Categoria: Economia

O capitalismo será derrotado pela Terra

Leonardo Boff55 Comentários

Há um fato incontestável e desolador: o capitalismo como modo de produção e sua ideologia política, o neoliberalismo, se sedimentaram globalmente de forma tão consistente que parece tornar qualquer alternativa real inviável. De fato, ele ocupou todos os espaços e alinhou praticamente todos os países a seus interesses globais. Depois que a sociedade passou a ser de mercado e tudo virou oportunidade de ganho, até as coisas mais sagradas como órgãos humanos, água e a capacidade de polinização das flores, os chefes de Estados, em sua grande parte, são forçados a gerir a macroeconomia globalmente integrada e menos atender ao bem comum de seu povo.

O socialismo democrático em sua versão avançada de eco-socialismo representa uma opção teórica importante, mas com pouca base social mundial de implementação. A tese de Rosa Luxemburgo em seu livro Reforma ou Revolução de que “a teoria do colapso capitalista é o cerne do socialismo científico” não se verificou. E o socialismo, na sua pior forma como ditadura do Estado, ruiu.

A fúria da acumulação capitalista alcançou os níveis mais altos de sua história. Praticamente 1% da população rica mundial controla cerca de 90% de todas as riquezas. 85 opulentos, conforme a séria ONG Oxfam Intermon, de 2014, têm dinheiro igual a 3,5 bilhões de pobres do mundo. O grau de irracionalidade e também de desumanidade do sistema falam por si. Vivemos tempos de explícita barbárie.

As crises conjunturais do sistema ocorriam até agora nas economias periféricas. Mas a partir de 2007/2008 a grande crise explodiu no coração nos países centrais, nos EUA e na Europa. Tudo parece indicar que se trata não de uma crise conjuntural, sempre superável, mas desta vez, de uma crise sistêmica, pondo fim à capacidade de reprodução do capitalismo. As saídas encontradas pelos países que hegemonizam o processo mundial são sempre da mesma natureza: mais do mesmo. Vale dizer, continuar com a exploração ilimitada dos bens e serviços naturais, orientando-se por uma medida claramente material (e materialista) que é o PIB. Ai dos países cujo PIB não cresce cada ano. Condenam-se à falência, com consequências sociais desastrosas.

Esse crescimento piora  o estado da Terra, diminuindo ainda mais o que resta de sua reserva biótica O preço das tentativas de manter e de aumentar o crescimento é, aquilo que seus corifeus chamam de “externalidades” ( o que não entra na contabilidade dos negócios). Elas são fundamentalmente duas: uma degradante injustiça social com níveis altos de desemprego e crescente desigualdade; e uma ameaçadora injustiça ecológica com a degradação de inteiros ecossistema, erosão da biodiversidade (com o desaparecimento entre 30-100 mil espécies de seres vivos, por ano, segundo dados do biólogo E. Wilson), crescente aquecimento global, escassez de água potável e insustentabilidade geral do sistema-vida e do sistema-Terra.

Estas duas injunções estão pondo de joelhos o sistema capitalista. Se ele quisesse universalizar o bem-estar que propicia aos países ricos, precisaríamos, pelo menos, de três Terras iguais a esta que dispomos, o que evidentemente é impossível. O nível de exploração das “bondades da natureza” como são chamados pelos andinos os bens e serviços naturais são de tal ordem que em setembro deste ano se verificou “o dia da ultrapassagem” (the Earth overshoot Day). Em outras palavras, a Terra não possui mais a capacidade, por si mesma, de atender as demandas humanas. Ela precisa de um ano e meio para repor o que lhe subtraímos durante um ano. Ela se tornou perigosamente insustentável. Ou refreamos voracidade da acumulação de riqueza e de consumo para permitir que ela descanse e se refaça ou devemos nos preparar para o pior.

Por se tratar de uma super-Ente vivo (Gaia), limitado, com escassez de bens e serviços e agora doente, mas sempre combinando todos os fatores garantindo as bases físicas, químicas e ecológicas para reprodução da vida, tal processo de degradação despropositada pode impossibitar a reprodução do sistema e  gerar um colapso ecológico-social de proporções dantescas.

