The End of Prehistory - International Humanist Party

The End of Prehistory - International Humanist Party

The End of Prehistory
A Path to Freedom
Tomas Hirsch
Acknowledgments
To Francisco Ruiz-Tagle1
The innumerable hours we spent reading, researching, writing and correcting became true lessons of
knowledge for me. More than once I was amazed by his capacity to retain, interrelate and interpret the
most varied kinds of information. His methodical and dedicated work made this book’s very existence
possible. Thank you my friend!
To the Humanists
…who anonymously dedicate their lives to bringing closer the yearned-for Universal Human Nation.
1
Francisco Ruiz-Tagle (1947), Chilean essayist and columnist, adherent of New Humanism. A consultant to the Latin American
Humanist Regional, he has given conferences in numerous countries of Latin America and Europe.
2
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future
Niels Bohr2
Acknowledgments
2
Prologue
5
PART I: THE RETURN OF SISYPHUS
8
1. The Crossroads
We are Part of a System
Is it Possible to Overcome Social Violence?
The Future of the Left
9
9
10
11
2. The Money Lords
Majorities versus Minorities
The Commandments of Financial Capital
In the Face of one Absolute Power, Two Counter Powers
14
14
18
24
3. Globalization: A Blind Alleyway
The System Paradox
Globalization and Its Consequences
The Opening Up of a Closed System: From “Mono” to “Multi”
The Project of the Peoples
27
27
29
29
31
4. Absurd Economics
Economic Violence and Social Explosion
The March of the Abandoned
State or Market: An Old and Repeated False Dilemma
33
33
35
37
5. The Betrayal by the Hierarchies
A Fable for the Clueless
The Captive State
Representativity in Crisis: The People Adrift
The People at the Mercy of the Elements
In a Real Democracy, the People are Protagonist
43
43
44
47
49
51
Appendix
54
PART II: SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
56
6. That Stranger, the Human Being
Determinism and Freedom
The Primacy of the Future
The Waves of History
57
60
62
65
7. The End of Prehistory
From Paternalism to Self-Organization
70
70
2
www.quotationspage.com/quotes/niels_bohr
3
The New Generations Return to the Struggle
On the End and the Means
The Fight for Subjectivity
73
76
79
8. Toward a Truly Human Society
A Progress of All and for All
A Human Revolution: From Competition to Convergence
A Social Revolution: From Accumulation to Distribution
A Political Revolution: The Deconcentration of Power
84
84
86
89
92
9. The Engine of Change
Growth vs. Development
The Worker-Owned Company
The Recovery of Natural and Energy Resources, Added Value and Technology
96
96
98
102
10. Latin America: Crucible of the Future
Where is the New?
The Affirmation of Diversity
The Convergence of Diversity
106
106
107
109
Finally, a Very Short Story
113
Epilogue Regarding A New Spirituality
114
4
Prologue
I met Tomas Hirsch in Mar del Plata while we were heading a great demonstration. It was November
2005 and for a brief period both of us had left our countries and the respective presidential campaigns in
which we were participating. The occasion merited it. In Mar del Plata the Summit of the Peoples was
happening, in which social movements from across Latin America were roundly and definitively saying
“no” to the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) that the United States wanted to impose.
Upon entering the stadium, while we waited for the event to start, we chatted for the first time over
coffee. Tomas emphatically declared that he was in favor of a sovereign sea coast3 for Bolivia. I believe
it was the first time that a Chilean presidential candidate included the century-old and legitimate Bolivian
demand in their political platform.
Nine months later, on August 6, 2006, we met once more, in Sucre. With the creation of the Constituent
Assembly, Bolivia was living through an historical moment. After 16 years of social mobilizations
headed by the indigenous people to demand the re-founding of the country, the excluded, the
marginalized of the countryside and the city were taking the stand of starting to build a new Republic.
In Sucre, Tomas was able to witness the emergence of a Bolivia that many had tried to hide over the
centuries — I refer to the Bolivia of the 36 indigenous and original peoples who marched together,
celebrating a new time of change and unity for our homeland. Today, we continue on this path towards a
new Constitution that will bring an end to racism and discrimination, proposing a future of equality and
social justice for all.
After our meeting in Sucre, we saw each other a couple more times: the first, in December 2006, during
the 2nd Summit of the South American Community of Nations in the city of Cochabamba, the last, in
April 2007, in Barquisimeto (Venezuela), where we were participating in the Summit of the Bolivarian
Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).
On that occasion, together with Hugo Chavez, we decided to inaugurate the meeting by giving the floor to
social leaders of the region. In his talk, Tomas denounced the drama that the plundering of the natural
resources in our continent signified and mentioned that if he were to become President he would
3
Refers to a historical conflict in 1879, when Chilean forces invaded Antofagasta in what was then Bolivia, and left her without a
sea coast. A treaty was signed in 1904 ratifying this annexation of Bolivian territory.
5
incorporate his country into ALBA. That was how we got to know each other, from meeting to meeting,
from country to country.
Today I have his book in my hands. Reading it has served to confirm to me that, in spite of the
differences in our origins and cultural contexts, a profound valuation of the human being and his destiny
unites us. The common aspiration to see the peoples of our continent rise up, in freedom and dignity, also
unites us.
Therefore I’m pleased that critical yet hopeful voices such as his are speaking out; voices that help us to
draw the future of our continent. I’m delighted to confirm how, day by day, Latin America is waking up,
shaking off conformism and lethargy, to undertake common action by social leaders and movements that
are opening the eyes and consciences of our peoples. Only the clarity of thought, conviction and honesty
that we inherit from our indigenous cultures will allow us to deepen the struggle to end domination.
Together we can break the yoke of subjugated democracies to build liberating, participative democracies
with solidarity.
In hindsight I must point out that, when we won the elections with a historical majority (54%), the
humanists were the first to approach us to offer us disinterested collaboration and solidarity. This bond
has continued strengthening day by day and step by step. So today, we can say with satisfaction that
Tomas has become an active spokesperson for the process of transformations that we have set in motion,
spreading our victories—from the nationalization of hydrocarbons to the farming revolution—in the
course of his travels.
As Tomas says in his book, Bolivia is living a simultaneous social, political and economic revolution.
Social, because we have converted the basic needs of our people into the axis of transformation, above
the demands of foreign capital.
Political, because in our Government are the social movements,
indigenous communities and peasants, unions and organized society that define political life.
The
traditional political class — stateless, rootless and deeply racist — has finally been left isolated.
Besides this, we are dealing with an economic revolution, because we have acted with the firm resolve of
recovering sovereignty and control over our natural and energy resources, putting international capital
where it ought to be, which can be summarized in the principle that Bolivia needs “businesses, not
bosses.” I am convinced this is the only path that, through State action, can end exclusion, guaranteeing
liberties and building equality. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the process of Bolivian change would
have no meaning if we were not to propose a true cultural revolution that allows us to wipe out the
colonial and racist matrix that prevents the recognition of our principal virtue: diversity.
6
In his book, Tomas proposes to value the human being above money; to put humanity in first place.
Well, this is also the struggle we are engaged in, whose basis is to bring dignity to our people. Therefore
it is the indigenous and farming communities, the workers, miners, artisans, students, small producers and
all the men and women working honestly, day by day, who must be favored by political changes, ahead
of the international financial communities. We must be able to put big capital in its place, so that it
benefits the people and doesn’t destroy them, as Neoliberalism has tried to do in recent decades.
In this sense, the proposals of humanism—that we have been able to better understand through Tomas’s
book—go in this same direction, and so we hope to continue working together to contribute to
disseminating them in our countries, and so that the impact of the transformations that we have started are
known, often premeditatedly minimized by the international media networks that have become a true
information industry.
Regarding regional integration, we are convinced that global peace, the struggle against so-called global
warming, harmony with nature, access to basic resources such as water, and the redefinition of global
concepts regarding development and progress are central elements that must be considered in an
integrated way.
Along these lines, one of our proposals before the international community is to
constitutionally renounce war as a form of conflict resolution between countries. Here we also coincide
with humanism and its rejection of violence, however it may be manifested. We come from a culture of
life and dialogue and not from the culture of war and death. Therefore, we believe that in this new
millennium we have the ethical and moral obligation to defend life and save humanity. And if we want to
save humanity we have to save planet earth.
Finally, to conclude this commentary, it only remains for me to congratulate Tomas for his initiative, for
his intention and commitment to humanist thought, and for his contribution to the liberation process of
Latin American peoples.
7
Part I: The Return of Sisyphus
8
1. The Crossroads
What is obtained with violence can only be maintained with violence.
Gandhi
We are Part of a System
In times like these, it is very difficult for an ordinary citizen to see him or herself as an agent of change,
capable of influencing the course of social events. “What do I know?” we ask, resigned to playing the role
of more- or less-fortunate passengers on a ship, whose itinerary and destination we know nothing about.
Moreover, the emergencies we must deal with in the present often make us forget that we are traveling
together with others toward someplace, and we imagine tomorrow as being an infinite repetition of today.
We therefore tend to think that global change is produced by the accumulation of millions of individual
efforts, and with this thought we stop worrying about the destiny of the whole, secluding ourselves in our
individual cell within the hive, to fulfill (with greater or lesser brilliance) the role that circumstance has
assigned us in the colony.
Nonetheless, our not perceiving that the Earth moves does not mean it stops moving. Whether we know it
or not, our individual destinies depend on the destiny of the system we are included in, and not the
inverse. It’s as if we were on a train headed for a precipice — changing the seating arrangement inside the
wagons doesn’t mean we will avoid the accident. To do this we would have to pull the emergency brake
or change the train’s direction.
We individuals are part of a larger social structure that is likewise in motion — subjected to changes and
transformations that we do not always understand or know how to interpret. The only thing clear is that,
wherever this social structure goes, we will go as well (and our children and grandchildren…), by force of
circumstance. This realization leads us necessarily to ask where it is taking us — to a situation that is
better, or worse? And if the direction taken by this system that includes us were destructive — as daily,
direct experience would seem to indicate — what can we do to modify it?
These are difficult questions, and even more so today, when the system is no longer local but global; no
longer a matter of one country or one region, but of the entire world, and therefore posing a challenge
with a capital “C” for any “poor mortal,4” whose life is affected even if they live in the remotest corner of
4
Expression taken from the song composed by the Chilean singer and composer Florcita Motuda for the 1978 OTI Festival: “Poor
mortal/If you want to watch less TV/You’ll discover how bored you’ll be/By the afternoon.” [The OTI Song Festival is an international
competition among the member countries of Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana or the Organization of Iberian-American
Television. Translator’s Note.]
9
the planet. However, if we are somewhat blind today to dimensions such as structure or process, it doesn’t
mean that things have always been this way, and a myriad of factors have been involved in the
development of our blindness. What is certain is that since the days of antiquity humans have tried to
comprehend the laws that rule History to be able to give its process an intentional, non-accidental
direction; and today, this comprehension is becoming more imperative than ever, before it may be too
late.
This is not the first time human beings face a historical crossroads of this magnitude — it has happened
many times before.5 But as we understand it, the difference is that, this time, the answer will not come
from the few illuminated leaders who will impose it from above on the population — the answer will be
found by the peoples acting as a whole, as the true protagonists of History. There are many indicators that
this is already beginning to occur in different parts of the world, and it is necessary to pay attention to
these signals. Our intention is to collaborate in that search by trying to broaden the perspective regarding
this moment, which we are called upon to live through. When we climb to the top of a hill, we see more
things and understand certain interconnections that we were incapable of seeing from the level plain.
Is it Possible to Overcome Social Violence?
And if we were to take that distance, how would our era look? The first thing that becomes obvious is the
unparalleled violence that is suffocating our societies. Upon incorporating the perspective of time, our
attention is drawn to a notable and at the same time absurd fact —human beings have constructed,
through the titanic efforts of innumerable generations, a social and cultural world, in order to escape from
pain and the violence imposed by the natural environment. However, as though it were a heavy burden
they cannot leave behind, they have never been able to finally divest themselves of aggressive behavior,
and the societies they created continue to be marked by the same tragic sign. Physical, racial, religious,
psychological, sexual, and — above all — economic violence, derived from social injustice and unequal
rights and opportunities, have persisted up to the present time as a sinister heritage. It becomes difficult
to understand this stubborn atavism, but there you have it. And given the enormous power of modern
nuclear armaments, today the violence has been converted into the unequivocal threat of mass
destruction.
5
According to Toynbee’s genealogy, 21 civilizations have gone through the complete cycle of genesis, growth, collapse and
disintegration, aside from others that were aborted along the way. The example closest in time is the Greco-Latin civilization, whose final
phase, the Roman Empire, disintegrated in 476 C.E. when Emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed by the Germanic General Odoacer.
10
Is it possible to eradicate the curse of violence from human societies once and for all? In the light of
historical experience, we would be tempted to say “No, that’s an illusory hope.” Nevertheless, it is also
true that at different moments in time individuals and causes have existed that reached their objectives
without resorting to the path of bloodshed and destruction.6 They serve as models or living references for
us, to orient our actions and restore our faith in the struggle that can convert this age-old human aspiration
into reality.
For Universalist Humanism, a current of thought to which we belong and from which we speak, since its
birth in 1969 in the heart of the Andes Mountains, the problem of violence, both personal and social, has
been a central concern. When Latin American thinker Mario Rodríguez Cobos, Silo, gave origin to this
movement with an impassioned public speech called “The Healing of Suffering,” he was already
reflecting on the different forms of violence that affect personal lives and social coexistence in all
countries, and he proposed paths for moving away from this destructive spiral. Thirty-eight years later,
the world situation has not changed radically and the original project of New Humanism continues to
have the same validity and has gained much more force than in its beginnings. In his latest, recentlypublished work,7 Silo returns once more to this issue, proposing this time the possibility of considering
configurations of advanced consciousness that are essentially non-violent, and leaving open the
hypothesis that this new psychic attribute may take root in societies as a profound cultural breakthrough.
Let us say, therefore, that one of the central questions that has led to writing this book, and that runs
through it from beginning to end, refers to the causes of social violence and the courses of action we
would need to follow in order to finally overcome it.
The Future of the Left
Around 300 years ago, the Western world was submerged in a kind of revolutionary tide, driving forward
everywhere all the structural social changes that have seemingly been forgotten today. As Ortega y Gasset
accurately said, it was about “modifying uses, and not just abuses.” In most cases, each of these projects
ended up bathed in a sea of blood, death and destruction. Revolutionary fever has apparently ceased after
the failure of the Soviet Union’s Marxist utopia, and the peoples have entered a state of deaf
disillusionment, as the struggle has been displaced toward clashes between cultures. In this scenario, the
6
Zoroaster; Buddha; Mahavira, founder of Jainism; Asoka, the Indian Emperor who was a disciple of Buddhism and who
renounced war in 261 B.C.E.; Henry David Thoreau; Gandhi; and Martin Luther King, Jr., to cite the most important.
7
The book Apuntes de Psicología (Psychology Notes), a compilation of four talks given by Silo in different years. The last of them
was given in Rosario, Argentina in 2006.
11
most radical Left has been bereft of a project, and old Socialism seems to have come to terms with its
defeat, to lower the revolutionary banners of its historical tradition and join the lukewarm project it had so
severely criticized in its days of fervor. In many places Socialism has mutated toward Social Democracy,
to form what are called “broad coalitions” — conglomerates that respond to the old theory of
accumulation of forces — in order to win political power, and end up administrating the reigning model,
this time as “shock troops” of the selfsame social mobilizations it had spurred on and led in its heyday.
Communist Parties have experienced the same trend, and, thanks to this tactic, have gained access to
small parcels of political power with the discourse that it’s better to be there than nowhere, and using the
“lesser evil” argument — a veritable blackmail that holds popular votes captive in order to block the
victory of the right. In our Latin America, we find analogous examples of this in Chile and Brazil.
What is certain is that from all quarters we have heard the same bitter song of defeat — the slogan of
“move forward without compromise” has become “compromise without moving forward.” It’s as though
there were a tacit agreement that people are unwilling to pay the price of loss of freedom implied by
revolutionary processes associated to the establishment of utopian totalitarianisms, preferring to accept
the stupid scheme of the conqueror and attempt to humanize it as far as possible.
However, we all know — because we experience it daily — that the current order of freedom is equally
non-existent, and that there has only been a transfer of power from the State to Big Capital. We have gone
from the State monopoly to the private monopoly.
Even so, in many places there exist groups of former militants of the old Left who seek a new
revolutionary path, because they suspect that the classical methods of analysis and forms of struggle are
of no use to them for finding the new answers. We want to convoke these persistent fighters on behalf of
society, who have never given up and who dare to leave behind the old patterns, to build a new Left, that
perhaps will not even use this vintage term because it needs to be completely recreated.8 This new
referent, which will have to arise because it is summoned by historical necessity, must be sustained by
two fundamental pillars — placing the human being as the center, above any other value (be it God, the
State or Money), and, as a corollary, its form of action must be non-violent. With respect to the method
of analysis of social reality, it is necessary to incorporate human subjectivity and its motivations among
8
The term “political left” originated during the French Revolution, in the place where the Jacobins, who supported measures in
favor of the poorest classes of society, sat in the National Assembly. Also called thus were the young Hegelians who interpreted Hegel,
discussing his idealism. In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach published his most important work, The Essence of Christianity, which from then on
became the principal referent of the Hegelian left.
12
the important factors that drive any process of change, just as science has been doing in recent decades,
within its own disciplines.9
As has happened many times before in the short span of human history, we are facing a violent system
and we want to change it because our lives, and those of all other human beings included in it, are being
painfully affected. The fundamental basis that motivates our struggle and spurs our action to support a
structural change and not adjustments or corrections to perfect the system in force, is reduced to a very
sharp perception that the social violence we are experiencing is not merely a negative, secondary effect
— a “negative externality,” as the technocrats like to say — but is a factor that is inherent in the system: a
system that imposes violent and dehumanizing social conditions, which in turn generate equivalent
violent reactions, in an increasing, infinite escalation. What are these conditions and what type of reaction
they incite among the populations that are subjected to them will be one of this book’s themes of analysis.
The chief indicator for measuring the success of our cause must therefore be the visible reversal of
violence, until its complete disappearance from social coexistence, since humanizing the society we live
in means modifying the conditions that eternalize violence within society. Until this happens, the struggle
will continue and may take unforeseeable directions. However, if in the past we had to face an oppressor
State in the hands of some tyrant in power, who must we struggle against now? Who are responsible for
the current state of affairs?
9
“…As we know, upon the advent of quantum mechanics…the observer – i.e., the human consciousness – acquires an active
function with respect to the phenomenon it observes. This function, moreover, will be decisive for the very existence of the phenomenon. In
contrast, in classical physics the observer is reduced to an impersonal figure, a concentrate of “pure attention” whose sole function is to
examine the phenomenon without interfering in it.… In quantum mechanics the idea of an observer that is independent of the phenomenon
observed, disappears.… It is a conception that is non-deterministic; that is, instead, probabilistic, in which the observer plays a decisive role
when measurements are carried out. “The phenomenon does not exist if there is no observer,” said one of the fathers of quantum physics,
Danish physicist Niels Bohr. And J. A. Wheeler, one of the most renowned contemporary physicists, affirmed that the most significant
teaching of quantum mechanics is that reality is defined on the basis of the questions that we formulate…. What seems evident to us is that
we can no longer fail to recognize the fundamental role in quantum mechanics of the observer, and it will be very difficult to omit, explicitly,
the intentional act of observation….” The Anthropic Principle and the Emergence of the Centrality of the Observer in Some of the Recent
Developments in the Physical Sciences. Pietro Chistolini and Salvatore Puledda, Santiago: Virtual Ediciones, 2002.
13
2. The Money Lords
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Euripides
Majorities versus Minorities
Everybody uses the word “humanist” today, whatever faction they may belong to. Concern for the human
being, for his individual and collective destiny, seems to be in fashion, from the most diverse quarters.
Even groups having opposing conceptions brim with deeply-felt and probably sincere declarations
regarding what to do to improve humanity’s lot, to finally overcome the social plagues that have dogged
Humanity since the beginning of time. The majority of these well-intentioned people declare that they are
humanists because it is in fashion, or sounds good for the media, and finally reduce everything to simple
frivolity with the statement that they are against violence because they are against war…however, they
support military dictatorships. They assure you that they are not prejudiced because they have a black or a
communist friend, but they don’t allow their children to make friends with people who are different. They
say they are environmentalists because we have to protect seals and parks…but they reject environmental
limitations on the investments of big capital. If you push them further, they will be unable to justify
anything they say in depth, and before long will start showing their true colors.10
Even so, one has the impression that progress has indeed been made, and that racism, discrimination
against women, homosexuals or against any other minority seem to have become anachronisms that no
one would dare defend publicly. The same applies to the use of violence. And when any of these conducts
are manifested, the voices of those who firmly repudiate them in the name of humanism soon make
themselves heard. One has the impression that the ancestral hatreds have finally begun to yield and that
the human species is heading towards the similarly-venerable ideals of dialogue and mutual
understanding, so close to the hearts of humanists in all eras.
In politics, democracy as a system of government has finally been imposed on the majority of countries,
and, as never before in history, it is the peoples who are making their will felt through periodic elections
and in polls that governments often need to do to sound out public opinion. In terms of material
conditions, the economic growth spurred by technology makes it possible today for large sectors of the
10
As the reader will gather from the text, there is a great deal of confusion today regarding what it means to be a Humanist. To those
who wish to delve deeper into the subject, we recommend the book Interpretations of Humanism by the Italian thinker Salvatore Puledda,
published by Latitude Press, San Diego, USA, 1997.
14
world population to be in a position of enjoying a degree of wellbeing that they had been excluded from
until now.
Globalized communications, powerful technologies applied to health, education, to the synthesis and
production of food, are all encouraging signs that we are prepared to make the great leap — to leave
behind prehistory and enter the era of authentic human history. We can state, without indulging in any
exaggeration whatsoever, that the material platform for this launch is available and is not the exclusive
patrimony of any particular sector, since it derives from the laborious efforts of the entire human species
throughout its history. There is no operational or technical reason not to make the leap, or to do it with the
typical exasperating gradualism of social democratic governments that have won victories today at the
polls in many countries. Without any doubt, this is a beautiful moment. For the first time in history, we
are in a position to defeat human pain, to achieve the yearned-for dream of progress of all and for all.
Nevertheless, this step is not taken. The great majorities of the planet, marginalized from taking part in
such brilliant progress, find themselves forced to keep waiting, without understanding the reasons or the
causes of such discrimination, as they watched, perplexed, the scandalous spectacle of the powerful and
privileged minorities who are indeed enjoying those benefits. Today, this atavistic inequality can no
longer be justified in any manner, and for this same reason, it makes one even more indignant and
ashamed to observe many of our elected officials trying to explain the inexplicable, “administrating”
social crises and, in the process, playing along with the powerful, as they relegate their people’s
legitimate and urgent aspirations to a distant future that always remains just out of reach.
This manipulation of the image of the future is business as usual for governments. Curiously, those who
are most in need are always the ones who must put up with the difficult situation, as though it were an
insignificant and tolerable crisis; and in response to their desperate protests at the eternal postponement of
their needs, it is explained to them — always very solemnly, in deep tones and complicated language —
that every economic adjustment necessarily has a social cost. Therefore, they must be patient, since the
problems cannot be resolved so quickly and everything possible is being done — res-pon-sib-ly
(emphasis on each syllable). Thus, while they make the millions wait, with the future promise of progress
for all, they continue widening the gap that separates the minorities, who concentrate more and more of
the wealth in their hands, from the increasingly impoverished majorities. Let us say it clearly: this is not a
small planning error; neither is it a regrettable detour in the practice of economic theory. This perverse
social order that imprisons us in a vicious circle has been designed in this way, and has now expanded
into a global system from which no point on the planet can escape.
15
Thus, as the 21st century dawns, we are living this great paradox — the human being, despite having
attained the material conditions necessary to definitively leave behind his enslavement to the natural
world, cannot materialize this human aspiration because the private interests of powerful minorities are
preventing it. All the verbiage we listen to daily from politicians and technocrats through the media to
justify why things are not done, serves no other purpose than to hide or camouflage this simple truth. In
the end, it is these minorities who are putting the brakes on humanity’s process, and this is unacceptable.
Too much suffering and tragedy, great hopes sustained through generations, enormous efforts and titanic
struggles have gone into getting us where we are today. And just as we are on the verge of materializing
the great collective project, a few wish to prevent it because it jeopardizes their tiny parcels of privilege.
When we view things from an historical perspective, it is possible to better appreciate the dimensions of
the monstrous disproportion and irrationality that conceal such a conservative and selfish position.
Behind this absurd situation lies a profound contradiction. Hasn’t Democracy — the government of the
majorities — consolidated its position in almost all countries? If this is truly so, then how is it possible
that minorities impose obviously disadvantageous conditions on the social whole, without any attempt on
the part of the majorities to even oppose them? The response is very simple — there is no real
democracy, and, strictly speaking, the majorities are not deciding anything of importance. Just as happens
in offices, where employees have a discussion and then vote on whether the desks should be farther or
closer to the windows, whether there ought to be flowers or whether the walls should be painted in
pleasant colors; but when it comes to proposing a discussion and then voting on the direction and
ownership of the company, there is a terrifying silence and democracy immediately comes to a frozen
halt, because, in reality, democracy is only accepted as long as the issues to be decided are circumscribed
to the Kingdom of the Secondary.
Democracy is sustained by the equilibrium between powers, and in the counterweight that is established
by a strong and organized civil society in order to limit the State and control its functioning. When one
power goes out of control because there are no counter powers to regulate it, the equilibrium is broken
and the democratic system is completely distorted, acquiring a purely formal character, since the
decisions that were in the hands of the people as a whole become rooted in the rampaging power in the
hands of a minority. This is the case of economic power.
16
From the Industrial Revolution11 on, the increase of social wealth in the world as an effect of the
technological revolution has gone hand-in-hand with a process of accumulation of this wealth in
increasingly fewer hands, until today, when it has reached a degree of concentration so extreme it has
become converted into a monstrous parallel power, into a Para-State.12 Thus political power appears as a
simple intermediary or executor of the intentions of the great financial concentrations which have
brazenly installed a code that the governments may only be “administrators” of their countries, because
the economic model and universal society that the rules of the game establish — and that they have
imposed — are unalterable. In other words, they have converted the illustrious function of governing into
a kind of magister ludi,13 which at most carries out the function of making sure the rules are followed,
without any authority whatsoever to make changes in the game. Not a very dignified role for our
politicians, but such is the current state of affairs.
At any rate, there is nothing new under the sun — this form of government is known historically as a
plutocracy.14 If the Greeks had already named it, then it is at least 2,500 years old. Perhaps the only
difference lies in that today, the rich have no need to be physically in the government, but can control it
remotely through politicians. That is, although in terms of form we may seem to live in a democracy, in
practice it is a plutocracy that works in this way: the rich are not in government, but they have the power;
politicians don’t have power, but they are in government. It is left to the reader to decipher this riddle, if
they have patience enough.15
11
In the Industrial Revolution, the economy based on manual labor was replaced by another dominated by mechanization, which
began with the textile industry and the development of iron production processes. The introduction of the steam engine favored drastic
increments in production capacity.
12
Parallel state. “In effect, the most important decisions for the collectivity of men are made by personages belonging to a very small
group that wields power by its members’ mutual consent. This association of money that currently exercises this dominion by means of its
wealth, orients the entire planet’s future. It chooses the direction the entire world moves in, but its only compass is financial reasoning. The
calamities that result from the loss of reference points are interminable.” J’accuse l’economie triomphante [I Blame the Triumphant
Economy], Albert Jacquard. Santiago: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1996.
13
This term is used by writer Hermann Hesse in his novel The Glass Bead Game.
14
Plutocracy, from the Greek ploutos, wealth, and cracia, government.
15
“– What does it mean when it is said that democracies, in the world order, are weakened to the point of having been converted into
a quasi farce?
“– We live in a plutocracy – a government of the rich, when these, in proportion to the place they occupy in society, ought to be
represented by a minority in the spheres of power. Today there is no country in the world that truly lives in a democracy, and this is the
debate that we owe ourselves, the one we are duty-bound to put on the agenda. Social injustice is like a new atmospheric layer that envelops
the entire planet. Do we believe we are participating in the destinies of our countries because we vote certain government or municipal
officials into office? Multinationals are the ones who, in this globalized world, exercise authentic power, and they devour human rights and
democracies in their entrails the way a cat devours a mouse. They are the ones who determine our lives. They are the economic interests that
direct the actions of governments, of all the world’s governments.” Interview with 1998 Nobel Prizewinner for Literature, Portuguese author
Jose Saramago, by Veronica Abdala. Página 12/Web, May 7, 2003. Buenos Aires.
