Page 41 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

dealing with human, nature, and market. All of which, under the guise of
economic science with the celebrated Adam Smith as progenitor.
From then on, the economic system is to take precedence over society.
And that, in the distinguished economic historian Karl Polanyi’s words,
“means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market.
Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations
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are embedded in the economic system”. In this scheme of thought, then,
human beings are to be valued and treated as mere units of labour, and
nature as raw materials. And both, the natural and human substance of
society, are to be transformed into material commodities, and therefore
to be subject to the market mechanism which is steadfastly held to be
self-regulating beyond social control. This is how the market economy
historically came about in commercial-made society, and hence the creed
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of free trade and free market. All of which, solely and infinitely for the
sake of industrial progress and capital accumulation.
Against such an extremist ideological background, colonization
and appropriation of nature proceeds in full force ever since. Here we can
see how the Western tenet of rights and liberties comes into play, that is,
within the framework of individualism, property rights and the rule of law.
Of all this, the determining factor lies with property rights which, according
to John Locke’s three-century old theory of value, are created by extracting
resources from nature with one’s labour. That is how capital comes into
being and as a result, as Vandana Shiva succinctly puts it,
“…only capital can add value to appropriated nature, and hence
only those who own the capital have the natural rights to own
natural resources; a right that supersedes the common rights of
others with prior claims. Capital is thus defined as a source of

9
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of our time,
Boston, Beacon Press, 1957, p. 57.
10
Ibid., p. 42-42, 132, 135-140.
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND 35