THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY IN QUESTION

Fernando Alcoforado*

I was honored with the invitation of the American intellectual scholar, Charles Moscowitz, to be interviewed on his YouTube channel about the issue of the progress of humanity. Charles Moscowitz conducts interviews on his YouTube channel with authors and academics who subscribe to Academia.edu as is my case. Moscowitz has forged a reputation for decades as the host of a radio show that interviewed thinkers from across the political spectrum, including left-wing personalities like Noam Chomsky, the late Howard Zinn, Gloria Steinum, and a long and distinguished list of academics and authors liberals and conservatives. Moscowitz prefers to have in-depth and respectful discussions and debates based on ideas and opinions that are sometimes opposed to yours. Moscowitz is the author of several books like the ones described below:

• On the Jewish Question – Karl Marx, anti-Semitism and the War against the West
• The Art and Science of American Money: How our Money is created and why it matters
• The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin Al-Husseini
• Assassination in America: 31 Cases of Murders, Plots, Shots, Conspiracies
• Islamo-Communism: The Communist Connection to Islamic Terrorism
• Was Hitler a Leftist ?: The Nazi missing link
• Apostles of Evolution: The Practical Result of the Evolutionary Faith
• The Socialist Bible: An analysis of The Communist Manifesto
• Communism is not dead: The Communist Conspiracy in the 21st Century
• The counter-Fabians: Republicans in the Age of Obama
• The Revolutionary Mind: and the counter-Revolution

I was interviewed by Charles Moscowitz on the question of the progress of humanity on his YouTube channel whose content is as follows:

Our objective in this interview was to demonstrate that the current progress of humanity is deplorable because it is at the service of market capitalism and not the interests of all humanity. Current progress is deplorable because it not only provides benefits, but also harms humanity. Despite all the progress achieved, humanity also deals with social exclusion, the concentration of wealth, underdevelopment and serious environmental damage, aggression and the restriction of basic human rights, in addition to driving the economic system into bankruptcy and endless wars.

I recognize the countless benefits that current progress has brought to humanity as the rapid economic growth achieved in several countries, especially since the 1st Industrial Revolution in 1860 in England to the present day, but it has created a very unstable world because there is also the vertiginous growth of social inequalities around the world, the depletion of the planet’s natural resources, the climate change that tends to be catastrophic for all humanity, as well as the increase in international conflicts.

Humanity’s current progress has been leveraged mainly since the 1st Industrial Revolution thanks to the support of science and technology that has enabled human beings to have an easier, cleaner and longer life. This caused humanity to become increasingly dependent on science and technology in the contemporary era. Science and technology started to be considered as levers of humanity’s progress. Science and technology has become synonymous with progress.

However, the philosophers Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer claim in their book Dialectics of Enlightenment that the supremacy of science and technology paved the way for the devastation carried out for the benefit of market capitalism that, through them, transformed the human being into gears of its profit-producing machine, canceling him out. The capitalist economy, science and technology, now united as a single instance, consolidates its supremacy over contemporary society, determining its course with the same boldness and impersonality of an invisible hand, according to Adorno and Horkheimer.

In other words, science and technology are at the service of market capitalism and not of all humanity, in addition to collaborating with criminal actions such as the explosions of the atomic bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during the 2nd World War and the use of napalm and defoliants in the wars in Vietnam and the Cambodia, among others, which created a climate of doubt about the benefits of science and technology for all humanity.

The development of science and technology is now seen more as a threat to the progress of humanity because, merged with market capitalism, it multiplies social pathologies and causes the degradation of nature, in addition to contributing to its use for war and destruction as evidenced by the countless international conflicts, especially the 1st and 2nd World War.

How can we transform current deplorable progress into new progress in which science and technology could be used for the benefit of all humanity? I consider it necessary to build progress on three new bases: 1) economic and social progress in each country to eliminate or reduce social inequalities; 2) progress in international relations to eliminate chaos in the world economy, guarantee world peace and order the planet’s environment; 3) environmental progress in each country and globally based on sustainable development.

The economic and social progress of each country to eliminate or reduce social inequalities, can be achieved with the adoption of the model of social democracy implemented in Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland) which are considered by the UN to be the countries of greatest economic and social progress worldwide whose people are the happiest on the planet according to the UN World Happiness Report. The Scandinavian model of social democracy can be described as a middle ground between capitalism and socialism. It is not entirely capitalist, nor is it totally socialist, but the attempt of being to merge the most desirable elements of both systems into a hybrid system.

