want to develop a very simple linear line of thought about one point. Why in our economy

charity is no longer just an idiosincracy of some good guys here and there but the basic

constituent of our economy.

I'd like to start with the future of so called cultural capitalism, today's form of capitalism,

and then develop how the same thing applies also to economy in the narrower sense of term.

Namely if in the old times, by old times I mean something very precise before this 68

transformation of capitalism, into as we usually call it, more cultural capitalism postmoderm

caring for ecology and all that.

What changed? What changed is that before this time there was a simple, more or less

simple, opposition between: here it's consumation, you buy it you speculate and so on. Then on

top of it comes what you do for a society like Soros. He's still the old type here I

claim.

In the morning he grabs the money, if I simplify it, in the after noon he gives half of the

money to back to charity and soporting things and so on.

But they claim in today's capitalism more and more the tendency is to bring the two

dimensions together in one and the same gesture.

So that when you buy something, your anticonsumerist duty to do something for others, for environment

and so on is already included into it.

If you think I'm exagerating you have them around the corner. Walk into any Starbucks

coffee. and you will see how they explicitly tell you. I quote their campaign: 'It's not

just what you are buying, it's what you are buying into'

And then they describe it to you. Listen: 'When you buy Starbucks, whether you realize

it or not, you are buying into something bigger than a cup coffee, you are buying into a coffee

ethics. Thru our Starbucks shared planet program we purchased more fair trade coffee than any

other company in the world. Ensuring that the farmers who grow the beans receive a fair

price for their hard work. And we invest in and improve coffee growing practices and communities

around the globe'

It's a good coffee karma. And a little bit of the price of a cup of Starbucks coffee

helps furnish the place with confortable chairs and so on and so on.

You see this is what a call cultural capitalism at its purest. You don't just buy coffee,

in the very consumerist act you buy your redemption for being only a consumerist. You know.

You do something for the environment. You do something to help the starving children

in Guatemala. You do something to restore the sense of community

here and so on and so on.

I could go on. Like the almost absurd example of this so

called Toms shoes. An american company whose formula is one for one.

They claim for every pair of shoes you buy with them they give a pair of shoes to some

african nation and so on and so on.

One for one. One act of consumerism but included in it you pay for being redeemed for doing

something for the environment and so on and so on.

This generates almost a kind of semanthic overinvestment or burden.

It's not just buying a cup of coffee at the same time you fulfil a whole series of ethical

duties and so on and so on.

This logic I think is today almost universalised. Let's be franc when you go to the store probably

you prefer buying organic apples. Why? Look deep into yourself. I don't think you really

believe those apples that costs double the good old genetically modified apples that

we all like that they are really any better.

I claim we are cynics there skeptics. But you know, it makes you feel warmer. I'm doing

something for our mother earth. I'm doing something for the planet. and so on and so

on. You get all that.

So my point is that this very interesting short circuit where the very act of egotist

consumption and so on already includes the price for its opposite.

Based against all of this I think that we should return to good old Oscar Wilde who

still provided the best formulation against this logic of charity. Let me just quote a

couple of line from the beginning of his "The soul of modern man under socialism".

Where he points out that, I quote, "it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering,

that it is to have sympathy with thought. People find themselves surrounded by hideous

povery by hideous ugliness by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly

moved by all this. Accordingly with admirable though misdirected intentions they very seriously

and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remeding the evils that they see.

But their remedies do not cure the disease they merely prolong it, indead their remedies

are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance by keeping

the poor alive. Or in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not

a solution it is an agravation of the difficulty.

The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying of this aim. The worst slave

owners were those who were kind to their slaves. And so prevented the core of the system being

realized by those who suffer from it. And understood by those who contemplain it. Charity

degrades and demoralises.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result

form the institution of private property.

I think this lines are more actual the ever. Nice as it sound basic income or this kind

of trade with the rich is not the solution.

I see here another problem again. This is the last desperate attempt to make capitalism

work for socialism. Let's not discard the evil. Let's make the evil itself work for

the good.

You remember, you are not old enough I am, how we were crazy 40, 50 years ago. We were

dreaming about socialism with a human face.

It is ethic today the most radical horizon of our imagination it's global capitalism

with a human face. We have the basic rules of the game, we make it little bit more human,

more tolerant, with a little bit more welfare and so on and so on.

First my attitude is here let's give to the devil what belongs to the devil. And let's

recognize that in the last decade. At least till recently. At least in the western europe.

There is no bullshit in here let's admit it. I don't think that in any moment in human

history such a relatively large percentage of the population living in such a relative

freedom, welfare, security and so on and so on. I see this gradually but none the less

seriously threatening.

When I gave an interview for HARDtalk yesterday. The guy Zucker, who is a bright guy he's not

just another sucker. He told me: "But are basically misanthropic". I told him "Yes"

and then I praised the British nation. You know very well that there is a certain type

of misanthropy which is much better as a social attitude than this cheap, charitable optimism

and so on and so on.

I think a mixture of not the hardline apocalyptic vision but let me call it soft. Gianni Vattimo

speaks about soft thought. I don't agree with him but I would say soft apocalypsis. It's

not 2012 we know but we are approaching a certaing zero point. Things are unfortunate.

Ecologically, socially with new apartheids and so on. We are approaching a certain point

biogenetics and so on where, I'm not saying, off course I'm not an idiot, that it will

be return to the old leninist party absolutely not. Again 20th century communist experience

was a mega mega ethical, political, economical and so on catastrophe.

I'm just saying that if all the cherished values of liberalism, I love them, but the

only way to save them is to do something more. You know what I'm saying, I'm not against

charity my god, in the abstract sense off course is better than nothing. Just let's

be aware that there is an element of hypocresy there.

I don't doubt people that told me Soros is an honest guy but there is a paradox. He is

repearing with the hand right hand what he ruined with the left hand. That's all I'm

saying.

For example, off course we should all help the children. It's horrible to see a child

whose life is ruined because of an operation which costs $20. But in the long term is Oscar

Wilde, would have said: If you just operate the child then they will live a little bit

better but in the same situation which produced it.