Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to demonstrate the necessity and the possibility of building another world diametrically opposed to the current one that faces in the contemporary era with economic, social, environmental and international relations crises that makes it possible to avoid the occurrence of harmful consequences for the whole humanity. With each passing day, these crises escalate and deepen, whether at national or global levels. The world is going through a troubled period in the contemporary era when everything is swept away by the speed of chaotic changes in the economic, political, social, technological, environmental and international relations fields. While on the one hand there is optimism about the prospect of advancing scientific and technological progress, there is also great pessimism about the loss of past references and the meaninglessness of life. Although in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the progress of European civilization aroused enthusiasm, this dream dissipated from the twentieth century, which was a time devastated by wars of unprecedented scale, dictatorship, population explosion, vast areas of extreme poverty, among other problems, which contributed to be placed in check the idea of progress.
In the twentieth century, utopias such as the building of a better world, of a classless society with the demise of the Soviet Union and the socialist system of eastern Europe, and in its place emerged dystopias like those of Aldous Huxley with his work “Admirable new world” and George Orwell with his “1984” work that envisioned a dark future for humanity. At the beginning of the twentieth century, sociologist Oswald Spengler with his work “The Decline of the West”said that the West had long since reached its heyday, and therefore all that was left was the decline. This pessimistic climate was not limited to the first half of the twentieth century extending also to the period after the Second World War. Although in this period there were moments of great optimism as during the “glorious years” of the 1950s and 1960s of the expansion of the world capitalist economy that soon tended to dissipate amid the gloomy 1970s and 1980s of the decline of the world capitalist system that will continue its deterioration until it end in the middle of the 21st century when the world profit rate and the world economy growth rate will reach zero, which we predict in our book “Como inventor o future para mudar o mundo” (How to invent the future to change the world” ) (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
Capitalism was born in the twelfth century and came of age by conducting four major industrial revolutions from 1760 in England with the First Industrial Revolution when science and technology gained a fundamental importance for human progress through continuous technological innovations. The prevailing idea at the time was to use the accumulation of knowledge generated in pursuit of human emancipation and of the enrichment of daily life. Capitalism also contributed to the realization of the 2nd Industrial Revolution that began in the second half of the nineteenth century resulting from socioeconomic transformations begun around 1870 with the industrialization of France, Germany, Italy, the United States and Japan, characterized especially by the development of new energy sources (electricity and oil), the replacement of iron by steel and the emergence of new machines, tools and chemicals (such as plastic). From 1909, when Henry Ford created the assembly line in the auto industry, inaugurating production in series and in mass production, and the late twentieth century, almost all industries became mechanized and automation extended to all manufacturing sectors. The 3rd Industrial Revolution from the second half of the twentieth century was characterized by the development of the chemical and electronic industries, the advances of automation, informatics and genetic engineering. We are now experiencing the 4th Industrial Revolution with the advent of Industry 4.0, which is based on some common technologies of our day-to-day that are being leveraged for application in manufacturing, enabling the emergence of intelligent factories that operate using artificial intelligence.
The evolution of capitalism has been marked by extraordinary economic, social, scientific and technological progress and also by events that have negatively marked today’s society. The main one was undoubtedly the catastrophes of World War I and II which resulted in a bloodbath with the deaths of some 200 million soldiers on the battlefield and of civilian populations. Indeed, science and technology contributed to the barbarism of two world wars by the invention of powerful and destructive weaponry. Science and technology are now being used on an unprecedented scale for both good and evil. Add the fact that science has lost its value as a result of its disillusionment with the benefits that technology has brought to humanity. All of this scientific and technological development must culminate in the mid-21st century with global catastrophic climate change with harmful consequences for humanity that could threaten their very survival.
After World War II, capitalism adopted the Keynesian model of economic management throughout the world capitalist system in an attempt to order the economy in each country and in the world sphere and to avoid the occurrence of economic depressions such as occurred in 1873 and 1929. Keynesianism, which contemplated active state participation in the running of national economies, contributed to world economic development with the boom of capitalism of the “glorious years” of the 1950s and 1960s. The failure of Keynesianism as an economic policy capable of leveraging the development of the central and peripheral capitalist countries took place from the 1970s onwards because of the oil crises that drastically raised their prices and the peripheral countries’ debt with the sharp rise in bank interest rates. The failure of Keynesianism added to the crisis that led to the end of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist system in the late 1980s that paved the way for the change in the modus operandi of the world capitalist system with the implementation of productive, commercial and financial globalization on a planetary scale when was introduced the neoliberal ideology that advocates the internationalization of capital in all its forms (productive, commercial and financial) and the adoption of policies of deregulation, liberalization and opening of the central and peripheral countries of world capitalism.
