The privatisation of the human genome and a general patenting of life forms are opening new prospects for capitalist expansion. A major privatisation of all things related to life and nature is in the offing, opening the way for a power perhaps more absolute than anything the world has known. Globalisation aims to conquer markets rather than nation states. This conquest goes hand in hand with considerable destruction. Whole industries have been wiped out in every region of the world.
Globalisation also means the plundering of our planet.
By turning words and things, minds and bodies, nature and culture into commodities, we are further aggravating the world's inequalities. Of the 6 billion inhabitants of this planet, barely 500 million live in comfort - leaving 5.5 billion living in need. State structures and traditional social structures are in the process of being swept away, with disastrous results. Almost everywhere in the countries of the South, the state is collapsing. Outlaw zones are developing, chaotic ungovernable entities, outside any rule of law, descending into a state of barbarism in which gangs of plunderers are holding populations to ransom.