Many may ask why not to implant socialism in the Soviet mold with the nationalization of the means of production? The end of socialism in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe, the failure of economic development in Cuba and North Korea and the abandonment by China of socialism based on the Soviet model, with the adoption of a hybrid economy of state capitalism, demonstrate the infeasibility of the Soviet socialist model. In order to evolve towards a communist society defended by Marx, it is necessary to go through an intermediate stage of the mixed economy of social democracy in Scandinavian molds. The communism advocated by Marx can only be built when human society in each country and in the world reaches economic, social and political integration.

The progress in international relations to eliminate chaos in the world economy, guarantee world peace and order the planet’s environment can be achieved with the constitution of a democratic world government that would be elected by the world parliament to be constituted with the participation of the countries of Worldwide. World government is necessary because the world economy operates chaotically without any planning and control, international relations do not have a global body capable of mediating conflicts, preventing wars and ensuring world peace and the planet’s environment is threatened by depletion of natural resources and climate change that can be catastrophic for humanity. Current international organizations such as the UN, IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, among others, do not have the power to achieve progress in international relations on the planet.

Throughout history, humanity has evolved from the village to form city-states, from city-states to constitute nation-states. Humanity will reach its highest stage of development when there is real economic, political and social integration at the planetary level. In order for this integration to happen, there must be a global democratic government and a world parliament that act based on a planetary social contract approved by all the peoples of the world.

Environmental progress in each country and globally based on sustainable development is absolutely necessary because the current development model is responsible for the depletion of the planet’s natural resources and for global warming with catastrophic consequences related to global climate change. Environmental progress in each country and globally based on sustainable development, which must ensure that the needs of current generations occur without compromising the needs of future generations, can be achieved with the existence of a world democratic government and the celebration of a Planetarium Social Contract that would establish the bases of relations between countries in terms of the economy, international relations and the environment.

It seems, therefore, that profound political, economic and social changes are necessary in each country of the world, in the international system and in the planet’s environmental system, so that progress on new bases is built in the world. My proposal can be considered utopian in the face of the difficulties of its realization, represented by the interests of economically and militarily powerful countries and even subordinate countries in the international system that do not renounce their sovereignty and multinational corporations that would not like to be subordinated to international economic regulation and environmental requirements.

However, there is no other way for humanity to achieve economic and social progress that could be shared by all human beings, environmental sustainability that avoids the degradation of the planet’s environment and that world peace could be achieved. Without this path, humanity will be driven to economic and social catastrophe, environmental disaster and the barbarism of wars that can lead to the end of the human species.

The economic and social changes that I have just proposed in each country will inevitably happen because the world capitalist system will end in the middle of the 21st century, when the global profit rate and the growth rate of the World Gross Product will be zero. The world capitalist system will come to an end in the middle of the 21st century because there is a downward trend in the world profit rate from 1869 to 2007, in the US corporations profit rate from 1947 to 2007 and in the growth rate of the World Gross Product From 1961 to 2007. To determine when these rates will reach zero in the future, maintaining the downward trend, performing the calculation using the least squares method of Statistics, I concluded that they will occur between 2057 and 2059.

Until the end of the capitalist system in the mid-21st century, the holders of political and economic power will try to prevent its fall by increasing levels of political repression on a global level with the worsening of political and social tensions around the world. Social revolutions and counter-revolutions will dominate the world level. To avoid this scenario, governments around the world should structure solutions that contemplate the managed and rational transition from capitalism to a new political, economic and social order worldwide.

It is important to note that in an environment of chaos, totalitarian solutions can arise, as opposed to a managed change that can lead to democratic solutions. In the middle of the 21st century, economic and environmental crises will feed each other, causing the masses of all countries in the world to seek to carry out the social revolution to change the world in which we live. It is important to note that in an environment of chaos, revolutionary solutions can be born to try to change the world for the better, but totalitarian solutions can also be born to maintain the status quo.

The changes in the international system and the environmental system of the planet that will require the formation of a world government will have to occur until the middle of the 21st century to order the chaos that will be established with the failure of the capitalist system and to deal with the environmental problems resulting from the changes that will assume catastrophic characteristics. It would be important for the changes I propose to happen in a progressive and managed manner until the middle of the 21st century, so as not to have to deal with the chaos that will be established at this time.

To watch the video of our interview with Charles Moscowitz, access the website (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTcQFBvPcXk).

* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, 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).