A consequência seria que a Terra teria derrotado definitivamente o sistema do capital, subtraindo-lhe a capacidade de se reproduzir junto com sua cultura materialista de consumo ilimitado e individualista. O que não temos conseguido historicamente por processos histórico-sociais alternativos (era o propósito do socialismo), o conseguirão a natureza e a Terra. Esta, na verdade, se livraria de uma célula cancerígena que está ameaçando de metástase todo o organismo de Gaia.

Nesse entretempo a nós cabe a tarefa de desde dentro do sistema, alargar as brechas, explorar todas as suas contradições para garantir especialmente aos mais humildes da Terra o essencial para sua subsistência: a alimentação, o trabalho, a moradia, a educação, os serviços básicos e um pouco de lazer. É o que vem sendo feito no Brasil e em muitos outros países. Do mal tirar o mínimo de bem necessário para a continuidade da vida e da civilização.

E no mais, é rezar e se preparar para o pior.

Leonardo Boff é articulista do Jornal do Brasil on line,membro da Iniciativa Internacional da Carta da Terra.

Religion can make the good better and the bad worse

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

Everything that is healthy can get sick, including religions and churches. Particularly today that we are afflicted by the disease of fundamentalism, that contaminates important sectors of virtually all religions and churches, including the Roman Catholic Church. Sometimes there is a true religious war. One need only follow some religious programs, especially those on television of a neo-Pentecostal tendency, but also some conservative sectors of the Roman Catholic Church, in order to hear how they condemn people or groups of certain theological tendencies, or demonize the Afro-Brazilian religions.

The main expression of this war-like and exterminating fundamentalism is the Islamic State, ISIS, that turns violence and the murder of those who are different into expressions of their identity.

But there is also another religious vice, found in the mass media, especially on radio and television: the use of religion to recruit people, to preach the gospel of material prosperity, to extract money from the faithful to enrich their pastors and their self proclaimed bishops. We have to deal with commercial religions that obey the logic of the market, namely, competition and recruitment of the greatest possible number of people, with the greatest possible accumulation of cash.

If we look carefully, the majority of these mass media churches rarely mention the New Testament. The Old Testament predominates. This is understandable. In the Old Testament, except in the Prophets and other texts, material well being is emphasized as an expression of divine pleasure. Wealth holds centrality. The New Testament exalts the poor, preaches mercy, forgiveness, love for one’s enemy and boundless solidarity with the poor and the downtrodden. Where does one hear, even in Roman Catholic radio and TV programs, the words of the Master: “Blessed you poor, because yours is the kingdom of God”?

There is too much talk of Jesus and God as if they were something found in the market. By their nature, these sacred realities demand reverence and devotion, respectful silence and devout unction. The most prevalent sin is against the Second Commandment: “Do not take the holy name of God in vain”. That name is affixed on car windows and even found in people’s wallets, as if God were not everywhere. And having Jesus this and Jesus that in an irritating trivialization of the sacred.

What is even more painful and truly scandalous is that the names of God and of Jesus are invoked for purely commercial ends. Or worse, they are used to cover up embezzlements, the theft of public funds and money laundering. Someone has an enterprise whose title is “Jesus”. In the name of “Jesus” millions are amassed in bribes, hidden in foreign banks, and other forms of corruption occur involving public goods. And this is done with absolute shamelessness.

If Jesus were among us, without a doubt He would do what He did with the merchants of the temple: He took a whip and chased them away, trashing their money bags.

Due to these distortions of the sacred reality, we lose the humanizing inheritance of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, particularly of the liberating and humane character of the message and practice of Jesus of Nazareth. Religion can make the good better, but it can also make the bad worse.

We know that it was not Jesus’ original intention to create a new religion. There were many religions at the time. Nor did He contemplate reforming Judaism. What He wanted was to teach us to live our lives guided by the values of his main dream, the kingdom of God, comprised of unconditional love, mercy, forgiveness and total surrender to a God, called “Father”, (Abba in Hebrew), with characteristics of a mother of boundless goodness. He set in motion the creation of the new man and new woman, humanity’s eternal search.