17
During a recent trip to Brazil we had the opportunity of conversing with some national leaders of the
Partido de los Trabajadores (PT) or Workers’ Party. The Party, one of whose founding members, former
labor union leader Lula, is the current President of the Republic, was in the midst of a corruption scandal
for buying votes in Parliament through bribes to opposition deputies and senators. At the same time, they
were already preparing their candidate’s reelection campaign. We asked them why almost none of Lula’s
electoral promises had been kept. They answered that, three months before taking over the government,
they had had to sign an agreement with the IMF in which they promised to abide by its guidelines for the
Brazilian economy. In other words, even before winning the elections they had agreed to begin
“governing” with hands absolutely tied in front of the interests of big capital. When we asked what could
then be the objective of that first government under such extreme conditions of limitation, we received
the surprising and bizarre response that it was “to succeed in winning a second term.” The statement, so
astonishingly empty of meaning, was accompanied by a de rigueur speech that, were they to win a second
term, they would indeed be able to do what they had not done in the first. A few months later, Lula would
win his reelection bid after a second round of voting, in the midst of new allegations of corruption.
The Commandments of Financial Capital
Sometimes you get the impression that human destiny is quite similar to that of Sisyphus,16 the character
from Greek mythology who must eternally push the same rock uphill. When Real Socialism fell not so
many years ago, there was unanimous consensus that political and economic power concentrated in the
State was a threat to the individual’s freedom. In fact, this has been one of the most frequently used
arguments for justifying the free market and private property of the means of production. Just as
democracy consists of the distribution of political power in the whole of the population — it was said —
democratization of wealth goes through encouraging individual initiative, transferring the means of
production from the sole hands of the State toward the multiple hands of private enterprise.
It sounded good in theory, but no one foresaw the effect, contrary to these beautiful expectations,
produced by the phenomenon of capital concentration, which, through stock market speculation and
16
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly roll a rock up to a mountain peak, whence the rock would roll back down
again, impelled by its own weight. They had thought, with some reason, that no punishment is worse than useless and futile labor” (p. 129).
“If this myth is tragic, it is so because its protagonist is conscious. In effect, what would his punishment consist of, if at each step he were
sustained by the hope of achieving his goal? The worker today works all the days of his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd.
But it is only tragic at those rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, the proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, is
fully aware of the magnitude of his miserable condition – he thinks of it during his descent. The lucidity that should constitute his torment
crowns his victory at the same time. There is no fate that cannot de defeated by scorn” (p. 131). El mito de Sísifo (The Myth of Sisyphus) by
Albert Camus. Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 2002. English translation : http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~pwillen1/lit/msysip.htm.
18
banking usury, has ended up accumulating (once again, like Sisyphus) the means of production in a few
hands, increasing the power of that economic minority over societies to a degree that is simply aberrant
and incompatible with any democratic conception and practice. To paraphrase Churchill, never before
have so few commanded so much from so many.17 The State was, at least, a clear and visible enemy
which made it possible to organize the social struggle around precise objectives. But capital is ubiquitous
and there is no center of power to refer oneself to, which debilitates social mobilization and reduces it to
specific or sectoral demands, stripping it of its collective purpose, which is where these vindications and
struggles find their greatest strength.
We must point out that, strictly speaking, what we shall call “speculative capital” or “financial capital” is
what has the aptitude (or the compulsion?) for concentration, to differentiate it from productive capital,
which is the type of investment that remains connected to the place where the productive infrastructure is
installed, and which is committed to that social environment, enriching in effect the value chain
associated to the processes of production and efficiently collaborating in the distribution of wealth.
Speculative capital, on the other hand, is not interested in production as a concrete contribution to society
that benefits a broad collectivity of human beings. Its sole concern is using productive processes as means
to transform everything into more financial capital, and this phenomenon can be confirmed with stark
clarity in the exploitation of natural resources in Latin American countries. To use an allegory, we could
say that it’s like a “black hole” that devours the diversity of the human and real world to convert it into a
uniform and inhuman abstraction. Incidentally, the relationship that might be established between this
unreasonable economic behavior and the progressive loss of meaning that we observe in our societies,
especially among the youngest, could be an extremely interesting subject of study for anthropologists.
Surely all of us, at one time or another, have laughed at the cartoon animation on television about two
pathetic mice who want to conquer the world.18 Megalomania is a pathology that is always associated to
absurdity and for this very reason is so comical. There is even a universal image for it — Napoleon with
one hand hidden beneath the folds of his uniform. What use could it be to anyone to conquer the world? It
is a bizarre and sterile project that leads to nothing useful. Well then, absurd though it may sound, that is
the project of the money lords and we could follow their steps one by one, from the forced privatizations,
the quasi-annihilation of nation states, the disguised enslavement of societies through usurious credit until
17
Sir Winston Churchill’s exact words following the triumph of the British in the Battle of Britain were “Never in the field of human
conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
18
We refer to the animated cartoon “Pinky and The Brain”.
19
ending in globalization and the “free” trade agreements associated with it. If we link productive capital to
the value-added chain (more complex products that require better technology, provide more qualified jobs
with better salaries, raising workers’ quality of life, etc.), financial capital goes exactly in the opposite
direction, since it subtracts value instead of adding it — it is the vacuum chain. The problem is that it
seems to be achieving its objective, mounted over leading-edge technologies and intentional manipulation
of subjectivity through the mass media, especially television. This is the situation we, the peoples of the
world, are in, for now — embarked on an absurd project that will conclude in total chaos, but lacking the
necessary lucidness to discuss it and take control over humanity’s process.
Lenin, who was a visionary besides being a good man, said that Communism was the power of the soviets
(i.e., the social base), plus electricity (i.e., technology).19 Unfortunately, this great leader died early and
the process he had launched went in a contrary direction when Stalin, his successor, emphasized
mechanism∗ and the dictatorship of the Party, the probable main cause of that ambitious project’s failure.
While Communism moved at the pace of the steam engine, financial capital — which was now
international — leapt from country to country, transported at the speed of light, thanks to the advances in
electronics. While Communism sought to generate certain objective social conditions, financial capital
bought television channels to broadcast its propaganda, which speedily reached every home and every
consciousness, generating favorable subjective conditions. Not even the wall of bricks and mortar that
once separated East from West could stop the television signals that bombarded each and every home in
East Berlin, offering the latest products for mass consumption.
With frenzied zeal, this new despot uses very precise procedures to oppress societies, which we might
summarize as The Commandments of Financial Capital. The following are some of its maxims:
1. Thou shalt accumulate into ever fewer hands, this being thy principal and only purpose .
But accumulate — for what? There is no possible answer for this question as we are dealing with a
power that shows such a high degree of irrationality and whose greed will produce, in the near future, a
19
“Communism is the power of the soviets plus electricity.” El Estado y la Revolución [The State and Revolution], I. Lenin, Editorial
Nuestra América, 2004.
∗
Mechanism (Sp: mecanicismo): Doctrine which states that all natural reality has a structure similar to that of a machine and can be
explained mechanically. English: mechanism. T.N.
20
world economic collapse that will finally drag along with it, as well, the controlling minority. If it wasn’t
so harrowing, given the devastating social consequences it unleashes, it would almost be amusing to
observe how this species of monstrous vacuum cleaner sucks everything up until it finally consumes
itself. It is no easy thing to grasp what motivates these small groups to pursue such a deranged project.
Perhaps the Money Lords are — quite simply — demented and possessed by avarice.
However, even more difficult to understand is the readiness of the rest of the world to join in the frenzied
dance. By way of an anecdote, it is almost shocking to observe how, when Forbes presents a ranking of
the wealthiest individuals in the world, almost like any other news item from the entertainment industry,
the same people struggling to cover their food budget and health care feel proud when they see a fellow
countryman in that disgraceful list. What ought to awaken indignation and rebellion is practically
converted into a reason for national pride. But if political power almost everywhere is the accomplice and
abject servant of the financial caste, the nations seem to be waking up and starting to take in the full
magnitude and true scope of this delirium, and the impact on their lives of its incalculable costs.
2. Thou shalt convince everybody that thou art the only important factor of increased productivity
and economic growth.
When this belief takes root, provided that capital arrives, peoples are more willing to make sacrifices and
accept disgraceful conditions,— like not paying taxes and taking the profits it generates within the
country into the international speculative circuit, leaving nothing more than crumbs behind. After which
we declare with satisfaction, “Excellent business!” At that moment, countries, companies, and even
people will have been turned into beggars who accept whatever leftovers financial capital wishes to toss
at them. As the saying goes, “Beggars can’t be choosers” — human dignity falters when confronted by
the power of money.
3. Thou shalt demand conditions that assure thee of maximum return, if they want to attract thy
participation.
Financial capital extorts countries and societies in order to obtain favorable investment conditions and
demands basically three things: weak labor, tax and environmental legislation that will allow it to exploit
workers, pay no taxes and plunder the environment. There are many examples and it suffices to cite the
case of copper in Chile, Peru and other countries, where mining laws have been amended so that all its
profits can be taken out and contributing practically nothing. And any attempt on the part of countries to
apply a tax or a royalty fee by way of minimal recompense for the extraction of their own minerals brings
21
with it the immediate threat of moving the investment elsewhere. And if the legislation is insufficient,
they can always resort to other methods that are somewhat less delicate, as they know very well in the
Middle East.
The question arises of why these one-sided demands are accepted by countries when they do so much
harm. If we assume that the men and women in government truly want the best for their own people,
there would be no way to understand it. The underlying logic must, therefore, be a different one, and there
is only one possible answer — that there are functionaries with access to the decision making levels who
are paid by capital, and who tilt the balance in capital’s favor. For this reason, it is illusory to think that,
within the framework of the system, a better income distribution will ever be achieved — it is impossible
because it would threaten capital’s maximum profits.
By the way, it is not a matter of rejecting foreign investment on the basis of principles, but because of the
conditions over which it is carried out. We would in fact be the first to welcome it, as long as it meets five
basic prerequisites: that it invest in new productive activities, instead of simple acquiring stocks in already
existing ones; that it pay taxes on the profits just as any other national company does; that it generate
intensive, quality employment; that its productive management be environmentally sustainable; that it
carry out technological transfer to local universities. Under these conditions, which are very different
from the ones of today, the investment is a contribution and is transformed into a factor of development
for our countries.
4. Thou shalt force all peoples to adopt one sole way of life —based on the free market model.
The objective behind the internationalization of markets has been present since the beginning in the
hegemonic delirium of the Money Lords. Globalization is the final stage of this process: one sole great
universal market, the homogenization of the modes of production and of exchange, an international
division of labor with countries that supply raw material and others that process it industrially. By the
way, none of this is “natural” or “free” — as the model’s salaried promoters like to say. Rather, it is
covertly managed and obeys very fine-tuned strategic planning.
It is no less paradoxical that the owners of the planet’s greatest energy reserves for making the project
viable belong to another culture that does not share the capitalist vision of the world or its way of life.
There, in the West’s urgency to gain free access to the oil is the underlying reason for the invasions and
wars in the Middle East, and not in the lame justifications disseminated by the media. The joke that
circulated on the Internet following the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- in which Bush asked the Defense
22
Secretary, “Why are there so many Iraqis living on top of our oil?” -- unavoidably comes to mind. It is
the same reason why the North American government is upset with Hugo Chavez. The giant of the North
is not used to hearing the president of a South American country raise his voice to reject their economic
order and denounce their abuses. However, they dislike such insolence even more when it comes from
one who is among their most important oil suppliers. This is the main problem for them.
5. Thou shalt undermine the nation state and put political power at your service.
Marx and Engels had foreseen this in their Communist Manifesto, over 150 years ago:
The bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market,
conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of
the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.20
The politicians “calm down” the people with their electoral promises, though knowing well that when
they come to power they will be unable to fulfill them. Once elected, they betray their voters and submit
to all the conditions imposed on them by financial capital, while they manipulate public opinion with
macroeconomic indicators and expectations of wellbeing that are never fulfilled for majorities falsely
infused with hope.
However, even if the latter were ever to realize this, they would have no way to
remove their faithless government officials because no mechanism exists to do so, apart from waiting
until the next elections.21 At the same time, the State’s resources are increasingly more restricted, leaving
it materially powerless to resolve social deficiencies in a real way. Thus, it is the public officials who
appear to be responsible and who lose their credibility in the eyes of the people — not financial capital
(who have everything very well planned indeed!).
There are many other supplementary measures that we will not explain in detail here, such as the
destructuring of the social fabric, the deactivation of popular and generational mobilization, television
hypnosis, the slavery of bank indebtedness; and if the peoples’ patience is exhausted and they start to
resist, become unruly, then an era of repression kicks in. We have merely wished to make known and
expose the fact that nothing these days is the product of chance or of “natural laws,” but that there are
human intentions that have been acting over decades to establish a certain way of life that favors some
20
written
Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, its title in German, was a proclamation commissioned by the Communist League to be
by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1847, and published on February 21, 1848. Translation taken from
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm.
21
In 1990, the Chilean Humanist Parliamentary Deputy Laura Rodriguez submitted a proposal for a Law of Political Responsibility
that would make it possible to remove from office any elected official who, having made a campaign promise, did nothing later to fulfill it.
Of course, the proposed law did not even make it into the agenda for discussion.
23
minorities to the disadvantage of the majorities, who are adequately distracted in order to inhibit or
weaken their reactions. As Manuel Vásquez Montalbán says in his Prologue to The Lugano Report by
Susan George:
Globalization implies not just the objective of a great universal market, marked by the guidelines
of the most savage Neoliberalism, but a total control over behaviors that impedes the sheer
possibility of insinuating, designing or practicing dissidence.22
To the extent that peoples succeed in perceiving this fact, they will have the strength and conviction to
rebel and take their destiny in their own hands.
In the Face of One Absolute Power, Two Counter Powers
From the time when human consciousness was articulated as such, freedom was established as its highest
aspiration and perennial task. All of our species’ laborious effort throughout history has been
fundamentally impelled by the profound desire to break away from all the conditionings and obstacles
that impose limits on the full exercise of freedom. In the course of this endeavor to liberate ourselves, we
have enslaved plant life, animals and natural forces, until the invention of machines in recent times as the
practical application of scientific progress. We have also many times enslaved our own species, a practice
that is now considered aberrant and unacceptable, although its abolition was owed, in principle, more to
economic reasons than to ethical ones – salaried workers were more productive than slaves.
If leaving behind the practice of direct slavery, however it was done, was a great victory for human
liberty, the subsequent totalitarian conceptions that placed absolute power in the hands of the State,
enslaved societies once again, annulling or repressing the control exercised over this nerve center by the
organized populations. When we succeeded in freeing ourselves from such an ominous despot, we
advanced one more step and believed we had finally reached true democracy. But we were wrong, for we
were now faced by a new form of absolutism whose action was cunning, covert, invisible. A dictator who
deploys the military into the streets, who tortures and disappears those who oppose it, that comes out on
television delivering patriotic speeches is much easier to identify as the enemy than an international
investment fund that no one ever sees and whose name and precise location are unknown, but that is
capable of moving millions of dollars to make an economy or a government collapse. What
22
Informe Lugano. Cómo preservar el capitalismo en el siglo XXI [The Lugano Report. How to preserve capitalism in the 21st
Century] (9th Ed.), Susan George. Editorial Icaria, Barcelona.
24
counterweight can we use to resist financial capital’s totalitarianism and to regulate its action, when we
cannot even perceive its existence?
The State is discredited, debilitated, and has been converted into a docile instrument of the new tyranny.
The social fabric that was the basis of popular power is in tatters. The manipulative media distract and
control individuals who give up before they even realize it. The acute state of generalized paralysis and
bewilderment is the ideal condition for financial capital to clear its path and plunder the societies of the
entire planet at its whim and convenience. Restrictions on State power and deregulation of local markets
(whose “advantages” the political and economic leaders everywhere sing in chorus with blissful frivolity
and ostensible conviction), are nothing other than tactics used by financial capital to annul any other
power and assure itself of unfettered circulation throughout the globe.
Nevertheless, if the peoples are capable of rising above the generalized distraction, it may still be possible
to restrain the irrational, unbridled power of financial capital, despite its overwhelming onrush that has
turned it in recent years into a global phenomenon. Although in any case, to achieve this critical purpose,
it is necessary to raise up equivalent counterforces that can strip financial capital of the absolute dominion
that it exercises today, such that societies are enabled to recover their sovereignty and independence. In
principle, there are only two possible paths for creating such counterweights — recovering the State’s
autonomy through elections, and rebuilding the social fabric and civil organization through intentional
work at the base that will be capable of articulating an authentic social movement. In this way, the State
will be able to moderate capital while the organized community fulfills the function of regulating the
State power.
It doesn’t seem possible to dispense with financial capital, today a power in fact and not in law. What
needs to be done, rather, is to place it within the framework defined by each country’s social planning,
and not — as is happening today — in the situation wherein local social plans are forced to adapt to the
mandate of an international power which, in essence, is what globalizing fundamentalism preaches. In
Latin America — Venezuela and, most especially, Bolivia — we are seeing encouraging attempts, and at
the time of writing they have demonstrated to all the other peoples of the Region that both paths — the
recovery of the State and the reorganization of the social base — are viable.
Actually, they are two experiences of quite different characteristics but convergent in their searches. The
Venezuelan case is a revolution initiated from above by a Lieutenant Colonel of the Army who first
attempted to take power through a military coup and, after spending several years in prison, returned as a
presidential candidate and won the election hands down. From this position, making use of the enormous
25
resources of one of the richest countries on the planet thanks to its hydrocarbon reserves, he began a
process of social transformation, injecting considerable sums of money into health, education and
housing. Simultaneously, he moved forward with an intensive agenda of Latin American integration that
is beginning to materialize around ALBA23 and other initiatives, such as PetroCaribe, PetroSur, Telesur,
Operación Milagros, Oleoducto al Sur [Southern Oil Pipeline], the purchase of the external debt bonds of
other countries in the Region, etc. However, in this process there has been a chronic lack of intermediate
cadres, trained grassroots organizations that make it possible to multiply the effects of the so-called
Bolivarian Revolution. In Bolivia’s case, its project is being carried out in one of the continent’s poorest
countries, but one with tremendous capability in social organization. There the process is being
constructed from the grassroots, through huge mobilizations to demand civic rights, such as the nowfamous “Water Wars,” through which the inhabitants of Cochabamba recovered the water supply that had
been privatized by a North American multinational. This was how a grassroots social leader, trained in
the streets in the heat of protests and mobilizations, was voted into presidential office with a program of
nationalizations, of equal rights for the Indian peoples, agrarian reform and community justice. In both
cases, it remains to be seen whether they are capable of sustaining themselves through time and succeed
in giving depth and consolidation to their respective sociopolitical projects.
English historian Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) used the Greek concept of hibris (excess) to describe the
state of disproportion that civilizations enter at the moment of their process immediately preceding the
onset of decadence. The creative potential that lies at the heart of a culture is deviated toward unbridled
excess or frenzy, turning against and finally destroying societies, instead of favoring their development.
Every civilization has suffered its own form of excess, and hardly any doubt remains that, in our own
civilization, the excess is manifested in the uncontrolled action of big capital, expanding with a force that
has grossly exceeded all boundaries and is now on the verge of making an entire system collapse, if it is
not reined in. Although, at this point, to undertake this task is an enormous challenge and we cannot be
completely sure it isn’t already too late, it is still worthwhile to attempt it, because whether we fail or
even refuse to accept the challenge outright, the process will follow the mechanical course described,
with just one possible, disastrous outcome.
23
“Alternativa Bolivariana para las Américas” (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), the 2001 proposal of Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez, in opposition to the U.S.’s ALCA (Free Trade Area for the Americas).
26
3. Globalization: A Blind Alley
We’ll do the same thing we always do, Pinky — try to take over the world.
The Brain
The System Paradox
Today’s crisis is marked by a singular event in our history — the world, human society, is moving in the
direction that will convert it into a single, closed system. More than one may ask oneself, “And how does
that affect me?” Well, it happens that the structural dynamic of any closed system is the tendency to
increase disorder, and upon trying to put in order this increasing disorder, the only thing it achieves is to
accelerate it. Therefore, even if an isolated individual wishes to live in peace, they will be unable to
remove themselves from the chaos that is affecting the structure that includes them.24
Thus, when an attempt is made from an imperial center to impose a New World Order, disciplining
societies to make them submit to a single sociocultural model, what is obtained is exactly the opposite, as
we are seeing everyday in the world’s media — the differences are accentuated and conflicts are
polarized. Moreover, with the added ingredient of a particular characteristic that is proper to this moment
— that conflicts today are not geopolitical, as happened in the Cold War, but, instead, cultural and ethnic.
Remember the Balkan War or the conflict with Islam, to name the most important ones.
There are many indicators of this progressive “dis-ordering” that we describe and that, due to simple
inertia, could tend to be accentuated in the future until reaching the system’s total decomposition. The
Soviet Union’s fall a few years ago was not a victory of Capitalism, as the interested defenders of this
model tend to see it; on the contrary, it may be a foretaste of what will happen to the other side in the near
future. If the fall of the capitalist system seems unimaginable, we would be well advised to recall that no
one inside the Soviet Union had the least suspicion that such a swift, thunderous and irrevocable collapse
was possible, as the one that finally took place. People woke up one morning and the powerful Soviet
State had ceased to exist. Exclamations of “It can’t be!” and “Incredible!” were heard everywhere, and
there was one amusing case of a Russian astronaut who lifted off under one system and landed under
another. Very well, this is what social processes are like. In 1989, we met in East Berlin with German
Democratic Republic leaders; with the Wall in the background, we asked them, almost naively, how
24
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a closed system is one which has no exchange of energy with another system.
In this situation, energetic degradation is inevitably produced until reaching thermal death, a moment in which no phenomenon can be
produced in the heart of that system. Up to the present, nothing appears to be able to escape this destiny – not even human life. (El azar y la
necesidad [Chance and Necessity], Jacques Monod. Ediciones Orbis. Barcelona, 1985).
27
much longer the Wall would last. With impressive historical (and histrionic) confidence, they answered
that it would surely not be needed forever and that their estimate was that in 50 more years it would no
longer be there. A few months later, both the Wall and the leaders responsible were gone. Social
processes are not linear, nor do they follow the plans of one faction or another, because if there is one
thing that is marvelous in human beings, it is their radical unpredictability.
As we can see, at this point it is no longer a matter of the good or bad faith of individuals or peoples but
of a mechanical process that, at some moment in history, was set in motion by an irresponsible minority
when it abused its arbitrary power, and that continues moving today along its inertial course, without us
— the human beings included inside that closed system — being able to do anything to modify it. The
problem, then, is not the content, but the “container” — all the more so, if it is the only one that exists.
What we are saying is that, no matter how we try, it will not be possible to resolve the serious social and
human problems that persist in the world and in our society in particular, if we do not open up the
system.25 But open it up toward where, if there is no other that is different? That’s the point. Perhaps it’s
because the peoples intuitively perceive this difficulty that they begin to search for signals from other
forms of existence in outer space. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that, as the social pressures, anguish
and loss of meaning increase, the sightings of UFOs and stories of amazing encounters with interstellar
visitors, awaited as veritable external saviors of the closed planetary situation will multiply.
It is worth pointing out that when this same process was produced in previous cultures and civilizations,
none of them were world empires, which meant that the hegemonic intent was limited, and consequently
the reserves of diversity in the most far-flung peripheral areas of those empires was safeguarded. These
reserves were the seed of the new civilizations that replaced the dominant culture when it fell into
decadence. Today, preserving diversity is much more difficult because the phenomenon is global.
However, for this same reason, preserving diversity is even more necessary, because, otherwise, where
will the alternatives arise that will replace the dominant culture that has already begun to decay at an
ever-increasing speed? The preservation of cultural diversity is no longer a nostalgic exercise in ethnofolklorism — it is a historical necessity.
25
To open up a system means breaking the energetic equilibrium that impedes it from functioning. It should be pointed out that, for
thermodynamics, uniformity (or equilibrium) is equivalent to disorder and system death, since the potential differences within it that give it
its work capacity, disappear.
28
Globalization and Its Consequences
The etymology of the word “homogeneity” is something like “of the same gene.” Can anyone imagine
nature betting on only one species, a single form of life? If the evolutionary process had happened in this
way, life wouldn’t have lasted for much time on the face of the Earth, and the human species would never
have come to exist. Life, in its incessant unfolding of growing adaptation to the environment, rests on
diversity, assuring itself that some of the infinite adaptive responses that it continually gives will be
successful and forge ahead.
Well then, we human beings, pushed by the pathological dimness of our current leaders, are doing exactly
the opposite — betting on homogenization, one sole lifestyle, a single adaptive response that has tried to
force itself on the entire planet. That is globalization. “And if it fails, do we have a Plan B?” — Some
might ask who have a bit more common sense than those who are managing us. The answer is that, at this
time, such an alternative doesn’t exist. Or (to refrain from being pessimistic), it does exist, but it is
weakly socialized. As we know, the globalized lifestyle was born with the emergence of Capitalism,
powerfully spurred by the Industrial Revolution. From there, we have witnessed the birth and expansion
of an increasingly more powerful bourgeoisie that has struggled to gain ownership of the world. This
process has gone through various stages until reaching the present, in which the concentration of financial
power has industry, commerce, politics, countries and individuals in a state of prostration. We have
reached the stage of a closed system, and in this situation there is no other alternative — entropy will
increase until the system is completely destructured.
We have already described how international financial capital tends to homogenize economics, Law,
communications, values, language, habits and customs. While above the monstrous Para-State
consolidates that attempts to control everything, below the social fabric continues its inexorable process
of decomposition. These contradictory trends will become increasingly accentuated until the old
obsession with reducing everything to uniformity in the hands of one same power vanishes forever. What
will follow is the same thing we have seen in the decadence of other civilizations, except for the fact that,
given that this world system is closed, there are no different human expressions that can replace what is
falling. We can only expect a long, dark, worldwide “middle ages.” Unless…
The Opening Up of a Closed System: From “Mono” to “Multi”
The trend toward uniformity seems to be characteristic of the last two or three centuries of our history. In
fact, if we didn’t become uniform toward “the right,” as is happening today, we would have done it
29
toward “the left,” since the real socialisms share a similar compulsion. When Mao launched his cultural
revolution, he said, “Let a thousand flowers bloom.” The slogan sounded good, but afterwards they
specified that all the flowers ought to be the same. Totalitarianisms are bad for individuals because they
forcibly restrain or annul their freedom. However, when totalitarianism imposes itself on the entire human
species, as is happening with globalization, this is already a major disaster because it leaves us with no
other response options.
The question that arises in front of this dilemma is: in which direction could a closed system open up if it
is the only system? The only possible answer is a somewhat bizarre one: inwards, towards its own
diversity. Fortunately, we humans are not just objective conditions; fundamentally, we are subjectivities
that vary from individual to individual in a marvelous multicolor display. This infinite garden that is
human intention manifesting itself in the world is the principal reserve of diversity that we have for
finding a way out of the roads that seemed to be closed. And this is what the peoples of different latitudes
seem to be suspecting — that we are transitioning from the single to the multiple, however poorly this sits
with the lords of power.26
In this new contextual framework that is beginning to erupt, diversity is not just tolerated as something
that is unavoidable -- it is valued, because it is understood as containing the seed of the future. The
argument underpinning this new paradigm is no longer economic but rather cultural, understanding by
“cultural” the diversity of lifestyles, of relationships and of production that are being proposed in
replacement of the single central model. From this perspective, economics is a part of culture and not the
inverse, as dictated by today’s ruling mercantilism.
Everywhere, interest in what is genuinely human has begun to displace the interests of the abstract,
uniforming and inhuman force that is money.
Consequently, the urgent social and economic
transformations that are required should be oriented toward impeding any form of power concentration
that would inhibit or repress the expression of diversity. This is the direction being taken by the
supplanting of representative democracy by plebiscitary democracy, by effective regionalization and by
the ownership of companies by their workers, to cite some examples.
26
In systems that are far from equilibrium, the energy dissipation sometimes allows for observing the creation of a local order. Ilya
Prigogine, Belgian physicist and a 1977 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, has described these formations, which he called dissipative
structures. These structures tend to break the tendency to increase the entropy in the system and generate what Prigogine has called a
bifurcation. (El pensamiento de Prigogine [Prigogine’s Thought], Arnaud Spire. Editorial Andrés Bello, Chile, 2000.).
According to our hypothesis, the cultural variants within the human species would produce the same and one or more bifurcations
would open up, which would break the mechanical tendency toward the total destructuring of the system.
30
True artists anticipate the future. When the avant garde of the early 20th century said that art was not for
copying external reality but for creating new realities, they spoke a great truth. The Surrealists proclaimed
that “there are other worlds but they are in this one;” the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro proposed to his
peers that they should not sing to the rose but rather make it bloom in the poem. In other words, these
artists valued the subjective and creative dimension of the human being, more than humanity’s concrete
reality — exactly the opposite of what the current materialist culture has attempted to impose. A century
later, the dream of these visionaries has begun — though still timidly — to be realized.
The Project of the Peoples
Planetarization is an age-old human aspiration that is crystallizing today thanks to the huge advances in
communication technologies that keep all points of the planet instantaneously connected. Globalization,
in contrast, is the project of a powerful economic minority that parasitically piggybacks onto this
planetarizing trend and uses the communications media to disseminate its paradigms. The very name
“globalization” reflects the territorial and geopolitical emphasis (the globe) of a proposal that is very
distant from authentically human concerns.
