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Subject: what is not acceptable - Riccardo Petrella
From: pit@uropax.contrib.DE (Pit Schultz)
Date: 31 Jul 1997 22:18:00 +0200

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Riccardo Petrella
President of the Group of Lisbon
Head of Social Research, Commission of the European Union - Bruxelles
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What is not acceptable

For the latest twenty years the social inequalities have been increasing
very rapidly all over the world. Poverty, marginalization and exclusion
are trasforming the United States, the European Countries and also Japan
into societies which are no longer simply unequal but also structurally
segregationist, divided and broken into fragments. In France 13 million
people (out of 58 million) live only thanks to governamental benefits
(according to a recent report of 1995 from "Credoc" on the "State of
France"). The report pubblished in October, 1994 by the "British
Commission for Social Justice" showed that the difference between the
highest and the lowest ones wages, in 1993, was broader than the
difference in 1886 (more than a century ago!)


The triumph of the short term, of the financial markets to
and of the struggle for the survival

In front of such "social destruction", the magnitude of which seems to
neutralize people reaction at any level, a state of both resignation and
aggressiveness is prevailing together with the belief that only the
strongest ones will survive the conflicts that are going to shake our
towns and countries violently. But there is somesing worse: people are
delighted in worshipping capitalist market economy in its extreme
free-trade, wild and privatised form, people admire the power of the mega
global networks of financial and industrial enterprises; people devoie
themselves to the cult of competitiveness; people let themselves be
dazzied by the "performances" of the plunderes the wealth of the world
and of the numerous new mercenary captains who have sprouted out like
mushrooms in the context of a world economy completely abandoned to the
"free" market forces. Everywhere the tendency is towards the dismantlement
of the welfare state. A new "neoliberal ideologic brainwashing", coming
from U.S.A., is not only recycling the black money of the whole globe, but
is also aiming at bringing discredit on the role of the State. The new
belief is: let the market and the private sector govern the society and
the world. Let them guide us towards the promised land of the fascinating
"information society". The State is finished, they say. Within the context
of emerging world-wide networks of information and communication the
future Ð we are told Ð belongs to new forms of political governance where
the mega global financial and industrial groups will play a principal
role. The real heart of the world will be the free, open, competitive
market. Yet all shows that the economic growth in accordance with the
latest twenty-year model, cannot secure a form of development socially
fair, economically effective, sustainable for the environment, respectful
of the cultural differences, open to political participation. Such growth,
on the contrary, especially since 1970, has only multiplied the economic
problems (structural unemployment, monetary instability, casino economy,
increase of commercial and technological warsÉ) and the social problems
(in addition to the return of poverty there is the increase of xenophoby
and racism, the increase of criminality, the crisis of the towns and the
explosion of urban violence). The economy of the free-trade market has
not maintained its promices of welfare. It only destroys the wealth of the
majority of citizens to augment the riches of few of them.


The priority: to satisfy the basic needs and aspiration
of the 8 billion people that will inhabit the planet in 2020

In 25 years the world population will be of 8 billion human beings, 5
billion of which will live in Asia. On the whole 3 billion people more
than in 1995. If there will be no rapid change in the mechanism of the
world economy and in the policy imposed on the rest of the world by the
richest and most powerful socio-economical groups, about half of the world
population (4 billion people), in 2020, will live in a state of poverty,
exclusion, vulnerability and violence, as has never happened before in the
story of humanity. We must rebel against this unacceptable future. We
suggest a non-violent revolt based on the following three aims:

a) to give the world economy a clear social visibility

- on one hand by intervening at the heart of its working: it is necessary
to re-establish a public control on the international movements of
capital. The Central Banks of the richest countries will have to agree
upon such controls. Besides, it is urgent, as President Francois
Mitterrand suggested at Copenhagen summit, to fix a taxation on the
international movements of capital (the Tobin taxation from the name of
the Nobel Prize for economy who proposed it). To refuse to carry out these
two measures means to accept that the evolution and the conduct of the
world economy must be subordinated only to financial interests.

- on the other hand by launching the set-up a world plan for the house
(project "Inhabiting the Earth") for the 2 billion people who will be
homeless by the year 2000. This plan could be financed thanks to a pooling
together resources from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund,
FAO, UNIDO, UNDP. The project "Inhabiting the earth" should be the core of
the final engagement of the World Conference Habitat II that will be held
at Istambul in June 1996. To say that this plan is utopian and
impracticable means to undervaluate the financial, economical,
technological and most ideal power of our world community. Anyway it means
to accept to keep 2 billion human beings in a condition of exclusion.

b) to make the World Summit on the Social Development at Copenhagen the
first step of a process that, in the next twentry years, should bring to
the realization of "A contract for the world"

At Copenhagen the Danish government has suggested the creation of a World
Commission with the task of ri-analising the world poverty and proposing
the most suitable measures to eradicate it. It is time to go beyond the
Committees of study and the creation of groups of experts. The
mother-causes of poverty, of social exclusion, of urban violence, of wars,
of racism are now well-known. So it is important to intervene on them:

* first of all in the field of education. The European societies, the
U.S.A. and Japan have succeded in becoming highly developed societies,
thanks to the introduction of free compulsory education, it is now the
moment to give new vitality to UNESCO and UNICEF laying the foundation for
a plan of free and compulsory schooling for all the children of the world
up to the age of 16. In particular the urgency is to starting with a
strong action in favour of 30-200 million "street children". Why should we
continue investing hundreds of million dollars in the uncertain project of
nuclear fusion instead of setting aside a big sum to the liberation of 30
to 200 million children (according different estimates) who live in an
umbearable reality?

* secoundly in favour of young people from 16 to 25-30 years of age.
Unemployed young people in the world are already 200-300 millions. In the
next twenty-five years this crowd of excluded, of young people who have
never had, in their life, a job to be proud of, may increase. At present,
the measures which have been adopted in favour of juvenile occupation in
Africa, in Latin America and in Asia have proved to be palliatives because
of the bonds imposed by the competitive, liberist, haphazard and
privatistic economy of the market (according to the rules imposed also by
the policy of structural adjustment of MB and IMF). We propose the
creation of a World Task Force composed of a reduced number of national
and international organizations with the task of promoting juvenile
occupation trying to convince the 5000 most important firms of the world
to to subscribe a world agreement for the enployment of young people. If
each of them undertook to engage 100 young people a year...

c) to do one's best for the creation of new permanent and effective forms
of world "political" governance

With regard to this we propose:

- a deep reform of Bretton Woods Institutions (MB, IMF) in the sense of
the implementation of a World Fund for the Social Development. These
institutions have shown their structural inefficacy to reduce within and
across countries inequalities and, hence, to promote in the world a
socially fair and sustainable development. It is not good to be cured by
phisicians who do not know their job or, still worse, who consider
themselves to be at disposal mainly ofthe powerful and rich "clients".

- a deep reform of OIT, FAO and UNDP in order to create, by 2010, a real
World Organization of Social Development with the task to ensure a world
work policy. The globalization of economy not only exacts a world policy
addressed to the capital, the firms and the market, but also requires the
mobility of people and a world labor policy. The recent cases of
authorization granted to West firms (like Lufthansa) to recruite workers
from all over the world with contracts not controlled by the country of
origin (therefore at lowest cost and at scant social protection) shows how
urgent a world labor market policy is.

- the creation of a Forum for a World Fiscal System with the task of
analysing the conditions, the obstacles to surmount, the measures to adopt
in order to reach, in a reasonable time, a stable monetary system on world
scale and a world taxation for the social development to struggle
effectively against poverty and social exclusion.


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