CAPITAL IS MASCULINE

Book review of: Winfried Wolf, Casino Capital. The Crash Begins on the Golf Course, 1997

By Walter Kuhl

[This book review is translated abridged from the German on the World Wide Web,  http://waltpolitik.powerbone.de/send199x/kv_kua09.htm.]

Ours is a world of rich men, it is said.

The majority of the world’s population is feminine as Winfried Wolf declares in his book “Casino Capital”. The “official population policy” often ends up changing this natural feminine majority in favor of a masculine majority. Many parents in the People’s Republic of China kill female descendants on account of the official one-child policy and belief in the higher value of a son. Those daughters who are allowed to live but are not registered officially have a better lot. They have the right to another child, hopefully a son. In China, several million young women live today without official registration for this reason. The fate of becoming part of the lowest social class threatens the majority of these women.

The ruling “elites” in the North and the South are 90 percent male or more. This is true for the politburo in the East and for the ruling elite in the People’s Republic of China. The western politburos and central committees – the board of the Deutsche Bank, the directors of the German Central Bank, a Daimler-Benz board of directors or the German government – are 98-99 percent male.

Rich men play golf. Winfried Wolf in Casino Capital also analyzes how far golf courses have become an indispensable part of economic life. At the end of 1997, there were more than 500 golf courses in Germany. While sports facilities and swimming pools available to a broad sector of the population are now closed year after year because of supposed scarce funds, 15 to 20 new golf courses are opened in German meadows. Many of them are set up in valuable agricultural areas, some even in natural reserves. The surface of all German golf courses is equivalent to that of the Bodensee. For every golfer, 3 miles of golf land are reserved for occasional use. This is 200 times what is available to a child in public grounds. An admission fee from 3-5,000 marks and an interest-free loan of around 20,000 marks are due for admission to these exclusive golf clubs. This is used to finance luxurious grounds…

In the meantime the indebtedness of the countries of the third world amounts to $2 trillion. Most of these debts must be written off as unpayable.

The debt crisis of the South is one element of the current process of destruction in the third world as a result of dependence on the North, relatively more is always spent for interest- and financing payments to the banks in the North and less and less for satisfying elementary human needs. Thus the countries of black Africa transfer three times more for interest payments to the banks in the North than they can spend for health care.

With the credits that must now be paid back, the elites of these countries copy the European-Us-American-Japanese economic model.

To pass off the policy of the North toward the South as exporting “civilization” is perverse. The North exports to the South the traditional destructive consumption- and production model with polyvinyl chloride, high tech weapons, the Moloch of the auto-city and nuclear power. In addition, the North exports to the South the especially destructive and at best unnecessary products of the capitalist world of goods. In the past, glass beads and liquor were forced upon the natives. Today Nestle pursues its campaign for powdered milk in the third world. The deaths of thousands of infants are promoted. The pharmaceutical industry sells medicines in the third world that were long prohibited in the North. The chemical industry markets and stores pesticides that destroy the human, animal and plant worlds in the South and are often prohibited in the North. The working- and production conditions used by transnational corporations in the South usually result in interventions of the board of control in the North or provoke the effective resistance of employees and unions.

So much for Winfried Wolf on the consequences of capitalist development. These consequences are hardly limited to the South. Unemployment, sickening working conditions, environmental destruction and impoverishment also exist in the North.

If the independent with the same gross income “only” paid as much taxes as dependent employees, the state annually would have more than 100 billion marks in additional tax revenues. The “austerity programs” of the last three years could have been “financed” with this additional revenue.

The funds are there. The funds must only be taken where they exist… Saxony Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf answered the question how much social state can we still afford in the sense of German banks and corporations: “We cannot afford a social state.”

But let us look where money concentrates:

Representatives of the automobile lobby sit on the board of directors of the German rail corporation. They are not opposed when the train goes into bankruptcy with absurd projects. The train has become indebted as in state ownership four decades ago. This time no one can cushion the bankruptcy. I don’t have to emphasize what this means for local traffic. The automobile firms welcome this.

Money would be there if tax liabilities for banks and corporations were consistently collected. Instead the alleged abuse of income support has become the dominant theme. Hardly a trace of critical journalism can be seen or heard.

50 billion marks for the German army could be easily saved every year. The Euro fighter alone will cost far more than 20 billion marks…