One would expect that these models, which are disseminated with so much effort, would account for a
more evolved human being; sadly, this is not the case. Rather, we are seeing the contrary — a leap, but
backwards. From homo sapiens we are devolving into homo economicus, or worse, back to homo erectus
or even earlier. In other words, we are returning to the condition of common animals of prey, which is
what we were three million years ago, in the dawn of the human species, except that we are now armed
with a few tools that are somewhat more destructive than axes made of flint. They have been on the verge
of succeeding, but one has the impression that the peoples are reacting and the final debate will take place
between naturalization and humanization, between a human being that is object or another that is subject,
one that is passive or another active, one that is mechanical or another that is intentional. It is nothing new
in the end, but always the same — the natural versus the human.
If globalization is the project of the hierarchies — who fortunately seem to be failing — the project of the
peoples is a very different one, though equally worldwide in scope. The peoples aspire to build a
universal human nation — a confederation of nations that is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multidenominational. The convergence, in sum, of human diversity. Although the salaried manipulators wish
to assimilate this project into their own, this is not possible because the two are mutually antagonistic.
Whereas the hierarchies quarrel over the “globe” and foster or forcibly impose the homogenization that
31
they mistakenly believe will give them control over everything, the peoples are gathering together all
genuine human aspirations into their sensibility, and are betting wisely on diversity.
Integration, at whatever level it may come about (whether national, regional or global) can only be
established on the basis of respect and valuation of difference. To try to make uniform what is diverse is
not just a historical error, as we have already explained — it is also the surest, fastest road to the opposite
effect, i.e., disintegration; because as one action unfolds, a proportional reaction is being produced.
Therefore, as the force that imposes uniformity grows, separatisms multiply, ethnic struggles, civil wars
and all the reactions of nations when they feel crushed or when their identity is denied by an arbitrary
superpower. Thus, the two opposing tendencies are sharply profiled — to integrate cultural and ethnic
diversity will involve the resolution of difficult problems, but it is an evolving, ascendant, libertarian
path. On the other hand, to attempt to make uniform what is multiple in order to control it is a direction
that devolves, is arbitrary and, of necessity, violent.
The Humanist Document27 says the following:
Humanists seek, not a uniform world, but a world of multiplicity: multiple in ethnicity, languages
and customs; diverse in local and regional autonomy; diverse in ideas and aspirations; diverse in
beliefs, whether atheist or religious; diverse in occupations and in creativity.
This is the world that is beginning to emerge in the dawn of the 21st century. But for such a world to be
consolidated, it becomes urgent and necessary to radically modify the system of social and economic
relationships ruling over us today, because the flowering of diversity must have fertile and friendly soil
for it to spread out — not the hostile wasteland that the powerful would impose on us.
27
Letters to My Friends, Silo. Sixth Letter, Complete Works Vol 1. Latitude Press, San Diego. 2003.
32
4. Absurd Economics
The worse things are, the better.
Trotsky
Economic Violence and Social Explosion
Thanks to the intense and efficient media manipulation practiced daily by the system’s formers of public
opinion, we have come to generally associate the word “revolution” with disorder, violence and social
destruction. It is a term that has been discredited to the point that the politicians and leaders who liberally
sprinkled their speeches and proclamations with it in the past, prefer to avoid it today, as though it were
blasphemous. Although it’s true that, quite often, the winning of power by radical organizations has been
achieved through the use of force, historical truth indicates that, in almost all cases, the widespread chaos
was a consequence of the ruling order’s resounding failure, and not of revolutionary action. Radical
groups could have taken advantage of the “objective conditions” of social malaise in order to agitate and,
in this way, channel water to their own mill, but they were not themselves responsible for the popular
uprising. The true causes of social upheavals were to be found in the conditions of violence and suffering
that, for a long time, had been imposed on the people by the established power.
To give just one example, in Tsarist Russia of 1917, people were starving to death and the situation of
social injustice was so atrocious that it culminated in multiple rebellions, that went so far as to force
Nicholas II to abdicate, long before the Bolsheviks seized political power. When Lenin and his comrades
took over the government several months later, they found themselves leading a country in ruins,
involved in a war that had bled it dry economically, and a people oppressed by centuries of servitude and
misery. The revolutionaries did not destroy the country; on the contrary, they had to completely rebuild it
from the catastrophic condition it had been submerged in by the protracted rule of Tsarist autocracy. To
achieve this they had to deploy huge efforts, given the colossal magnitude of their task. The manner in
which they reorganized that society was indeed revolutionary, since it involved an abrupt and profound
change in social structures, a break with the preceding model and the establishment of another that was
absolutely different.
The chaos and social explosion are none other than the peoples’ proportional reaction to the violent
existential conditions imposed on them by the small ruling groups. Social systems are revolutionized
when popular pressure spills over and can no longer be controlled, either through collective hypnosis or
through the usual repressive methods. Then, and only then, when the disorder has become widespread,
does the failure of a social order become painfully obvious to the majority. Once the people are squarely
33
planted in such a scenario, there are only two possible courses of action — either the established order
accentuates the repression by moving toward fascist-style authoritarian systems (such regimes are
generally installed with the justification of avoiding an imminent civil war), or the conditions that are
producing deep popular dissatisfaction are radically modified.
Here we see that the revolutionary response is imperative when the reestablishment of a social order
broken by sustained economic violence is sought; above all, if the alternative of a sinister, downward
spiral of repressive and homicidal authoritarianism, whose horrific consequences we Latin Americans are
only too familiar with, is not desired. When a society reaches this breaking point, as the consequence of
the blind ambition of the powerful more than of the destabilizing action of radical organizations, no other
options exist. However, those in government today do not seem to realize that this breaking point has
already been reached almost everywhere, and they continue to bet on a parsimonious gradualism, as if
they had all the time in the world; or they devote themselves to the provisional management of the
conflicts by resorting to what is wryly called the “short checkbook,” in veiled hopes that the tether might
be stretched a little bit tighter, and the people continue to put up indefinitely with yet another
postponement of the fulfillment of their demands. This irresponsible and condescending attitude reveals
deep ignorance of how social dynamics work. One master of this art of postponement through the timely
dispensation of hand-outs is former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, a typical social democrat. Each
time some social sector raised its voice and began to mobilize around any concrete demand for
vindication, the aforementioned personage would announce, with a huge media deployment, some
subsidy or miserly Christmas bonus with which he snuffed out the social fire looming in the horizon,
without ever actually implementing a structural modification of the origin of the mobilizing sector’s
anguish. This policy meant that he stepped down from power with very high ratings of popular support;
however, since nothing had actually changed, the conflicts have exploded in his successor’s face.
Within Latin America, Chile is the “model of models,” portrayed as the Region’s most successful country
as far as economic development and social achievements go. In fact, in this Region as well as in Europe,
we have heard all sorts of praise for the mythical country that, of course, does not coincide with the real
Chile. How has that idealized image been acquired? Well, as everything else is done these days —
through the propaganda financed by the great financial, mining, fishing and forestry multinational
corporations that use Chile as their publicity platform for “exporting” the success of their economic
policies. Of course, when speaking of the blessings of the Chilean model, they take very good care not to
show the country’s other face; but there is a huge distance between the real Chile and the Chile of the ad
34
campaigns. What happens is that neither workers nor Mapuche Indians nor students have the opportunity
of traveling all over the world to make their reality known and show that hidden side. All the social
problems that make up the failure of the success are deliberately concealed.
However, in recent years the symptoms of popular effervescence that we have described have started
becoming visible in Chile. The explosive, uncontrollable growth of delinquency increasingly appears to
be more a form of violent, forced redistribution of wealth initiated by the most dispossessed, than unusual
anti-social behavior, despite the clearly interested commentaries of economic power’s political
emissaries, who demand more repression from the administration in power in order to neutralize this
“social plague” (demands that merely confirm such groups’ authoritarian background, giving the lie to
their loudly-touted, hypocritical mea culpa for their unconditional support of military dictatorships in the
past). The sustained mobilization of broad sectors to demand the satisfaction of basic needs such as
health, education or housing is an uncomfortable legacy for Socialist President Michelle Bachelet’s
government. All of these manifestations in a country showcased as the highest example of progress
toward development, thanks to the strictly orthodox application of neoliberal economic policies, only
allow one interpretation — that economic growth is very far from being synonymous with distribution. In
fact, Chile holds a shameful record: it has one of the worst income distributions in the world, and a
gigantic social gap.
The March of the Abandoned
Ever since the disingenuous paradigm of the trickle-down theory failed to work anywhere, the argument
most fervently-espoused today by the defenders of the neoliberal model sustains that the most important
efforts in a country ought to be focused on reaching a high year on year growth rate, because this means
that more is being produced, together with the consequential increase in jobs. According to this logic,
employment is the distributive mechanism par excellence, and from this point onwards, all discussions
will revolve around different ways of favoring capital to attract investments and thus reduce
unemployment. Well, we’ve been growing for years and employment is not tending to increase in time,
but rather to decrease.28 This paradox can be explained by the increasingly intensive use of advanced
technologies that supplant those in productive processes. To put it bluntly, people are superfluous since
machines are much more efficient and less trouble than human beings. In reality the situation is even
28
This is a reality that is imposed over the one painted by spun official figures that, for instance, consider the millions of informal
workers or those who have worked just two hours a week as being employed. In the measurement of this index is where we find the highest
degree of manipulation and deception.
35
more perverse, because employment is used as a “fuse” to keep the flow of profits stable. It has been
abundantly proven at this time that when unemployment starts to dip and salaries begin to improve,
automatically a sudden recession rears its head on the horizon that necessitates massive firings and salary
reductions for the lucky ones who manage to keep their jobs.
While they are perfectly aware of the falseness of their arguments regarding the relationship between
growth and the rise of employment, the economic minorities, in complicity with governments, continue to
fan the hopeful flame to keep the peoples in the thrall of future expectations that will never be fulfilled.
What flagrant and contemptible bad faith! This phenomenon is even more acute in Latin America’s case,
because ours are extracting economies of raw materials exported with scant value added, where
investment seeks to convert the extracted natural resources directly into financial capital without applying
any other intermediate productive process. Frankly, our countries lose very much more than they gain —
our non-renewable natural resources, our sovereignty’s material base, are brazenly plundered. The jobs
that these operations yield are few and require little training; the environmental deterioration they cause is
irreversible.
At one time, Marxism revealed that the gains of capital were obtained at the cost of labor’s exploitation
and it called for the union of the global proletariat, appealing to the worker’s superior dignity in relation
to the bourgeois businessman’s. Today this landscape no longer exists, as Viviane Forrester dramatically
describes (more indictment than description) in her beautiful book, The Economic Horror, because today
the mechanisms of exploitation are much more subtle and elaborate. Profitability and earnings have been
displaced from the exclusively productive toward speculative exchange, through a virtual network. This is
how financial capital travels through the world’s stock markets with total freedom, buying and selling the
stocks of productive companies from whom it demands maximum profitability, forcing them to dispense
with the human element or to cheapen it to the maximum through a complete deregulation (read
“flexibilization”) of local labor markets, or even through the transfer of productive facilities to areas of
the planet where the cost of labor is lower. In recent years, over a million foreign companies have set up
operations in China, attracted by very low salaries; however, this exodus has translated into an extremely
high unemployment rate in their original locations.
While these decisions are made in cyberspace, in the real world, human beings, totally limited in their
physical displacements by the innumerable impediments to migratory movements (including the wall that
the U.S. is building along its border with Mexico), fight to the death over the few available positions in
what is euphemistically termed “competition.” By the way, the ruthless war for getting a job pushes
36
salaries down, which obliges workers to get into debt. Thus the Machiavellian circle is closed — there we
have the banks, the owners of capital, the same ones practicing international speculation on a grand scale,
but this time wearing their friendly disguise as usurers, offering credits left and right to the desperate
millions ready to enslave themselves for life, as long as they can gain access to resources they cannot
obtain through their occupational activity. Though the scenario may sound apocalyptic, unless the
direction of events changes, more and more people will join this veritable army of the unemployed;
wandering about, excluded and left to their fate, under the indifferent gaze of technocrats perched on their
virtual Olympus. It is the march of the abandoned, only the most ferocious of whom will survive. It is
here that the vision of these enormous human groups condemned to slow extermination ought to brutally
lay bare before our eyes the factor of natural selection that underpins the established economic order,
joined to the absurdity contained in this fact — to have traveled the entire great, evolutionary journey of
the human species, only to return to the beginning and be reduced to a society that shelters us in an
implacably animalistic ecosystem! It is, simply, absurd and senseless.
We cannot keep fooling ourselves. This monstrous farce must end or the price will be extremely high.
The moment has arrived to put economics at the service of human beings and not human beings at the
service of an aberrant economic order. If what we wanted to demonstrate here about the fallacy of
employment as a mechanism of wealth distribution is true, then — sooner or later — it will collapse
resoundingly like a colossus with feet of clay, its abject failure as an articulator of collective effort having
become self-evident. Before long it will be nothing more than an old forgotten myth. All the empty
verbiage, the indefatigable economicist rhetoric repeated ad nauseam justifying the perpetual and
shameful delinquency in repaying an egregious social debt will disappear forever, scattered by the winds
of history. And it will finally be the youth — the true protagonists of this drama in full development —
who will have to make a crucial decision to either accept the current conditions and hurl themselves into
an increasingly cruel, violent and destructive fratricidal struggle, or to deploy all the potential of their
creative imagination to find new solutions to replace the primitive, stupid babbling we hear today.
In these new generations we are putting all our hope.
State or Market: An Old and Overworked False Dilemma
Nevertheless, if the economic order in use today has failed, the question persists of how to allocate the
resources in any given society.
37
The reality is that, in these last few years, there has been no serious open discussion regarding the scope
of public and private sector roles in social management, because the neoliberal indoctrination through the
media has sought to present as theological truths, concepts that are outright falsehoods, or — at the very
least — arguable. The great, self-important men who appear on television, corseted into expensive suits
and preaching in deep voices that the Market and its Laws are part of a universal natural order that cannot
be modified by human intentions in any way, but can merely, at the most, be managed well or badly —
are practicing gross manipulation and bad faith to deceive the unwitting, reminiscent of what the ruling
powers did a few centuries ago with respect to the Earth as center of the Cosmos. Pathetically, in any era
there are always people to be found who are more than willing to be deceived.
But irony aside, let us analyze in greater detail the different alternatives open to us in answer to our initial
question.
For the ruling liberal currents, the market (that invisible, blind magician who, if left alone, rarely ever
makes mistakes) ought to fulfill the function of allocating resources. However, this implies that no
allegedly intelligent planner (read: the State) may interfere, since such interference distorts the game and
violates the freedom of the individuals who make up society. Why should the State tell me, for example,
where and how I should educate my children? If it is considered that an initial condition of inequality
exists that must be repaired for everything to function well, then the investment should not be made by
the State. Rather, the resources allocated to implement the leveling-out should be distributed among the
private sector, so that they may decide how to make use of them. In this way, individual freedom is
assured and competition is encouraged among those who wish to capture the funds, which will finally
translate into improvements in services or in products.
We cannot fool ourselves, because it is laughably evident — hidden in the labyrinth of economic jargon
and its acolytes’ exultant praise, we recognize Spencer’s old social Darwinism29— i.e., the survival of the
29
Herbert Spencer (b. 1820- d. 1903). Social Darwinism sustains that persons and social groups compete (as do animals and plants)
for survival through a natural selection that results from the “law of the strongest.” The principle of “the survival of the fittest” was
formulated by Spencer six years before Darwin. In Social Statics (1851) and other writings, Spencer submitted that through competition
society could evolve toward individual prosperity and freedom. It is a theory that classifies social groups on the basis of their capacity to
tame nature. From this point of view, persons who achieved wealth and power were considered the most apt, while the lower socioeconomic
classes were considered the least capable. The theory was used by some as the philosophical basis for unbridled imperialism, racism and
capitalism.
38
fittest, and, to describe the situation more completely, the elimination of the least fit.30 An absentee State
with fewer and fewer functions until it almost disappears, and that generates a kind of allegedly selfregulating bourgeois anarchism. From this viewpoint, any increase in taxes is an aberration because it
goes against the desired direction that ought to be deepened. In other words, if, in the classic conception,
the private sector paid the public sector for it to carry out certain functions associated to the common
good, for Neoliberalism these tasks can very well be placed in the hands of each individual, with the
market as the regulator, eliminating the need to support the State’s paternalism. The same thing applies to
publicly-owned companies — there is no reason why the public sector should have to manage complex
productive apparatuses, given that, besides doing a bad job, the public sector no longer needs money.
Thus privatization, lower taxes and the reduction of public expenditure are all cut from the same cloth —
the undermining of the State in order to transfer all of its functions to the private sector.
In the opposing corner are those who think that the State should be the principal allocator of resources,
thanks to the centralized planning of a project for nation-building. The great state utopias have emerged
from this vision, which imposed complex collective systems to organize social coexistence. Throughout
time, this concept has undergone a few variations, ranging from the leftwing and rightwing
totalitarianisms at the start of the 20th century, to postwar Europe’s Welfare State, until reaching today’s
so-called Third Way. It is amusing to watch this historic succession as though in fast motion, because it
reflects the progressive capitulation of Statism to the overwhelming advance of the opposite concept — at
the beginning there is an omnipresent, omnipotent State (masterfully drawn by George Orwell in his
novel 1984) that ends up carrying out minor duties and begging to not be deprived of them. As an
example, it should be noted that the “originality” of the military dictatorship that was imposed on Chile
for almost two decades was its merger of political totalitarianism and economic liberalism. It was the first
time that such a creature had ever been engendered.
To its detractors, the State is a terrible distributor of wealth and their main criticism points out that
resources are usually “lost” in the labyrinthine corridors of a corrupt bureaucracy, never reaching the
sectors they are intended to benefit. Neoliberalism, in turn, has no way to ensure that there will be equal
opportunity, which is the basic condition for the market to function in a minimally fair way, given the
inexorable process of capital concentration in the hands of the banks that has reached too advanced a state
today. The big problem with this conception, structured over the basis of the reigning idealism at the
30
In a campaign to publicize a business magazine in Chile, the image used was of a meeting of executives in a large company. Each
of them had a lion’s head, except for one who had a gazelle’s. The ad said: “In this meeting it’s obvious who’s not reading our magazine.”
39
historical moment when Classical Liberalism emerged, is that the perfect automatism, transparency and
symmetry presupposed by this entire ideological construct do not work in reality. Therefore, in the final
stage of this perfect process, a handful of “private sector actors” will control everything and there will be
nothing nor anyone left who can control them. Thus, there will be total freedom…but only for that
reduced group, which will be able to dispose of everything at entirely their own convenience. Pay
attention, because it won’t be too long before that moment arrives. There is no question that both
positions are deploying their rationales and irrationalities; but, in light of the facts, what we are seeing is
the transfer of centralized political power to concentrated economic power, while the freedom of
individuals is consistently violated.
And what is New Humanism’s position in front of this dilemma? From our concept, it is not a question of
models, but of priorities. Health and education are basic human needs, and, as such, they constitute
inalienable human rights that should be guaranteed in an egalitarian way. Today, inequality in access to
health and education has become structural, because for a long time there have been other priorities
(money, for example), and this social weakness must be corrected before anything else. True revolution,
in the end, is a very inconspicuous (but profoundly significant) reorganization of priorities that puts health
and education in first place. The neoliberal paradigm may be formulated in the following way: “To have
health and education, first you must make money.” Humanism inverts this paradigm: “To make money,
first you must have health and education.” At the moment, the State seems to be the only entity that can
assure the construction of that common ground, and so society should provide the needed resources for it
to fulfill its function without delays and with maximum excellence. However, there are other areas that
exert no effect on these vital needs, where private initiative and the market may indeed freely intervene.
In broader terms, the Humanist proposal has the form of a mixed economy31 in which the State operates,
in a manner of speaking, in consensus with the market, establishing a new social contract with the private
sector actors, now understood not as antagonistic or competitive, but as complementary and synergistic.
The main resistance to this framework agreement of sorts comes from Neoliberalism, which has been
remarkably successful in establishing absolutist deregulatory criteria in local markets, to allow the
31
“Much has been attempted, and much has been learned from each failure. Today we know that it is not a matter of imposing a
centralized economy, in which a bureaucratic state controls everything; however, neither is it about expecting the market to administer social
justice nor to plan development. It isn’t a question of a “third way” either, in which the State asks for permission from the economic power to
carry out tepid, cosmetic reforms, because this would be nothing but capitalism disguised with good manners. We cannot speak of mixed
systems as if they were about mixing water and oil, because the oil will always manage to rise above the water. It is about trying to create a
new system, a new substance that will perhaps adopt some of the properties of oil and of water, besides incorporating others that are more
adequate for a human being in the process of growing.” Economía Mixta, más allá del capitalismo [The Mixed Economy: Beyond
Capitalism]. Guillermo Sullings. Ediciones Magenta. Buenos Aires, 2000.
40
internationalization of capital and favor its free flow. We must struggle against this tendency, and not
against the market — a simple mechanism we neither need to, nor would be well-advised to, destroy, but
that we must merely frame within its correct proportions, establishing what it may and may not do.
Let’s be clear on this point — we are not at all advocating a return to Statism, whose failure has been
demonstrated. We are rather proposing the construction of a great public-private accord to act in
convergence. Enough of feeding the false dilemma between public and private sector management as if
they were opposed and irreconcilable. The State can and should regulate, to prevent the abuses of power
that tend to take place in the market. Likewise, it can and must intervene to finance and support that
which favors the common good, as well as punish with taxation whatever malfunctions from the
perspective of fairness. A usurer can lend money at the rate they please, even though the law may
officially prohibit it, because there will always be some way to carry out clandestine transactions, as long
as people exist who are driven by the urgency of their need to accept usurious conditions. But if we
create a state bank financed with public resources that does not charge interest, then the usurer will be
forced to lower their rates or they will lose their clientele. The State can plan and coordinate many things,
and this does not necessarily mean the economy will be centralized. It is a matter of providing incentives,
of financing, of rewarding what is advantageous, and of penalizing what is not beneficial for the whole,
dissolving any forms of monopoly, at times legislating and at others creating competition for the
monopolies.
In short, a mixed economy consists of a market than can function freely until such time as State
regulation becomes necessary. To say it with an image, the market in a savage state is domesticated by
state action, with a relationship of reciprocity established between both. It is about finding the equilibrium
point between the ferocity of individual competition and the rationality of joint accords; between swift,
short-term responses and long-term, reflexive planning for the problems that require it. If we want a
market based on fair competition, then complete equality of opportunities among the participants must be
assured. This is nowhere near happening today, and the State seems to be the only entity capable of
establishing this basic condition of fair competition.
However, this convergence can only be reached when the absurd — and, for some, advantageous —
beliefs are discarded with respect to the apparent automatism of some forms of social organization. The
vision that there are “naturalisms” that human intention cannot possibly alter is so much rubbish that has
always been part of the public discourse of the powerful, to preserve the status quo. It is remarkable how
these clichés continue to be used unchallenged. For us, the human being is an historical being, and all
41
human creations are historical as well; therefore, by virtue of this quality, they are subject to unceasing
transformations.
Even if what we are about to say makes neoliberal fundamentalists scream to high heaven, practical
experience demonstrates that leaving everything in the market’s hands is the shortest path to chaos,
because in reality, international financial capital then takes over, occupying the power vacuum created
by the extreme deregulation advocated by the neoliberals.
This is an evident fact that has been
maliciously hidden from the public eye through abusive media manipulation. Even Karl Popper, one of
the most lucid defenders of what he himself calls the “open society,” finally recognized the need for state
participation in social management.32 On the contrary, to centralize everything in the State inevitably
leads to totalitarianism and the sacrifice of freedom. It is, however, significant to verify the fact that on
both extremes the same vice is being manifested, i.e., a power that breaks away from the social body that
gave birth to it, to finally oppress the social body.
There can be no doubt that human imagination will be capable of conceiving new solutions for the
problems of coordinating collective action, and that it will not limit itself to returning, time and again, to
this anachronistic confrontation between pragmatism and idealism, already over 200 years old and
embodied in the antagonism between the Market and the State. And this obliges us to reflect on the issue
of power.
32
La lección de este siglo [The Lesson of this Century], Karl Popper. Interview with Giancarlo Bosetti. Editorial Océano. México,
1992.
42
5. The Betrayal by the Hierarchies
Democracy is a Greek joke.
Charles I, England.
A Fable for the Clueless
Traditionally, political and commercial partnerships made efforts to keep themselves formally
differentiated and autonomous, although in the facts, the relations of exchange and corruption between
both worlds were always intense and well known. Well then, we have the honor of announcing that this
long and clandestine cohabitation has been formalized — at last! — through marriage, with the birth of
the political-commercial partnership. What follows is the announcement in the Society Pages of this
illustrious wedding.
“The traditional family of the Politicians and the prosperous family of the Banks have united their
destinies forever, to the jubilation of all,” the wedding invitation would say.
As in any upper-class marriage, the Politicians should give a dowry to the Banks to formalize the
marriage contract. This dowry consists of a great company called The Country Inc. However, the couple
have already been living together for some years, and it so happens that the family of the Banks has been
in charge for some time already of managing the relationship, and holds a good portion of the property.
Therefore, the marriage will simply be a formality, perhaps to cover such matters as inheritance, and so
on.
The Country Inc. is a thriving concern, where 99.9% of its employees work like animals for miniscule
salaries, while 0.1% reap the huge profits produced (that’s why the corporate logo is a funnel). Actually,
almost all of this Money finally goes to the pockets of the Banks, whose patriarch, Lord Speculate, lives
abroad, and, it’s said, invested a huge amount of capital to save the company from the clutches of the
Statists, another family that took over the management a few years ago, with the support of the workers,
and tried to implement significant social and labor reforms that drastically harmed company
profitability.
“But,” you may say, “the workers will complain about such inequality.” Actually, no one does. Quite
the contrary — everyone is happy and proud that The Country Inc. is growing and is an example for the
entire world. What is happening is that a very good economic model has been applied that this gentleman
brought from abroad, but when it was set in motion, he sent a very clear message to the company
43
managers: “Either you apply it just as I tell you to, or I won’t invest another peso there…” And he left
the phrase open ended.
The family of the Politicians started to panic, because they were aware of the very real danger that
foreign investment might fly away. As for the Banks, as was to be expected, they expressed their total
agreement with the measure suggested by Lord Speculate.
Under this tremendous pressure, the
Politicians gave in…but on one condition: that they would always be elected to the board of directors of
The Country Inc., because company traditions had to be maintained and the company image protected.
Besides, from their position as board members, they made a commitment to protect the Banks’ interests to
the death, now that the Banks were family.
And this is how it’s been. From time to time, wonderful electoral farces are staged in the company that
are full of color, cheer and promises that leave everyone feeling content — the workers, because they
believe they’ve decided something; the managers, because they’re assured of getting their piece of the
pie; and the owner, because he has several million slaves working for him unawares. The most oftrepeated slogan in the company — “How beautiful the world is when everything is going great!” — so
clearly expresses the spirit of The Country Inc., that jingles and songs are composed for the workers to
sing in a chorus while they work. The Politicians also sing and even dance, to make themselves liked, and
the Banks neither sing nor dance, but they’re the ones playing the music. It’s a charmingly perfect
relationship.
The only thing that has been somewhat of a wet blanket for this marvel is that, in other, similar
companies — very badly-managed ones, it goes without saying — the workers have started to realize that
something is not right in this story. And they’ve gotten so angry that they’re showing their discontent and
aggressively demanding that the Politicians — who are the ones who have to face the music, as they’re
paid to do, and besides, are hardened to it — get out. There have also been disturbances that reduce
productivity and increase risk. In short, a disaster, viewed from any angle. Lord Speculate and the Banks
must be rather worried and disturbed, because chaos tends to be contagious.
Although — if you think about it — the situation isn’t that serious; there are always ways to restore
productive discipline if things start getting somewhat out of hand.
The Captive State
It was 1917. The social turbulence that exploded in Russia because of the country’s deep economic crisis
led to Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication. The Duma, the Russian parliament, up until then unable to exercise
44
real power, established a provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky, a Social Democrat. The
chaotic situation and widespread anarchy demanded urgent measures, among them, the call to form a
Constitutional Assembly in order to draw up a new constitution. But Mr. Kerensky took his time, which
was not synchronous with the urgency of those moments, and this parsimony cost him the loss of what
little support he had. The Bolsheviks took over and Kerensky had to flee Russia. He never returned.33
Ninety years later, Mr. K. has taken his revenge — Social Democracy triumphs politically in almost the
entire planet. However, one has the impression that, upon reaching power, it is still what it was: a flashy
impediment to carrying out fundamental changes when the social situation requires them. Social
Democrats in the government spend their time staying on good terms with everyone, adopting cosmetic
measures that won’t upset anybody and trumpeting them through the media to try to gain the sympathy of
all sides. As illustrated by the historical example we have cited, their political action has been invariably
characterized by an exasperating gradualism, and, at this point in the game, to demand anything else of
them is to ask for the impossible, and even more so, given that their performance in the position of
political power is being closely monitored by the economic powers.
