodging. At the same time, only 4% of global tax comes from taxation of wealth, and studies show that the super-rich avoid as much as 30% of their tax liability. Extremely low corporate taxation helps them cream the profits from companies where they are the main shareholders; between 2011 and 2017 average wages in G7 countries increased by 3%, while dividends to wealthy shareholders grew by 31%.

The USA political approach favors free-market capitalism, and generally associated with policies of economic liberalization including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society. This currently dominant USA neoliberalism seeks to maximize the freedom of the smart and advantaged to exploit human and natural resources for private profit. In contrast,   social humanism (socialism, democratic socialism, eco-socialism, the welfare state) seeks to sustainably maximize human happiness, opportunity and dignity through evolving, culturally-cognizant intra-national and inter-national social contracts. Neoliberalism has resulted in huge and growing wealth inequality that endangers democracy (Big Money buys public perception of reality and votes) and endangers the economy (the poor cannot afford the goods and services they produce), this impasse leading to demands for imposition of wealth taxes.

It is worth remembering that a corporation exists only when a government has issued a charter. There is no legitimate reason for any democratically accountable government to issue a corporate charter other than to serve a public purpose. Similarly, there is no legitimate reason why a corporation chartered by one government jurisdiction has any inherent right thereby to do business in any other jurisdiction unless granted that privilege by the people of that jurisdiction through their government. That current law contradicts these simple truths is a consequence of corporate interests’ ability to manipulate the legal system. Current rules governing corporate conduct encourage and reward what should be treated as criminal behavior.

Current laws governing corporations:

1. They allow corporations to reap the rewards of their decisions without bearing the full costs. For example, when they evade paying taxes, they evade paying their fair share of the costs of infrastructure, education, or other essentials of doing business.

2. They allow the corporation to assess value only in terms of financial costs and returns, thus ignoring the need to secure the health of Earth’s regenerative systems on which all life depends.

3. They allow corporations to use their enormous financial resources and centralized decision-making to shape public opinion and pressure politicians to assure that laws favor corporate interests instead of public interests.

Calls for corporate responsibility generally assume that those who work for corporations, especially top management, are free to exercise moral responsibility on behalf of the corporation should they choose to do so. This ignores an important reality. Unless they own the corporation, those who lead a corporation only appear to be in charge. They serve only at the pleasure of financiers who compete for control of any corporation that is not taking full advantage of opportunities to maximize profits – which often means externalizing costs.

Trying to set and enforce rules at a global level to force transnational corporations to serve the people and planet they were created and designed to exploit would be an exercise as futile as a call for voluntary responsibility. A better solution is to break up transnational corporations and restructure them in ways that assure community accountability. How this might be done to best serve the well-being of people and Earth is a topic worthy of serious discussion, with implications well beyond the corporation.

Capitalism is structurally flawed. Its dependence on ever-expanding consumption cannot answer the environmental crises necessarily entailed by such consumption. And economies that are being artificially “grown”, at the same time as resources deplete, ultimately create inflated bubbles of nothingness. Pandemics like COVID-19 are the outcome of our destruction of natural habitats: to grow cattle for burgers, to plant palm trees for cakes and biscuits, to log forests for flat-pack furniture. Other lifeforms are being driven into ever closer proximity, forcing diseases to cross the species barrier. And then in a world of low-cost flights, disease finds an easy and rapid transit to every corner of the planet. No, capitalism is now in survival mode. That is why western governments will, for a time, try to “bail out” sections of their publics too, giving back to them some of the communal wealth that has been extracted over many decades. These governments will try to conceal for a little longer the fact that capitalism is entirely incapable of solving the very crises it has created. They will try to buy our continuing deference to a system that has destroyed our planet and our children’s future.

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Proceedings Global Dialogue 2020 (September 1st 2019 to August 31st 2020).

Global Peace Earth.

Global Community days of celebration or remembering throughout the year.

Authors of research papers and articles on global issues for this month.

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Proceedings of Global Dialogue 2020

Proceedings of Global Dialogue 2020 (September 1st, 2019 to August 31, 2020) are ready for reading. Please do verify that your articles, comments and papers were correctly published, and that recommendations were appropriate, useful, pertinent, and proper. Authors of research papers and articles on global issues for Global Dialogue 2020 were published in the Dialogue Overview section at

Proceedings of Global Dialogue 2020.
Artwork by Germain Dufour
August 2020
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Global Peace Earth

• Poèmes de paix, Poems of peace, Poemas de Paz
• Meet Peace diplomats
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• Work done so far to create peace in the world
• Register your Ministry of Global Peace

Ministry of Global Peace in government

Over the past decades we have shown that peace in the world and the survival and protection of all life on our planet go hand in hand. Asking for peace in the world means doing whatever is necessary to protect life on our planet. Protecting life implies bringing about the event of peace in the world. Let our time be a time remembered for a new respect for life, our determination to achieve sustainability, and our need for global justice and peace.

Our Global Peace Mouvement is about the courage to live a life in a harmonious peace order and showing by example, thus preventing poverty, wars, terror and violence. We need to educate the coming generations with good principles, being compassionate, social harmony and global sustainability being some of them.

Soul of all Life said in Global Peace Earth "Soul of all Life teaching about Peace: Introduction"

Peace is being who you are without fear. It is the "being who you are" who must be taught a value based on principles to live by. Only principles described in Global Law are necessary and required to attain Peace in the world.

Global Community days of celebration or remembering throughout the year.

Cultural Appreciation Day: August 22

Along with all the global communities, the Global Community, all life on Earth, and the Soul of Humanity can rightfully claim ownership of the Earth as a birthright: October 6

Founding of the Global Community organization, Global Community and the Federation of Global Governments: October 6 , 1985

Global Citizenship Day: October 6

Tribute to Virginie Dufour, the first Secretary General of the Global Community organization, who passed away April 28,2000

The Global Exhibition: August 17-22

Nationalization of natural resources: October 6

Global Peace Movement Day: May 26

Global Movement to Help: May 26

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Authors of research papers and articles on global issues for this month

Germain Dufour.

Germain Dufour, Global Civilizational State: the Application of the Scale of Global Rights to the global issue of our ways of doing business and trade worldwide threatening humanity's survival.

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