As the book Acts of the Apostles show, initially Christianity was a movement more than an institution. It was called “the way of Jesus”, where reality was open to the fundamental values Jesus of Nazareth preached and lived. But as the movement grew, it was inevitably converted into an institution, with rules, rites and doctrines. And then the sacred power (sacra potestas) became the organizing principle of the whole institution, now called Church. The character of the movement was absorbed by the Church. Through history we know, however, that where power prevails, love disappears and mercy vanishes. Sadly, that is what happened. Thomas Hobbes warned that power protects itself only by seeking more and more power.

And this is how Churches appeared that were powerful by virtue of institutions, monuments, material wealth and even banks. And with power comes the possibility of corruption.

We are witnessing something good that we must welcome: Pope Francis is retaking Christianity for us, more as a movement than as an institution, more like an encounter between people and the living Christ, and more as mercy without limits than discipline and orthodox doctrine. He has placed Jesus, the person, at the center, rather than power, dogma, or the moral framework. This allows everyone, even those who are not part of the institution, to feel that, to the degree that they opt for love and justice, they are on the path of Jesus.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Gastfreundschaft: unser aller Recht und Pflicht

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários
Immer wieder stellt uns das weltweite Flüchtlingsproblem vor den ethischen Imperativ der Gastfreundschaft sowohl auf nationaler als auch auf internationaler Ebene. Wir erleben zurzeit eine Völkerwanderung wie zu Zeiten des Untergangs des Römischen Reichs. Millionen Menschen sind auf der Suche nach einer neuen Heimat, wo sie überleben können oder einfach, um dem Krieg zu entkommen und ein Minimum an Frieden zu finden. Wir alle haben sowohl ein Recht auf Gastfreundschaft als auch die Pflicht, Gastfreundschaft zu gewähren. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) erkannte deutlich die Überschneidung von Rechten und Pflichten und der Gastfreundschaft für die Schaffung dessen, was er den „Ewigen Frieden“ nannte (Zum ewigen Frieden, 1795). Kant war seiner Zeit voraus, als er eine Weltrepublik oder einen Völkerstaat entwarf, der auf dem Weltbürgerrecht aufbaut. Die vordringliche Aufgabe, so Kant, ist die „allgemeine Hospitalität“ (§ 357).
Warum Gastfreundschaft? Für Kant „weil sich alle Menschen auf der Erde befinden und ausnahmslos alle das Recht haben, auf ihr zu leben und Orte zu besichtigen sowie die Völker, welche sie bewohnen. Die Erde gehört allen gemeinsam“ (§ 358).
Diese Bürgerschaft, entstanden durch allgemeine Gastfreundschaft, wird durch Rechte regiert und niemals durch Gewalt. Kant schlägt vor, die ganze Kriegsmaschinerie zu demontieren und auf jegliche Armeen zu verzichten, so wie es auch die Erd-Charta vorsieht. Denn solange solche Mittel der Gewalt existieren, wird der Starke den Schwachen bedrohen und werden Spannungen unter den Staaten bestehen, die die Grundlage für fortwährenden Frieden unterminieren.
Die Macht eines Rechtsstaats und die Verbreitung allgemeiner Gastfreundschaft müssen zu einer Rechtskultur führen, die Herz und Verstand aller Weltbürger und Weltbürgerinnen durchdringt und so eine Völkergemeinschaft schafft. Diese Völkergemeinschaft, so Kant, kann sich dahingehend ausdehnen, dass weltweit spürbar wird, wenn es an einer Stelle der Erde zu einer Rechtsverletzung kommt (§ 360). Diese Idee machte sich Ernesto Che Guevara viel später zu Eigen. Der Geist der Gastfreundschaft und Solidarität drückt sich so aus, dass das Leid eines Einzelnen zum Leid aller wird und die Vorteile des Einen zu den Vorteilen aller werden. Dieser Gedanke findet bei Papst Franziskus ein Echo, der von Menschen als von Beziehungen spricht, die am Leiden anderer teilhaben.
Wenn es uns um anhaltenden Frieden geht und nicht nur um einen Waffenstillstand oder eine momentane Befriedung, dann müssen wir universelle Gastfreundschaft und den Respekt universeller Rechte umsetzen.
Frieden ergibt sich laut Kant aus der Rechtskraft des Gesetzes, aus rechtskräftiger Mitbestimmung und aus der institutionalisierten Kooperation unter den Staaten und Völkern. Für Kant sind Rechte „Gottes Augapfel“ oder „das Heiligste, das Gott der Erde geschenkt hat“. Das Respektieren der Rechte ermöglicht die Entstehung einer Friedensgemeinschaft, die dem „schändlichen Kriegstreiben“ endgültig ein Ende setzt.
Zu unserer Zeit hat sich Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) in seinem Buch „Über die Gastfreundschaft“ (De l’hospitalité, Paris, 1977) dem Thema Gastfreundschaft angenommen, indem er ihr einen bedingungslosen Charakter für alle verleiht.
Dennoch war Kant es, der ihr das beste Fundament verlieh. Für ihn besteht die Grundlage aus dem guten Willen, der für ihn die einzige makellose Tugend darstellt. In seinem Buch Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785) stellt Kant etwas sehr Wichtiges fest: „Man kann sich nichts innerhalb oder auch außerhalb der Welt vorstellen, das ohne Vorbehalt so gut sein kann wie der gute Wille.“ Um diese schwierige Ausdrucksweise in heutige Sprache zu übersetzen: Der gute Wille ist das einzig Gute, das in sich selbst gut und das unbeschränkt ist. Der gute Wille ist gut, oder es ist eben nicht guter Wille. Erscheint der gute Wille suspekt, so ist er nicht gut. Guter Wille setzt eine Öffnung für den anderen und bedingungsloses Vertrauen voraus. Dies ist für Menschen machbar. Wenn wir mit dem guten Willen nicht ernst machen, werden wir keinen Weg aus der verzweifelten Sozialkrise finden, die ganze Gesellschaften an den Rändern der Erde zerreißt und die für die Millionen von Flüchtlingen verantwortlich ist, die sich auf den Weg nach Europa begeben haben.
Der gute Wille ist das letzte zur Verfügung stehende Rettungsboot. Die Situation der Welt ist ein Desaster. Wir leben in einem permanenten Zustand der Besetzung oder eines globalen Bürgerkriegs. Niemand, nicht einmal die beiden heiligen Männer Papst Franziskus und der Dalai Lama, nicht die intellektuellen oder moralischen Eliten, noch die Techno-Science haben einen weltweit gültigen Ausweg parat. In Wirklichkeit sind wir einzig auf unseren guten Willen angewiesen. An dieser Stelle sollten wir uns daran erinnern, was Dostojewski 1877 in seiner fantastischen Kurzgeschichte „Der Traum eines lächerlichen Menschen“ schrieb: „Wenn es alle wirklich wollten, würde sich die Erde innerhalb von einem Augenblick verwandeln.“