There can be no doubt that Social Democracy has become a vacillating political force (pardon the
paradox) and this weakness has meant its being used by economic power to contain social conflicts and
gain time,34 while it continues to move ahead and realize its fixed idea — the dismantling of State
institutions. The neoliberal strategy for destroying the Nation State has concentrated on two fronts:
systematically discrediting it in front of public opinion, and progressively undermining its decision
making power. The State’s poor public image is the consequence of an intense media campaign that has
been sustained for a long time, using the massive and almost monopolistic public rostrum afforded by the
33
Alexandr Fyodorovich Kerensky (1881-1970). After the fall of the Tsar and the establishment of a provisional republican
government, he was named Minister of Justice and went on to become War Minister two months later. He tried to rebuild the army to launch
an offensive against the Germans, but a large number of soldiers refused to obey their officers, abandoned their posts and returned to their
homes. Kerensky was named head of the provisional government established following the July revolution, which followed the failure in the
front. One of the first measures he adopted was the suppression of the Bolshevik Party presided by Lenin. Lenin hid in Finland; other
Bolshevik leaders, among them Trotsky, were arrested. Nevertheless, Kerensky failed to neutralize the sustained deterioration of the
country’s economic and military situation, which allowed the Bolsheviks to undermine the prestige of his government and take over control
of the soviets of workers, soldiers and farmers, until they established a parallel power structure to that of the provisional government.
Kerensky was also being harassed from the right by the monarchists and other reactionary sectors that wanted to crush the revolution. He did
not take effective measures when General Lavr Kornilov attempted to march into the capital in September and proclaim a military
dictatorship with himself at its head. Kerensky, who was at the front at the time trying to win the troops’ support, organized a military force
and tried to capture St. Petersburg, but the soldiers refused to fight. He fled to Paris and finally to the United Status, where he became a
lecturer on politics and sociology. "Alexandr Fyodorovich Kerensky." Microsoft® Student 2007 [DVD]. Microsoft Corporation, 2006.
34
In honor to the truth, this was not always so. In their origins, socialist parties emerged as the proletariat’s organized vanguard, and
before long began to differentiate themselves as to the paths they chose to establish socialism. Social Democracy is a reformist line that
finally was also strongly influenced the gradualism of Edouard Bernstein. In any case, historical experience indicates that neither
revolutionary communist radicalism nor social democratic gradualism has succeeded in stopping or reorienting capitalism.
45
media in the hands of economic power. Certainly the endemic venality of the political class gratuitously
collaborates in this “crusade,” as it is regularly implicated in noisy corruption scandals involving public
funds. The reduction of the State’s decision making capacity has been a somewhat more complex
operation that ranges from the extortion practiced on countries by international financial capital, by
conditioning any investment or credit on maintaining certain macroeconomic equilibria and making
drastic reductions in public spending, to the entrenchment in State bureaucracy of a caste of technocrats
with the explicit mandate of executing neoliberal policies to the letter, including disregarding the officials
elected by the people. There we have the venerable and powerful State — that glorious summit of human
reason, in Hegel’s words “the ultimate realization of Idea” — mercilessly nobodied (the rapier-sharp
word coined by Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral)35 by a pack of boorish, tightfisted shopkeepers who have
come to dominate the world; degraded to a status of servility before a captive economic power. It is a
painful and pathetic spectacle, quite difficult to swallow for any genuinely republican spirit.
As students are taught in their first class of civic education, in a representative democracy the governors
are simple agents of the popular will, executors of the people’s mandate, and their legitimacy solely
emanates from the power that has been transferred to them by the community through the electoral act. If
these representatives, once elected into office, renege on this sacred mandate, and submit, because of
weakness or personal interest, to an illegitimate power (such as economic power), they are perpetrating a
most grievous act of political treason, and, in doing so, reduce democracy to a pure formality — they
convert it into an empty ritual stripped of its essential attribute. Well, this is what is happening almost
everywhere, with governments that win elections on the basis of promised economic and social reforms
that answer to the demands of the majorities; then later, in the intimacy of power, adapt these policies to
the restrictions and adjustments imposed on them by the great foreign bankers (setting aside a small
portion as well for their own pockets, justified in their consciences perhaps as a fair commission for
services rendered). And as if this were not enough, that arbitrary power no longer even needs to veil
itself in shadow in order to act; quite the contrary, today it is brazenly boastful, acting in full sight of the
community. Towards the end of 2005, during the last presidential elections in Chile, one of the principal
spokespersons of the country’s economic minority, Eleodoro Matte (and, by the way, a member of one of
Chile’s richest families), declared emphatically and almost threateningly that it didn’t matter who won,
35
Meaning: putting down or silencing someone while impressing their insignificance on them. TN
46
because no one would dare change the economic model, and that, finally, the country was running on
automatic pilot.36 We would be hard put to find a more explicit illustrative image of the current situation.
Governors who cannot govern, but who only administrate. Representatives who betray their constituents
to end up representing only themselves. Leaders incapable of giving another direction that does not lead
straight to their own pockets. And peoples who are obligatorily submissive because they are unorganized.
Is this, finally, democracy? It is not. It is to call chaos by any other name.
Representativity in Crisis: The People Adrift
Just as we have described in detail the brutal maltreatment that the peoples suffer due to economic
violence, we can now likewise confirm, in the political field as well, a new manifestation of the same ill
— the implicit violence behind the arbitrary act of usurpation of popular sovereignty by international
economic power, with the open complicity of democratically-elected government officials. This
disgraceful conduct of the political leadership has ultimately put representativity in check, because it has
caused societies to mistrust their leaders, while the latter can no longer justify such conduct as being the
exception rather than the rule, given its replication everywhere today. The gap between the social base
and its leaders has grown deeper and deeper; it may never quite close again. The bond of trust that joined
human collectivities to their leaders has been broken and will be very difficult to rebuild. Besides this,
we are talking about a universal phenomenon that pervades society from top to bottom, and that manifests
in any organization where representativity exists. It may even be that people don’t know what it is exactly
that smells fishy, but they detect the stench very clearly and it makes them wrinkle their noses and move
away from its source. This recoil helps us to understand, for example, the rising rate of voting
abstentions. For good or ill, this divorce is a natural consequence of our elected representatives’ reiterated
misconduct; and if they expected something different, then their shamelessness is even greater than could
have initially been imagined. The fact is, the peoples have had infinite patience (verging on fatalism), and
if their patience is running out today, it’s about time it did!
The credibility and — above all — the trustworthiness of politicians and social leaders have deteriorated
seriously at this time, and these personages have become associated with many more negative attributes
than positive ones. Their customary dishonesty is the stock-in-trade of comedians, and they are referred to
as useless parasites in café conversations. All the opinion polls on the public image of institutions rank
36
From the Santiago daily “La Tercera,” “Reportajes” section. Issue of Sunday, 17 Abril 2005. Chile.
47
political parties in last place. This negative perception, created by the way they customarily go about their
business, has also been reinforced by their neoliberal discourse that degrades ideologies, and, in general,
any set of guiding ideas that may sustain social projects other than their own, in which these leaders
would have an important role to play. As a result, elections are no longer a competition between ideas,
but rather a contest in who projects the best image, with the huge margin of error for voters that such a
communicational tactic entails.
However, as is always the case in human affairs, this deep disillusionment has two sides to it. In this
negative dimension, upon losing faith in a debased leadership, human collectivities have entered into a
state of confusion that has led them to seek refuge in a resigned and silent passiveness, scarcely showing
any visible reaction to the increasingly flagrant violations of their liberties and rights as citizens. And
when they have indeed been able to express themselves, they have done so cathartically, through more or
less destructive explosions, but without a direction that is truly transforming of the oppressive situations.
Now, as a positive aspect, the historical process has led us to this crossroads, from which we can only
come out progressing toward new forms of democracy that will prove themselves capable of forever
stopping any attempt by any minority to seize power away from the communities. We then experience
contradictory emotions. We don’t like what is happening with these “leaders who don’t lead,” because it
immobilizes the peoples and submerges them in confusion; and yet, we cannot help but feel glad, because
this complex challenge, which the peoples are compelled to confront from their position of abandonment,
will finally force them to take their historical destiny into their own hands, and leave behind the need to
obey any form of archaic paternalism.
Nonetheless, that time has not yet arrived, and, for now, social leaders continue to be important and even
necessary in the context we have described — or, perhaps, precisely because of it. It can be of no surprise
to anyone that, if the “traditional” leaderships have lost credibility to the point of leaving great masses
completely in the dark with respect to the direction they must go in, and worse, faced by the failure of the
way of life that these leaders promoted, the peoples should seek new references capable of seeing farther
ahead than the immediate present, in order to define a direction to follow. In historical moments of
confusion such as the one we are experiencing, the peoples cannot move forward without reference points
and will keep searching until they find them. However, this very same urgency and anxiety can also lead
to mistakes that will be fatal for humanity’s process, since what finally lies in the balance is not so much
who leads us, but where they are taking us. New Humanism has invested many years in the design and
construction of just such a future landscape; and today, in the midst of widespread disorientation, we are
48
working arduously to offer it to the entire planet, because of our firm conviction that that is the world we
all deserve to live in. We will continue to exert our maximum efforts to get our message to every corner
of the globe, in intimate hopes of one day touching the hearts of all the simple people who are being
viciously tormented by the powerful, and persuading them to join us in this beautiful intent.
The crisis of representativity has already become so acute that it is now impossible for anyone to not see
it. However, any real solution to this complex problem (a solution — not another quick fix to get out of a
bind for the time being) must necessarily go through the step of moving the focus of analysis away from
the “re-engineering” of political hierarchies, toward the rebuilding of the social base. It is urgent to
refocus on the most important actor in a democracy, the one almost always forgotten, manipulated,
persecuted, even despised — the people.
The People at the Mercy of the Elements
The market’s resounding failure to assure the people of equal opportunities and the usual inability of
today’s governments to implement structural changes to correct this disgraceful inequity have left things
in a kind of stalemate, a frozen equilibrium between the economic and the political powers. As always
happens, what has broken this symmetry is popular mobilization — i.e., the public expression of the
foundation and pillar of democracies: the power of the people. The mobilization of youth in different
parts of the world is another encouraging sign of the times; it is the energy of the new generations in pure
state, expressing itself in the world. Nevertheless, as we have already said, the direction that these social
movements are taking is still unclear.
The only way that governments may fully respond to the demands of a mobilized people is for them to
break their alignment with neoliberal tutelage. However, such a conduct implies a political courage that
government officials are utterly devoid of. Therefore, popular mobilization must be sustained in time until
it forces the divorce to take place, because the legitimate alliance that democratic government must form
is with the power of the people who have elected it to office, and not with economic power. The social
struggle must be sustained until this fundamental principle — completely distorted by the “illicit
partnership” between political and economic power — is restored. This is the underlying problem, and
not the application of this or that economic model, which is a sterile discussion if societies do not have
enough freedom to decide what they wish to do.
Nevertheless, such a vigorous social dynamic demands the existence of a strong, organized and active
people, light years away from where we are today. What was once called a “social body” today is in a
49
state of complete fragmentation, stripped of inner cohesion and reduced to an inorganic agglomeration of
millions of isolated individuals who compete amongst themselves for survival. As a consequence of this
radical loss of its structural quality (in other words, of its de-structuring), the social base has ceased to be
an intelligent force and has become a formless mass that obediently lends itself to being manipulated, as
in fact is happening each day. And so we have been desolate witnesses of this veritable collapse, in which
such a highly complex and vibrant system as that which we once identified as a people has ended up
disintegrating, reduced to ruins, dragged along in the wake of a regressive, incomprehensible and painful
process.
In the meantime, the hierarchies devote themselves to business as usual with ineffable irresponsibility, not
even understanding what is going on beneath their very noses and with the sole aim of keeping the social
situation under control — which becomes increasingly difficult to do as the blind pressure of
uncontrollable, directionless human energies continues to build. The people — over whom these
hierarchies claim to endlessly fret, the focus of their sleepless nights, have in reality been abandoned by
them and left to the mercy of the elements, in the raw wasteland of nature, whence they temporarily
rescue them each time they need the legitimacy of people’s support. The people (the sole object and
subject of social life) — turned into the scum of the earth and obliged to beg for what they are entitled to
by right.
Possibly, for many, this vision is too dark; even intolerable. But it is a vision that is genuine and
courageous, to look at what everyone seems to want to hide: that a democracy simply cannot exist unless
it is sustained by a strong and solidary people, within a vigorous social fabric, with real community
participation in shared decisions, with cooperation more than competition. It is the responsibility of
governments to create the social conditions for empowering these paths of popular expression, instead of
restricting them more and more for the benefit of an artificially-imposed order from above. True social
order is the final result of the enormous complexity of the collective human phenomenon. It is rooted in
the existence of base organizations that are well constituted and differentiated, in a permanent
participation on the part of the population, and a shared project that calls them to convergence. If these
three conditions are not created as a minimum, then democracy becomes an empty form, a meaningless
word for adorning speeches. As they say: a rotten egg.
However, leadership hierarchies, adequately “encouraged” by economic minorities, have done exactly the
opposite — they have kept power in their hands by destroying everything else. Now they crow over their
Pyrrhic victory as if it were the maximum conquest of State Machiavellianism, without noticing that they
50
too are a part of the same entropic process, and will not be able to escape being swept away in the flood
of chaos that they helped unleash. As we observe, yet again, the apparent advance of the absurd and how
it irremediably engulfs what humanity has built, we cannot help but remember Sisyphus, pushing his
boulder up to the summit, but always falling time and again, to then restart his ascent. Can it be truly
possible to change this persistent tendency toward chaos and intentionally correct the direction of this
process, for the benefit of all? We humanists firmly believe that it is.
In a Real Democracy, the People are Protagonists
But we can’t wait for such a radical solution to come from hierarchies blinded by the glitter of gold or
distracted by self-interest. While there are a few experiments underway that could vindicate the ruling
powers, we are not yet in a position to assure the success of their attempt, although we fervently wish for
it. The response must come from the peoples who, like the phoenix, will rise again from the ashes. These
same peoples, trampled by tyrannies, mistreated by the powerful, betrayed by their own leaders and
exhausted by the hard struggle for daily survival, will rise up from their current state of prostration to
build a new order that has perhaps never been attempted before at such a scale in human history.
Whenever there is talk of democracy, obligatorily associated to representativity, as if an impassable
frontier existed there for the imagination, apparently unwilling to cross those limits. The political class,
for its part, fearful of being consigned to the trunk of old souvenirs, makes sure this vacillation is
reinforced by hammering continually on the impossibility of governing without parties or representatives.
However, as we have already said, historicity is what makes us human, and for this reason is always in
process, is a continual unfolding. Every human construction will always be spurred towards inexhaustible
metamorphoses, and in this eternal unfolding, nothing can be considered as definitive. And so, the
solutions to specific social problems that were useful in one historical moment will cease to be so, when
the conditions change, and it will be necessary to look for new answers. If in cowardly eras such as this
one, the trend is to bury one’s head in the sand and futilely aspire to stop the Wheel of history turning, a
change of mentality will imply reconciling with temporariness and taking on the difficulties as a
permanent challenge. And so, what innovations will we be capable of proposing in order to overcome this
hard test that democracy is facing today?
When political parties were setting down their roots in the underground currents that pierce through the
peoples’ soul, gathering up and expressing the diverse collective sensibilities that were in play, they had
legitimacy and social recognition. But when they literally uprooted themselves from that nourishing soil
51
that gave them life, and all that interested them was power, they forever lost their authority as interpreters
and spokespersons of social reality, which was their only political capital. These referents were then
converted into electoral mills that produced public officials and abandoned the direct bond with the
peoples and their problems, opting instead for a mediated relationship (in other words, one that solely
utilized the mass media). This form of communication, which is eminently manipulative, given its
unidirectional character — the candidates can address the peoples, who remain silent (except for the
polls, today converted into the peoples’ only voice, despite the suspicions of manipulation that are also
associated to this medium). Besides this, in order to mount efficient electoral campaigns, these mills
needed more and more money, and in their insatiable greed betrayal was cultivated, because they had to
negotiate their access to resources with economic power, with political power, or with both. The
institutionalization of “lobbying” by powerful minorities and of vote buying at the social base are some of
the deformations being experienced by democracy in its debacle.
The monumental distortions of the spirit of democracy are so obvious that all attempts to win back trust
through political deals struck within the inner circle will always be contaminated by their proximity to
power and will merely corroborate the eternal bad faith of the elites, who mean to hang on to their
privileged position at any price. When the Humanist Parliamentarian Laura Rodriguez was elected to
Parliament in 1989, she said that her political conduct would be “facing the people and with my back to
Parliament,”37 with which she clearly showed the orientation of her vision. Her conduct was exactly the
opposite of the usual behavior in traditional politics, which is hypnotized by power and forgets its
constituents…until the next elections. Siding always with the people brought her more than one run-in
with the “barons” of the Chamber of Deputies, who accused her of lowering parliamentary dignity,
without ever clarifying precisely what they meant by such an accusation. What is curious is that her
declared emplacement, which would be the norm in an authentic democracy, is seen today as a
praiseworthy exception. We are indeed in a very bad way.
In reality, democracy will recover its soul when the people stop being a mere extra and once more
become protagonists. But this collective energy will manifest itself in all its fullness only when
participation becomes synonymous with decision-making power. This will become effective if certain
fundamental transformations are set in motion in the democratic system, which are oriented toward
37
A quien quiera escuchar [To Whomever Wants to Listen]. Laura Rodríguez. Ediciones Chileamérica, CESOC. Chile, 1994.
52
transferring progressively higher levels of decision-making to the organized community. Silo, one of the
creators of New Humanist thought, has said:
The point is that, along with the progressive decentralization and decrease of State power, there
must be a corresponding growth in the power of the social whole. The only guarantee that today’s
grotesque State will not simply be replaced by the unrestrained power of those same interests that
created it (and which today strive to dispense with it), is to be found in those factors that the
people themselves manage and supervise in solidarity, free from the paternalism of any faction. 38
If in the past, operational difficulties might have been a useful justification for hindering these changes,
today the progress of information technology allows the efficient and safe administration of such
processes of permanent collective participation.
The formula of a strong State and a weak people led fatally to State totalitarianisms that crushed freedom
with institutional violence. A weak State and a weak people have generated a power vacuum that allowed
the eruption of an illegitimate Para-state in the hands of international financial power, which holds
societies hostage, imposing sweeping conditions of economic violence on them. A strong State and a
strong people would at least be in the situation to neutralize the Para-state and be able to establish a
dynamic equilibrium of powers among them. However, to the extent that adequately coordinated
communities increase their real power, State domination will proportionally decrease, and collective
organization will get closer to the ideal of a direct democracy, so often described by the dreamers of all
ages, from Athens in the Age of Pericles onward. And when the peoples become capable of making all
decisions regarding the matters that directly involve them, then freedom will cease to be just a word and
become social reality, long-yearned for and hard won.
38
Collected Works, Vol.1. Humanize the Earth. The Human Landscape. Silo. San Diego: Latitude Press. 2003.
53
Appendix
“There is no fate that cannot de surmounted by scorn.”
The Myth of Sisyphus
A. Camus
Even if the following truth may be difficult to accept for those consciences possessed by their yearning
for the absolute, it seems that human processes somehow always thwart any and all forms of determinism.
The banner of infinite progress held aloft by the optimism of the Age of Enlightenment was a beautiful
chimera, brutally disavowed by the barbarity that characterized the 20th century.39 The predictions of
presumptuously scientific historical materialism that Marxism enunciated did not come true either.40 And
the much-touted “end of history” associated with neoliberal pragmatism is no more real than any colorful
slogan at the service of the media manipulation so abundantly exercised by these sectors..41 The only
predestination left standing, looming like a somber cloud in the horizon of humanity’s immediate future,
is the threat of final entropy, as we have forewarned throughout this reflection.
If the human being’s journey is neither an eternal ascent, nor a determinist trajectory as described by
classical physics, nor an implausible suspension of the future, then this means that cycles do exist.
Historians have always sought to achieve a rigorous characterization of the great historical eras, and to
determine the moment that their own epoch was in. Should there still remain any doubts concerning this
one, we consider it as being the “anteroom” of the decadence that is starting to affect our vainglorious
technological civilization. Does this mean that this process is inevitable and therefore some form of
predetermination will always be finally fulfilled? No. These cycles may constitute tendencies that lay
down certain conditions, among which we must choose; however, they do not define in any case an
inexorable course of events. If this were so, then nothing would have any meaning and all that would be
left is to resign ourselves stoically to the final collapse of our world, as though we were facing a natural
catastrophe.
What we have precisely wanted to make evident are the options that are open to us today. History is not a
chaotic and accidental accumulation of events, nor is it a machine as certain interested quarters would
39
"L'espèce humaine marche d'un pas ferme et sûr dans la route de la vérité, de la vertu et du bonheur." Condorcet, 1743-1794. (“The
human race advances with a firm and sure step along the path of truth, virtue and happiness.”)
40
We refer to his determinist conception of the historical process and to the prediction of an inevitable revolution…that was never
consummated.
41
It must be said that almost no one takes Mr. Fukuyama seriously anymore. One has the impression that he was satisfied with
obtaining the “recognition” that he identified in his book as the engine of human action, in order to get off the wagon of his scatological
theory and start criticizing everyone who believed it. He seems to be dedicated to doing this today.
54
have us believe. History is the vibrant expression of a collective quest; it is the underground murmur of
human intention as it peers into the future and tries to build up certainties amidst a desolate and
ambiguous landscape. Today, certain powerful minorities, in order to favor their own petty interests, try
to betray that legendary purpose by dehumanizing the collective effort and miring it in the world of the
natural, with which they will merely accelerate the decomposition of the entire system. The only valid
position that can be adopted in front of this serious error of the few, is to rebel and once again connect
with the basic human project that seeks to overcome pain and suffering. If this happens, it will be because
the intentionality of individuals and of peoples has been set in motion once more in order to correct the
process’s direction.
The peoples are the subjects of history. If long ago they once knew this, today they seem to have
forgotten it and been converted into objects — and history, apparently, does what it likes with them. Our
aim is to help them to remember.
55
Part II: Social Transformation
56
6. That Stranger, the Human Being
Each man is furthest from himself.
Nietzsche
Disobedience Opened Up the Path
It is a day like any other, between a million and 500,000 years ago. The smell of ozone in the dense
atmosphere of the African veldt and the enormous bodies of dark clouds that shroud the sky up to the
horizon announce the coming of a storm. A group of hominids crouches beneath a rock cornice, awaiting
the rain. Suddenly a noiseless blaze rips across the sky, followed almost instantaneously by a terrifying
roar that reverberates throughout the mountain peaks encircling the valley. A celestial light hits an
enormous, dried-out tree, splitting it in half, and it ignites in flames. The group grows uneasy because the
fire is too close and they fear it, but there are others who stare in fascination at the flames that shoot up to
a great height. One of them — male or female, we do not know — disobeying the powerful command of
instinct to flee, scuttles toward the fire. A burning branch breaks off and falls at the feet of the curious
one, who, instead of jumping back, goes even closer until they can almost touch the flames. Behind them
can be heard the cries of the tribe, who gaze at the scene with something akin to reverential wonder. The
hominid picks up the piece of burning wood and looks at it closely, experiencing the variations in its
temperature as they hold the flame closer or farther away. Then they turn and rejoin their excited fellows,
the glowing firebrand in their hand and a triumphant expression on their simian-like faces.
It was probably not the first act of rebellion against nature, but, yes, the most significant, because it
profoundly determined the subsequent process. We all know of the importance of mastering high
temperatures for different cultures. Like all animals, hominids too had a sacred fear of fire. This is what is
meritorious and interesting. We would have to put ourselves inside that head, housing a brain with the
cubic capacity of an orange, that sees the fire and circles around it until daring to go against the fear.
What an interesting mental circuit it is, that makes a human being move against the dictates of a
conditioned reflex!
Starting from this instance of radical disobedience, human beings began to distance themselves from their
animal origin, until finally replacing the natural environment with an eminently cultural environment, in a
process of increasing humanization. It is the act of Prometheus, who, according to Greek mythology,
rebelled against the gods of Olympus, to favor with fire and other gifts, the creature he himself had
fashioned: the human being. Quite correctly, the Titan’s name in ancient Greek means fore-thought
(Προµηθεύς — “he who thinks ahead”); that is, anticipatory capability. From the depths of a
57
consciousness as yet obscure, that exclusively human ability had emerged that was capable of breaking
away from animal reflex response, to move to the future and direct their actions toward an as-yet
nonexistent image in the world. Suddenly, like an electric shock, intention (to tend towards something)
and project (to launch ahead) had manifested. The eruption of this act of consciousness, and of its
reciprocal object, changed the world’s destiny forever.42
From that time on, the world of the artificial opposes and replaces the world of the natural in all spheres,
including that of the body itself. We follow Spengler’s words:
“The privilege of creation has been wrested from Nature. “Free will” itself is an act of rebellion and
nothing less. Creative man has stepped outside the bounds of Nature, and with every fresh creation he
departs further and further from her, becomes more and more her enemy. That is his “world-history,”
the history of a steadily increasing, fateful rift between man’s world and the universe – the history of a
rebel that grows up to raise his hand against his mother.43”
At the other extreme of history, it is said that Einstein began his research on the basis of a question that he
formulated when he was still a schoolboy: “What would the world look like, if I saw it while astride a
beam of light?” That early quest was likewise an act of original disobedience, and from that point this
German scientist developed his entire theory, revolutionizing physics and all our lives as well. It seems
that all investigating and, therefore, all discovery, always starts out from an insatiable curiosity. To see
the world as if it were virgin territory, always open to investigation and discovery, is a typically human
attitude, from the evolutionary moment when mankind approached fire instead of fleeing from it, as all
their animal instincts told them to do.
It must have been at that same moment when the human being succeeded in stripping himself of those
instinctive ties to a nature subjected to slow genetic modifications, when freedom was also emergent,
since, for the first time, he ceased to be enchained to an invariable, automatic response. Now they could
defer those responses, and spread out before themselves a variety of options among which to choose. But
such an enormous broadening of the horizon of possibilities brought along with it the need to justify the
scope and limits of that autonomy. Ethics and morality then appeared, which sought to regulate the
difficult interaction between many free individuals. But such a tremendous broadening of the horizon of
42
Although our narrative’s dramatism leads us to accentuate the emergence of the human as a point of rupture with the natural world
(the “Promethean act”), strictly speaking this is not so, since primitive forms of intentionality are also observed in the animal world, and this
is evidence of life’s continual process towards an increase in its complexity.
43
Man and Technics, Oswald Spengler, published in 1932 by George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London. Original title Der Mensch und
die Technik.Munich, 1931.
58
possibilities brought along with it the need to justify the scope and limits of that autonomy. This was
when ethics and morality appeared, which sought to regulate the difficult interaction between many free
individuals. The struggle for freedom also began, since slavery and extermination have always been
justified with the illegitimate recourse to dehumanizing those whose subjection or elimination was
desired. In order to do this, it was necessary to submerge them once again in the world of nature, denying
them the capacity of having intentions and, thus, all right to exercise their freedom. History is rife with
episodes telling of the innumerable methods of different groups to bewilder humanity and justify
oppression and murder, ranging from the most brutal physical violence to the most sophisticated forms of
manipulation.
Coherently with these definitions and according to our reflection’s initial purpose, we can now state with
authority that the root of all social violence and of all human unhappiness is the exercise of illegitimate
power by some human beings over others, because, in order for the former to exercise illegitimate power,
the latter must necessarily be reduced to things, to objects without intention. But those who dehumanize
others also dehumanize themselves. For this reason, the definitive elimination of violence will only be
achieved when we become capable of dismantling the social structures that make any kind of
concentration of power possible, and — consequently — any form of domination.
However, this vision of the human is something from very recent times — no more than a hundred years.
Phenomenology first, followed by existentialism put forth the need to go beyond 19th century positivism
to characterize the psychic phenomenon, and they described subjectivity as a new dimension that eluded
all analysis with the methods of knowledge applied to the physical world. Until that key moment, the
human being continued to be considered, in the best of cases, as a “rational animal,” in accordance with
the old Aristotelian concept. Certainly, Universalist Humanism considers itself the heir and legitimate
successor of these lucid attempts to grasp the ungraspable, reach the unreachable, describe the
indescribable.44
44
“But there is another sense of the word, of which the fundamental meaning is this: Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in
projecting and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to exist; and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent aims that he
himself is able to exist. Since man is thus self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart
and center of his transcendence. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This relation of
transcendence as constitutive of man (not in the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in such
a sense that man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a human universe) – it is this that we call existential humanism. This is
humanism, because we remind man that there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also
because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of
some particular realization, that man can realize himself as truly human.” Existentialism is a Humanism. J. P. Sartre. Editorial Losada.
