<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Claudio Schuftan</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cschuftan@phmovement.org">cschuftan@phmovement.org</a>></span><br>Date: Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 9:14 AM<br>Subject: Food for an exhausted thought<br>To: yo <<a href="mailto:schuftan@gmail.com">schuftan@gmail.com</a>><br><br><br><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt">Human
Rights Reader 355</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:14pt">WE MAY BE MOVING
TOWARDS A POST-NEOLIBERAL ERA, BUT MOVING AWAY FROM CAPITALISM WITH ITS MYRIAD
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IS MUCH ANOTHER THING.</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">1. An era can be said to end
when its basic aspirations and illusions are exhausted. (Arthur Miller) Take
neoliberalism: Disenchantment with neoliberalism as an ideal has <u>grown to a
dangerous (or hopeful?) point.*</u></span> <span> </span>(J.C. Juncker)<span> </span><span style="font-size:11pt;color:red" lang="ES"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>*: I read
somewhere that for people these days it is easier to imagine the end of the
world than the end of Capitalism. (Albino Gomez)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">2. Neoliberalism has not just
been a set of bad attitudes. It has been the unrestrained exercise of corporate
power with its human rights (HR) violations, taking <u>advantage of the working
class’s lethargy.</u>**</span> (W. Podmore)
</p><p class="MsoNormal">**: Capitalism does not only generate capital; it also
creates a working class kept content with an unjust system they are made to believe
to be natural. (N. Shepper)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">3.
You see? In our world, transnational corporations (TNCs) have rights backed by
hard laws (treaties, free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties…)***
and strong enforcement mechanisms; they can sue states even beyond national
jurisdiction. But TNCs obligations are backed only by soft laws, codes of
conduct and voluntary guidelines, deprived of any enforcement mechanism; the HR
situation is no exception. Above all, it is weak and poor states that suffer
most from this situation. Only powerful states are able to regulate and control
the activities of TNCs and hold them responsible for the damage they do and the
HR violations they perpetrate; but<u> most other states are not able to do so</u>.</span><span> (M. Khor)</span><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">***: For instance, the latest WTO Bali deal is ultimately ‘a
battle between food for the poor and trade for the rich’. (R. Sengupta)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">4. So, perhaps more than rhetorically,
are we rushing forward to the past, to the times of Queen Victoria, when an
obscure German philosopher and economist by the name of Karl Marx was working
in the British Library in London on his denunciation of exploitation, and
preparing his Communist Manifesto?</span> (R. Savio)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:14pt">Neoliberalism is
but a moment in the history of capitalism</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">5.
Neoliberalism has done away with many State functions; it has not destroyed the
State, but has put it at the service of the neoliberal project, the capitalist
project. Capitalism has existed and exists as an economic, political, cultural
and military hegemonic power. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">6.
How we relate to the essence of capitalism actually also leads to quite serious
consequences for our environment. From a theoretical point of view, the reason
is that the rate of reproduction of capital is very different from the rate of
reproduction of nature and, as the injection of capital imposes its own
rhythm, <u>not surprisingly, it is destroying nature</u>.**** </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>****: </span>Who
will forgive us if we let the planet die while we just bare witness? (J.
Koenig)<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">7.
For capitalism, nature is a source of<span>
</span>'natural resources', i.e., capitalism commoditizes the planet because,
if natural resources are not dealt as commodities, they cannot contribute to
making a profit and to the accumulation of capital. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">8.
This fact calls for a thorough revision of the capitalist model so as to serve
particularly urgent ecological and social demands. Instead, the tinkering we
have seen is short term, i.e., applying social policies largely of the welfare
type, such as subsidies and other. This may (have) allow(ed) poor people to
escape from misery, but not become the active social subjects they need to become
--perhaps, at best, just the system’s customers. </span><span style="font-size:14pt">(F. Houtart) </span><span style="font-size:14pt"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">9. In this, </span><span style="font-size:14pt">believing in a
utopia is very necessary to aim at our human rights (HR) goal --not in the
sense of an unreachable illusion, but in the sense of something that we do not
have today, but that we could have tomorrow. It is thus worth fighting for this
utopia, at the same time being specific and concrete.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">10.
The principle is that we should leave a system that concentrates real power in
a few hands --a system where it is the individual that prevails over the common
good and over the rights of others. There is nothing less democratic than the
monopoly capitalism that characterizes the current economy, with its domination
over the political organization of nations and of international agencies. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">11.
As a matter of principle, also sport, culture, religion and other areas of the
human endeavor will have to introduce democratic processes in its respective
structures.</span><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span><span style="font-size:14pt">Developing these
democratic processes everywhere is a very important immediate step (for example
fostering participatory, direct democracy) and also a longer-term step (e.g.,
reforming the United Nations). Just be reminded that the Security Council, the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are very undemocratic with the
right to pass resolutions or to veto vested in only a handful of world powers.</span><span style="font-size:14pt"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:14pt">As the Mayan
Indians in southern Chiapas say: "Human beings are the consciousness
bearers of nature".</span></b><b><span style="font-size:14pt"></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">12.
Capitalism tends to impose a single culture, a single lingua franca, a way of
consuming, of eating, of dressing …all as a function of submission to the law
of value. It is all about imposing a dominant culture that has undoubtedly
contributed much to mankind, but that was ultimately absorbed by the very logic
of capitalism, i.e., as an instrument for its global dissemination leading to
its hegemony.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">13.
There already exist in the world thousands of initiatives, both advocating for
the respect for nature, as well as for a social/non-individualistic and more
solidary economy and for the defense of HR and of fairer democratic mechanisms.
These initiatives do indeed exists, but are still very scattered. The problem
is how to bring all these forces together to a joint political project aimed at
arriving at a stronger correlation of forces in the struggle to transform
ingrained practices and economic and political structures. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">14.