An Brasilien lässt sich das Drama der Welt in Miniaturformat ablesen. Die sozialen Wunden, die in fünfhundert Jahren Vernachlässigung der Bedürfnisse des Volkes entstanden, führten zu einem Blutvergießen. Die Mehrheit unserer Eliten hat auf der Suche nach einer Problemlösung nie an Brasilien als Ganzes gedacht, sondern immer nur an sich selbst. Den Eliten geht es mehr um die Verteidigung ihrer eigenen Privilegien als um die Sicherung der Rechte für alle. Durch tausende von politischen Manövern, selbst durch Androhung von Amtsenthebung, gelang es ihnen, die demokratisch gewählten Regierungen dazu zu bringen, ihre Interessen auf der Agenda durchzusetzen und soziale Veränderungen zu vermeiden oder zu hinauszuzögern. Im Gegensatz zum Großteil der brasilianischen Bevölkerung, die einen unglaublich guten Willen aufbringt, verweigert ein Großteil der brasilianischen Elite den guten Willen, den sie ihrem Land schuldet.

Wenn der gute Wille so ausschlaggebend ist, muss er dringend in allen hervorgerufen werden. Alle haben die Pflicht, Gastfreundschaft zu gewähren, und das Recht aufgenommen zu werden, da wir alle in dem einen gemeinsamen Haus leben.