Buenos Aires. 2002. English translation from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm
59
It may be that many of these explanations seem futile and removed to many persons. However, we have
already warned of the consequences that can derive from one or another conception of what is human, in
the exercise of power. Let us now examine some examples in other areas. In many countries a heated
controversy is going on regarding whether an embryo should be considered as being human life or merely
biological life. The same is happening with respect to euthanasia. Can a person decide when they want to
die if, because of some irreversible impediment, they are not in a position to deploy their intention in the
world and realize themselves fully as a human being? Without any doubt, these are difficult and painful
issues for everyone because they are heavy with guilt. For this precise reason, societies should not shirk
the profound discussion of: when does human life begin (or end)? If we accept that this form of life,
which is so particular, is already completely defined from the perspective of and by corporealness, we
would therefore be enunciating it from what is most external, without noting with precision what aspects
differentiate it from other “types” of bodies. In this case, we would be very hard pressed to define its
exact limits. On the other hand, if human life is established on the basis of this exclusive and singular
activity of consciousness that we have tried to describe (that is, from its interiority), the human would step
out into the light in all its originality and grandeur. If consciousness and world are essentially intertwined
in an indivisible structure, would it be possible to speak of a fully human life in the absence of one of the
two factors? We are leaving these questions open-ended to contribute to the discussion, given that today,
due to the infinite possibilities that advances in genetic engineering are putting forward, new and complex
questions have opened up. But we will add that the answers can only be reached if we succeed in building
consensus around the concept of being human.
Determinism and Freedom
Marxism conceived the human process as the result of mechanical and deterministic evolutionary forces
(and for this reason they approached social reality from a perspective they defined as “scientific”). For
that vision, so much a part of the 19th century European cultural landscape, the human being (the human
mind) was a simple reflection of that great process dynamic; and, as such, was a secondary and peripheral
phenomenon. Well and good; but while we have deep respect for the attempts of that current to transform
society in order to correct the disgraceful inequalities it spawned within it, we cannot close our eyes and
shut out the vision of thousands of individual lives sacrificed in the insensitive gears of that gigantic
60
machine,45 as represented by the great British filmmaker Charles Chaplin.46 Such a monstrous massacre
could only be possible because of the secondary position that the human being had been relegated to, and
its grotesque objectification. For its part, Neoliberalism, which also has its origins in the same cultural
environment, sees society as one more natural ecosystem, and the human being as conditioned by
ineluctable instinctive impulses. It is a zoological vision that also naturalizes the human being, and we
have already described at length the silent and atrocious extermination that derives from it, upon
imposing crude individual survival as the sole criterion of social validation.
Between mechanics and zoology, the human as interiority is nowhere to be seen. (Will it be necessary to
invent a new science in the future — Humanology?). Both the totalitarian utopias of the early 20th
century and the anti-utopias of the early 21st century objectify human beings, because they deny the
essential attribute that defines them as such: freedom. If subjectivity is mere reflection of objective
conditions or a reflex response to harassment by a hostile environment, then freedom is nothing but an
empty word. The extremes are united by their base.
Let us then say that — to the surprise of some — we have no problem whatsoever with one or other
“model,” understanding them as being technical devices to resolve certain social problems; however we
do have problems with the ideologies that these models smuggle in with them, because they are converted
into theological axioms by the few to conceal the human and, in this way, exercise an illegitimate
dominion over the whole. It is here where the root of all violence and all suffering, individual as well as
social, is found. In reality, we are happy when we can be free; otherwise we sink into non-meaning and
absurdity when our freedom is repressed by force, or — even worse — when it is negated by some form
of ideological manipulation. It is for this reason that we rebel, for example, against death — that great
denier. For New Humanism, freedom lies at the core of human dignity. Needless to say we are not
talking about the “freedom” to buy one brand of refrigerator or another, but about the right to accept or
deny the conditions in which we live, and of the right to carry out intentional actions in order to change
such conditions.
From this vision, it is unnecessary to wait for any kind of objective conditions to be fulfilled in order to
act — it only depends on what the peoples believe (or disbelieve) at any given moment. The question then
45
Strictly speaking, Marx’s concept of the historical process becomes dialectic materialism, first with Engels, later with Lenin, to
finally be enthroned by Stalin in his famous short work, “Dialectic and Historical Materialism.” Thus the peripheral location of the human
being does not come from Marx, but from these subsequent interpretations.
46
In his film “Modern Times” (1936).
61
becomes crucial of what the human beings of the future, the new generations, want. We imagine that,
above all, they want to be subjects and not objects of history, which is the same thing as saying: they want
to be free. Because there doesn’t seem to be a great difference between being trapped by human nature or
by historical mechanics. What do you prefer: the gallows or the firing squad? To leave the field of
necessity, and enter the field of liberty through revolution, is the imperative of this era in which the
human being has been closed off.
No doubt the most important revolution today is human, more than political or social, because we are
already familiar with the horrors that result from the erroneous concept (whether disinterested or not) of
what is human. To humanize oneself means to acquire consciousness of one's own freedom, and set it in
motion in a direction that transforms the world. And if humanity does not assume its role as historical
protagonist, then history tends to behave like a natural system that is subject to entropy, which is what is
happening today. The determinism of what is natural is present in the current model’s Darwinism -historical determinism, in the mechanics of destructuring. These conditionings can only be overcome
through the path of intentional awakening of individuals and peoples, which will happen exactly at that
moment when we stop believing that we are what we are not: parts in a great machine, or two-legged
animals in a struggle for survival.
At the end of any analysis, we unfailingly arrive at the same thing — we human beings are eternal rebels,
and when that rebelliousness disappears, as happens in today's world, what makes us human is diluted.
We rebel against everything that denies us and we reject any form of determination that means to force us
to obey, whether it be nature, pain, death, the gods, or — with even greater conviction — other human
beings. How have we been able to swallow these cheap conjuring tricks for so long, to bury what is
human and suffocate rebellion? If we succeed in getting through the darkened times we are living, it will
be because freedom will have implanted itself as the center of social life. Then, an ethos of freedom, a
psychology of freedom, an economics of freedom, a political organization of freedom, a religion of
freedom and an art of freedom will emerge, and there will be no form of determinism or naturalism
capable of stopping that unfolding.
The Primacy of the Future
As we know, for classical mechanics, the past is what matters. If the conditions of origin of any
phenomenon are known with precision, it is possible to predict with mathematical exactness what its
future behavior will be — which would be none other than an effect of those causes. For the animal,
62
pressed by the urgent demands of survival, conditioned by a battery of reflexes programmed to respond to
those demands, what matters is the present. For human beings, on the other hand, the time that rules is the
future. It is there where the meanings are found that attract them like powerful magnets, and any
modification that they may effect on that distant hyperborean landscape47 will instantaneously reorganize
their present behavior and beliefs about their past. Here there is nothing like a predefined trajectory or
crude conditioned reflexes — only pure probability and radical aperture. The longer the images last and
the more resistant they are to becoming defunct, then the greater the intensity will be of the registers of
meaning that they project, and, therefore, the greater the power with which they will fulfill their function
as orientors of actions. They will likewise possess the best attributes for summoning toward convergence.
Therefore, as the images of that future are, thus will the actions of the present be. And if the moment of
one's own death is the maximum projection in time of those images of the future, then this will generate a
type of action that will likewise be limited by that factual circumstance. However, let us imagine for a
moment that each individual is capable of having images that go much farther beyond their individual
death, beyond the disappearance of their body. Let us imagine that these images arise from the rebellion
against that illusory end, that they are in the far-off future as powerful aspirations or aims to be achieved,
way beyond the apparent limit of the body’s disappearance. What strength those images would acquire,
what capacity to mobilize individuals and society they might come to have!
While there still are small self-interested groups who cling like starving birds of prey on the carcass of an
already-vanished world, it is abundantly clear that 19th century determinism, in any of its variants, is
already gasping its last breath. The different disciplines (except, perhaps, for economics) have one by one
abandoned the paradigm of scientific rationalism, but not in order to rush toward irrationality; rather, to
build a broader rationality, able to accommodate the infinite universe of human subjectivity and its most
intimate motivations. Physics, psychology and the social sciences have already begun to revise their
convictions, in the light of this inextinguishable “will to meaning”48 that suffuses and sustains all that is
human. We would like to send words of hope to those who still feel trapped “between the cold mechanics
of pendulums and the phantasmal optics of mirrors49” and tell them with sincere conviction — The future
is open! The crushing nightmare of the immutable is beginning to fall behind us and our dancing gaze can
47
For the Greeks, Hyperborea was a mythical place “beyond the north,” whence each year, at the start of spring, the god Apollo
returned to his dwelling in the Oracle of Delphos.
48
Term used by the Austrian psychiatrist Victor Frankl (1905-1997) to explain the roots of human motivations, in contrast to Freud
(1856-1939), who derived them from the will to pleasure, and Adler (1870-1937), who attributed them to the will to power.
49
Collected Works, Vol. 1. Humanize the Earth. The Internal Landscape. Silo. Latitude Press. San Diego, 2002.
63
now slide untrammeled toward the unknown. Everything is still to be done, and all that’s lacking is for us
to be willing to answer history’s summons. At the end of the day, it's about our own history.
And it is from this look that we dare affirm emphatically: what will mobilize the peoples will not be the
struggles for vindication, but the coinciding of an image of a beloved future; in this image they will find
the strength they need to break away from naturalism and the objectification that enslaves them today.
This is the root of our fundamental divergence with the historical left. For us, the revolutionary path does
not necessarily pass through the exacerbation of social contradictions in order to give rise to certain
"objective conditions" that will “mechanically” precipitate the process in a certain direction, nor through
the “accumulation of forces,” nor through the construction of “axes.” All of this cumbersome
phraseology, proper to a mechanical conception associated to relations of cause and effect, has nothing
whatsoever to do with the human, and it has already been demonstrated that these are erroneous
explanations, and should be deeply revised if there is a serious aspiration to work on the transformation of
society. The revolution is a signifier, a direction, a meaning that can only be found in the future; and if we
aspire to lead the social processes that are coming, we must be capable of opening up that dimension of
time for all.
As we have already said, we know with total certainty that change will not come about mechanically. On
the contrary, because of pure mechanics inside a closed system, the factors of destructuring will continue
deepening, with the aggravating factor that, since the system is global and unique, there will be no
possibility of accessing other elements that are different from it in order to overcome the old with the new
— an option that did indeed exist in the decadent stages of the civilizations that preceded ours. The
effects of the process could therefore be even more devastating. Neither will change be produced by an
“order” from the political power toward the rest of society, given that political power today is merely the
instrument of the real power, which it would never dare to contradict. A "rebellion of the masses" as a
cathartic response to the accentuation of oppression and of the system’s contradictions (how much more
would they need to be accentuated?) is equally improbable. The change will be produced when the
intentionality of individuals and peoples is set in motion and actively corrects the direction of the process.
But the feasibility of such a mobilization is linked, necessarily, to a simultaneous inner transformation —
the modification of the belief system. This, because as long as each of us continues to experience
themselves as a passive object, pushed and pulled by forces we cannot control (which is what they tell us
we are), then no intentionality will be set in motion, or any change produced. In short, change will happen
64
when the human condition is revalued as active consciousness, whose destiny is always to transform itself
and the conditions in which it lives.
In sum, we want to express that one mechanical system cannot be combated with another mechanical
system — an objective so out of order it seems more like a joke than a real attempt at leadership. The
revolution of the future must overcome the predictable pendular motion of action and reaction, which is
exhausted in a process of attrition, and connect with that inextinguishable fount of inner energy hidden in
what is unwritten. If in the past the mistaken attempt was made to carry out the revolution while
dispensing with human consciousness, today the revolution is — before all else — an act of
consciousness. What Marxism had that was appealing for the great masses was the description of that just
and kind future society of solidarity, that was converted into a beloved image and mobilizing paradigm
for many; but what ended up ruining everything, was its atrocious conception of revolutionary praxis.
If we have learned anything about recent history, it is that those of us who are leaders or guides of the
new era should be prepared to articulate social mobilization around the convergence toward those deeply
cherished, shared objectives. This is one of the attributes that we value in Evo Morales’ leadership.
Another virtue of his leadership is the use of active non-violence as the sole methodology of action.
Despite all the difficulties that this form of struggle presents, it is the only one that humanism can use if it
wishes to be ethically coherent. For this reason we have publicly come out in support of the Bolivian
President’s proposal to include an article in Bolivia’s new constitution that eliminates the use of arms to
resolve conflicts. It is an example that should be followed by all of the world’s Government leaders.
In many places the political right has wanted to appropriate the discourse of the future, leaving the left
tied to the demands of the past. While this strategy has been provisionally successful, it has already begun
to collapse from its own weight — “rightism” lies because it is only capable of offering more of the same,
which has left populations disillusioned. Given the enormous vacuum they have generated, the building
of new references that will illuminate the way like beacons is the urgent task, today and tomorrow, of the
new leaders.
The Waves of History
In light of these reflections, we cannot evade the issue that we are discussing concepts that are over 150
years old, which becomes even more striking given the discussion’s background of accelerated
technological development. What has happened? Has nothing interesting emerged in that century-and-ahalf? At first sight, it would seem to be the confirmation of the Neoliberals’ crude belief that history has
65
ended. However, when we examine the phenomenon more sharply we notice that history has not stopped
at all, but that — strictly speaking — it seems to be regressing. In effect, in the first half of the 20th
century, a few visions flowered that proposed new directions, but they did not succeed in penetrating the
collective sensibility; neither did they modify social customs. One of these last attempts was the youth
revolution of the sixties, which drifted toward destructive and self-destructive paths, such as drugs or the
guerrilla movements, until it finally ended up in disarray and absorbed by the system it meant to
transform. Today, all of the anti-establishment movements have been extinguished, and only Universalist
Humanism, which emerged in more-or-less the same era, has continued in the vanguard for the last 40
years.
How to explain this singular — apparently regressive — historical behavior? If we are faithful to our
conception that history cannot be observed from the outside, since its unfolding is the manifestation of an
inner process — that of the human consciousness — then why did that consciousness become cowardly
and decide to regress to territories that it had apparently already abandoned forever? To answer this
gravitating question, we need to understand how history moves. We should know who the carriers are of
the new signifiers upon which collective progress is built, as well as how the process, through which so
many values end up being imposed on the social whole is brought about. We have found the best
explanation in answer to these questions in the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset, in his theory of the
generations as the engine of history, which was later expanded on by Silo when he grafted it to his theory
of the consciousness.
Naturally we won't go into detail here on these theories, which have already been sufficiently developed
by their authors.50 We will merely say that, at some point in our recent history, and for reasons as yet
unknown, the struggle for power ceased (in a broad sense, and not just politically) between contiguous
generations. From that event on, the human process seemed to be left suspended in a moment of time.
This phenomenon has demonstrated various things and also rings alarm bells among those of us who feel
concerned about the human being’s future.
The first point that can be verified is that the alleged end of history is merely a gross error of judgment
(an “optical illusion”) derived from the confusion caused by this withdrawal of the new generations.
Clearly, history can never be stopped, even less, be pushed back; but there are moments within this
50
For the subject of the generations in Ortega y Gasset, see The Modern Theme (1923). For additional reading on the subject of
consciousness in Silo’s work, see Contributions to Thought in Collected Works Volume 1. Spanish edition: Contribuciones al pensamiento.
Editorial Plaza y Valdés. Mexico, 1990.
66
process when human consciousness grows conservative and tends to support itself on past models to
interpret the new realities it must live in. This has happened many times before; it suffices to mention the
example of the Pythagorean astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, who proclaimed heliocentrism 2300 years
ago, which was forgotten and replaced for almost two thousand years by a monstrous conception of the
universe, until Nicholas Copernicus, an obscure Polish cleric, picked up the thread where the Greek had
dropped it.
The other point that can be confirmed is that the movement of history is not mechanical or independent of
the human, but it is intentional. This intentionality becomes visible (and the historical dynamic that is set
in motion) when a generation contradicts the one that is in power and struggles to displace it in order to
impose its own landscape. It is enough for this opposition to cease for history to seem to regress, although
the generations are actually the ones who have withdrawn. To say it with images, the generations are like
waves crashing on the shoreline and gradually transforming it, as they roll in on each other in that
unceasing task, except that the “generational waves” are not impelled by a mechanical, physical force, but
by an inner image that draws them from the future. If the natural evolves through slow biological chance,
the human, which is historical, evolves by the action of the intentionality of the generations, expressed in
the dialectic that is established between them.
This vision is coherent with what we have sustained up to this point: that everything human is constituted
on the basis of its particular activity of consciousness — the intentional act of challenging the
establishment and a project of transforming the world that emerges as the object of that intention. When
this authentic structure configured by the consciousness and the world is broken, whether because there is
no questioning of the social conditions or no such transformative project exists, then the human begins to
recede very quickly; and as the individual experiences this rupture as non-meaning, society tends to lose
its attributes and to break down towards a natural state. This is what happens when the young are
premeditatedly excluded from the social process, prevented from exercising the protagonism they are
entitled to, and forced to withdraw into themselves, into the sphere of their exclusively personal affairs.
When this happens, the new landscapes that they carry in their inner worlds cannot be materialized in the
outer world because they have given up the struggle to create a space for them there. Upon losing their
67
historicity, societies decay, degenerate and become dehumanized, which is exactly what we are
witnessing in today’s world.
The youth mobilization in Chile in early 2006 (called “the penguin revolution” because the students’ dark
blue-and-white uniforms made them look somewhat penguin-like) to demand structural improvements in
education was an encouraging signal of this dialectical awakening, and very especially because the action
forms that were used were eminently non-violent. It is very interesting to review, even if summarily, the
development of those events and how the Chilean government treated the demonstrations. The first
response of the Executive was to dismiss the movement and its young leaders, whom it ordered to go
back to classes and trust in the authorities. “You’re very young and don’t know about the serious efforts
we’re making to improve your education,” they were told. But the movement continued and spread.
Young people started to go out to the streets, raising their voices and insisting on their demands. Then
the second, classic response came — repression. And this time, it was the toughest that has been seen in
Chile since the end of the dictatorship. The entire country witnessed the Dante-esque spectacle of police
dragging young students by the hair who were peacefully asking for a better education. Such was the
degree of police violence that the President herself ordered the dismissal of the commanding officer of the
repressive units. Repression did not work either, and the mobilization continued to grow. Then,
completely unexpectedly, young people answered the violence they were receiving with a void — they
left the streets and took over their schools. First, five schools; the following morning, thirty; a few days
later, a thousand schools were in the “penguins’” hands. The government, finding itself bested by the
students’ decision, went on to the next tactic, known as the “short checkbook,” a favorite of Bachelet’s
predecessor. It consists of throwing a few coins and making some secondary modifications without
touching the core of the problem, which was the Organic Constitutional Law of Education (la Ley
Orgánica Constitucional de Educación, or L.O.C.E.), that General Pinochet signed into law on the last
day of his dictatorship. Through this law, education was transferred to the private sector and was
converted into a source of profitable businesses. The students, members of a new generation that is
waking up, analyzed and rejected the government’s offer, understanding very well that it contained the
classic scheme of offering something so as to change nothing, and putting off dealing with the problem
until a later date. The students called for a national strike and the Executive was forced to understand that
68
it had to change its attitude. Thus, after three erratic months, things finally started moving forward in the
right direction, by opening up spaces youth participation in a commission supposedly invested with the
authority to resolve the issue. However, this is not the established power’s habitual conduct.
The minority groups who are currently in power, who seem uninterested in these complications, speak of
youth participation, but their discourse is hypocritical and rife with bad faith, since they are unwilling to
yield a single atom of the power they administrate. Whatever they may say, this is the reason why they
discriminate against the youth by denying their intentional capacity (which is the essence of all
discrimination), and with this behavior they are pushing the youth toward imminent cathartic explosions,
which will be properly repressed, thus keeping everything inside the traditional framework of action and
reaction.
If what we have expounded on has been understood, the moment has arrived to give back real
protagonism to youth in the construction of society, and we can begin by building bridges over this abyss.
It is not a question of “goodwill gestures,” as the paternalists in power would like to understand it, in
accordance with their agenda. The new generations are the “guardians of time,” because through their
struggle to implant a new sensibility in the social scenario, they set history in motion. Only they can
disarticulate the veritable time trap that international financial capital has locked us into.
69
7. The End of Prehistory
Revolution is a spiritual state.
Ortega y Gasset
From Paternalism to Self-Organization
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) said that the Greeks considered hope as the worst
of evils, the most truly perverse, precisely because it keeps the miserable entertained in such a way as to
prevent them from realizing the reality of their misfortune.51 Although we do not share this extreme
posture, we cite it here to illustrate a conduct seen time and again in the peoples, who tend to let
themselves be deceived by the manipulations of the hierarchies and their offers of a promising future that
never arrives. While we are in no way suggesting the amputation of the enormous inner force that nestles
in hope, it is essential to stop putting it where we already know, from repeated experience, that it will be
frustrated — the leaderships’ promises. The time has come for the peoples to wake up from their fatal
enchantment and leave behind the old habit of paternalism forever. We cannot live eternally expecting to
receive gifts, that — like manna in the Bible — will graciously fall down on our heads from the heights
of power. Whether we like it or not, the time has arrived for us to take charge of our own destiny, and it
will be better for us to do so cheerfully, because this is what history is screaming out for us to do.
Most probably the times to come will be too chaotic in this, our small world. It could not be any other
way, since we are witnessing the fall of one civilization and the emergence, for the first time in
humanity’s history, of a new planetary civilization. However there is no need to be afraid if, in the midst
of the alteration and the upheavals announcing the birth, we keep our sights well trained. At this peculiar
historical moment, the only truly dangerous thing is to sit and wait for the solution to come from whence
it can never arrive, having realized that our leaders, blinded by power, have not even noticed what is
really happening. This is why communities will find themselves facing the challenge of creating new
forms of organization at the social base on their own, through which they will be able to compensate the
widespread disorder that is coming, and thus avoid the undesirable consequences for people that such a
traumatic situation could bring about. The point is that there is a certain degree of urgency in the matter:
we can’t keep postponing the moment when we finally get down to work, without running the risk of
being overwhelmed by events.
51
El anticristo [The Antichrist], F. Nietzsche. Editorial Alba, Madrid, 1996.
70
In these complex circumstances, Lenin’s old question acquires new resonance: “What to do?” If the
peoples have already acquired full consciousness of the real need to act, what steps must they take to
carry out their project? Without any doubt, the first would be to take the crushing belief out of their heads
that human destiny is resolved (or not resolved) through the action of a purely mechanical process,
without human intervention. This false conviction, which has been extensively disseminated by the
powerful to inhibit any initiative that might affect their despicable business, has done great harm to the
historical process and to the human beings encompassed by it. Everything we have said up to here goes in
the direction of repudiating this ill-fated dogma, so that the peoples can shake off the immobilism that
they have docilely surrendered themselves to for decades. It is evident that this must be the first step.
Once we succeed in standing on our own two feet, it will be necessary in the short term to find a new type
of organization, one that is much more flexible and able to respond dynamically to the efforts that will be
demanded of it by the generalized situation of social instability. Surely, to reach the best attributes for
these new social structures, it will be necessary to make various attempts until, through demonstrationeffect, whichever succeeds will be universally adopted. Although it’s true that there is nothing defined as
yet and all the possibilities are wide open, we are sure that the new organic structures will be very
different from the pyramidal and hierarchical morphology that is the hallmark of this prehistory that we
want to leave behind and grow out of. The mental change that is being produced should be reflected in
these constructs, and most probably they will be characterized by horizontality, by a complete absence of
chiefs who mobilize human groups from the outside, since each of the individuals making up these
collectivities will already have progressed in the task of setting their own “internal engine” in motion.
Vertical relationships of subordination will then be replaced by a network of coordination linkages
between diverse functions, without a manifest center from which more than one individual might aspire to
taking over and ruling the whole (something that tends to happen frequently in history). In sum, surely
they will be organizations that are closer to the forms of articulation of life, rather than ideal geometries
or anachronistic rationalisms that look good on paper.
By way of an example (and since we are talking about structures), we are dealing with a process that
could be compared with the one that followed medieval architecture when it transitioned from the abstract
geometric forms of the Roman churches (which were projected on the basis of formulas corresponding to
a preconceived vision of the world) toward the organic designs of the imposing Gothic cathedrals, rising
above the towns like fabulous, eternally-alive insects, and whose revolutionary building solutions, by
making evident the enormous physical forces at play, affirmed an external reality that had been negated
71
until that moment. Exactly as happened in that remote era, the new “scaffoldings” will also contain the
germ of the future world and will be sustained by a new conception of the human being that is already
beginning to dawn. Nothing above the human being and no human being above another! As long as
masters exist, there will always be slaves, whatever forms of oppression may be used. This is why we
humanists do not accept any master — not God, or the State, or Money; the three eternal faces of Power.
In their place, we propose to move forward to modes of popular self-management that nip all forms of
domination in the bud. The real change is not the replacement of one powerful person by another — it is
the total absence of powerful persons and the final overcoming of a social order that implies the existence
of dominators and dominated.
Ever since its origins, already more than two centuries ago, anarchism has always been very clear on the
following principle as it carried out its struggles: as long as existing social structures favor any form of
power concentration at all, freedom will always be a mere chimera. According to this look, it is more than
evident that the current brands of reformism are totally insufficient, since they have no effect at all on the
authoritarian configurations that tend to arise in almost all world societies. Today, in the 21st century, we
are living a revitalization of the anarchist libertarian spirit, especially among the youngest, and New
Humanism can be considered, in some aspects, as continuing this line of thinking, though incorporating
the methodology of non-violent action as the only path for carrying forward the deep transformations
demanded by our era.52 For this reason this renaissance makes us glad since it is evidence, above all, of
the enormous mental change that is accompanying the new world rising on the horizon. Prehistory
associated to power and brute force is falling back, and the doors of history are starting to open to allow
in the human being, in all its greatness.
The Humanist Movement has been conceived since its beginnings as a human structure whose
morphology corresponds to this model of “inner design,” just as life does. This is why there are no norms
or regulations that can operate from some external sphere or area alien to the phenomenon, that can end
up imposing limits on or inhibiting its development. There are no hierarchical conformations of any kind,
which makes any attempt to accumulate power impossible. We work on the basis of agreements adopted
by the whole to set the direction to be taken, and the careful coordination of actions, leaving infinite space
52
The fundamental overlap between Anarchism and New Humanism is that both currents sustain that radical changes must be born
out of the initiative of the organized peoples. In Bakunin’s “Program of the World Revolutionary Alliance” he says, “Everywhere the masses
are beginning to realize the true cause of their miseries; they are becoming aware of the power of solidarity and begin to compare their
immense multitudes to their plunderers' insignificant numbers. What stops them, then, from liberating themselves now, if it is true that they
have reached that stage of consciousness? The answer is: their lack of organization and the difficulty of reaching agreement amongst them.”
72
for individual initiative. In our organization there is nothing close to a centralization or concentration of
decisions, and diversity is not only tolerated, but encouraged and valued. The attempt to reconstruct the
social fabric according to these parameters has been a constant task of primary importance for
Universalist Humanism, because we understand that the traditional structures employed for organizing
societies have entered into terminal crisis and their imminent collapse seriously threatens the continuity of
the human project.
And so it is that, in organizational terms, the end of prehistory will be characterized by the abandoning
and subsequent collapse of rigid, monolithic structures, so as to leave the field open for new forms of selforganization, such as those we have described. Belgian physicist Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003) successfully
demonstrated that in the midst of chaos, solutions of a more complex order can always emerge that rescue
processes from final entropy and reorient them towards an irreversible future.53 Hopefully the response
from the populations will be as swift as the moment’s urgency will require.
The New Generations Return to the Struggle
If our hypothesis is correct and the world has entered an accelerated mechanics of social decomposition
towards what we have called de-structuring, then we are facing a tremendous challenge if we want to
revert this destructive tendency. Given the task’s magnitude, many will probably opt for considering these
analyses as somewhat exaggerated speculations lacking in sound foundations, and will then carry on
cheerfully with their lives, without any will whatsoever to take on the arduous demands of the present
moment. Naturally we have no intention of forcing anything on anybody, and we limit ourselves to
presenting our arguments — which radically question the authorities’ complacent view — so that each
individual can have all the elements they need to decide what they want to do with complete freedom.
However, it is essential to reach agreements with those who share our perspective and who feel they are
protagonists of this epic, so that we can determine our common images of actions that can correct the
direction the process is taking.
A healthy social body is not an undifferentiated, homogeneous mass; it is a complex reality in which
diversity coexists. This marvelous capacity that the human being (and life in general) has, for enabling
diversity to converge, conferring it with organizational capacity and order, constitutes the force and
wealth of the collective human phenomenon. The particular manifestations inside this ebullient system
53
El fin de las certidumbres [The End of Certainty]. Ilya Prigogine. Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile, 1997.
73
that we call ‘society’ are articulated amongst themselves as indivisible structures, that later intersect with
others in an incessant interaction. We are not referring here to just ethnic or cultural differences (which no
doubt have enormous value for adding momentum to the great collective river), but above all to the
coexistence of different generations. Today they would have us believe that such multiplicity is
synonymous with disorder, and all value has been placed on the unique, the monopolistic, the singular.
