[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This longer Reader is about ways of breaking out from the current stifling grip of neoliberalism, neocolonialism, war and the voice of the markets in favor of the voice of the streets using the HR framework. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—We are at a bleak moment in human history –and we will either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forbearers-built slip away. (Bill McKibben)
1. Historically, we have not been able to get across the idea that the systems we live under are themselves responsible for the chaos, destruction and violations we live under. We have got to break out of that, and stop elevating the economy, our politics and our legal systems, as if they come before anything else. Despair in the face of this situation is a luxury we cannot afford. (David Suzuki)
Capitalism has been and is responsible for the accentuation of underdevelopment hence the impossibility of ‘catch-up’ development (W.F. van Woerden, Remco van de Pas and J. Curtain)
2. Development needs to be premised on equitably meeting human needs and rights within planetary boundaries, not forgetting to acknowledge the role of the informal economy. Critically, countries in the global South need to be able to mobilize production capacity around meeting human and planetary objectives rather than serving consumption and accumulation in the global North. Key measures are required to address this extractivist arrangement and liberate labor and resources in the service of local and national objectives.
3. Today, over 50 years after the launch of the Limits to Growth report of the Club of Rome and the call for a New International Economic Order (NIEO), the project of decolonization remains incomplete and ecological time is not on our side. Growth-defending political and corporate interests* continue to manifest themselves as deeply entrenched within the global governance landscape. Indeed, no post-growth advocate would argue that challenging these power structures, addressing the commercial determinants of, for instance health, and advancing a post-growth agenda will come easily.
*: Some TNCs have a surprising faculty for believing in the sanctity of their intentions. (adapted from Ernest Hamel, French historian, 1826-1898) They have thus been portrayed as ‘astutely diabolical’ (Fred Spielberg) or even branded as corporate velociraptors. (L. Casado)
4. The problem is not that we do not have the imagination or the policy proposals to secure a dignified life for all humans and non-humans with respect for the integrity of our biosphere. Human rights (HR) activists must pressure decision-makers harder to reverse the neo-colonial trajectory of deteriorating planetary health at the mercy of growth, and usher-in post-growth policies for an economy centered on care. (W.F. van Woerden et al)
Is neoliberalism the unsurmountable fate of humanity? (L. Casado)
5. We live in the most dangerous and aggressive historical period of hyper-neoliberal Capitalism. In the Global South, this is an era of the dismantling of HR. There is an explosive convergence of new technologies: ‘big data’ operations and artificial intelligence have unfortunately become tools of profit without regulation and precaution, constituting a powerful industrial arsenal for increasing the vertiginous extraction rate. This is often paired with social regulation by an algorithmic governance that perpetuates consumer behaviors and forces political and cultural affinities, as well as a racist distribution of information and services. This brutal process has led to the elimination of policies focused on the common good and has destroyed the last vestiges of a fair social contract.
6. In the context of twenty-first-century extractivism, we simply must offer a perspective based on ethics and HR, on productive structures that satisfy the consumption needs of majorities. The quick increase in income from capital is and has been at the expense of all HR. In the logic of infinite accumulation, the sacred code and language of narrow individual rights and of a faulty ethics of ‘development’ are invoked to justify and defend supposed progress. We thus also need to stake demands against the ‘secondary effects’ of a Capitalism that dismantles the common good. Therefore, in this context, we must create a new framework to discuss an ethics and a HR approach that is not pray of being co-opted by neoliberalism.
