People in a healthy society are mindful of the human rights of all of its members.
1. In neoliberal orthodoxy, certain inalienable laws govern the give-and-take of market forces and to interfere with the self-regulation of markets is to court economic suicide. In that sense, the neoliberal outlook regards market forces as being akin to the great force fields in physics, such as magnetism or thermodynamics. In other words, like these other forces, humans must respond according to the laws of the market or face annihilation. The entire edifice of neoliberal rationality and certainty is thus based purely on the basis of financial considerations.*
*: This outlook is, for sure, not new. It just has had a number of incarnations since the early days of history; we now call it neoliberalism.
2. But to mediate in conflicts between interests and, for sure, to defuse human rights (HR) violations, it is the government that must play the dominant role…That is why we invented it! Therefore, such ideas as markets being allowed to make major social, political and HR decisions without the mediating influence of the government as a duty bearer are simply nonsense. No wonder democracy is seen as an obstacle, as a barrier by the proponents of orthodox neoberalism.**
**: The keep-government-out-of-economics argument is thus plainly a form of social Darwinism. For neoliberalism, free markets are an article of faith and, in such a naked struggle, the odds operate against community and against the upholding of HR thus undercutting healthy societies that protect the weakest of their members as a measure of their social strength and integrity.
3. Not to be forgotten, though, is the role trade unions have played historically as, over time, they have protected the HR of workers; we can thus perhaps consider them the first organized claim holders. They were also among the first to consistently confront authorities in an open way with their demands.
4. In modern times, more and more, the HR-based framework has allowed us to jump-start work that directly aims at solving the problems of discrimination and of marginalization coming from a different (or an added) set of principles and standards.
5. Neoliberalism has vigorously promoted mechanisms that remove both wealth and dignity from the bottom of the social ladder and that shift wealth to the top. It does so by fostering unrestrained competition which ultimately prods and honors inequity –inequity that ends up very fast rewarding the successful to the detriment of the beaten.*** (Makes one really be amazed how the history of civilization has been the cradle of the unequal society).
***: Neoliberalism is a philosophy for the winners, not for whining losers, we are told. Its constituency is only the top 20% of the income scale. It defines anything publicly owned, as opposed to privately owned, as inefficient. It is certainly not the expression of natural human nature. In the case of health, it undercuts physical and mental health and is ever ready to mortgage it for the financial advantage of a few.
6. At the center of neoliberalism is the ownership society, a society that has relentlessly emphasized privatization, deregulation, disregard for HR, living beyond one’s means**** and huge tax cuts for the already wealthy (i.e., the-heroes-of-wealth-creation). Moreover, the proponents of the ownership society have a messianic enthusiasm to change the attitudes of those that do not think like them. (Isabel Allende) The message is: “you are on your own –your problems are not ours!”.
****: Don’t you think the possession of a credit card, for example, for many, just defers the home-economics-judgment-day for a few months? (The same is true for the printing of more money by central banks).
7. Not to be forgotten either is the fact that in the ownership society the ever-corporate-compliant media keeps people agreeably misinformed, only partly informed and, worse, informed at length and in detail about trivial events and about life styles that require wealth. (Is it true that institutionalized disinformation is the modern means of social control…?)
8. Every now and then, somebody, in the press and elsewhere, keeps calling for ‘market transparency’. But the transparency they call-for is a myth; it promises a politics-fee solution within the confines of the system itself.
9. It is not enough to have a passion for justice and for human rights; one has to look straight in the face of reality and to become acquainted with the laws and with the wheels of politics. (I. Allende) Unfortunately, in the ownership society, few do so and, worse, the justice system finds guilty people where there are only victims (often of HR violations), and there is no punishment for the rich when guilty. (Carlos Fuentes)
10. To me, all the above shows that decency rapidly crumbles when faced with greed. If it is all about becoming richer, most proponents of the ownership society will sacrifice their souls….and certainly HR. Historically, it was nothing less than a wholesale change of long cherished social values
that rendered selfishness intellectually respectable. (As an example, you can take, for instance, the promotion of a privatization ethic in Third World countries having become an accepted fait-accompli).
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org