Consuming is the final end of every human activity and other dimensions must be systematically
amputated to be able to keep things “under control.” Any hint of “disturbing” discord is immediately
stifled, and, day by day, the feeling grows that what they want is to convert us into an army of zombies.
Once again, behind this formulation hides the paradigm of power that aims to simplify reality by force, in
order to subject it to its designs. And then, as an example, binomial electoral systems begin proliferating
to artificially force the formation of large political blocs, and this is justified with the argument that the
excess of political parties and candidates is “chaotic.” Even worse, inside these blocs, candidates cannot
even represent their ideas any longer — they are treated like products for consumption in the electoral
market. Or else, generational diversity is eliminated by excluding young people from the process of
decision making through crude legal trickery. This clumsy attempt to reduce social life to one sole
dimension, driven by economic minorities, is the main cause of destructuring.
Nevertheless, to the simplifiers’ disgrace, things are exactly the opposite — societies must increase their
complexity and not reduce it, or risk completely undermining themselves. The blindness (or stupidity) of
the current leadership does not allow them to realize, despite the abundance of similar episodes in history,
that when diversity cannot converge, it explodes in the form of an irreconcilable and highly destructive
differentiation within a system.54 Human reality is essentially complex, and if the incapacity of the
leadership impedes it from finding ways to coordinate this complexity, then they should resign and not try
to mold the facts to the short range of their intelligence. It is always said that the peoples only have the
leaders they deserve. This aphorism is partially true; however, we still have some time left (not much) to
attain insight and correct this deplorable situation.
Because of this accumulation of errors — like a mudslide — that is pushing events, it is becoming
increasingly evident that the human process is reaching breaking point: either we regress in an accelerated
fall toward the system’s total disintegration, or we make a qualitative leap to advance to the highest levels
of order and collective cohesion. Our destiny is at stake in the decision we make today. We have said
54
All we need do is remember the tragedy of the disappeared Yugoslavia, a country that disintegrated after Tito’s death into a series
of ethnic wars that left millions of dead and displaced people in its wake.
74
before that we are able to make out some timid but promising steps in the right direction, there where the
social fabric has begun to slowly regenerate through new forms of organization that have emerged
spontaneously from the base of societies. Forcing the terms somewhat, we could say that it is about
reconstructing the social space. This is, however, insufficient, because it is also necessary to restore social
time, which is expressed in the world through the dialectical interaction between generations. Just as in
the individual consciousness, past and future continually crossover in the present, as an incessant flow
that goes in one or another direction of time, in a specific historical present, different generations coexist
that embody the social past and future as well (as “mental time” and not just as biological fact). When
there are generations that refuse to take on their historical role of questioning the world received from
their elders, and they abandon the attempt to build the world they want, as has happened in recent
decades, societies lose the temporal dimension that is so important in order for history to advance.
Since the managers of the stupid sociocultural matrix ruling the world today don’t like complications (and
time is one of them, and quite difficult to digest besides), they have taken, as they always do, the easiest
road — i.e., close down history, cut out the time variable, deny anything to do with process. Among
many other things, they have also robbed us of time, which, by the way, is not a thing, but the intangible
quality that is precisely what makes human beings human, and not things. “Who cares?” they might say;
“—one more intangible that’s about to disappear.” At any rate, it’s much easier to manage individuals
ruled by basic biological impulses (such as profit, sex or power), than to have to deal with vague
imponderables that can’t be quantified. In light of what we have been saying, the final objective behind
such maneuvers turns out to be quite obvious: if they wish to maintain their power indefinitely, then they
must naturalize what is human and attribute certain conditions of immutability to it that eliminate any risk
— to them, that is — of being displaced by the future’s inexorable flow. And it matters little if such
conditions are totally false, since what is essential is for people to believe they are true. However, these
“time bandits” have once again made a mistake, since we human beings do not accept being treated like
cardboard cutouts, and when they least expect it, we will shake off our prolonged forgetfulness in order to
recover the inner dimension that is the most intimate register of our own humanity. When this happens,
the world will change forever.
In the meantime, one of the ways to revive the process dynamic lies in the hands of adults. We should
reach out to the younger ones and facilitate their action instead of blocking it. The first modification to
bring about would be to reduce the severe pressure that we bring to bear on the young for them to quickly
be converted into “productive factors” (yet again, the accursed reductionist economic jargon). But the
75
generational abyss is too serious a problem to resolve with easy tactics like increasing the number of
positions for youth in structures that probably would be the first in need of radical transformation.
Perhaps these new sensibilities that should erupt out of the youngest generations have already done so,
and are here amongst us; we simply don’t know it because their owners, engrossed in their own private
universe, have retreated inward to create true cultures (and subcultures) that are encapsulated within the
system. If we want to interact with them, we must approach them as one approaches a culture different
from one’s own; that is, we must understand that they use relational codes that are unknown, alien to
ours, and make genuine efforts to incorporate into our social life the new meanings that reside in these
groups, through giving their members genuine participation in the levels where decisions are made.
The only objective of this brainstorm is to predispose the adult world to approach the new generations, as
it can help them to close the gap and return to the struggle, and because humanity’s process has an
imperious need for this. If everything we propose is achieved, the future world will be very different
from that of today, and from that other world’s perspective we will one day look back on this past as part
of a long prehistory that we finally overcame. What will the new world be like? We don’t know; but we
harbor the hope that its ruling principles will be upheld by humanism. Marxism, Liberalism, Social
Democracy as ideologies and forms of action already had their chance; they played out their cards with
differing outcomes and today they are history. They, among others, have put the world into its present
situation, and we firmly believe it is now Humanism’s turn to take on the task of giving a direction to the
world’s transformation, by correcting the present disorientation and getting everything (Yes it does sound
clunky, but then it also sounds like the disorientation is what will be gotten back on track) back on track.
On the End and the Means
“All forms of struggle are valid, Comrade.” We have heard this more than once from Communist friends.
It is an updated version of the old apocryphal phrase attributed to Machiavelli, about how the end justifies
the means. When we observe (yesterday as well as today) the brazen, unscrupulous actions of the
powerful in order to eternalize their power, and when we witness the continual mistreatment that the
peoples are subjected to in order to favor the petty interests of the powerful, we are overcome with
indignation to the point of feeling tempted to agree with our friends. Because if the celebrated Florentine
has revealed the formula for dominating the peoples to those who rule then nobody has taught those
peoples how to defend themselves from their Machiavellian princes. It is in this way that, in order to
eternalize itself as long as possible, access to power (political, economic, military) has become the main
objective — almost the only one — for most of the different competing factions within society, making
76
communities pay an extremely high price (in terms of loss of liberty, of quality of life), for the sake of
future benefits that they never did receive. And so these collectives are obliged to stoically bear their
current overlord’s orders, without any effective means to divest themselves of him when they feel harmed
— and this is more true now than it ever has been, in a time when democracy is nothing but the friendly
mask of Money’s ferocious tyranny.
Let us agree then, that the greatest violence, the most widespread and systematic, has almost always come
from institutions (or has been under their protection), to be exercised against the peoples; and that,
consequently, we should ask ourselves if it wouldn’t be legitimate to make use of all forms of struggle to
defend ourselves from these abuses, or — better yet — to free ourselves of them once and for all. New
Humanism’s answer with regard to this concern is categorical: violence cannot be fought with more
violence, because the repetition of brutal conduct only succeeds in enchaining us indefinitely to the
prehistory we yearn to leave behind. This authentic symbiosis between power and violence is the symbol
of this long era and has raised itself up, until now, as an inescapable fate, similar to certain tragic plots
that are characteristic of mythology. Let us then build our own myth.
Since time immemorial, Power and Violence were Siamese twins, and therefore inseparable. While
the first twin had a cold, strategic mind, the second was wild and brutal, never hesitating to stain his
hands with blood whenever his brother asked it of him. Thus, joining their special attributes together
as closely as their bodies, they achieved such a perfect complementation that they were capable of
subjugating anyone who crossed their path. For a long time this was what they did, and they benefited
immensely at the cost of others' pain and misfortune. But one day, the people, whom they had
plundered for generations, became unwilling to continue in a state of abject submission and they
rebelled. They asked for help from a wise man who was a humanist and a doctor, who performed a
delicate operation on the Siamese twins as they slept, and successfully separated them.
When they awoke and recovered, the brothers’ consternation was so intense that Power was lost
forever in the crowds and became diluted among the people. As for Violence, having lost the master
he had served, he found himself obliged to transform himself into something useful. So he channeled
his energies toward mastering the forces of nature and in this way he rendered an invaluable service
to humanity.
Our myth illustrates that, as long as the Machiavellian formula of power + violence continues to operate
in the world, nothing will truly change. When power is an end, violence is usually employed as a means
to gain power and conserve it (and we are not just talking about physical violence). This is the prehistoric
77
mentality’s irrefutable axiom. Therefore, the only way to avoid the institutionalized use of force on
people is by preventing political power from becoming the tempting spoils of war for the few; but this
new paradigm can only be established when effective ways are found to deconcentrate political power.
And by way of an aside, we find it scandalous to the extreme that every time a dictatorship falls in some
country, those who carried out the dirty work of repression are brought to trial and punished (always
within the limits imposed by the transitional government, of course), but the regime’s intellectual authors,
who planned and finally issued the orders to their henchmen, invariably go unpunished and merely carry
on with their political careers as if nothing had happened. In many countries, including Chile, they have
even been voted into Parliament through democratic elections. Nevertheless — and to the satisfaction of
many — as a result of power’s unremitting excesses, it now has its own nemesis. Because in a society in
the midst of destructuring, even power becomes incapable of holding back the disorder that is already
starting to emerge everywhere.
Those with a fondness for objectifying the human being—who are nowadays legion—like to say that
violence is part of “nature,” and based on this they conclude that violence is inextinguishable. The
humanist vision is very different because it is an approach based on the concept of process — it so
happens that we are a very young species that only recently stood upright, emerging from the deepest
animality and making immense progress in a very short period of time. A few million years ago, we were
still moving about on all fours. The manipulation of fire is a mere 400,000 years old, and the use of the
first forms of technology began very recently. Just a few hundred thousand years ago we were still eating
each other; later, instead of using each other as food, we discovered slavery, and — though admittedly it
sounds terrible — this was progress. Not much time later, we realized that by paying salaries, people
produced more than if they were slaves, and slavery ended. Thus, conditions changed and, one by one, the
various human rights ended up being enthroned — at least on paper. These advances were not the
products of a mechanical progression; rather they have been the result of the human intention to transform
the environment and itself. It’s true that in the course of this journey we have suffered countless setbacks
and regressions, some of them as horrifying as what is happening today in Iraq, where North American
soldiers humiliate the enemy by mocking their dead — a despicable behavior that probably has not been
seen since the human species’ most primitive stages. But this is how processes are, such as when a child
is just beginning to learn how to walk. Learning cannot take place all at once.
What will be the next step in this exciting human passage? Probably an authentic inner transmutation that
will imply finally abandoning all forms of violence, not just because of a rational conviction, but because
78
violent acts will produce visceral sensations in us of revulsion. But this is still far off, and humans will
have to continue moving forward until they reach the physical and psychological transformations
necessary for the act of violence to become impossible to commit, because their bodies and psychisms
will reject it. From our process perspective, everything seems to be moving in this direction, but such a
radical change may take a long time to happen. One of the most profound and deeply-felt aims of
humanist action is to help the process accelerate so that the human species might advance from the
present moment of prehistory, in which violence is still part of its codes of daily behavior, toward a new
moment, when this primitive relational form will have disappeared and is nothing more than a pale and
distant memory.
Precisely because we have felt the impact of these tendencies like any other human being, we humanists
have always taken special care to consider political power as just one more means, and not, under any
circumstances, the only means — not even the most important one — for carrying out a revolution that,
among other things, aspires to disarm forever the perverse relationship between power and violence.
However, if we consider the traditional means as being impracticable, even illegitimate, how can we then
spur the necessary structural changes to extricate ourselves from the undesirable social situation we are in
now? Doubtless, through non-violent forms of action and struggle, such as the ones Gandhi y Martin
Luther King, Jr. employed in their own times. Mobilizations that will be hugely more complex, whose
setting in motion will undoubtedly demand tremendous creativity and flawless coordination. But we have
already said that our look is not aimed at the growing impotence of established power, but at what the
organized social base will be capable of achieving, because all of it is part of the necessary baggage to
produce the enormous evolutionary leap that looms ahead.
The Fight for Subjectivity
In the early 1990’s, shortly after he stepped down from power, Mikhail Gorbachev appeared in the world
media as the central figure of an ad campaign for Pizza Hut, a North American fast food chain. Given
Gorbachev’s international importance as the Soviet Union’s last leader, it was a shocking event that
confirmed the final defeat of a proposal that had emphasized the “objective conditions” in order to
interpret human processes, and made it graphically evident that, on the contrary, the most important battle
was the one that tried to gain control over the subjectivity of populations. There is nothing new about
this, and the powerful of all eras seem to have understood this early on in history, and have employed the
widest diversity of means to win the favor of the peoples. Such is the case of the coin bearing his likeness
that Alexander the Great ordered to be minted and circulated throughout the Persian Empire — an
79
ingenious tactic that is still applied today. Another is the intensive religious indoctrination carried out by
the Catholic Church for several centuries, for which it hired the services of the greatest artists of their
times. Thus, the great difference between the experiences from the past and those in the present lies, not
in the end, but in the means — judging from the reach, the power and capacity of penetration that the
powerful have attained, with technology’s support.
Now the messages are no longer supported by simplistic, schematic representations of the real world, that
rely on a favorably-disposed audience to be believable, because the extremely polished audiovisual
productions seen today have made them seem more real than reality itself. That real people are often
confused with the fictional characters they play, as the public often does nowadays in relation to
television or film stars, is an anecdotal fact that tells of this peculiar inversion between reality and
illusion. Communication satellites now have the power to instantaneously broadcast messages to the
farthest corners of the planet, and thus there are practically no living human beings who can escape their
influence. Thus, almost without our noticing, we have ended up recreating everywhere a curious
contemporary version of the celebrated Cave Myth:55 what comes out on television (the technological
counterpart of the back of the cave) is the only reality; everything else simply doesn’t exist. However, just
like Plato, we trust in the human capacity to remember...
It wouldn’t have taken long for economic power to become aware of the enormous possibilities for
manipulation that such a powerful instrument offered, and to start acquiring television frequencies
everywhere in order to broadcast their propaganda. From that time on, massive, remote-controlled
indoctrination of public opinion was already possible around a set of unfounded assumptions and beliefs
that it was in their interests to establish as unarguable truths. Thus, for over 20 years, we have been
astutely deceived by the preachers of the system, who have used and abused their media power to impose
a way of life and the economic-social model most favorable to the interests of the economic minorities,
nullifying any form of resistance that might come from the majorities negatively affected by their
decisions. Until now, the intense propagandistic bombardment seems to be achieving its objective, given
the lamentable state of “zombification” observed in the human groups exposed to its influence, thanks to
which they can be tamely led to their own extermination as they are bewitched by the dream of their
imminent, long-awaited entry into the paradise of material abundance.
55
La República (The Republic). Plato. Andrés Bello, Santiago de Chile, 1982.
80
It is interesting to observe how this veritable truth-creating machine works. Each day the media
(especially television) bombard public opinion with these slogans that they want to implant. The people,
who tend to believe the media more than their own experience, ponder their own lives, comparing them to
the media’s official truth. If they are told by the media that everything is fantastic, yet their personal
situations are terrible, they compare the two affirmations and the media version comes out winning. Then
each of these individuals ends up feeling like a failure for being incapable of taking advantage of the
opportunities that (so the media say) the system offers us all. “If the television says so, then it must be
true,” they think to themselves. Very few are doubtful or infer the existence of manipulation in the
media's messages.
Will these peoples be capable of breaking the hypnotic inertia that drags them along? Will they stop in
their tracks before they cross the threshold of the slaughterhouse? We are confident that this will be the
final outcome, because human beings are unpredictable; and, when faced by a dead end, unfailingly
discover a way out. However, if we want to support the step that must be taken toward collective
awakening, actions that are based solely on direct communication don't seem to be enough because of
their very limited reach in time and space. It is necessary to fight the battle through the same mass
communications media that established power uses to put the people to sleep. Even so, nothing will be
easy, since the oligopoly that accumulates ownership of the media will want to retain its control over
them for itself, and will use every resource within its reach to try to avoid the battle.
But the world moves on, and its process is accelerating. If a certain dominant sensibility still survives, and
certain of the peoples’ behaviors that are rooted in it, it is because behind or at the heart of this particular,
subjective predisposition, there lies a myth. This central belief that rules over our quests today and shapes
our most intimate aspirations, may last for a longer or a shorter span of time, but it is not eternal. And
when its ascent begins to falter it will be replaced, as has always happened in previous eras. The mutation
of the image will be the correlate of a displacement in the people’s sensibility, all of which will also drag
along with it an immediate modification of collective behaviors. With his characteristic lucidness, Ortega
y Gasset defined this phenomenon in the following reflection:
81
The diagnostic of human existence—of a man, a people, an era— must begin by mapping their
belief system; and in order to do this, before anything else, by identifying their core belief — the
decisive one that sustains and gives life to all the rest.56
Well then, the primary myth of our era, still in force but already quite weakened, is—who can doubt it—
money. And ever since this profane minor god established itself in the background of collective
subjectivity, all of society became organized on the basis of its parameters.57 From then on, human
coexistence has been modeled solely on economic variables. But it is already possible to perceive that the
effectiveness of this myth (and the mercantile sensibility it is associated with) is in the final phase of its
decline. The visceral repulse that today’s lifestyle produces among young people is one of the most
evident signs of this exhaustion that presages the profound social change that is coming.
No doubt many will say we are mistaken, because money is an objective fact that is impossible to avoid.
We will then have to clarify that we aren’t referring to money as a means of exchange, but to the
enormous magical potential we attribute to it to positively change our unhappy reality. The question that
arises is whether money really does possess that transformative aptitude, or whether we are the ones who
firmly believe that it does, and therefore we move and act in the world as if this belief had objective
reality. If this were the case, then we would be in the presence of a myth, and the problem presents itself
when what we have placed our faith in lacks the power we assigned to it, because in this case it will only
be a matter of time before we are disillusioned. How can it be possible that a simple tool, created for the
utilitarian purpose of facilitating the exchange of goods, has acquired such powers of seduction that it
keeps multitudes under its spell? This is a curious phenomenon that seems to have no rational
explanation. It is as if, all of a sudden, a shoe, a screwdriver, an iron or any other practical object, through
who knows what hidden games of the consciousness, became converted into a god and acquired immense
powers. Could it be that our era is characterized by a somewhat decrepit intelligence that, because of its
desperate impotence, is capable of validating anything at all? Without a doubt, these are interesting
questions, but questions that we do not know how to answer.
56
La Historia como sistema [History as a System]. Ortega y Gasset. Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1981.
Contrary to everything that might be naively believed, money has not always been the central myth. It is with the rise of the
bourgeoisie, towards the end of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, that money acquires special importance. This process continued
to advance until it was consummated with the bourgeois victory of the French Revolution. At any rate, before this, in the Latin culture of 300
B.C., prayers were already sent to Juno Moneta for an abundance of goods. For the believers, however, Juno was more important than the
money that derived from her goodwill. The very word “money” derives precisely from “Moneta.”
57
82
What we do know is that, when peoples are disillusioned and lose faith in the power of a myth, the form
of life that rested on the pillars of that dogma crumbles like an empty shell collapsing beneath the weight
of its own structure. This statement may be highly disturbing for a prehistoric mentality, since, in the
human world, subjectivity conditions objectivity to a greater degree than the inverse influence. Therefore,
if collective belief in the alleged magical attributes of money has begun to weaken, then everything will
change much faster than expected by those who have settled into power as though they were going to stay
there forever. This is the moment we are in, and although the powerful may be the owners of all the
planet’s media potential and they succeed in perfecting the techniques of manipulation to the maximum,
not even if they used all the force of their unlimited arsenal destined to control human subjectivity, would
they be able to sustain a world that peoples no longer believed in. This is already happening, and all that
remains is for us to begin searching for the new. Universalist Humanism will then employ the
communications media — the same ones that today have been at the service of the established order — to
put its proposals within reach of all the forms of that search.
83
8. Toward a Truly Human Society
If man fails to reconcile justice and freedom, he fails utterly.
Albert Camus
A Progress of All and for All
“Pay attention, young ones,” said the Master softly, adjusting the cordless microphone as her gaze swept
the crowded, noisy auditorium. “The Academic Year has reached its conclusion. During this intense time
we've shared, our objective was to prepare you to comprehend and face the future, a time that as of now
does not yet have objective reality, but that lives in each of you as an inner landscape; the same one that
you will attempt to mold in the world in the months and years to follow. You have everything you need to
be able to do this, and the spaces of social participation will always be open to you so that you may use
them with complete freedom, to carry out your project.”
As she spoke, the Master savored the fleeting nostalgia that visited her each year around the same date,
when she remembered the creative maelstrom and dynamism of her own youth. She also felt the flow of
an intense current of affection toward the young disciples who listened to her with impatience.
“However, it wasn't always like this," she continued, speaking in a theatrically somber tone. “And even
though this is an old story, we go back to it each year, because, as the aphorism says, a people who do
not know their past are condemned to repeat it.” She then began the narration that both she and those
attending the event already knew by heart. However, it was not novelty that mattered, but the affirmation
of their commitment. This, and no other, was the true meaning of the event that was unfolding.
“For a long time, human beings struggled with deep confusion about themselves and their destiny. They
felt divided between blind animality and a new horizon pregnant with the unknown, and — perhaps most
difficult of all — the acute awareness of their own death. At some point in their vital trajectory, evolution
had equipped them with vision of the future, but while this unique attribute led them to gain more
freedom, it also connected them to the absurd, because it was meaningless to train their gaze at the
future, merely to find themselves facing the final abyss. It was almost like a macabre joke played by some
unknown sadistic god, intent on a bit of fun at the cost of humanity’s misfortune.
But this anguish-filled mystery also drove them to keep searching, leading them towards the swift
material progress that freed them, in great measure, from physical pain and natural enslavement.
Nevertheless, not even these formidable triumphs were capable of filling the void within, that
accompanied them like a faithful dog throughout the various passages of their history. They found no
other way to muffle this lacerating awareness, except from undertaking a radical sacrifice: they denied
84
themselves, and much of what they did bore the indelible mark of this denial. They built very complex
societies and civilizations wherein they were almost always relegated to a secondary position. Sometimes
by a god, other times by an idea, sometimes a thing, in whose name the human was sacrificed and against
whom the most savage atrocities were committed. All because they had denied themselves, to escape
from the unbearable absurdity that they were hurled into by a simple, unanswerable question.
(A compassionate murmur floated down from the seats of the amphitheater; the assembly seemed to
shiver with deep emotion).
The last stage of that prehistory was characterized by the dominion of money (at this point of the
narration the same thing always happened — the assembly burst out in laughter and the Master had to
ask for silence, though making no effort to hide a subtle smile of complicity). At the center of the social
order they enthroned…financial capital! (New stifled bursts of laughter.) It was not long before it became
an uncontrollable and irrational force that began devouring everything in its path. Collective
organization started falling apart, and all genuinely human gains were lost, transformed into economic
abstractions. In the end, all that remained was the pathetic, insatiable greed that only intensified the nonmeaning it tried vainly to lessen. Faced by an infinite inner emptiness that was now also everywhere
around them, human beings had to admit their failure. Then, everything began to change. Financial
capital continued its mad race until the accumulated delirium ended in a collapse, dragging the entire
planet into the debacle. But this didn’t matter much anymore, because in different places, at the same
time, new responses were being tried out that placed the human being at their center. As chaos theory
explains, this small change — the light fluttering of butterfly wings — would have enormous
consequences.
It was the most glorious moment of our magnificent epic, because the dispersed and fragmentary
individual efforts of the previous stage began converging toward a great shared project, and from the
depths of the peoples’ consciousness, a new image arose: the Universal Human Nation. For the first time
in many ages, we placed our work at the service of collective welfare, using the powerful resources of
technology to reach progress of all and for all — not merely for a few privileged people. When all human
beings, without exception, were delivered from the threats to their survival, the search for a final answer
to the question of death acquired special importance; and today, all of us are receiving the benefits of
those exciting inquiries...."
The narrative always ended at the same point. What came afterwards was always much more familiar for
everyone present, and wasn’t necessary to retell since it was part of the new era they were already living
85
in. The Master switched off the microphone and sank into the oceanic silence that had fallen over the
auditorium. She observed the intent faces of her disciples, while they compared their present lives with
the one described in the narrative, and made deeply-felt resolutions to take care of and improve what they
had, learning from their past mistakes. Once the meditation was over, the meeting was dissolved amid
sounds of jubilation and laughter.
Will everything happen as described in the narration? The truth is that, if we could take distance from the
historical moment we are living through and evaluate it dispassionately, the options available to us would
not be much different from those presented in this story. And so, if this rather naive tale leads us to reflect
and helps us to make decisions, it will have accomplished its purpose.
A Human Revolution: From Competition to Convergence
Tell me what you believe in and I’ll tell you what kind of society you will build. As long as money is the
central value, something similar to Neoliberalism will always emerge; if it is power, a variant of the
totalitarian State; if it is God, then it will be a theocracy. When the central value becomes the real and
concrete human being, then we will build a humanist society. The ruling way of life today is nothing but a
by-product of that great priority — money — and the economic model, that seems so real, is an
“emanation” of the values (or anti-values) that spur on those who have designed and built it. In the last
analysis, appearances (i.e., what appears to be) are nothing but the external manifestations of a fevered or
lucid mind. Therefore, aside from questioning the dreams (or nightmares), we also confront the dreamer;
because if he doesn’t change, he will keep dreaming about the same things.
Today we live in a grotesque world where everything is upside down and in which we have lost the
relations of inference — what reveals the kind of mentality operating behind things. The ends must adapt
themselves to the means, the abstract conditions to the concrete, the quantitative conditions to the
qualitative, human welfare is subordinated to economic interests. To illustrate it with an old rural adage,
the cart has been put in front of the horse. How was this inversion produced? German sociologist Max
Weber (1864-1920) in his day had already given the name of "formal rationality" to the technocratic
mentality that washes its hands of the objectives it pursues and whose ostensibly rational functioning is,
at bottom, pure irrationality, as our recent past made tragically clear.58 They are myopic functionaries,
conditioned by a step-by-step computational logic, absolutely lacking in process or structural vision,
58
This idea comes from the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School (Marcuse, Adorno, Habermas).
86
making it impossible for them to even glimpse what the consequences of their acts will be. For example,
when these “power dummies” (idiocrats?) sound off pompously about establishing a new world order,
what they get is a new local disorder such as Iraq, which ends up swallowing them whole (watch out
Latin America!). The process of taking over planetary societal control by this decadent caste has been
developing for nearly the entire 20th century and seems to be culminating in the chaotic world of today.
The chaos is their ill-fated legacy.
It is necessary to reestablish the order of factors in order to be able to operate with some degree of
efficiency over reality. But this implies, before anything else, a change of perspective with regard to what
the human world is, and with respect to the relationship between that collective experience and individual
humanity. We must be capable of freeing ourselves from the tight corset that this extremely limited,
dominating brotherhood has tied us up in. To do this, it is strictly necessary to learn how to see (and to
see ourselves) in a completely new way.
In the current model, the social dynamic is sustained by competition. Considering the dominant
technocracy’s zoological vision of human activity, it was very difficult indeed for anything else to occur
to them, and so they have established the “struggle for survival among members of the same species” as
the only driving force for human life. At this point of the process of social progress, this proposal is
unacceptable on the grounds of imbecility and racism, but it has tended to be legitimized, in spite of
everything, as people have put its assumptions in practice in their everyday actions. The least that could
be expected was that this competition be fair and, in effect, free; but we all know that it is neither one nor
the other, although we act as if it were, in view of the enormous comparative advantages of different
kinds that are enjoyed by the power groups. It is as if we were obliged to play a game that we don’t like
and, on top of this, the rules are changed constantly to favor the bettors — it is all wrong! If this is so on
the individual level, at the level of nations something quite similar is also the case; and so disarmament,
peace, integration and progress become even more difficult to achieve.
Nevertheless, to imprison human life within the tautology of “living to eat and eating to live” is to hurl it
into absurdity. In fact, by emptying human activity of all meaning, we are producing sick societies, not
only socially (which is already quite serious), but also psychologically. Because if collective activity is
nothing but natural mechanics, what project could the social whole promote? If human relations basically
consist of rivalry with others around us, what solidary collaboration could we invoke, and on the basis of
what moral framework could we judge the excesses in competitive behavior?
87
At any rate, we should know that when the human being is bereft of a greater destiny toward which to
project their future, and around which they may converge with other human beings, it often happens that
they go mad. How can it come as any surprise, then, if depression, suicide, drug addiction and alcoholism
are spiraling59? What arguments could we use to reproach youth for their lack of interest in participation?
They are totally right — why indeed should they participate, if what they are offered today from the
human point of view is: precisely nothing.