7. If the option is to overcome reformism and to build true reforms in the area of HR, we must subvert the substance of current hindering laws in a manner that is actionable in the current moment. It is the work that emerges from societies that already mobilize and collectively fight for their rights that we must identify as the knowledge and the work necessary to launch essential reforms in the HR realm. We need to rethink the challenges of a world affected by a justice system that is not fair, of a distorted social ethics, of the trampled right to health and to education, and of the forgotten politics of the common good. Last but not least, there is an urgent need to topple the technocratic spirit and instrumental reasoning, awaken the consciences of claim holders, as well as enlist our universities in efforts to address these challenges. Morals, ethics, and HR are in serious and accelerated dispute, and the future of our species and the Earth depends on which side wins the battle. (all the above from Jaime Breilh)
Is neocolonialism the unsurmountable fate of humanity? (John Ruehl)
8. ‘Reframing’ neocolonial policies to reinforce system-justifying narratives (often by claiming the need to maintain geopolitical stability), has been essential to sustaining the status-quo in international affairs. [Not surprisingly, the five UN Security Council members have often accused one another of imperialism and colonialism** to deflect criticism from their own self-serving interests and practices]. Yet, prolonging these relationships in former colonies or spheres of influence simply perpetuates dependency, hinders economic development, and encourages instability through generating inequality and perpetuating exploitation. (J. P. Ruehl)
**: Ongoing military domination allows colonial imperialism to further manifest itself through economic, political, and cultural control. … and honest accountability by these major powers for the historical and ongoing exploitation of weaker countries remains rare. (Accountability is defined as the recognition of the imperative to answer to others for one’s actions).
Are wars the unsurmountable fate of humanity?
—War is the only amusement of the powerful to which they invite the miserable. (adapted from Henri Jeanson) …and when the truth comes out of the mouths of the powerful, things get serious. (L. Casado)
–Or, on a more facetious note: War is God’s way of teaching (North) Americans geography, or, What is the philosophy of war? Cogito ergo boom! (adapted from Susan Sontag)
9. The planet cannot survive the business of war. Wars and their escalation –the mass destruction of human life that is almost invariably accompanied by destruction of the natural world– happen because preparations for war bring leaders, some respite on their mounting local political problems —and the defense industry the promise of juicy profits. (David Bromwich) The growth of military budgets in almost all countries is an ominous sign that the fragmentation of the world and the resulting instability will have violence and war as its main response. Peace will be the scarcest commodity after water…
Bottom line: It is urgent to break the dissonance between the voice of the markets and the voice of the streets (Lula)
–I suggest that while corporate behavior stays the same, the problems we face will remain and we will continue down the proverbial drain. (Edward Milner)
10. If we are to change the system, we must understand the forces that shape it –and they are complex, multidimensional and dynamic. These forces are so deeply embedded in the-way-things-work that they are often difficult to see and make sense-of. In other words, they are coded into the system. (CESR) …so much for that.
11. A major political struggle against those who benefit so prodigiously from the status-quo is urgently needed.Capital accumulation in the core depends on draining labor and resources from the periphery. Capitalism produces too much, yes, but also not enough of the right stuff for the majority of people. Access to essential goods and services is limited by commodification; and because capital seeks to cheapen labor at every opportunity, particularly in the periphery, the consumption of the working classes is constrained –clearly a HR violation.
12. We must, therefore, distinguish between the socially necessary production that clearly needs to increase for progress in social development, as well as in HR, and the destructive and less-necessary forms of production that urgently need to be scaled down. This is the revolutionary world-historical objective that faces our generation:
- First and foremost, we must expand and decommodify universal public services. By this I mean health care and education, yes, but also housing, public transport, energy, water, the internet, child care, recreation facilities, and nutritious food for all.
- We further must introduce a public job guarantee, help people empower themselves to participate in these vital collective projects, doing meaningful, socially necessary work with workplace democracy and living wages.
- We need binding targets to wind the fossil fuels industry down.
- We must also reduce aggregate production in other destructive industries (automobiles, airlines, mansions, industrial meat, fast fashion, advertising, weapons).
- For the Global South, this requires ending structural adjustment programs, canceling external debts, ensuring universal availability of necessary technologies, and enabling governments to use progressive industrial and fiscal policy to improve economic sovereignty and HR.
- Finally, we urgently need to cut the excess purchasing power of the rich using wealth taxes (Right now, millionaires alone are on track to burn 72 percent of the remaining carbon budget to keep the planet under 1.5°C of warming).
13. Some will say this sounds utopian. But these policies –all intimately related to HR– happen to be extremely popular. Polls and surveys show strong majority support for these ideas. But none of this will happen on its own. In the absence of effective multilateral action, the time has come for Southern governments to take unilateral or collective steps toward sovereign development and should be supported toward this end by progressive forces from the North. (all the above from Jason Hickel)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com