This shift from Keynesianism to neoliberalism comes to fruition with the arrival of Margareth Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Helmut Kohl, respectively, in the governments of England, the United States, and West Germany. Liberal and conservative forces in England in 1979 with Margareth Thatcher in the United States in 1980 with Ronald Reagan, and in Germany in 1982 with Helmut Kohl adopted neoliberal policies aimed at deregulation, privatization and trade liberalization in their economies, which were incorporated by multilateral organizations, primarily the IMF and IBRD, and implemented in countries that used these institutions, especially peripheral countries. The option offered by the world capitalist system politically to the peoples of the world was limited to the following alternatives: 1) capitulation / resignation / conformism to the historic victory of neoliberal globalized capitalism; or, 2) to challenge the current order, but not from a totalizing, global perspective that would lead to the replacement of capitalism, but from a fragmented perspective of struggles. The practical posture of globalized neoliberal capitalism is to prevent the contestation of capitalist logic as it really is. Deliberately, the ideologues of world neoliberal capitalism defend the thesis that it is impossible to contest a victorious system (capitalism) and that it is here to stay definitively, that is, globalized neoliberal capitalism.
The speech of the ideologues of world neoliberal capitalism is characterized by the attempt to conceal the conflict between social classes, to conceal class domination and to hide the presence and domination of the great powers over the peripheral countries of capitalism, giving it the appearance of universal. Ideology is, in short, a form of production of the social imaginary that corresponds to the aspirations of the ruling classes and ruling countries as the most effective means of social control and of easing class conflicts and international spoliation, either by reversing the notion of cause and effect, or by silencing about questions what for that very reason they prevent citizens fof the countries from becoming aware of their historical condition by forming false ideas about themselves, what they are or should be. In this sense, the ideology of neoliberalism and globalization contemplates the policy of the dismantling of the state – as an economic agency, public service and social protection -, deregulation of the market and removal of protectionist barriers, precarious labor relations and the employment and containment of trade union and popular struggles.
One can understand the implicit or explicit function of ideology in the attempt of the social classes to make the particular point of view of the ruling classes and of the great capitalist powers that exercise political domination make it appear to all social and political subjects as universal, and not as a particular interest of a particular class or country. In this sense, ideology has functions such as preserving class domination within each country and imperialist in international relations by providing a soothing explanation for the social differences within each country and the differences between central and peripheral capitalist countries at the International level. Its goal is to avoid open conflict between dominators and dominated. Despite the globally imposed neoliberal dictatorship, the current crisis of neoliberalism manifested in the 2008 world crisis and the economic devastation that has occurred since 1990 around the world are helping to prevent neoliberal ideology from imposing itself..
The facts of history demonstrate that liberalism, socialism, and neoliberalism have failed to construct the collective happiness of nations and peoples around the world. In order to build the collective happiness of nations and peoples around the world and end the barbarism that characterizes the world we live in, it is urgent to build a new model of society that enables civilized living among all human beings. This need is imposed in the 21st century in the face of the foreseeable end of capitalism in the middle of this century, the environmental degradation of planet Earth resulting from the depletion of natural resources and global climate change and the escalation of international conflicts that could lead to the war of everybody against everybody nationally and internationally [ALCOFORADO, Fernando. Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (How to invent the future to change the world). Curitiba: Editora CRV, 2019]. Considering the foreseeable end of capitalism in the mid-21st century, it is urgent to replace capitalism with the Nordic or Scandinavian model of social democracy, practiced in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, which could best be described as a kind of middle ground between capitalism and socialism. It is neither fully capitalist nor fully socialist, being the attempt to merge the most desirable elements of both into a “hybrid” system.
In 2013, The Economist magazine declared that the Nordic countries are probably the best governed in the world. The UN World Happiness Report 2013 shows that the happiest nations in the world are concentrated in northern Europe. The Nordics have the highest real GDP per capita rating, the longest life expectancy, the greatest freedom to make life choices, and the most generosity. Despite their differences, the Scandinavian countries share some common features: a Universalist welfare state that is aimed at improving individual autonomy, promoting social mobility and ensuring the universal provision of basic human rights and economic stabilization. It is also distinguished by its emphasis on labor force participation, promoting gender equality, reducing social inequality, extensive levels of benefit to the population and the great magnitude of wealth redistribution..
In addition to establishing Scandinavian social democracy in every country in the world, it is urgent to establish a world government that would aim not only at world economic order and world peace, but above all to create the conditions to meet the great challenges of humanity. in the 21st Century which consist of: 1) Chain economic and financial crises; 2) Social revolutions and counterrevolutions across the globe; 3) Cascade Wars; 4) World overpopulation; 5) Deadly Pandemic; 6) Extreme climate change; 7) organized crime; and, 8) Threats from space whose global actions to counteract them are impossible to be carried forward by individual national states and current international institutions. It is imperative for humanity to move towards complete economic and political integration between countries. Global economic integration inevitably requires world political integration. From the primitive village, humanity is already constituting a “global village”. For this global village to succeed, there needs to be a world government to exist also a globalized right.
The time has come for humanity to equip itself as urgently as possible with the tools necessary to control its destiny and to put in place a democratic government of the world. This is the only means of survival of the human species. Because there is no other way to build a world in which every human being today and tomorrow has the same rights and duties, and in which the interests of the planet, all life forms and future generations are in which nature is used in an ecologically and socially durable manner. A world government would aim to defend world peace and the general interests of the planet, ensure that each national state respects the sovereignty of each country in the world, and seeks to prevent the spread of world systemic risks. Another world is therefore, besides being necessary, it is also possible.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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