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Capitalism and neo-liberalism

by Theo van Rossum

Capitalism, an economic system so much glorified by conserva-tive Americans because of the belief that both socialism and communism are "economic sla-very" or wouldn't accept a "free market". But in actuality we're dealing with some myths here, as in fact economic slavery exists everywhere and there is really no such thing as a real "free market" in the first place. Surely there are state-owned companies in communist countries but even there free enterprise exists, believe it or not. Take for instance a giant multinational company like

Chiquita. Already when it started as the United Fruit Company it had a reputation of suppres-sing worker's rights and actively financing paramilitary groups and coups in order to saveguard their markets in Latin American countries. Later on the company decided to change it's focus on tropical fruits to just bananas and change it's name to Chiquita. This did however not change their policies because only recently they have been sued in Colombia for their support to para-militaries who torture and kill workers for wanting to erect a worker's union. Boycotting giant

companies like Chiquita is however no easy task as in most cases it will mean eating no bananas at all, seeing how they are still dominating the world banana market, so we can almost speak of European "banana republics" now I notice that any visit to the store leads to the discovery that Chiquita is more often than not the only brand available. As I always used to buy the Fair Trade brand I was disappointed to discover that this brand has been removed from their assortment, probably, I suspect, be-

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