Capitalism breeds so much selfishness. It teaches each person to think for himself first, for his own profit first, and only afterwards for others. In the cooperative model, because cooperatives are collectives or collections of people all working for a common goal, so each worker/member learns to think first for the collective and only afterwards for himself. So by creating a cooperative commonwealth we can change the entire culture here - from one of extreme selfishness and self-centeredness to one of collective caring and community.
Like so many other issues, this is an issue of education. Right now in Sweden more than 60 percent of businesses are run as cooperatives. The result is far more egalitarianism in the workplace. Here cooperatives are practically unknown. We need to talk to the people about cooperatives, and if possible, we need to establish them and help spread the cooperative movement here."
Can you please tell me what is the WPA viewpoint or position on the US imperialist wars being waged since 9/11 under the guise of an eternal "War On Terror"?
Garda: "Well, Cathy, this seems to be a rhetorical question you've asked here... US wars are indeed imperialist wars. They are also illegal as per Article 51 of the UN Charter. If we study the history carefully, we will probably find that US imperialist wars have been illegal for many decades or even centuries. America does not have a very good track record when it comes to its treatment of other countries. But certainly, the present regime in America has taken criminal wars to a new and horrible level. Close to two million Iraqis have been slaughtered as a direct result of US invasion and occupation. More than four million are refugees. Those remaining in Iraq suffer untold misery with only a couple of hours of electricity each day, only a few buckets of water and sometimes no water daily. Americans cannot even imagine it. Sometimes when I'm hanging out with people, listening to them chat about various things, my mind seems to invariably wander over to Iraq and Afghanistan, and I start feeling all the pain of the people there - then I start to wonder how people here can live in such utter oblivion of that all that pain. I just can't understand it."
Your panel of speakers and presentations certainly looks impressive and exciting. What do you hope will come out of the "Building A New World Conference?"
Garda: "Well, I feel I've done very little in my life compared to many of the speakers coming. The first thing I need to do there is to salute all those great people whose contribution to humanity is by any standard truly astounding. So even if I can simply salute these great people, I will feel very happy. And the second thing, the hope, the dream that I have, is to somehow cause this conference to be the seed of a great movement that needs to sweep our nation...a positive force that, through its sheer moral force, will have the capacity to obliterate all the crimes and corruptions going on in high places. And once that is achieved, that same positive mass movement needs to find the strict moralists and install them as the leaders of our country. This is the dream, Cathy. Please come there and help me to manifest this dream."
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