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by Frei Betto
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by Frei Betto
After the Second World War, the industrialized nations knew that the social welfare state, sustained by a full employment policy, increased tax revenues that in turn enabled them to make their societies more secure.
For all of this, the new economic order did not permit the full employment policy to be extended to the peripheral nations. Pressured by the neo-colonial postures of the financial centers, these nations were squeezed by exporters of products and royalties and drained of their wealth and resources. Because of this, only a small portion of humanity gained the rights of 40: to work 40 hours per week; a little more than 40 weeks per year; for a little less than 40 years in a lifetime.
With the arrival of neo-liberalism, in the peripheral countries millions of persons excluded from employment opportunities were left without access to economic and social rights, and thus, to citizenship. In the metropoli the social welfare state was set back, while the private corporations complained about the reduction in their luxuries.
Thus began the process of putting a price on everything. State and public assets were looted by the privatization policy. The productive sector was left unprotected and speculation was favored, which promised more immediate returns and demanded less absorption of the displaced labor force.
Viewed through the Keynsian lens, there was a close connection between employment and citizens' rights. Now, when unemployment or the risk of getting caught up in it increases, the exercise of citizenship declines. Facing the enormous rights of multinational corporations, citizens were left as subjects stripped of rights. The anti-community weight of juridical persons crushed the rights of natural persons. The only ones who were saved were those with corporate protection. Outside of this, we have a humanity deprived of citizenship.
Keynes didn't consider the right of citizenship to be a fundamental principle, as does the Catholic Church's doctrine. For him, citizenship depended on a person's participation in the market, that it, of the possibility of access to products and services. Today, access to citizenship is, for billions of people, as limited as their access to the market.
How do we get out of this impasse? A post-capitalist alternative must combine policies to expand job opportunities with policies that value work without ties to an employer, as in jobs done at home, in the community, in study and in cultural and recreational activities. In this way, the distinction between formally productive work (paid labor) and work that's productive by its content (voluntary labor), both of which are necessary for the reproduction and continuation of human life, would be eliminated. In this way, the association between employment as it is commonly known and citizenship can be surmounted.
Everyone has the right to citizenship, whether or not they have a paying job. To get past the criterion of a connection with a boss, you include in the concept of citizenship the tiem dedicated to the community, whether by individuals or enterprises. Business citizenship is that which invests in the collective good without taking any financial gains. It's simply a matter of paying the company's social debt.
From this perspective, the end of social exclusion doesn't happen only by insertion into the market, but also by insertion into community life, in activities which promote social welfare.Citizenship is transformed from being synonymous with status conferred by market position into the exercise of duties owed to everyone and of duties everyone owes to the individual --- and to nature --- as part of living a full life.
In the face of abuse of authority, the question will no longer be: "Do you know who your talking to?" It will be: "Who does he think he is?" Respect for human rights is what will sustain the paradigm of universal citizenship.
This perspective will only be reached by means in which everyone is assured of a minimum income that permits access to products and services. Here, two basic questions come into play: to define, in a determined social context, the minimum contribution that an individual needs to make in order to enjoy a dignified and happy life; and to set a ceiling on the accumulation of juridical persons, with the aim being the distribution of income.
From the economic point of view, this equation would stimulate demand and productivity, significantly reducing inequality. But from the subjective and ethical point of view, it demands a profound sense of justice, beginning with the Biblical principle of recognizing that other people like me, and expressions of the divine image.
(Frei Betto is a Catholic priest and social activist in Brazil.)
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