If, for a mercantile society like the present one, the only way to generate collective energy is through a
crude effect of friction between its members, then the project of humanization becomes even more urgent
and necessary, because to formulate social relations in such narrow, one-dimensional terms is a dramatic
indicator of the scant perception we have today of the inner dimension of the human — an aspect we have
already expounded on at length in a previous chapter. We are in reality “makers of meaning,” poets
illuminated by an inner fire that flares out to the surrounding universe; a hodgepodge of dreams that we
go about trying to clarify to later transform them into beloved realities, inspired constructors of worlds
that march toward their Destiny. This is what we are and we won’t allow the daily torment of ruling
materialism to make us forget it. In this sense, Don Quixote is, perhaps, the most genuine, intimately
human literary character whose fabulous life is a vibrant affirmation of these values, and this is the reason
for his immortal universality.
On the contrary, in a humanized society (i.e., one whose members bond with each other based on their
intentionality), the driving force should emanate principally from the convergence of their diversity
around a shared project and not from competition (“From each according to their capacities, to each
according to their necessities,” as stated in Louis Blanc’s famous aphorism). We are all different but we
want the same thing, and so the great collective effort will consist of agreeing on what we want and not
on competing for it. The latter is a fatuous, shortsighted logic, whereas complementing our intentions and
actions will allow us to expand and hone our capacities well beyond their present limits, to reach heights
never before attained. Universalist Humanism proposes a direction to follow, a collective dream around
which we can converge, that gathers together, in a single beam, all aspirations for brotherhood and
cooperation that have always enriched the best moments of our history — the construction of one Human
Nation that will go beyond the concepts of territory, of ethnicity, and — it goes without saying —
59
As these lines were being written, in the state of Virginia, in the U.S., a student gunned down, for no reason, thirty of his fellow
university students, which is a multiple version of the absurd that Camus described so well in his book The Stranger.
88
infinitely beyond economics. This yearning now attains universal projection, carried on the shoulders of
material progress.
Thus the human revolution, before all else, is an inner revolution, because it implies the substitution of
the present paradigm. This will manifest following the move from competitive, animal behavior toward
an eminently human response that seeks reciprocal confluence. There will probably continue to be a
market with all of its derivatives; however, it will be restricted to specific areas, without illegitimately
conditioning (or contaminating) the totality of our collective coexistence. It goes without saying that the
resonating vibrations of this profound inner change will also make themselves felt in social reality, giving
birth to radical transformations within it.
A Social Revolution: From Accumulation to Distribution
That money is still enthroned as the most important social value, despite the deep discontent and
widespread dissatisfaction, can only be explained by the enormous power that the plutocracy still
possesses; and by the fact that the peoples, in spite of their misery, feel forced to dance to the music
played by those who own the silver. Except in the case of the hoarding minorities who are directly
benefited, no one wants this wretched present, shot through by a dreadful materialism that has reduced
humanity’s destiny to a tormented struggle for survival. And yet, so few manifest their willingness to do
something to change the current state of affairs, and this is evidence of the visceral fear that this invisible
dictatorship is capable of infusing into the populations of the planet, in order to keep them enchained —
their paralyzing terror of losing what little they have.
It arouses suspicion to observe that, in the public debate that opens up from time to time seeking
“solutions” to the ruling model’s eternal equity deficits, no consideration is given to the fact that
accumulation and distribution are antithetical terms — when the obsessive compulsion to accumulate is
stimulated in a thousand ways and the resources are limited, it is impossible to expect that distributive
justice will also be attained. To manipulate people’s expectations with this rubbish is simply bad faith.
Even if the opposite is claimed to keep up appearances, we can conclude that inequality is not an
undesirable random consequence that can be corrected, but a key mechanism for the model's workings.
This perverse game in which a few accumulate while the great majorities must live in conditions of
deprivation, thus forcing a fratricidal struggle of everyone against everyone to gain access to the scarce
resources still available, is the means of domination that the present tyranny uses, and is perhaps the most
89
important source of social violence. The chronic sensation of material insecurity that populations
experience is the psychological base for keeping everything as it is.
But human life is too valuable (as well as brief…) and we do not deserve to live out our lives trapped in a
stupid game designed to satisfy the pathological possessiveness of a small group. The moment has arrived
to overcome our fear, to rebel against the implacable extortion exercised by the powerful, and to demand
from our governments the urgent reordering of social priorities. Even if these actions do not seem like
much, they will be more than enough.
Let us agree then that an authentic social transformation (not the programmed distribution of paltry alms
to pacify the discontented) starts by redefining the top priorities in social management. Capitalist
ideology has its priorities, which are to position money and its profitability demands at the top of the list,
and to relegate human beings to second place. Humanism struggles to change this paradigm and places
human existence and its concrete necessities at the center of collective effort, while it displaces the
(abstract) requirements of capital to a secondary position. Consequently, the accumulative logic of the
present system can be transformed into its opposite, because once the material basis of human life — here
and now — is assured, then the urgency for accumulating ad infinitum disappears as well, in its character
as a compensatory response to the oppressive condition of being deprived of vital needs. Thus it becomes
evident, as well, that the desire to possess and its attendant consumerism — which are such highly-valued
behaviors in this crude, materialist culture — are none other than instinctive, neurotic responses that are
out of proportion and out of control. It is simply pathetic...
And very especially because the scarcity (if not abject poverty) that the majority of our planet’s
inhabitants must bear is a false scarcity. It is one more groundless invention established with absolute
premeditation in the collective subjectivity in order to dominate it at will. The problem lies precisely in
that we have been conditioned to ponder the facts from the look imposed by the system; but upon
changing our perspective, we realize immediately that never before in human history had such enormous
power been attained over nature, as that which we possess today. We have mastered almost all its secrets,
and we have learned to extract the maximum abundance from her breast, which refutes all official
arguments that collective progress must wait until certain unknown ideal conditions are achieved —
which are never achieved. Strictly speaking, material wellbeing is there, within reach, and if it does not
benefit us all equally, this is not because it cannot be done, but because they do not want to do it. Because
it turns out that social control exercised through astutely administrating dosages of scarcity is entirely
functional for the accumulation agenda of the owners of speculative capital.
90
If these are the depths of foolishness that an organized society can reach in relation to an abstraction such
as money, let us see what happens when the flesh and blood human being is placed as the central interest.
The first thing we verify is that, today, the basic demands of health, education, housing and employment
are stated as fundamental human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.60 Many of these
have been made a part of the signatory countries’ Constitutional Charters, except that they cannot be
legally enforced — unlike, for example, the right to own property. The difference in category between
one right and another speaks clearly of the direction toward things and not toward people that
characterizes the current system. Well then, in a truly human society such an aberration is corrected,
because the emphasis is inverted, and, consequently, the satisfaction of these needs becomes an
unavoidable constitutional obligation, assuring all people of the same level of excellence no matter what
their economic status. This common floor, which establishes the minimal conditions for real equality of
opportunities to exist, is the only way to assure a people's effective progress.
And what objection can anyone raise to such a reasonable aim? However, they always resort to the same
arguments: that there is no way to finance such investments, that social spending cannot increase because
it will increase the risk of inflation, that private investment will be discouraged, that the temptation of
populism must be resisted, etc., etc. We are familiar with them all, not because we are especially
scholarly, but because they are endlessly repeated in the media. In sum, this is pure economicism that,
however, cannot impose itself over the humanism of the new social priorities, no matter how complex the
technical problems that must be resolved. During the 1980s, when cruel adjustments were made in Latin
America to adapt local economies to the demands of globalization, the cowardly technocracies had no
need of any popular support since they had the protection of military dictatorships that exercised absolute
power over the region. They simply made sure to emphasize with cheerful brazenness that such economic
reforms implied a "social cost" that had to be paid. Well then, if the peoples found the strength to bear the
adjustments with enormous sacrifices in exchange for meager compensation (an unfavorable cost-benefit
ratio, as a technocrat would cynically observe), the switching of priorities over to human ones would
imply an equivalent “financial cost” that would have to be covered by big capital, like it or not. In the
60
Adopted through a resolution of the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948. As an example we cite one of its articles,
which 60 years later has yet to be applied in many parts of the world:
“Article 25
1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including
food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
91
end, it is what is called reciprocity. But the new winds have begun to blow timidly. In Bolivia, firm steps
have been taken in this direction, and investors have not fled the country or conspired to finance a coup
d’état; rather, they have accepted the new conditions.61
As we see, a humanist social revolution is not characterized by flashy, cinematographic display, but by a
reorientation of the entire system from accumulation to distribution. If today everything is aimed at
favoring the concentration of speculative capital, to the detriment of finding real solutions to the multiple
urgent social needs; in an authentically human society, the focus of effort will be on radically improving
peoples’ living conditions above any other interest, whether economic or ideological. Once society, thus
oriented, has guaranteed the biological and cultural support for human life on equal terms for all, making
intensive use of the enormous arsenal of resources contributed by technology, it will also be necessary to
protect human consciousness from the intervention of any arbitrary power that might want to crush its
liberty. This final task is part of the program of a humanist political revolution.
A Political Revolution: The Deconcentration of Power
It is always fascinating to observe how a certain vision of the world blooms in linguistic expressions. For
example, in the way human groups are referred to. If the traditional left conceives them as “masses,” for
currents that favor the market they are “consumers,” to be grouped in socioeconomic segments. The
masses can comprise large numbers (a quantitative variable), but they are not considered as being capable
of establishing qualitative distinctions that give direction to the whole; thus they need a political or social
leader to make decisions for them. These blind masses must be driven like flocks of sheep. The decision
making capacity of the consumer prototypes is similarly meager, as their responses seem limited to
models based on imitating certain “opinion leaders,” who come out on television. Consumers must be
adequately stimulated to activate certain conditioned reflexes in the Pavlovian manner, and we have
advertising to fulfill this function. It would seem that, for both tendencies, the inner autonomy of
collectivities is extremely limited; and for this reason — according to each case — they must be driven or
motivated from outside of themselves. Curiously enough, both currents justified their radical rejection of
the State and announced its imminent disappearance, but they always ended up using it to impose their
respective politico-social projects on the peoples.
61
Refers to the new relationship established by Evo Morales’ government with the energy transnationals that extract gas and
hydrocarbons from Bolivia, following the nationalization act of May 1, 2006. All companies, Repsol and Petrobras among them, accepted
the contractual changes.
92
What is the point behind these considerations? Basically, that the figure of the State as an entity that
concentrates political, economic and military power emanates from the same conviction mentioned earlier
— that the great human collectivities are incapable of assuming responsibility for making their own
decisions and, therefore, they must delegate them to an ideally wise superpower who will manage them
correctly. This argument has sufficed as “philosophical" justification, such that, with undesirable
frequency, some tiny minority who considered itself privileged stripped the peoples of their sovereign
attributions and subjected them for a long time to a regime of dependence and paternalism. In the best of
cases, this transition is carried out through the democratic path, but as long as a point exists that
accumulates social control, the temptation will also persist to try and gain access to it by force, or to
stymie it through economic extortion, in order to favor certain sectors to the detriment of the whole.
This is the current situation, and it has also been thus in the past. It is almost an immemorial struggle, in
which liberation movements aspire to win the power that is in the hands of oppressors, who desire to keep
it in their hands at all costs, without anyone realizing, apparently, that the problem lies precisely in that
there exists the real possibility of “taking” power. When will the struggle end, and the violence it implies?
We have already pointed it out: when there is no longer anything to be taken, because the State has ceased
to be an accumulator of sovereignty, in order to transform itself into an efficient coordinator of the
multiple and autonomous activities at the base of society. This will finally happen when societies become
humanized, and the “masses,” as well as the “consumers,” come to terms with themselves as fully
intentional human beings who are responsible for their individual and collective destinies.
For New Humanism, human collectivities are understood as complex systems of relations that are
articulated around a coincidence of intentions among their members. According to our conception, these
genuinely intentional networks have no need for leadership or stimulation that are external to their own
initiative, but rather for adequate coordination.
The distinction is important to understand. If we
consider human beings as active consciousnesses that do not just reflect the world, but instead are always
in a position to transform it, according to the orientations that their intention takes on, then to interfere in
this process from the outside becomes completely illegitimate, because what is at stake is human freedom
itself. In this sense, the concerted action of the political and economic Right is infinitely more meanspirited. The mouths of their spokespersons are filled with flowery speeches "in defense of freedom,"
while they grossly manipulate people's consciousness to restrict or annul them. In other words, they are
hypocritical and cunning because they say one thing but do the opposite — and worse, they act furtively,
behind people’s backs.
On the other hand, if the Left has made many mistakes in terms of the
93
methodologies applied, its intention has clearly been to liberate the peoples and to make enormous
contributions in the course of its laborious and dignifying attempt.
We point out that this State role, active but not coercive, has nothing to do with the absence or paralysis
of the State — almost catatonic — that is advocated by Neoliberalism, above all because there is no
power vacuum produced of any kind, given that the State is rooted in an integrated way in the organized
community. While the new functions of coordination that we envisage as the State’s future role will be
very different from the powers of command invested in the State as we know it today, they will in no be
equivalent to the State’s current situation of impotent immobilism. However, although in theory these
changes may seem easy and smooth, in practice they pose more than a few difficulties. First, because the
concept we have described continues to operate, that does not even allow visualizing new alternatives of
social organization. And, secondly, because it is necessary to disarticulate and impede any form of
oligopoly, whether in the field of politics, public administration or economics, so they won’t simply
replace each other like runners in a relay race.
The Document of New Humanism proposes effective and viable solutions to these complex problems.
Some of these proposals have already been expounded in broader terms in previous chapters, as follows:
in politics, to advance from the present formality of the democratic process toward real democracy,
deepening the permanent participation of the social base in decision-making through plebiscites and
popular referendums; in public administration, to promote decentralization of countries through effective
regionalization that will include democratic elections of regional authorities and autonomous
management of each region’s economic resources, on the way to the formation of federal republics; in the
economic-productive sphere, to promote the worker-owned company, a new model of ownership of the
means of production, and – mainly – of productive management, that will moderate the unbridled action
of international financial capital and make it possible to move towards greater freedom and social justice.
It should now have become clearer that the main difficulties blocking the execution of all these proposals
are not technical (although these also exist, as in any human endeavor). Rather, they come from the
resistance of interest groups, whether political or economic, to any innovation that might threaten their
favored social status. How can we get around this very real blockage of change? We always come to the
same conclusion — by moving the look away from power and turning it toward the social base, where the
coercive action of the State apparatus makes itself weakly felt (except for the action of mass media…).
At the social base, many of these measures can be experienced at a small scale and, later, the successes
attained can be exported through the media as “demonstration effects” for other points where something
94
similar is being attempted. However, this is an arduous and humble task that we can resolutely undertake,
once we assume without ambivalence that the classic (or almost atavistic) illusion of gaining-controlover-the-central-power-in-order-to-change-the-world-from-there, has failed.
We will add that this failure does not reflect a purely declamatory position, since it is based on the
confirmed fact that the State has lost its real power for at least two reasons that we have already explained
in detail — because it is dictated to from above by international financial capital, and because the
destructuring of the social base impedes it from operating with any degree of efficiency over the
populations. Thus, the historical dynamic itself has taken charge of demolishing the great myth of
modernity and the image of gaining access to the State as being synonymous with achieving social
control — so real in other eras, but today bled dry of meaning. We cannot complain, since we have fought
for this for so long, and now, history is lending us a hand. This industrious lady is the only one who has
set to resolving half of the problem, and she has left the rest to us: “power is no longer centralized, and
it’s your job now to transfer it to the people," she seems to tell us teasingly. And well, nothing can be
perfect, and all we can do is thank her for her kindness and get to work. From hereon in, the central issue
has to be the reorganization of the social base so that the sovereignty it embodies may be made manifest.
95
9. The Engine of Change
No society can be flourishing and happy if the greater part of the members are poor and miserable
Adam Smith
Growth vs. Development
Objectives are one thing though, and realities quite another. Attempts to change the bourgeois capitalist
regime are close to 200 years old, and until now have not succeeded. It can be no surprise to anyone that
Neoliberalism has revitalized this model of society to the extremes we know today. We may not like it,
but it was in fact their project from the beginning. However, though the initial intention of the
revolutionary Left was to destroy that previous framework, they failed too and actually helped it to
spread. This was made plain by everything that occurred after the fall of so-called Real Socialism in the
countries within its orbit, where everything was rapidly reorganized in the direction of the bourgeois
model.62 To state it clearly, even though they were antagonistic projects of society building, they both had
maintained essentially the same relations of production and the emancipation of labor was never won —
there did not appear to be much difference in status between being a salaried employee for capital versus
for the State. In both cases, the old ties of “capitalist boss–salaried worker” had remained intact.
However, today this discussion no longer seems important to anyone, and people feel that it’s enough —
if they even go that far — to resist the abuses of the system without trying to change the structural
conditions that make it possible for the abuses to continue. The preceding revolutionary failures have
spread despair and conformism, and create the impression that, for the majority, resignation to having
little would be preferable to risking everything in a revolutionary adventure with an uncertain outcome.
But this is only the apparent calm before the storm — the growing discontent of youth at the increasing
inequality, exclusion and a lifestyle bereft of meaning is spreading like wildfire. The system’s enormous
internal tensions will inevitably climax in a devastating social explosion, the like of which has never been
seen before. One of the paths to deactivating this imminent conflict is to change the bourgeois
relationship between the factors of production, capital and labor. We would like to think that among the
62
Ever since Russia ceased to be a communist state fourteen years ago, Moscow has come to have, at present, 23 multimillionaires,
surpassed, according to Forbes, only by New York. In contrast, approximately 25.5 million inhabitants of Russia, or 18% of the population,
live in poverty on less than 45 Euros a month. While the soldiers of the former Red Army are begging on the streets and pensioners
protesting their miserable pensions, retail therapy became all the rage among the so-called "Nouveau riche” of Russia. It is estimated that
these spend some four billion dollars a year on luxury goods, in Russia and abroad. In Moscow, the richest have 53 times more than the
poorest. In all of Russia the ratio is 15 to 1.
96
current political hierarchies there are still reasonable people who understand the seriousness of this
moment and who are willing to face this debate; but to be honest, it seems rather improbable.
For several years now, the majority of the Latin American countries have been experiencing sustained
economic growth, which, however, does not translate into equivalent human development.63 All the
explanations proffered by the promoters of the current model to justify this stubborn phenomenon are
false, because its original cause lies in what is never said — that the ownership of the means of
production is in the hands of capital today. Although labor and capital are mutually responsible in
solidarity for any increase in production, it is capital in its capacity as owner who receives the profits
earned, while labor remains tied to a fixed salary that never goes up if there is economic growth, but that
does shrink when productivity decreases. Today, this perverse distortion between the factors of
production has become even more warped, since capital pressures labor to raise its productivity by
offering variable salary increases, thus converting the fixed salary into a variable one. Nevertheless, even
in these cases, the relative increase of salaries as an effect of the incentive is lower than the relative
increase of capital earnings. The situation worsens when it becomes evident that, in most cases, the
proposed productivity targets are unreachable for the workers. Thus, at the end of the day, labor does not
receive the promised salary improvement, even though the company’s earnings have increased and there
has been a corresponding improvement in capital’s profitability. Clearly, as long as this absurd
disequilibrium is maintained, it will be practically impossible to reach any degree of distributive justice,
and therefore technocracy’s specious arguments to justify it before public opinion merely makes what
they wish to hide even more obvious — the unrestrained greed.
Now add the fact that the majority of those profits are not even reinvested into expanding productive
facilities in order to create new employment sources, but instead they leave the country that produces this
wealth to go to tax havens, where they are absorbed into the circuit of speculative international finance.
Closing the vicious circle, part of these resources surely return to the same countries they came from, but
this time as high-interest loans. This cycle has led to a situation in which the means of production no
longer even belong to those who brought them into existence by running all the risks, since their
ownership interest has been transferred in its totality to the banks, the owners of capital, due to the debts
63
In the last 20 years, Latin America has experienced constant growth. In the same period, income distribution has deteriorated from
year to year. In Chile’s case, the “example of modernity,” after applying the Neoliberal model for 22 years, it has gone on to have one of the
worst income distributions on the planet. According to the 2003 UNDP Report on Human Development, of the 12 countries with the worst
income distribution in the world, seven are African and five are Latin American. In this ranking, Chile is in 11th worst place, only "beaten"
by Namibia, Swaziland, Botswana, Nicaragua and Brazil, among others.
97
that the original entrepreneurs were forced to incur and couldn’t pay. Thus, this form of ultraconcentrated private ownership that has finally been reached will end up collapsing into itself like a dying
star, upon reach saturation point. It is significant that rumors of another imminent recession have already
begun to circulate in the international financial press.
But it is still possible to revert this lamentable process; and to do so, it would be enough, first of all, to
restore to labor, as a factor of production, rights that are equivalent to those of capital, which would
translate, as a minimum, into equal access to the company’s profits. Human labor is the source of all of
humanity’s material gains; nevertheless, the worker has been progressively stripped of his original
dignity, to finally be reduced to being the slave of capital. Therefore, if we wish to progress toward a
harmonious social coexistence, it is necessary to correct this flagrant injustice, which has no rational
justification and cannot be explained either by any of the usual nebulous economic jargon. For Marxism,
capital was nothing more than accumulated labor; but today, realism indicates that this force cannot be
overlooked as a factor of production. However, what is indeed being questioned is the disproportionate
preponderance it has reached in relation to labor — an inequality that is seriously affecting the totality of
social relations.
When this new paradigm of production is established in societies, we will see that the social wealth will
immediately begin to flow and be distributed — as if a dike had been removed — and economic growth
will begin to be transformed into human development. Today, the practice of incorporating workers into
company profit sharing schemes is already common in many parts of the world, marking a path and a
trend; what is still lacking, is to achieve complete equality of conditions between the two factors.
The Worker-Owned Company
In the meantime, the owners of speculative capital (i.e., the banks) continue trying to improve their
hegemonic position in society even more, which is a sign that they have completely lost their way (and
their sanity). At this time they are trying to impose so-called "job flexibility" on everybody. Its final aim
is to dismantle the labor laws that epitomize all the victories workers have won throughout their historical
struggles, and thus dispose of the “labor market” at whim. To accomplish this, they resort — as usual —
to arguments that amount to blackmail, as they threaten to restrict investment if the aforementioned
measures are not implemented. The social explosion in France in early 2006, which expressed repudiation
for the flexibilization of young people’s jobs that the executive tried to impose, speaks to us of the
dangerous levels of instability that human communities have reached as a consequence of the profound
98
social imbalances introduced by big capital’s devastating action. To deactivate the protests, the French
government was forced to modify the proposed law.
It is impossible to keep putting up eternally with such an explosive situation, and so we will have to be
capable of finding a formula for putting a stop to this phenomenon that resembles some kind of frenzied
mob; because, if we don’t, it will end up destroying, one by one, humanity’s most elevated gains. The
moment has arrived to channel this overflowing force, to impose strict limits on it that will temper its
harmful influence over the whole, so it will stop distorting our collective coexistence and affecting
people’s wellbeing. Since it has taken us such an inordinately long time to realize the negative
consequences of the present socioeconomic construct (which we hope have not become irreversible at this
point), the response we give now cannot be gradual. It is necessary to implant, at the speed of light,
certain instruments that will make it possible to control the action of speculative capital with steely
determination, and oblige it to reinvest primordially in production. This implies abandoning the ghost
universe of abstractions in order to make a leap toward the human. In this new context, labor will be
valued over capital and productive investment over speculation, simply because they refer to human
realities.
The only path that can be taken to successfully implement this mandatory framework is to open up the
ownership of the means of production, and, especially, productive management, to a broader
participation by workers, and explore a model of society that will distance itself from both the monstrous
State monopoly and the irrational private oligopoly. At this point of the human process, we can conclude
that no form of concentration can be favorable to good social relationships — they are all equally evil and
deserving of our repudiation.
To be an entrepreneur is, in the final analysis, to take a risk. Whoever invests capital to create a means of
production is taking a risk with their money in a changeable market. Whoever contributes their work to
make that means of production produce, also takes a risk by making a daily commitment to their
employer and investing their effort. Both parties — capital and labor — are "workers" in the company
and constitute a productive partnership, whose bonds of cooperation assure the production process of
successful administration.
If, in another historical moment, labor and capital faced each other as
irreconcilable enemies within the company, the great cultural change that New Humanism proposes is
that both productive factors, instead of competing from within the means of production that they are part
of also, seek convergence for the benefit of their mutual progress. Above all, if we consider that, today,
99
the enemy is something else — what we call speculative capital. To understand this well, a brief
introduction is needed.
A productive enterprise is made up of things (machinery, raw material, facilities) and by persons (labor
force). By some strange trick of the collective consciousness, both components have finally become
assimilated as though they were substantially equal. Then, when someone buys a company, they have at
their disposal both the things and the persons that comprise it with identical naturalness. In other words,
they objectify those persons and, automatically, acquire absolute power over them through the mere fact
of acquiring ownership of the company that includes them. From thereon in, the owner has the right to
decide about the lives and destinies of these people-things, who can be fired, transferred or relocated as if
they were furniture. Something bizarre is going on here, to say the least, because while in society, as a
whole, democracy is a non-negotiable value, in the workplace, workers are not the masters of their
decisions — this right has been obligatorily transferred (without the explicit consent of the parties
affected) to the owner of the means of production who employs them. Well then, thanks to this particular
concept of property, international speculative capital, already completely dehumanized, moves through
virtual financial circuits, buying productive enterprises and deciding the destinies of billions of people,
who, by the way, are not consulted regarding the measures that affect them. When we have spoken about
the universal tyranny of money, we referred specifically to this phenomenon, imperceptible up to now,
but nevertheless real, and that is protected by the paradigm of "ownership of things = power over
persons."
This monstrous mutation that the world economy has suffered should immediately push us to radically
reformulate the concept of enterprise and property, because workers as well as entrepreneurs themselves
are being profoundly affected by this aberrant dehumanization. Let us then speak of human beings, of
persons involved in resolving the collective problem of how to produce more. These real persons —
entrepreneurs and workers, capital and labor — must face the risks involved in their productive project,
together. In front of such a demanding challenge that will demand all the energy and maximum lucidness
of those committed to it, both speculation and the usurious practices of banking capital are nothing but
repugnant parasites that weaken these initiatives and seriously threaten their continuity. From a strictly
human perspective, those who have a right to exercise ownership over a means of production are the
persons — complete with their first and last names — who are prepared to take on the daily risks posed
by entrepreneurship; not anonymous and volatile capital that can be here today and gone tomorrow,
depriving a productive reality of its economic support from one second to the next.
100
The worker-owned company,64 which is founded on this new principle, has the primary objective of
returning control to human beings over the economic decisions that directly affect them. When the
ownership of things does not guarantee any power, then speculation on a grand scale will lose all its
supports, but this is very far from happening still. Meanwhile, the incorporation of workers into company
management and into decision making will prevent earnings from escaping to the speculative circuit; and
will instead be reinvested by force in company expansion or diversification and, thus, the generation of
new jobs. With this, we are saying that in an economy at a human scale, the profits generated thanks to
increased productivity are perfectly legitimate, unlike those that are the result of speculation and usury,
because the temptation of obtaining this “easy money” stimulates fraudulent bankruptcies, forced
indebtedness and capital flight.
Outstanding Chilean entrepreneur Carlos Vial Espantoso, in a final interview before his death, explained
that he had made a serious attempt to initiate employee participation in the ownership and management of
his companies, but found himself subjected to such tremendous pressure from those he referred to as
"savage capitalists," that he gave up trying to do it and instead opted to distribute his money among
several charities which are still functioning. But worker ownership is an entrepreneurial model that has
begun to acquire great importance in the world in recent decades, as stated in a report by the Chilean
research center CENDA. This report has been extensively cited by the Dictionary of New Humanism65
and is an exhaustive study of the startup in different countries of very large and commercially successful
companies that have opened up to worker participation — a politico-social system with a humanist
orientation that tends toward the structuring of a society in which worker ownership can predominate.
Although we agree that economic growth is the means for achieving material wellbeing, our argument
with the current scheme centers on the fact that the benefits that are obtained thanks to collective efforts
favor a very reduced group, while the large groups must resign themselves to the latter’s leftovers. On
the other hand, in an economy at the service of the human being in which the priority is full employment
of the peoples in conditions of full parity between capital and labor, economic growth will ensure the best
income distribution. Hence, an orientation toward reinvestment of profits and diversification of the
productive platform is mandatory. Let us stop fooling ourselves. The enormous human problems
64
This model of the company is the practical application of a new concept, the company-society, developed by Spanish economist
Jose Luis Montero de Burgos. Empresa y sociedad (bases de una economía humanista).[Enterprise and Society. Bases of a Humanist
Economy] Antares Ediciones, Madrid, 1994.
65
Dictionary of New Humanism,Collected Works Vol 2, Silo, published originally as: Diccionario del Nuevo Humanismo. Obras
Completas. Vol. 2. Silo. Plaza y Valdés. México, 2004.
