Reminded of a workshop last year on the subject of working conditions in developing countries and the impact of neo-liberal globalization, I remembered the vision I had of men of colour labouring in work camps while the women and children were being fed into a sausage machine.
Did we overthrow the monarchy for their excesses and oppression in order to be oppressed by an indlugent bourgeoisie? Because the bourgeois has defaulted its role. Human rights are purely a matter of cost-benefit analysis ... while it remains true that what is legal is not necessarily moral, we can't even rest assured of legal rights. Those who live in extraordinary luxury from profits generated by others have an eye on that profit and nothing else: legal sanctions are merely a cost of doing business. If there was a market for sausages from the human remains of labourers worked to exhaustion, this legion of ghouls would move to meet it. And the painful reality is that those who've invested some their meager wages in the market would take home some small share of that unholy wealth.
Always carnivorous, we are become cannibals.