There’s nothing particularly unusual about a protest march through the financial district. But in place of the anti-globalization protests we’ve come to expect, a group of U of T students will be rallying and marching for capitalism on Sunday.
The Objectivist Club, who will be taking part, is a group of U of T students who subscribe to Ayn Rand’s teachings on the necessity for unrestricted free-market capitalism.
The event is being organized by an Australian known only as Prodos, head of the Prodos Institute and self-designated “global coordinator” of the first annual rally for capitalism.
The Prodos Institute is an activist organization for the free market. Prodos provided some information by e-mail and a phone number in Australia that didn’t work.
“There are no sponsors,” he wrote. “It’s a grass-roots activist campaign…. But unlike the anti-capitalists we are doing it to celebrate and uphold the Creators and Producers of the world—not to destroy and intimidate.”
The organizer of the Toronto campaign also e-mailed the Varsity after numerous attempts to contact him.
“Today’s mixed system, to be absolutely clear, although it’s called ‘Capitalism’ by its detractors, is not Capitalism. The most glaring socialist injections in our world are socialized medicine, public education and the welfare state.”
Ray Girn, president of the University of Toronto Objectivist Club, was also contacted by e-mail.
“When the initiation of force is banished from human affairs—as it is under a system of capitalism—what results is a benevolent world where people deal with each other voluntarily when it’s to mutual gain, and respectfully go their own ways when it is not,” he wrote.
“The prosperity that results is not an accident. This is the ideal we are promoting by walking for capitalism.”
The march—one of 102 around the globe, according to the group’s website—will begin at 10 a.m. at Metro Hall Square on King Street, head south to Front Street and wind north again through the financial district to City Hall.
The demonstration will also include an award ceremony—the Capitalist Awards—which recognizes “the individual in each participating city who has done most to defend and promise freedom and prosperity (Capitalism), and/or who, by their actions, most gloriously embodies the spirit of Capitalism,” according to Prodos.
Those wishing to become involved with the Capitalism Walk can sign up on the web site or contact a local coordinator and volunteer. It is also still possible to become a coordinator, if you “fulfill certain specified requirements,” Prodos explained.
