While leafing a bundle of press cuttings I came across Fr Peter Serracino’s article of 6 January 2008, “Time and democracy”. It deserves to be commented upon, seeing how things have turned out in the short space of nine months.
Experience shows that “political processors” of democracy do not trust the people’s right to express themselves freely through the ballot box. Instead, they, the “processors”, expect people to “do what ‘we want’”.
A few notorious examples should suffice to prove the point. First, Henry Kissinger’s contempt for democracy when he once observed that he saw no reason why Chile should be allowed to “go Marxist” merely because “its people are irresponsible”.
Secondly, the way the American Supreme Court’s one vote gave George W. Bush the presidency. Third, the way the European Union dealt with an Austrian election result some years ago, and the other more recent one in Palestine.
Then Fr Peter turned to economics and wrote that “most people still do not accept the primacy of the economy”. By which he certainly meant that people should be at the service of the economy instead of the other way round.
He, it clearly seemed, was gleefully satisfied about “the global triumph of capitalism”, “free market economics” and “neoliberal global capitalism”. Which obviously make one suspect that he had forgotten altogether, and perhaps ignored as dated, the timeless validity of most of what the great 1871 and 1931 Papal encyclicals stated about the inhumanity, irrationality and greed of capitalism and economic liberalism.
No doubt he might have then thought that to improve the living conditions of the poor, full employment and greater spending on welfare were also outdated ideas. In other words, he was of the opinion that “yesterday’s solutions do not provide for tomorrow’s problems”. By which he also meant that “global capitalism” is still the answer to tomorrow’s problems.
If that is so, then why is it that we are experiencing today less economic growth, more unemployment, an unjust mal-distribution of income or wealth, the gradual dismantling of social safety net than we had in fact relied on “yesterday’s solution”?
How plainly untrue what has been confidently asserted that “free trade and free markets – i.e. globalisation – have proven their ability to lift whole societies out of poverty”.
What is needed today is for politics, for governments, to regain its supremacy vis-à-vis finance.
It is well worth recalling, considering today’s global financial crisis that (a) a British Conservative Prime Minister once referred to “the ugly face of capitalism”; (b) a noted British Communist leader had exclaimed “the race is for rats, we’re not rats” because of the excessive greed that capitalism generates; and (c) the former French Prime Minister Edouard Balladour once declared “Free markets work ‘by the law of nature’; civilisation’s function is to struggle against nature”.
To conclude, Fr Peter saw no harm in the neo-liberalism of the European Union which relies on the working of blind forces. In such a system, which prevents government intervention, national policies cannot be framed with a view to promoting employment, social housing and social security.

J. Cachia
Paola

PRINT THIS ARTICLE