< Corruption and crime are different. Governments are responsible for corruption. Crime is private enterprise.
Doug Henwood wrote:
> Lisa & Ian Murray wrote:
>
> > For now here's an interesting article from India on an
> >aspect of the economy we don't hear much about from the WTO,
economists and
> >many others.
>
> Actually that's not exactly true. "Corruption" is one of the
> obsessions of the World Bank these days. Go to their website
> <http://www.worldbank.org>, or if you're impatient directly to the
> search page <http://www.worldbank.org/search.htm>, and do a search
> for "corruption" and you get back 300 hits. They spin it differently
> from the Times of India article, of course. But the WB and other
> orthodox sorts would like to make a sharp distinction between crime
> and the normal operations of capitalism, a distinction that more
> radical sorts might want to think twice about.
>
> Doug
>
I wonder, you guys. I look at the root of the word for help in figuring its meaning. "Co-" means "together" or "with" and "rupt" means "break". I think Richard Wilbur hit on the meaning of corruption in his poem _Speech for the Repeal of the McCarran Act_
... As Wulfstan said,
It is oathbreach, faithbreach, lovebreach
Bring the invaders into the estuaries.
What do you think of breaking faith with the people, breaking oath to the people, as being what corruption really is?
Most folks think of corruption as having something to do with money and/or sex. But that is venality. Not that venality can't also be faithbreach, of course. I haven't looked, but I'll bet the WB is mostly concerned with venality, not corruption.
Comments?
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