Übersetzt von Bettina Gold-Hartnack

 

Religion can make the good better and the bad worse

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

Everything that is healthy can get sick, including religions and churches. Particularly today that we are afflicted by the disease of fundamentalism, that contaminates important sectors of virtually all religions and churches, including the Roman Catholic Church. Sometimes there is a true religious war. One need only follow some religious programs, especially those on television of a neo-Pentecostal tendency, but also some conservative sectors of the Roman Catholic Church, in order to hear how they condemn people or groups of certain theological tendencies, or demonize the Afro-Brazilian religions.

The main expression of this war-like and exterminating fundamentalism is the Islamic State, ISIS, that turns violence and the murder of those who are different into expressions of their identity.

But there is also another religious vice, found in the mass media, especially on radio and television: the use of religion to recruit people, to preach the gospel of material prosperity, to extract money from the faithful to enrich their pastors and their self proclaimed bishops. We have to deal with commercial religions that obey the logic of the market, namely, competition and recruitment of the greatest possible number of people, with the greatest possible accumulation of cash.

If we look carefully, the majority of these mass media churches rarely mention the New Testament. The Old Testament predominates. This is understandable. In the Old Testament, except in the Prophets and other texts, material well being is emphasized as an expression of divine pleasure. Wealth holds centrality. The New Testament exalts the poor, preaches mercy, forgiveness, love for one’s enemy and boundless solidarity with the poor and the downtrodden. Where does one hear, even in Roman Catholic radio and TV programs, the words of the Master: “Blessed you poor, because yours is the kingdom of God”?

There is too much talk of Jesus and God as if they were something found in the market. By their nature, these sacred realities demand reverence and devotion, respectful silence and devout unction. The most prevalent sin is against the Second Commandment: “Do not take the holy name of God in vain”. That name is affixed on car windows and even found in people’s wallets, as if God were not everywhere. And having Jesus this and Jesus that in an irritating trivialization of the sacred.

What is even more painful and truly scandalous is that the names of God and of Jesus are invoked for purely commercial ends. Or worse, they are used to cover up embezzlements, the theft of public funds and money laundering. Someone has an enterprise whose title is “Jesus”. In the name of “Jesus” millions are amassed in bribes, hidden in foreign banks, and other forms of corruption occur involving public goods. And this is done with absolute shamelessness.

If Jesus were among us, without a doubt He would do what He did with the merchants of the temple: He took a whip and chased them away, trashing their money bags.

Due to these distortions of the sacred reality, we lose the humanizing inheritance of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, particularly of the liberating and humane character of the message and practice of Jesus of Nazareth. Religion can make the good better, but it can also make the bad worse.

We know that it was not Jesus’ original intention to create a new religion. There were many religions at the time. Nor did He contemplate reforming Judaism. What He wanted was to teach us to live our lives guided by the values of his main dream, the kingdom of God, comprised of unconditional love, mercy, forgiveness and total surrender to a God, called “Father”, (Abba in Hebrew), with characteristics of a mother of boundless goodness. He set in motion the creation of the new man and new woman, humanity’s eternal search.

As the book Acts of the Apostles show, initially Christianity was a movement more than an institution. It was called “the way of Jesus”, where reality was open to the fundamental values Jesus of Nazareth preached and lived. But as the movement grew, it was inevitably converted into an institution, with rules, rites and doctrines. And then the sacred power (sacra potestas) became the organizing principle of the whole institution, now called Church. The character of the movement was absorbed by the Church. Through history we know, however, that where power prevails, love disappears and mercy vanishes. Sadly, that is what happened. Thomas Hobbes warned that power protects itself only by seeking more and more power.

And this is how Churches appeared that were powerful by virtue of institutions, monuments, material wealth and even banks. And with power comes the possibility of corruption.

We are witnessing something good that we must welcome: Pope Francis is retaking Christianity for us, more as a movement than as an institution, more like an encounter between people and the living Christ, and more as mercy without limits than discipline and orthodox doctrine. He has placed Jesus, the person, at the center, rather than power, dogma, or the moral framework. This allows everyone, even those who are not part of the institution, to feel that, to the degree that they opt for love and justice, they are on the path of Jesus.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.