[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This Reader is about why the right to think and to move towards a truly structural change is denied us and what actions it demands from us so as to redistribute wealth and resources, remedy inequalities and HR violations, as well as rebalance the power of and within the reigning development paradigm. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
Those who want to return–to or stay-in power are stuck in a melancholic defense of their past achievements
1.More and more these days, those in power lack a truly new proposal for transformation capable of raising our collective hopes. It is no coincidence that right wing politicians use the prevailing paradigm as providing the ‘momentum for change’ they think is needed. This, as a result of the conservatism of current (fake) progressivism. Progressivism pretends to play a protagonist role in forging a new destiny, but it actually throws itself into a reinvented future that is unable to escape from the limits set by the prevailing paradigm –even if it claims to stand for more equity, equality and economic democracy. (Alvaro Garcia Linera)
2. The Establishment’s ideological work has inserted strong symbolic components to keep the paradigm alive. It has, for example, involved eliminating certain words and replacing them with others thus neutralizing their political or ethical connotations and naturalizing what is ‘normal’. In that line: ‘Capitalism is replaced by market economy’; ‘job insecurity’ is replaced by ‘labor flexibility’ (despite the fact that they are opposites and do not mean the same thing for the lives of workers). Moreover, using selective information has been and is intended to make people believe that the tip of the iceberg is the entire iceberg. We should also note that replacing human tragedies with statistics also contributes to the new normal. Human life is a quality, while the number of lives or deaths is a quantity. But in this case, the key is to have the power to prevent quantity from becoming a new quality. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
As simple as this: When we end up suppressing our own stories, the powers-that-be define us; when we own our stories, we get to write the ending (NY Times)
–…and the end pre-exists in the means we use. (Martin Luther King)
—Systems do not transform themselves; only people do. (Shalmali Guttal)
3. Apathy turns our work to replace the ailing paradigm into stagnation. This is why we are called to fight against the forces of conformity that keep us divided. We simply have to demand more of ourselves. Dreams have an expiration date. Indifference is a capital sin that, sooner or later, we will have to atone-for. (Isabel Allende, The Wind Knows my Name)
There are decades where nothing happens; there are weeks where decades happen (Lenin)
4. The right to think structural change is denied us by repressing the possibility of anything different to the consensus of one-way thought (la pensée unique du paradigme). Anything different to what exists (or ‘is acceptable’) is suppressed. To this, we counter by saying that anyone and everyone can think differently and must be able to speak out. This must be the starting point for a different, new conception of, in our case, the development paradigm ‘to happen’(though not necessarily in weeks…).* People must thus explicitly express their thoughts for change so as to freely arrive at new (political) truths and avenues that challenge the past. (Michael Neocosmos)
*: For example, we are told we have to sacrifice health or justice or equity in the name of ‘serving’ economic growth and the economy as a whole. But, in reality, in the new paradigm, people are the economy. For this to become true, claim holders do have the right and, therefore, must ask (and answer) the question of what the economy they live under is-for and who it currently serves. Claim holders will thus have to struggle for a narrative that counters the dominant dogmas and offers a vision of an economic system that supports a better life for the great majority of people who do not reap the rewards of neoliberalism.
The vision
5. A paradigm with a rights-based economy demands action to redistribute the resources, remedy the inequalities, as well as rebalance the power of and within the current paradigm. Such a rights-based approach will include:
- Progressive taxation that redistributes wealth and power.
- Universal, gender-responsive public services funded through government and grants, not loans.
- Gender justice as a non-negotiable pillar of the new paradigm.
- Human rights–aligned debt governance, including a UN-led mechanism for debt restructuring and cancellation.
- The protection of fiscal space, policy sovereignty, and the right to challenge illegitimate debt.
- Climate finance based on public resources and on the accumulated historical responsibilities of the major CO2 emitting countries.
- Investment in care systems and recognition of unpaid labor, and
- The full realization of sexual and reproductive rights. (CESR)
6. Note: A global consensus is no longer a requirement for meaningful progress! In the face of political gridlock, determined alliances are already demonstrating what is possible. These alliances are a vital strategy for keeping ambition alive** by gearing-up to a practical momentum and demonstrating that another path to follow is possible. (CESR)
**: We know our struggle has ambitious goals. There is no systems revolution without the effective struggle of all progressive forces from all over the world.
7. To be noted here is that it is insufficient to propose alternative pathways within the old paradigm; we are at a stage where we have to directly address its structural contradictions. Only with deep reforms, and attention to the international human rights framework insisting on a people-centered participation and accountability mechanisms, can our actions evolve into a counter-force to change the current global and local order. (UNRISD)
Question: Is it a good time to execute the vision?
8. Already in the 19th century, Arnold Toynbee (British economic historian 1852-1883) focused us on a debate that is current today. He referred to a period of prolonged decline of ‘the West’ in which its particular civilization ceases to respond to challenges, loses creative and spiritual energy and adopts rigid forms of hierarchy. He called this ‘petrification’. What is today called Western civilization is in a state of petrification. The decline is not due to an external enemy; rather, it is due to an internal enemy. This petrification takes a specific form in which internal barbarism does not give the slightest chance to any innovative or creative energy that arises within it, as long as the minority in power sees it as a threat. The smaller the minority, the more likely it is to see great threats in actions that are not.
9. I will leave you with these thoughts: Are we going to give a chance to the innovative and creative energy to sprout as the times call for? What if we do not…?
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-Modern education exists, not because brilliant minds designed the optimal learning system, but because centuries of the-paradigm-of-power-structures needed obedient workers and compliant citizens. For hundreds of thousands of years, children educated themselves through play and exploration until agriculture demanded child laborers, feudalism required servants, and industry needed factory workers –all requiring the systematic suppression of children’s natural willfulness. When universal schooling emerged, it combined religious indoctrination, employer demands for punctual workers and nationalist goals of creating patriots –using the same power-assertive methods once used in fields and factories. Today’s schools still operate on the fundamental premise that learning-is-work-children-must-be-forced-to-do, rather than recognizing that humans evolved to learn naturally through self-directed play and exploration. (Peter Gray Makes Us Human )
#HumanRightsReaders #HumanRights #ClaudioSchuftan