Amid the financial crisis, “which in a way is concealing all other crises”, there isn’t much room to make progress in the formulation of alternatives within the framework of Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, says sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the Director of Social Studies at the Economics School of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. ALAI had the following conversation:

 

 

The issue of Green Economy is going to dominate Rio+20. It is the highest level of conscience of capitalism. Capitalism must find a way to understand the environmental crisis, the food crisis. However, capitalism looks at it from a profits viewpoint because capitalism is amoral, it has no concept of human dignity, let alone a concept of Pachamama. It always looks at problems to find ways to accumulation, of profitability that are viable. The Green Economy or Green Capitalism is a way to turn the ecological and environmental crisis into a means of accumulation, it will also create carbon markets, all the environmental services that are a branch of industrialization, and it will try to do so in a seemingly sustainable fashion.

 

However, we have long reached the conclusion that development, as they understand it, is not sustainable. Sustainability does not entail an alternative development, but instead an alternative to development. These alternatives are related to other concepts which are not the ones held by capitalism. There is only one alternative to development in a post-capitalist horizon where the use values, for example, once again have some priority over the exchange values. This is not happening with the Green Economy.  On the contrary, the working documents being prepared at the UN for Rio are basically what I call the highest possible level of conscience, especially because it is happening amid a financial crisis, which in some way is concealing all other crises.

 

Two years ago in Copenhagen and later in Cancun, we talked about different aspects of the financial, economic, energy, environmental, historical, and food crisis. However, all these crises suddenly disappear and we only talk about the financial crisis. It is said that the financial crisis will be solved with growth and employment. But at the same time the UN is telling us that should we follow this model of growth and development, in 2015 global warming will become irreversible and the environmental changes will be noticeable throughout the world. Within this framework there seems to be no solution, in my opinion. I believe that through this financial crisis brought about solely by world financial speculation as a result of the lack of regulation of the financial markets, neoliberalism in its strong financial stage has aimed at destroying all the forces of resistance to capitalism or at least tried to force them to retreat. We can see this in many ways, for example social movements that were very strong in the first decade, such as the environmental movement, have been mum. 

 

 

I think that it is not a search of new paradigms. Basically, the possibilities of the movements are being restricted. This has two aspects. On the one hand, the exertion of discipline over peoples and movements. On the other hand, states that are searching for new paradigms. In this new stage of neoliberalism the states are in the service of capital, but they have to be in its service even more than up to now. We have regarded the state as a battle ground. The state, while it is still a capitalist state, is today full of contradictions because it contains social struggles fought for over a century (the workers’, farmers’, natives peoples’, women’s struggles) which obtained social, economic and cultural rights from the state. What is happening now is that capitalism wants that state to stop being a contradiction and be in the service of the financial capital.

 

We are talking about an entity that does not exist, but which is omnipresent nonetheless. It is a little like talking about God. The stock markets around the world are always active, and when you wake up there is a crisis in your country which is not brought about by an economic crisis, which is not brought about by a crisis of strikes, which is not brought about by a climate disaster. It is brought about by the financial markets which during the night decided to attack your economy, speculate on your debt. It seemed that the smaller countries, like Greece, Portugal, and Ireland, were more vulnerable to speculation. But now it is in full swing in Spain, Italy, and tomorrow it will be in France, where it has already begun, and it will reach Germany. There will come a time when financial capitals will have to be regulated because it was they that brought about the crisis, from the ‘subprime’ on, and they wield such power at present that it is they who are ‘solving’ the crisis. Obviously, they are not solving it.

 

Today we have things we could not have imaged possible at the turn of the 21^st century, such as the socialism of the wealthy. After many decades, the wealthy are saying ‘please, we want to pay higher taxes, we want to contribute to the solution of the crisis.’ This is evidence of the failure of center-left political forces, and it also shows that capitalist philanthropy is utter selfishness. These super-rich don’t want to pay taxes to help the country. They fear that the crisis will be so deep that their wealth could be in jeopardy. So, it is better to pay slightly higher taxes than to lose a lot more in a far-reaching crisis.

 

 

There isn’t much leeway, it has shrunk with the financial crisis. It think the financial crisis has been created to reduce that leeway, which is the other aspect of exerting discipline over peoples and the states. I think what is still new is the new energy, both at economic and ideological levels. Today we have concepts, ideas that we did not have 10 years ago and which cannot go to waste, such as the concept of Buen Vivir, Sumak Kawsay, Pachamama, the rights of nature, also legalizing the Native Community Lands. The idea that property does not only include state property or capitalist individual property, but also other forms of property is a huge breakthrough included in the constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador. This means that in practice we must try to protect community property, private property, associative property, and cooperative property. In Bolivia, there is an idea that we have three forms of democracy, representative, participatory, and communal democracy. We have new instruments for an ideological battle.

 

As we can see, great alliances can be formed between, let’s say, what seems to be ancestral-modern and what is modern-modern. All the issues we have today of environmental, political-ecological, and Buen Vivir movements. It is not the same as de-growth, as some today defend in Europe, it is a different thing. It is the creation of wealth without destroying wealth, it is a different concept. We have some ideological instruments, political tools, ideas, concepts; now, this is not enough because you must have historical social subjects, social movements, and also political structures and new forms of public planning and management. Here lies the difficulty at present.

 

 

Very much so, but that is the thrill. After at least two or three centuries of the idea that development is infinite and that nature is an absolutely inexhaustible resource, you cannot change everything in one decade. It is very important, at least in Ecuador, to take the idea of Buen Vivir indicators seriously.

 

In fact, historically the problem of transitions is that we do not show patience because our lifespan is short; societies, however, have a slightly longer lifespan. What worries me at present is that we have the theoretical conceptual instruments, but we lack the social forces.

 

There is a strong endeavor underway in this continent to weaken the social forces of the left, the progressive forces. To me, what is changing is that the US is back in the continent. But there are new things, and not-so-new things, called local development. In the most remote villages in these countries there is a USAID program. These programs are not innocent. These programs have funds for certain types of things, for example work with leaders, indigenous leaders, who are trained within this framework to attack progressive administrations because these administrations are not be trusted. The same thing happens when the organizations of the Left confront each other in these countries. They accuse each other of being the Right or making things easier for the Right. But the Right never trusts these groups. The Right only wants what belongs to it. That’s why, though Lula did everything imaginable to aid Brazilian capitalism after he took office, he never became a trusted man for the Brazilian or the transnational bourgeoisies.

(Translation: Germán Warckmeister).

 

This article is a translation from América Latina en Movimiento, No. 468-9, El cuento de la economía verde,http://alainet.org/publica/468-9.phtml.