101
generated by the current economic system have not been caused by simple technical difficulties in its
application — they are due to the deviation of the essential purpose for which the system had been
conceived, i.e., to help the human being advance on the path of liberation. And this deviation was not
accidental; it arose from the bad faith of a group of crooks who have used their cheap tricks and glass
beads to strip us of our role at the helm of the process, to obtain benefits for themselves meant for the
whole. There is no doubt that the moment has arrived to put everything back in its proper place.
The Recovery of Natural and Energy Resources, Added Value and Technology
Copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, cellulose, fishmeal, coffee, cocoa, sugar, oil, natural gas…. Latin
America supplies the world with raw materials that are later processed and transformed into more refined
products in countries with a greater degree of technological development. Our continent is selling the
blood of its veins, as Galeano wrote,66 within the curious scheme of planetary division of labor, and later
must buy back the refined products made from those raw materials, paying a humongous surcharge. To
make our beloved region’s situation even worse, we have known only very rarely how to exercise our
sovereignty over our resources. First there were the empires (Spanish, British, North American), who
ransacked these reserves at any price, even taking possession of our territories or instigating fratricidal
wars in the continent;67 now there are the transnationals, who do the same thing but more discreetly,
finding shelter in favorable legislation. Very few countries of the region have succeeded in shaking off
this historical abject servitude. Chile was able to nationalize its copper during the Allende government,
but later the military dictatorship — in complicity with the Chicago Neoliberals — took back the majority
of that gain, which succeeding democratic governments have not had the least political will to recover.
Venezuela, thanks to President Chavez, succeeded in recovering control over its oil, which had enriched
generations of corrupt politicians in the country. Evo Morales’ government is attempting to do the same
in Bolivia with its reserves of natural gas.
Natural and energy resources are the material base of a country’s sovereignty, and by virtue of this
condition are therefore not the property of the State, and even less of the government. They belong to the
people, and it is the people who must decide their destiny — that is, if the government currently in power
is agreeable to asking them, in these theater props of modern democracies that govern us. Today the
situation is even more pathetic. Since relatively simple extractive processes are concerned, the economic
66
Reference to the well-known book Open Veins of Latin America by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano.
One of the most emblematic cases is the civil war that broke out in Colombia at the turn of the 20th century, which the U.S. took
advantage of to take over the area where it was to later build the Canal, which finally led to the creation of a new State: Panama.
67
102
groups who own the exploitation sites use advanced technologies to literally devastate these resources,
which are then transformed into financial capital.68 This speculative “virtuous circle” is a vicious circle
for the region’s countries, which cannot get out of underdevelopment because they sell their land, water
or forests at commodity prices, and then import expensive value-added products, one of them being
money. Today usury yields the major part of profits, and although credits were an instrument for selling
more products in the past, the process has become inverted and products are now the hook for selling
more credits. In all cases, financial capital wins on both ends, at the expense of our historical lack of
expertise.
It needs to be said plainly, even if it hurts us in the most profound depths of our regional soul: since its
“discovery,” Latin America has always been a colony plundered by successive colonizers, and its final
liberation continues to depend very closely on the process of regional integration — whenever integration
moves forward, our hopes for achieving authentic emancipation will grow as well. Certainly,
globalization goes in exactly the opposite direction, because it is a process that tends toward divergence,
assigning priority as it does to bilateral free trade agreements with countries that are outside the regional
context, which then de-emphasizes the continent’s need for a common destiny. The only road to true
progress for Latin America is the one that passes through the following three milestones: regional
integration — not just economic, but, primordially, energetic and human; the recovery of its natural and
energy resources; and industrialization with latest-generation (i.e., non-contaminating) technology for the
manufacture of products with high value added.
It would suffice to observe the origin of the obstacles and limitations thrown in the path of each of these
objectives, to understand the huge interests that are at stake. If no serious attempts to block this process
existed, it would be impossible to understand why we have made so little progress, unless we attribute it
to the ineptitude or dishonesty of our governments, which doesn't leave us in a very good light either.
Ultimately we find that there are a set of interwoven reasons that answer to the intentions — whether
voluntarily or involuntarily — of the colonizers of the present: the transnational economic groups.
68
“This process of converting natural capital into financial capital is richly documented by abundant studies that report on the degree
of deterioration suffered by the environment as a result of the incessant destruction, at the same time that the availability of financial capital
concentrated in very few hands increases in an almost irrational way. In fact, the 225 richest people in the world are hoarding the same
amount of wealth as half of humanity. In other words, the equivalent of the wealth distributed among 3 billion people. According to the 10th
Edition of World Wealth Report (Merrill Lynch and Capgemini, 2006), the total number of millionaires in the world grew 6.5% in 2005,
totaling 8.7 million people. Their total patrimony amounts to 33.3 billion dollars. This number of privileged people does not go beyond 0.1%
of humanity.” El retorno de Fausto [The Return of Faust] Marcel Claude, Ediciones Política y Utopía, Santiago de Chile, 2006.
103
Regional integration and the recovery of our natural resources are the responsibilities of our current
political leaders. We should be capable of getting over the lyrical, fuzzy rhetoric that the Latin American
political class is so fond of employing, and start seriously working on designing a clear agenda and a
precise itinerary that could be made in consultation with the peoples. In short (and if we may say so
again): talk less, and do more. Now that the empire has looked away from us because it’s busy attending
to other, more urgent, higher priority problems, and with the rise in different countries of political leaders
who are well disposed toward integration, this is the right time to resolutely advance. It would then be
necessary to build instances of political dialogue between the nations of Latin America without delay, in
order to iron out our differences and design the process of regional integration and recovery of natural
resources as a whole, in space and in time.69 The integration of Europe that is culminating today began in
this manner around 50 years ago, based on accords signed by six countries which formed the European
Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). We in Latin America are perfectly capable of attempting something
similar, if the strategic need for this great alliance has been understood.
As for the technological and industrial platform, up until today it has been a frustrated dream; and Brazil,
the region’s giant, is the only country that has achieved a certain degree of progress. Some time ago, a
large monographic exhibit was held in Chile on the subject of copper that covered its history until the
present time and showed the enormous importance that the red metal had acquired. The exhibit showed
all of the products fabricated today with this resource, most of them using latest-generation
technology…except that none are manufactured in Chile. And to close the paradox, thanks to the rise in
the international price of copper, Chile ended the year 2006 with a surplus of eleven billion dollars, which
could have been used to raise its level of technological development. But as a result of the pressure
applied by the interest groups, it was channeled toward the international banks. Once again, in this issue
as well there has been an excess of rhetoric, because although there has been a lot of talk about the second
and third export phases that would add value to our raw materials, no substantial steps have been taken in
that direction, and government administrations have not even allocated the necessary resources to carry
out exhaustive studies on how to move on from extraction to manufacture.
69
An initial plan for moving toward the integration of the peoples should at least consider the following: resolution of all border
conflicts; proportional and progressive disarmament with allocation of these resources to health and education; free movement of people;
economic integration accords that favor the development of small and medium-sized enterprises; regional legislation to defend the rights of
workers; and regional environmental legislation.
104
In the heat of these reflections, we keep asking ourselves how we have been able to do things so badly,
and the only answer that reassures us, in part, is that we are a very young continent that has only recently
entered history. Contrary to what the technocrats on the pay-roll of the transnationals tell us, the
difficulties we have in advancing toward progress are neither technical nor material, but derive from a
generalized lack of clear-sightedness and political will. While the region’s leaders have not carried out
their mandate with sufficient nobility of purpose, and have not known how to (or wanted to) clarify their
peoples regarding the right direction to follow, it is the peoples who are ultimately responsible. This is
because too many times, they have endorsed their representatives’ deficient performance with their votes.
Latin America is at a crucial moment of her historical trajectory and we fervently hope that her peoples
will have the necessary wisdom demanded by present circumstances to elect those who will be capable of
leading them in the correct direction.
105
10. Latin America: Crucible of the Future
One day our grandchildren will go to museums to see what poverty was like.
Muhammad Yunus
Where is the New?
Something new is happening inside the heads of Latin America’s inhabitants; something new seems to be
impregnating the social climate. It is not about the urban landscape of freeways, malls, cell phones and
instantaneous communication. Neither is it about the difficulties of surviving in today’s world, where
everything — absolutely everything — is based on money; nor is it, incidentally, about the provisional
triumph of social democracy, and along with it, the final establishment of Neoliberalism. What we are
witnessing is the emergence of the first attempts by the peoples of this continent to find a way out of a
very anguishing moment of their social life. Beyond how right or how wrong these responses may be,
what is important is the search for a new path that will enable them to find the way out of the violence
and discrimination of daily experience. It is not about the continuity of economicism, but neither is it
about a classic revolutionary upsurge. Rather it is about a much more profound search, to tear away the
mask of the oppressor, who stifles the people, even though they may not know precisely who it is.
In Bolivia, Evo Morales is taking the world of the farm workers and the indigenous peoples into
government. Latin America has felt the reverberations of a cultural earthquake. Evo took his oath of
office in Puerta del Sol wearing an unku, the cloak used by the ancient priests of Tiwanaku in its imperial
stage 1,000 years ago, and a chuku, a four-pointed hat representing the four cardinal points and the
country’s ecological layers. The wipala with the colors of the rainbow, or cuichi, officially declared as the
flag of Tawantinsuyo in 1975, flutters on high. A leader who has risen up from his people’s heart, carries
the staff of two condors’ heads, handed to him by the amautas, the wise men or ancestral priests, today
called by different names (shamans, yachacs, kallawayas, healers, etc.), to represent the 36 nationalities
that make up the Bolivian people. Uniting symbolic motifs with the needs of the times, Evo has known
how to adapt, referring to the unity in the country of East and West, where atavistic conflicts between the
collas of the high sierras and the cambas of Santa Cruz still prevail.70 This search for unity is perhaps the
same one convoking all the peoples of the continent today. Evo’s platform for Bolivia can be an
inspiration for the social movements of the region — nationalization of natural resources; the acceptance
70
“The Cultural Context of Evo Morales’ Swearing into Office” by Jose Salcedo, presented at the Latin American Humanist Forum
in Quito, Ecuador, 2006.
106
of foreign investors as business partners and not as owners of these resources; the Bolivians’ control over
their water, and a new constitution that will deepen their democracy.
The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela that is being spurred on by Hugo Chavez has received the
citizens’ support election after election, and the population has mobilized to prevent a military coup.
Venezuela has used its oil to finance gigantic health care campaigns for its people and has extended these
campaigns as well to hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans. Venezuela has adopted measures to
break the information monopoly and has shown its solidarity with the peoples affected by natural
disasters. The U.S. military bases along the borders of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador are not there to
stop FARC or drug traffickers; they are there to prevent the three countries from coming together and to
make their integration difficult, which is the correct path toward peace and demilitarization in the area.
Much farther south, in Chile, a model country for the IMF in Latin America because it put Neoliberalism
into practice with unparalleled fundamentalism, for the first time in 2006 a woman was sworn into the
presidency to lead the nation’s destiny. Michelle Bachelet is a single parent, divorced, an atheist, a
woman who has broken away from the conservative values imposed on the country. Lula, a former
laborer now at the helm of the Brazilian government, and his Argentine counterpart Kirchner are showing
encouraging signs of independence upon freeing themselves of the IMF by paying back the totality of
their countries’ external debt, thus putting an end to the IMF’s illegitimate interventions in these
countries’ domestic policies.71 In the case of Uruguay, its Frente Amplio [Broad Coalition] could follow
the same trend and set off a new cultural and political phenomenon.
We are without any doubt living through a very deep cultural change, because everywhere a new
liberating sentiment is emerging that seeks to materialize in the social landscape. The change has been
internal, one of sensibility, and this new perception of the world will find its social and political
expression. The peoples are the ones electing governments that are breaking away from the homogeneous
parameters of globalization. They are the ones who are raising up something different, who have opened
themselves up to new answers, and new risks.
The Affirmation of Diversity
Globalization’s essentially economic project, through which social behavior is regulated, is beginning to
clash with the reaction from what is different and diverse. Even when it accepts the folklore and disguises
71
In April 2007, Hugo Chavez also finished paying Venezuela’s debt to the IMF, yet another sign that new libertarian winds are
blowing in Latin America.
107
its representatives of women, youth or of ethnic groups, it cannot disguise the fact that the way of life
based on money and consumption that it advocates, homogenizes the populations. Having converted the
basic needs of health, education, water, electricity and communications into articles of consumption, it
satisfies these needs in exchange for money. This same global power goes about adapting local
governments in order to facilitate its actions over the needs of the local residents.
However, this negative trend has distorted and hidden another process that is truly important — a deeplyfelt human aspiration for the meeting between cultures and for peace, around a shared destiny, that can
overcome violence, injustice, pain and suffering. The impetus toward humanity’s unification, toward the
establishing of interconnections and communication as humanity marches toward a new planetary
civilization, is a living image inside us all. We are not here to be a semi-robotic, semi-enslaved labor
force for satisfying the ambitions of a central, standardizing power, but to elevate the human condition, to
nurture diversity and experience the fertile contact with those who are different from us, but who are also
our peers, our brothers and sisters, our equals.
For a materialistic culture to use an evolutionary, historical tendency for its own spurious ends is merely
one harmful instant in a marvelous social process. Further on we will be able to recognize that it helped
develop the technological paths so that the peoples could communicate with each other; and that it also
established unbearable social conditions that compelled great human collectivities to migrate and displace
themselves from one place to another on the planet, and, in that process, they began to erase the national
borders. Even in spite of their dramas, these migrations enabled the meeting of peoples from all places, of
all races, all nations, all languages to happen. Thus, in decades to come, we will say that the human being
opened up a path and was liberated, as it had done many times before. But this time, the human being was
liberated from a global power that threatened to enslave it.
Globalization is a model that is imposed on Nation States from a center of power. But National States, in
turn, impose the same homogenizing model on their provinces and municipalities. The municipalities
seek to homogenize the social organizations, and these attempt, in turn, to act likewise over their people.
It is not a matter of just one type of government or one economic form — more than this, it is a mentality,
a mode of relationship that negates that which is different from it. Today, we cannot even say that the
center of globalization is found only in the United States. The hallmark of this process is also to be found
in Europe, Russia, China and India, which compete among themselves for world hegemony, configuring a
polycentric system of international relations. And it will be good if, while this is happening, we succeed
108
in raising up a new project that will channel the reactions of this divergence and enable it to find its own
convergence.
To affirm diversity beyond its poetic content is the possibility of elaborating the new. This cannot be left
as pure rhetoric; it must be founded on the conviction that only in this way can societies get out of
stagnation. And the only way to affirm diversity is through concrete policies that empower its expression.
The struggle for democracy makes sense if it is a democracy that incorporates diversity; the
“democracies” of globalization are in reality dictatorships in democratic clothing, in which freedoms are
restricted through economic control, achieved by assigning a disproportionate value to money or capital.
To affirm diversity is to open up the spaces of decision making to those who, at this time, are kept out of
those spaces. It is to open up these spaces to ethnic groups, women and youth, so that from them,
answers may arise to the questions of this historic moment. If the globalizing paradigm bears the mark of
machismo, the future lies in the women who will increasingly become a factor of transformation. If it
denies ethnicities, they will be the cultural phenomenon to open up the future. If it represses or puts the
new generations to sleep, in the reactivation of youth participation, the answers to the crossroads facing
Humanity will be found. However, we are not talking about charity here. It is not a question of men
“giving” power to women, or of the old “giving” power to the youth. The other party must make its own
contribution, must fight its corner.
Even though the ideology of globalization may tell us the opposite, its intent to crush diversity in order to
keep controlling society is a stupid policy because it produces violent reactions in communities — whose
orientation is to defend their identities however they can — accentuating disintegration, violence and
chaos in the process. To deepen real democracy, to open up to a diversity of economic models, to
guarantee each and every human being’s education, health and pension, independently of their condition
of origin, is not just social justice but the best way for the diverse to manifest itself.
The Convergence of Diversity
It happens, though, that as globalization marches on and continues to concentrate power and wealth, the
disarticulation of the social base increases, as it breaks down into ever smaller fragments. Just as the
affirmation of diversity dynamizes societies and leads to a rebirth of human creativity in order to resolve
the needs imposed by the historical moment, if this diversity does not find the way to converge and
complement, a progressive atomization will instead lead the process to a situation of irreversible,
109
generalized chaos. Attempts may be made to put a stop to this chaos by employing brute force, but it will
merely increase the speed of disorder.
The force of diversity lies in its possibilities for converging; otherwise, it will remain an incomplete
formula. But how can that which only affirms itself, converge? The answer is simpler than it would seem
— through necessity. Europe has done it after two horrendous wars and centuries of differences, because
it lost almost everything and the failure of segregation and disunion became self-evident. While global
homogenization spells certain death for the entire system, diversity multiplied ad infinitum is not
constructive either. But the destructive pressure exercised today by the environment, as a result of the
situation of growing violence and dehumanization that we have described, may not be sufficient stimulus
to awaken the need for convergence — called, in Latin America’s case, “regional integration.” For the
moment, it is still nothing more than a shared aspiration that is beginning to be sketched out in different
circles and allure for the multitudes; it is a sentiment and an intuition that have yet to become formulated
as an ideology or a platform.
If in this storm that we are in the midst of, there are no longer any answers to be found in the realm of the
familiar or in what is native to us, then perhaps we will grow willing to listen to the gentle whisperings of
“something new” that can lead humanity to safe harbor. While the United States, in its pathetic role as
caricature of the superhero, continues to drag the world toward culture clash, the dictatorship of capital,
the nuclear threat and the avalanche of terrorism, perhaps Latin America will be the place on the planet
where we will see the birth of an alternative to globalization. In this convulsed scenario, where other
regions such as Europe, China, India, Russia have adapted and today compete for world hegemony, Latin
America and, of course, Africa seem to be gaining awareness of their cultural wealth, of the value of their
people and nations, their natural and energy resources, and of the need to unify in order to make a leap in
their histories by building regional integration.
While globalization’s hegemonic intent has also searched for ways to put down roots in our continent and
holds a leading position through the Free Trade Agreements and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, its
regional pseudo-integration based on economic criteria is running into problems and has begun to clash
with the cultural expressions of a diversity that wishes to expand and is responding to its overtures by
ignoring them. The new regional project affirms the individual, but not individualism; it affirms the
national, but not nationalism; it affirms the cultural roots of the peoples, but not the violence rooted in
them; it affirms women, but also men; it affirms the youth, but it values their elders.
110
In Latin America, we are glimpsing a possibility; a space exists for raising up a Latin American project
that will propose something truly new and that will serve to lay down a foundation for the new planetary
civilization. The winds of the Andes, the heat of the Amazon and the breezes of the Oceans are meeting
and dissolving the differences, disputes and pettiness. Latin America is a landscape made from many
landscapes, a look made from many looks that at times fuse and at others separate. Here we find those
who come from inside, and those who come from outside — the indigenous ethnicities, the European,
Asian and African migrations. It is the place of “all bloods,” of multiple looks that must begin to
recognize — and find — one another. Each Latin American is a face made from many faces.
The Nation is often confused with the State, when in fact they are very different realities. A Nation is a
cultural phenomenon characterized by the confluence of intentions and looks by a group of persons,
without causing them to lose their identity and uniqueness. The State, on the other hand, is a particular
form of self government practiced by some societies. The Nation is a project launched to the future, a
response given by a human whole to overcome necessity, pain and suffering. The project of Nation can
arise in a moment of history, it can develop and attain plenitude or it can stagnate and even disappear in
its intent. Its future viability will depend on whether or not it finds the unifying element that will give
cohesion to the infinite individual aims — the "magnet" that will make everything flow in the same
direction.
If Latin America has succeeded in affirming her cultural richness, she has yet to find the shared spirit that
will give her unity. Where must we seek the identity of integration, that sentiment that makes us
recognize ourselves as one? Sometimes we seek it in the past, and there we only find the shards of a
fragmented memory. Sometimes we look for it in the present, based on the pragmatism of immediate
convenience, and all we find here is the fragmentation of particular interests. Perhaps we should look in
the future, in what, up to now, has never been attempted, but is there, looming ahead, waiting for us to be
in a position to see it. Integration will not come like a mandate from any higher power, whether internal
or external; it will answer to the will of our continent’s peoples and communities. Therefore, let us give
this human nation the maximum power of decision, that it may find its path.
This is why an integration sustained over a social base that possesses effective liberty cannot be achieved
as long as the United States is operating in the region. Any superior power, be it extra- or intra-regional,
that attempts to keep deciding the direction that communities must move in, for reasons external to
themselves, will only succeed in accentuating the dispersion. On the other hand, if we hand over the
maximum freedom to the peoples for them to choose their own future, this new form of coexistence will
111
search for convergence like a river seeking its course, and Latin American integration will be a
contribution to the process that is leading us to the Universal Human Nation.
112
Finally, a Very Short Story
The Pyrocrats
Alter countless frustrated attempts, human beings finally discovered the secret of fire. The news exploded
in a certain location and spread everywhere like a plague. The different groups then entered into a frenzy
of activity and everyday a new application was found for this original and powerful friend. Storytellers
infused enthusiasm into their listeners by announcing the advent of an era of wellbeing for all, and the
anguish of the struggle for survival seemed to have been left behind like a bitter memory.
Everything was going well until the pyrocrats appeared. Nobody knew for sure where they came from.
The only thing certain was that, as soon as they arrived, they began getting in touch with the chiefs,
whom they rapidly beguiled with flowery, obscure language, until they became recognized as “experts in
fire management.” From then on, everything started to get complicated.
Their first measure was to ration access to the shared patrimony, arguing that only they had the
necessary technical knowledge to take care of it and maintain it. They then issued bonds for sale to those
who wanted to receive the benefits they offered. From then on, these papers became such highly-prized
objects that people were ready to do anything to obtain them. At this point, human brotherhood — that
had taken so much effort to establish — disappeared, and social relations were once again ruled by the
old mandate of nature, the law of the fittest. It happened suddenly that everyone began to forget that the
mastery of fire had been a collective achievement, and people began to believe that the pyrocrats were
the fabulous tool’s legitimate masters. This unfortunate circumstance allowed a new caste to wield almost
absolute power, that they could use in a thousand ways for their own ends.
But one fine day, thanks to the insistence of a few persons, the spell was broken and the people recovered
their memory. The pyrocrats’ vile maneuverings were exposed and they were forced to negotiate to be
allowed to remain in the communities, this time under much less privileged conditions. They had to resign
themselves to working as hard as everyone else.
And so, humans regained control of this beneficial instrument, and fire favored all people once more. The
storytellers again sang to its prodigious magic, and a new collective order replaced the pyrocratic chaos
of before. However, through this cruel experience, the people also finally understood an old and wise
teaching: that all human works are the fruit of cooperation, and not of disputes.
113
Epilogue Regarding A New Spirituality
We have reached our journey’s end. The autumnal twilight sky, tinged red by the setting sun, hovers
above the city like an immense scarlet canopy, somehow symbolizing the all-consuming global
conflagration that is humanity confronted by the Money Lords. Meanwhile, both social and personal life
are breaking down into increasingly smaller fragments, as if we were being observed through a giant
kaleidoscope. Existential emptiness has submerged the populations in an addled lethargy, interrupted
from time to time by agonizing cathartic convulsions. It is a sad time for human beings, because the
world we have built has exploded into an unrecognizable thing for its creator, while our nostalgia for the
unity we have lost becomes ever more powerful, the more hopeless our living situation seems.
Many cultures have told myths about gods whose bodies were torn apart because of rancor, and the pieces
spread out across the world, to finally be put back together thanks to the power of love, that sword of fire
that is capable of piercing through all limits and reaching down to the most carefully-guarded secrets.
What meanings hide behind these strange allegories and what do they have to do with our era? Today
everything has drifted toward radical antagonism. Cultures clash with each other, capital clashes with
labor, death is opposed to life, concentrated wealth takes over the planet and sets itself against the
wellbeing of great collectivities.
This is how things are. However, the way out of this universal
opposition cannot be found in the hypocritical discourse of the powerful, or in that of their cohorts, or by
deepening today's analytical vision, which only accentuates the widespread decomposition. Even less can
it be found through the horrible triumph of one faction over another. We could say, to quote a cynical
military maxim, that if one cannot win, then one must parley; but the understandable hatred of those who
have suffered offense, whipped up by the general situation of absurdity, will block all possible dialogue.
Despite the huge advances we all know today, no physical force has shown itself to be capable of
reestablishing the essential union of all that exists. It is a matter, no doubt, of an experience of another
kind, identified by an anonymous philosopher as the moment of “revelation of Being” — alétheia for the
Greeks, and “God” for many others. Whatever one may wish to call it, it is a powerful intuition that has
erupted in different eras, each time the human being had to undertake a path that was different from any
he had followed until then. The new spirituality that is appearing simultaneously all over the planet
speaks to us of these quests, which try to pose the fundamental question of: what is the meaning of human
life in general, and of my own life? If science has been able to describe the "how" with overwhelming
efficiency and philosophy has tried to answer the “why,” only inner revelation can open the doors to us of
114
“what for" — which is the dimension that underlies every other question. Nevertheless, when we speak of
life and its meaning, reality and the mystery of death also challenge us, though we cannot say much about
them, since we believe each person is in condition to find their own certainties in this respect.
To flourish, the human mind needs the truth, just as the body needs air to live. However, this desire for set
certainties that has always driven us to tireless action has culminated, by a strange paradox, in an era
where lies, manipulation and deceit have been imposed as the main relationship codes. Something has
gone very wrong here —we must recognize it—and the malicious use that has finally been made of such
powerful tools as today’s communications media is more than enough evidence of this, as they take
official lying to never-before-imagined depths. The moment has thus arrived for us to turn inward and
seek the light in our own hearts; because historical experience indicates that “real truth” cannot be
reached through the purely mechanical accumulation of knowledge of the external world, as rationalism
has taught us, but through instantaneous, direct comprehension (unmediated by anyone); the fruit of a
profound inner experience of illumination. As the mystics of all ages know very well, it is a truth given in
revelation. The interpretations and myths follow later on, elaborated and re-elaborated time and again on
the basis of the original experience, and, as always happens, tending to multiply with the passing of time.
But what is important continues to be the certain possibility of gaining access to the sacred places in one's
own interiority, where the eternal meanings are kept, in mythical spaces where humans and gods coexist
in perfect harmony.
After many painful failures, it is our impression that human beings are once again ready to open up to
living that fundamental experience, one they had moved away from for causes too complex to analyze,
and that go beyond the intentions of this writing (as well as this writer’s abilities). The point under
consideration now, is how to obtain the means to access an experience that has survived since time
immemorial as just a vague and confused memory. To whom can we turn? Whom can we trust? Above
all, one must look to those who seek nothing for themselves and make no attempt to impose any dogmas;
benevolent guides who limit themselves to showing us a path we can freely travel, if it is our deepest
wish. If the times demand it, then these guides already exist somewhere. To become aware of their
existence, it will suffice to learn to see, following the mandate of a sincere inner need that will orient
one’s search. At the same time, however, if we wish to keep from making mistakes, we should also point
out those we must avoid: anyone who uses (or defends) violence as a means, no matter how elevated their
declared objectives may appear to be.
115
When this human need for meaning turns into a clamor — in other words, into a collective demand —
there will be no chains capable of stopping or controlling the peoples’ intention to move in that direction.
The shared image that will arise will pack such colossal energy that it will be capable even of modifying
the entire system’s direction. We may be accused of delirium, but we dare say that the eruption of this
experience can imply a complete transformation of social coexistence. We say this because the
experience will lead to the final comprehension that each human life is sacred, part of a unique weave in
which no one is dispensable, in whose weft all of us are necessary, and that all of us need each and
everyone else as well. Let us say then that the verification of the profound unity of the diverse can only be
obtained this way. And so, the abandoning of violence as a form of relationship between individuals and
peoples shall be, above all, a visible manifestation of the profound contact with the sacred that we will
very soon access. The overcoming of all forms of violence will mean, finally, that the root of how we
experience the human, in ourselves and in others, has changed.
New Humanism has never conceived interiority and exteriority as separate universes, basically because
this separation does not exist, and because to establish such drastic limits is a methodological error proper
to previous historical moments. Our proposals make evident the existence of an inner world in ceaseless
interaction with the outer world, forming an indivisible structure of worlds reciprocally influencing and
transforming each other. All of our discussions with the fallacy of the current immobilism start from this
conception. By virtue of it, we have an immovable faith that we will be capable of breaking out of the
straitjacket that paralyzes us, and that, in the light of this new revelation, we will know how to resolve —
or dissolve — our differences. In the end, hatred and rage — the midwives of violence — are human
emotions; and like all that is human, they can be transformed and reoriented towards a useful objective.
This would be something infinitely easier to achieve if those who control the world today would step
aside, so that their habitual clumsiness will not cause the situation to worsen even more.
And when they finally do so, human beings, in full possession of all their faculties, will be able to project
themselves toward the future and materialize their yearning for a Human Nation. The same incurable
adventurers who has run all risks; who so many times sowed horror and so many others rose to the
heights of the sublime; who make efforts to leave prehistory behind and enter into a warmly human
history; who often forget who they are, but later remember again; who struggle, day by day, to win their
freedom.
Santiago, Chile
116
August 2006 - April 2007
117