The Neoliberals and the Kingdom of God
A few days ago a friend of mine, who had spent a
few days in the United States in January, told me about the
indignation she felt when she saw the misery of the homeless people
of that capitalist haven in the winter. Today, the US is busy
replacing social welfare governments with those who fulfill the
"neoliberal agenda". In Brazil, they have managed to
substitute the legitimate government with the collaboration of the
federal legislators, who are busy now destroying the welfare state
structures and introducing a new type of colonization to carry out
the neoliberal agenda faithfully!
They have bought up almost the whole of the
Brazilian judiciary and the press (mostly gossip tabloids according
to the British Press) to mount a crusade to criminalize their
opponents by timely handing out of large sums of money in the form of
salary raises, subsidies and housing allowances etc. The press
campaigns aimed at eliminating of its adversaries by judicial
lynching is well advanced. In the face of all this, many are
perplexed. This relentless campaign has also managed to bring back
the old feeling of impotence, which the Workers’ Party government
had managed to eliminate to some extent among the poorest of the
Brazilian population.
Today the critique of capitalism is out of
fashion and neoliberal triumph seems insurmountable! In fact, after
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Communist
Governments, the Left, when it did not embrace capitalism, merely
sought to be a better administrator of the market by applying
palliatives to social ills. In this context, it is necessary to begin
a Christian reflection that would gradually lead to a theological
critique of capitalism, basing itself on the values of the
Kingdom of God that Jesus of Nazareth announced. At the same time one
must keep in mind that capitalism has its own history of at least
three centuries already. Neoliberalism is his new avatar that made
its appearance in the US starting in the 1930s.
History tells us that the followers of Jesus of
Nazareth have shown their ability to act as "salt of the earth
and light of the world" on many occasions throughout the twenty
centuries of the Christian Era. Here in Latin America, those that the
"neoliberal lawfare" today seeks to annihilate, are the
prodcts of a re-reading of the Scriptures and rethinking the
Christian vocation, during the post Second Vatican Council era, the
inculturated reception of the decrees of the same Council in this
continent. Right now the need for Christians to show themselves “salt
of the earth and light of the world” is very evident.
But first, it is necessary to trace, even very
briefly, the path that capitalism has followed since its birth at the
beginning of European modernity. As a system, capitalism is the
successor to mercantilism. Capitalism is based on private property,
the possession of the means of production and exchange. It has been
marked right from the beginning by its unending search for profit by
individual initiative and by free competition. Capitalism entered the
economic and political vocabulary of the industrial revolution at the
time Karl Marx published his main work Das Kapital.
Modernity was the result of two revolutions: the
economic and the political-ideological. The first (industrial
revolution) began in England in the 18th century. The second, that
is, the political-ideological one, took place in France (1789-1799).
"The global triumph of capitalism is the triumph of a society
that believed that economic progress rested on the competition of
private enterprise, of buying everything cheap in the market and
selling it for a higher price." It is remarkable that the
changes that have occurred in the last three hundred years have not
meant any break in that system which followed the feudal
Christianity, mercantilism.
It is worth recalling that the European
renaissance, that passed into the economic sphere as mercantilism in
the time of the great Spanish and Portuguese voyages, of the
geographical discoveries, the territorial expansion, etc.,
transformed itself into capitalism. This was an event, of gigantic
proportions, probably the most impressive event in the history of
mankind. Meanwhile, this civilization is causing alarming imbalances
in the human habitat. Here we need to enumerate some of the important
characteristic of the globalized capitalism that is shaping up the
modern civilization and has its economic dimension as well as its own
anthropology, morality and principles.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário