http://trinity.duke.edu/globalstudies/slavery-the-holocaust-and-the-challenge-of-global-justice-exploring-critical-and-decolonial-approaches,

followed up by a workshop on Critical and Decolonial Dialogues

http://trinity.duke.edu/globalstudies/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/100215-critical-and-decolonial-dialogues-Final.pdf

Both the Seminar and the Workshop are based on a basic assumptions: There are two kind of critics to modernity. One is internal to Europe, from the Frankfurt School to post-modernity. The second kind emerged in the borders of Euro/American imperial expansion and interference with the non-Euro American world. We label “critical” de first kind and “decolonial” the second, which doesn’t mean that the decolonial is not critical. It means that is critical from the exteriority of the West. That is, a critique from the “outside” invented by Western epistemology to legitimize itself as the “inside” and the point of reference to make the will turn around.

Around that time a double movement began: the colonization of time and the invention of the European Middle Age; and the colonization of space and the invention of the America and of the Old World. There was no Old World without a New one. And the Old World was later divided between the imperial Old World (Atlantic Europe) and the colonial Old World (Asia and Africa).

The first civilizations to suffer the consequences of the formation and expansion of Western civilization were the Incas, the Aztecs and the Mayas. One of the drastic consequences was the dismantling of the communal system of social organization, that today indigenous nations in Bolivia and Ecuador are working to reconstruct and reconfigure. From the European perspective, the communal may sound like socialism or communism. But it is not: socialism and communism were born in Europe as a response to liberalism and capitalism. Not the communal system. The communal system in Tawantinsuyu and Anahuac, as I imagine social organizations in China before the Opium War and the arrival of Mao Zedong, were not created as responses to liberalism and capitalism. They had to adapt and still are adapting to capitalist and (neo) liberal intrusion.

A recent proposal to re-inscribe (not to recover or to go back to the past) the communal into contemporary debates on pluri-national states is “El sistema communal como alternativa al sistema liberal” by Aymara sociologist Félix Patzi Paco. But there are others as well. Evo Morales’s discourses are full of references to the communal. Nina Pacari, ex-chancellor of Ecuador and recently appointed to Evo Morales secretary of foreign relations is another example as well as the collective work of CONAMAQ (Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Colasuyu). No need to explain this in the same way that there is no need, for example, to explain a reference to the Jakobins or the French commune, in the re-orientation of the European left.

Therefore, the communal shall not be confused with “the common”, which is becoming the new keywords and the re-orientation of the European left. Now the idea of the “common” is part of European history imaginary. It could be taken up of course by Marxist oriented left in non-European parts of the world who would prefer to be “modern” instead of taking the bull by the horn, and without fear, to think from their own histories instead of adapting and adopting solutions that emerged from other historical trajectories.

The communal, on the other hand, is indeed a form of social organization that was disrupted, as I said, by the European invasion of what became America. It subsisted for 500 years, and the Zapatistas are re-inscribing it in the form The Caracoles. The reconfiguration of the Ayllu as is being advanced in CONAMAQ in Bolivia, doesn’t mean to go back to the past. The reorganization of the Ayllus and Markas means to re-inscribe the social organization of one of the four Suyus of Tawantinsuyu. In this case Qollasuyu which is the Suyu “underneath” the soil of the Bolivian nation. When Alain Badiou talks about the common and refers to Jean-Jacques Rouseau, the Jakobins and the Chinese Cultural Revolution–but only the Marxist side of Mao Zedong. But there is another side of Mao Zedong, one cannot surmise that he is proposing to go back to the Enlightenment or to Mao. One may regret, in the second case, that Badiou is only taking into account the genealogy of European thoughts and not asking what Chinese are thinking today in terms of dealing with the invasion of the West. What is relevant for Badiou and the European left may not be relevant for Chinese thinkers, leaders and the civil and political society. Or if you wish, the European left can celebrate Mao and Evo Morales, although what Mao was trying to do and Evo Morales is doing, has not much to do with the European left, but with their own histories, memories, subjectivities.

The point being that an idea of the “common” that goes back to eighteenth century France and twentieth century China, is not necessarily “preferable” to the idea of the “communal” that goes back to the socio-economic organization of Indigenous civilization, in the Americas, disrupted by European civilizers who created the conditions for eighteenth century France to happen.

The idea of the communal is not grounded in the idea of the “comuna”, although in Bolivia the idea of the “comuna” was taken up, not by Aymara and Quechua intellectuals, but by members of the Creole and Mestizo/a population, which is an important aspect of the debate in Bolivia, between the colonial left (meaning, the left of Marxist bent that unfolded in European colonies) and the Indigenous projects of decoloniality. Not that one is good and other is bad, for we know that there is no safe place; but we should know that the left of European genealogy of thought (and the same genealogy in modern/colonial states) doesn’t have the monopoly to imagine and dictate how a non-capitalist future shall be. The communal is an-other story which cannot be subsumed by the common, the commune or communism. This is not of course my decision, but the way I understand the dignity of people who do not want to be civilized either by the right nor by the left.

II
Aymara sociologist Félix Patzi Paco is a controversial figure in Bolivia and in the current process of thinking and working toward a pluri-national state. Creoles and Mestizo intellectuals suspect that Patzi Paco is working toward the hegemony of Aymara’s people which means on the one hand a project that is not pluri-national because its aim is to reverse the white (mestizo/creole) hegemony and, on the other, it ignores the many nations that currently exist in the state of Bolivia, including other indigenous nations as well as peasant organized communities. Since the objection is coming from leftist voices (generally whites by South American standards) seriously engaged in building a pluri-national state–and not, for example, from the right wing of the low land–the tension between the left ingrained in European traditions and decolonial indigenous voices ingrained in a long history of confrontations with European traditions reveals a common threat: the dividing line between leftist and decolonial subjectivities and genealogies of thought; briefly the difference between the diversity of the population of European descent (spiritually white) and the diversity of the population of Indigenous descent. Mixed of course but always through power and the colonial difference.

Patzi Paco launched a proposal toward the re-conceptualization of a “communal system” as an alternative to the liberal system. In the Indigenous intellectual tradition shall be distinguished from the common proposed by the European left. The genealogy of thoughts, history and sensibility are far apart in these two proposals. It shall be seen how and if they can work together in the future. The commons is being thought out as the pressure of the multitude to transform, through increasing and radical demands, the current complicities between the state and the market (capitalism). The communal comes from a non-western cosmology and sensibility, entrenched some how with western cosmology where the European left is inscribed, but endowed with particular visions of the organization of the economy and of governability. Notice that “sistema liberal” here means the advent of the modern/colonial state in Bolivia (and other regions of the non-western world), after independence from Spain, controlled by an elite of creoles and mestizos that lasted until the election of Evo Morales as president of Bolivia, in December of 2005.

Patzi Paco’s proposal, published in 2004, did not loose its relevance and its insights. I will risk a summary, in a few pages, hoping to do justice to a proposal that deserves to be further debated. I will make some changes in the vocabulary. I will substitute “workers/trabajadores” by “persons.” In spite of the fact that Patzi Paco makes clear distinctions between “communism” (in the Marxist trajectory) and “communal” (in the indigenous experiences in the Andes), he remained attached to the word “workers” that detracts from his proposal. Indeed, what he is proposing demands a different characterization of social roles. For that reason, the communal system is open to “persons” (Indians or not) as well as to different types of “works:” in a communal system the distinction between owner and waged worker as well as boss and employee in administrative organizations (banks, state organizations) vanished as well. To understand the scope of Patzi Paco’s proposal it is then necessary to clear our heads of the image of “Indians = peasants” that the coloniality of knowledge and of being imposed upon all of us, over five hundred years of control of knowledge and rhetoric of salvation.

One motivation of the proposal was to redress the image of Indian nations that prevail among social scientists, in Bolivia and from other countries and to provide a vision of Indian society and nation that is not shaped by disciplinary concerns but that comes from the history and memories of Indians themselves. As sociologist, he is not rejecting the disciplines, and particularly sociology, but he reverses his role. Instead of listening to the dictates of sociology, he uses sociology to communicate and organize his argument. The end result is a clear case of border epistemology.

Patzi Paco’s main objection to disciplinary studies of Indian nations is that they limit their investigations and report to:

–The common culture
–The language
–The territorial space

By so doing the “core” of communal organization, that in the Andes is the Ayllu, is bypassed or ignored comes to the fore. The proposal is then basically a description of the system of economic management and the system of political management, that he considers as the “core” of the communal system while the elements just mentioned constituted the “context” (e.g., entorno). So basically, most of what we know about Aymara and Quechuas in Bolivia is knowledge of the “context” but not of the “core” of their socio-economic organization.

There are several disclaimers that precede the presentation of his main thesis. One is the common myth among non-Indians that Indians are a homogenous community. Patzi Paco dispels the myth by drawing on class distinction. Among Indians there are professionals, retailers, manual workers, etc. On the other hand, there are Indians industry owners who exploit Indian labor. In a society where the communal system co-exists with the liberal one and market economy, industry owners have re-functionalized Andean reciprocity in order to obtain longer labor journeys (12 instead of 8 hours) for low salaries. That this would happen is not surprising and it doesn’t offer a counterargument against the communal system but rather support arguments against the mythical view of Indian society by the Creole-Mestizo society.

Identity is another issue that requires clarification. Both “indigenistas” (non-Indians who are pro-indians) and “indianistas” (Indians themselves who engage in identity politics like forms of identification with Indigeneity through clothes, long hair, rituals) operate at the level of the “entorno” (environment) rather than at the level of the two basic nodes of the system: economic and political organization.

Thus when Indianistas and Indigenistas refer to the ayllu, their reference is made to “territorial geographic organization” (which is a state conception) rather than to the “core” of the ayllu which is the economic and political organization. Patzi Paco’s proposal will focus precisely on this. The question Patzi Paco asks: how to solve the paradox between, on the one hand, the denial of Indigenous identity and its reinforcement, on the other? He mentions some positions among Indianistas and Indigenistas who argued for the need of a mental revolution in order to solve the paradox. Patzi Paco’s opinion is that this position is utopian since it is impossible to revert the process when nations are traversed by global flows (music, television, cinema, videos, internet).

Patzi Paco will address all these issues through his theory of communal system. In personal conversation he mentioned that has has been observing for several years that there was an incongruence between the attention paid to surface symbols of Indians (whether they have cell phones and adapt symbols of not Indian culture) but less attention was paid to the fact that the ayllu remained, changed, but remained as ayllu. The reason why they survived for three hundred years of Spanish colonialism and two hundred years of Bolivian republic, was not taken into consideration.

The question was how to structure the argument to make it effective. One night the light came in the name of Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems. Patzi Paco draw on two concepts, system and environment (e.g., entorno), that he also renders in terms of “center” and “periphery” (not in the geopolitical sense of the terms but to characterize a given social organization). As I suggested before, this is not a case of application of Luhmann’s theory but its reversal. This is one of the obstacles that decolonial thinking has to solve. One way to go is border epistemology or border gnosis, a problem that is not a problem for the re-orientation of the European left in thinking “the common” since the re-thinking takes places, internally, within their regional genealogy of thought. Badiou doesn’t need to deal with “Chinese thoughts” but Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong had no choice but to be confronted with “European thought” from the right and from the left.

As Patzi Paco explains, Luhmann is concerned with social stability while he is interested in social transformation; furthermore, Luhmann’s analyzes modern society in which different fields are self-constituted (the political field, the economic field, the religious field, the artistic field), while in the ayllu this situation doesn’t obtain. In his own words:

“Asi una sociedad organizada en subsistemas, para Luhmann, es una sociedad que no dispone de ningún órgano central. Es una sociedad sin vértice ni centro. Mientras mi planteamiento consiste en que toda sociedad tiene su esencia o centro y una periferia. Esta diferencia es sin duda comprensible debido a que la preocupación de Luhmann es la de preservar la sociedad moderna, por eso podemos ubicarlo dentro del paradigma de una teoría general de la estabilidad. Mientras que nosotros proponemos una teoría de transformación.”

If then, social organizations are structured around two pillars of the system, which constitute its core (political and economic management) and its environment (or entorno), then both the liberal state in Bolivia and the Indian organizations around the ayllus are both characterized by their system and their environment. This hypothesis explains that state multiculturalism (or the pluri and the multi as the expressions went) was an attempt from the Bolivian state to co-op the environment of the ayllu while ignoring, at the same time its core: the political and economic management. Here resides the second strong motivation to bring to the foreground the communal system and to confront it as an alternative option to the liberal system.

We can see now that both the “common” and the “communal” describe two horizons of expectations, one coming from the history of Europe and concocted by the European left and the other coming from the colonial histories of the Americas and concocted by Indigenous decolonial thinkers. What counts here is that a break through took place: the awareness of the indigenous leaders, Indian communities and non-Indian middle class supporters, that a de-colonial path to the future was opening and global futures cannot longer be though out in terms of “good” universals that shall replace the “bad” universals of official Christianity and liberal capitalist civilization.

I can anticipate two kinds of smiles here: a) Romantic Indianism for the first case (Bolivia) and b) Imperialist pretensions of having a world homogenized by the communal system (global reach, not globalism or globalization in the neo-liberal sense of the word). Whoever has been following the events in South America since the Zapatistas uprising, and in the Andes in the past 15 years, would have a hard time convincing me and others that this is romantic political theory. The second, we (all on the globe) are at the point in which abstract universals are no longer tenable: global reach of communal systems (which will not necessarily be based on Aymara-Quechua experiences if the system is worked out in China or South Africa) doesn’t mean monotopic universality. What it means is that de-colonial options toward global futures have in the communal system both a philosophy of life, a non-capitalist economy where the main reward in life is to accumulate wealth, a non-liberal voting system to elect the candidate who propose themselves as candidate; and a non-communist organization in the hand of a omnipresent state. But what is it the communal system?

Briefly stated:

Entendemos por concepto comunal o comunitario a la propiedad colectiva de los recursos y al manejo o usufructo privado del mismo. Por eso esta categoría debe ser entendida no sólo como algo referido a las sociedades rurales o agrarias, aunque son las que han sabido adaptarse muy bien a los cambios contemporáneos. De ahí que, sin duda, nuestro punto de partida para el análisis de los sistemas comunales son las sociedades indígenas. A diferencia de las sociedades modernas, las sociedades indígenas no han producido los esquemas de diferenciación ni tampoco han generado la separación entre campos (campo política, campo económico, campo cultural, etc.).

I would like to propose here a change in the vocabulary. Patzi Paco remains within a sociological vocabulary shared by liberal and Marxists: “property” albeit with the modifier “colectiva.” But “collective property” may be a confusing expression if we want to clearly distinguish between a communal system and communism or the commune. I would rather look for an expression like “collective rights to resources and group/family rights to use the fruits of their labor” (which means that people are not exploited by other people who appropriated the fruits of their labor as is the case in capitalist economy).

As I observed before, Patzi Paco looks at both the liberal and the communal systems in their core and their environment or “entorno”. In their core, there are both organized and consolidated on two pillars, economic and political/administrative managements. The difference lies in the type of economy and the political organization, both constituted by two types of “entornos” that Patzi Paco describes as “internal” and “external.” Internal “entorno” is generated within the system itself, liberal or communal. Crucial here is how both the system and the entorno are “coupled.” Patzi Paco introduces the concept of operational coupling and structural coupling. Through operational coupling a system, communal or liberal, can appropriate elements from the “entorno” of other systems. Thus, actors living by the rules of a communal system can appropriate elements of the entorno of the liberal systems, for example technology. Indian insurgencies that controlled the city of La Paz on a couple of occasions that ended with the presidency of Sánchez de Losada and later on of Carlos Mesa, were organized following the habits and the logic of the ayllu using cellular phones. The liberal system can, by means of operational coupling, appropriate elements from another system, the communal, and “include” them next to the elements of the “entorno” internal to the liberal system. This is a common strategy to build the rhetoric of “inclusion” without modifying the core, political/ administrative and economic management.

Thus, the two pillars of the communal system (as of any other social system, sultanates, kingdom, modern-European liberal societies or modern/colonial societies in British or independent India or colonial or independent Bolivia) are then “the system of economic management” and the “system of political/administrative management.” The fact that the two systems of management could be distinguished doesn’t mean that the economy and the government of the Sultanate shall be equal to the British State; and that the current organization of the modern states shall remain forever the model for the management of the community. Theoretically then the questions are how the Andean communal system differs from the Bolivian version of the liberal system, but how it could be similar to any other social systems in the present that has been affected and disrupted by five hundred years of Western expansion.

Now, I am not suggesting here that Patzi Paco’s modeling of the communal system shall be like the architect design for either remodeling an old building or building a new one. We know that people can be pushed to do what they do not want to do to a certain point. José Carlos Mariátegui saw it clearly and distinctively when he referred to building national-states grounded in liberal principles, in Peru after independence, in early nineteenth century. He stated:

“A society cannot be transformed artificially, still less a peasant society (here he is referring to Indians society indeed) deeply attached to its traditions and its legal institutions. Individualism has not has not originated in ay country’s constitution or civil code. It must be formed through a more complicated and spontaneous process. Destroying the “communities” did not convert the Indians into small landowners or even into free salaried workers; it delivered their lands to the gamonales and their clientele and made it easier for the latifundista to chain the Indian to the latifundium.”

Patzi Paco’s conceptualization of the communal system cannot be thought out as a replacement of the current modern/national state for it will not result on a plurinational but on a mononational state with different configuration. But for the same reason, it should count in the discussion for a pluri-national state for the current modern/colonial and mononational state could not offer a solution for a pluri-national state. Ignoring Patzi Paco’s proposal by the progressive left may end up in an excuse to prevent Indigenous and peasant leaders and communities to intervene in de-colonizing the current mono-cultural state that have been disputed by the white (creole-mestizo) right and left. A pluri-national state cannot be the left in power with the support of the Indians against the extreme right of the lowlands with the support of the international market.

III.

The United Nations will honor President Evo Morales with the title of “Defensor de la Madre Tierra.” In fact Evo Morales has been very vocal and clear advancing de-colonial views of Western conceptualization of Human/Nature relations, particularly since Francis Bacon’s Novun Organum (1620). The move by the United Nations support recent conversations and celebrations of the declaration of “the rights of nature.” But the “rights of nature”, like “human rights” are necessary in a society in which “mother earth” is indeed “exploited” as provider of “natural resources” for a society based on the Industrial and Technological Revolutions, both part and parcel of a liberal and capitalist civilizations. There was no need of “the rights of nature” for example, in Tawantinsuyu or in Ancient China for there was not Industrial Revolution that needed to deplete natural resources to produce artificial commodities and to dump the waist and the dirty the water on “nature” whose rights have been violated to produce artificial commodities, industrial and technological. The United Nations’ move responds to honest liberal intentions but at the same time silencing the process of the de-colonial Pachakuti (a Andean philosophical concept meaning a radical turn around of time and space) that the idea “of the communal system” is bringing to Bolivia, South America and to the world: the communal system doesn’t propose a more equitable distribution of wealth, but an horizon of life where wealth is not the goal. The goal, as it is being repeated today and inscribed in the Ecuadorian constitution is “el bien vivir” and “el bien vivir” cannot be attained through an economic system the promotes gains and accumulation at the expenses of human lives and of all living systems simplified under the name of “nature.”

[1] ) http://www.conamaq.org.bo/

[1] ) http://www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=99).

[1] ) See for instance the recent conference at Birbeck College, London, on “The Idea of Communism,” http://www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=99.

[1]) For the contextualization of “grupo comuna” see http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0718-090X2005000100006&script=sci_arttext. Four names associated to it are Alvaro Garcia-Lineras, current Vice-President of Bolivia, Raquel Gutierrez, Raul Prada, also working in the government and Luis Tapia..

[1] ) Sistema Comunal. Una propuesta alternativa al sistema liberal. Una discusión teórica para salir de la colonialidad y del liberalismo. La Paz: CEA (Comunidad de Estudios Alternativos), 2004. I will refer particularity to chapter V that contains the proposal.

[1] ) During his visit to UNC-Duke Consortium of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, in November of 2004/

[1] ) Translated by John Bednarz, Jr with Dirk Baecker. Stanford: Stanford U.P., 1995.

[1] )  Since the book by Patzi Paco, published in Bolivia, is not of easy access, I am quoting here from the reproduction of the main chapter (chapter 4), printed as “Sistema Comunal: Una propuesta alternative al sistema liberal,” in Las vertientes americanas del pensamiento y el proyecto des-colonial

[1] ) op.cit, 70.

[1] ) These concepts were introduced originally by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela El árbol del conocimiento. Santiago de Chile: Editorial Univrsitaria, 1984. They were used without explicit reference by Niklas Luhmann.  But this is issue is for another discussion.

[1] )  Esteban Ticona, personal communication.

[1] ) Jose Carlos Mariategui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality [1927]. Translated by Marjori Urquidi. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1990.

[1] ) At the time I was writing this article, no information is available in English, in Google. But it is all over the place in Spanish. http://spanish.china.org.cn/international/txt/2009-08/28/content_18419184.htm

http://otrosbicentenarios.blogspot.com/2008/12/el-vuelco-de-la-razn-sobre-las.html

1.- Las llamadas “revoluciones” y a veces “independencias” que sacudieron a América y al mundo del Atlántico (desde España y Portugal hasta Francia, Alemania e Inglaterra), fueron en realidad revoluciones e independencias post-coloniales. Post-coloniales en sentido literal: instauraron órdenes políticos y económicos sobre las ruinas de las colonias ibéricas y británicas. No podría decirse en cambio que la Revolución Gloriosa, en Inglaterra o la Revolución Francesa, su país homónimo, fueron revoluciones post-coloniales. En las Américas las revoluciones e independencias fueron movimientos de emancipación de los criollos blancos (en la América Latina y Sajona) y negros, originarios de Africa o nacidos y crecidos en el Caribe (la revolución haitiana). En medio de las revoluciones y las independencias que lograron—en distintas escalas—sus fines, cuentan también las “rebeliones” de Tupac Amaru y Tupac Katari en el Colasuyo, y en el sector sureste del Hispánico Virreinato del Perú. Hoy no se entendería con propiedad la elección de Evo Morales como presidente de Bolivia, y las poderosas organizaciones indígenas en Ecuador, la fuerza de Gambianos y Nasas en el sur de Colombia si no tuviéramos en cuenta las rebeliones además de las revoluciones y de las independencias.

La comprensión adecuada de este sacudón periférico que comenzó antes de la inflada revolución francesa, necesita sacar de la estantería lugares comunes, ya tapados por el polvo. En primer lugar, la revolución fundadora de los Estados Unidos de Norte América ocurrió en 1776, y las rebeliones de Tupac Amaru y Tupac Katari en 1781-82. En segundo lugar, a diferencia de la revolución francesa y a su equivalente en Inglaterra (la revolución gloriosa), no fueron revoluciones de una clase emergente en Europa—la burguesía mercantil que provenía de la Edad Media Europea y la burguesía librecambista enriquecida por la explotación de las colonias en América y por la trata de esclavos, que teorizará Adam Smith en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII. Alcontrario de Europa, las revoluciones, independencias y rebeliones en las Américas ofrecen un paisaje vario pinto.

Los criollos de descendencia Europea que llevaron adelante la revolución en Estados Unidos, no eran propiamente burgueses, equivalentes a grupos sociales en Inglaterra y Francia; ni equivalentes a las comunidades formadas en los Burgos medievales ni tampoco a la burguesía surgida del comercio trasatlántico, como lo explica Eric William en su clásica obra Capitalism and Slavery (1944). Los criollos y africanos de primera generación que llevaron adelante la revolución Haitiana, no tenían mucho que ver ni con los unos ni con los otros. Ellos no llegaron a América desde Europa, sino desde Africa. Por su parte, las rebeliones de Katari y Amaru eran sólo la última de una larga historia de rebeliones y protestas, en los Andes, en Yucatán y en el valle de México, cuya historia se remonda a la primera mitad del siglo XVI. En tercer lugar, las de Europa se llamaron revoluciones (la Gloriosa y la Francesa), mientras que en América se llamaron revoluciones (la de Estados Unidos y la Haitiana). Se tomaron como homólogas periféricas de las correspondientes revoluciones metropolitanas, en Inglaterra y Francia? Independencias en cambio se llamaron sus equivalentes en el mundo colonial ibérico (cuando todavía América Latina no existía).

Una comprensión cabal del sacudón periférico nos lleva a preguntarnos, estas revoluciones, independencias y rebeliones en la periferia, fueron contra qué y contra quienes? Y en Europa, las dos revoluciones de marras, fueron contra qué y contra quienes? Y por qué no hubo semejantes sacudones en lo que es hoy el Medio Oriente (que no existía como tal todavía), en China (que todavía no había caído en las garras diplomáticas y comerciales de Inglaterra y Estados Unidos, como lo haría con la Guerra del Opio, en 1848)? Para empezar, la revolución que constituyó los Estados Unidos fue para emanciparse de quienes, en Inglaterra, comenzaron a tomar control político y económico con la rebelión de los “leverlers” (en 1648) y la “Revolución Gloriosa” en 1688. La revolución que liberó esclavos y africanos en Haiti, sacó ventaja de las clases emergentes que se emancipaban del control monárquico y religioso. Es decir, los motivos que encendieron las energías en ambos lados del Atlántico eran bien diversos y tenían historias locales específicas. No fueron, por cierto, revoluciones, emancipaciones y rebeliones contra un abstracto Gran Hermano opresor, uni-versal e invisible. Al contrario, una cosa fueron las revoluciones en el seno de formaciones imperiales-capitalistas, en Europa y otra muy distinta las rebeliones, revoluciones e independencias en las colonias de los países europeos, imperiales-capitalistas.

En América, los movimientos de emancipación (con sus tres perfiles) de-coloniales fueron distintas respuestas a la “revolución colonial” que tuvo lugar en el siglo XVI y comenzó a re-estructurarse a finales del XVIII y comienzos del XIX. En qué consistió “la revolución colonial?” Para los hombres Ibéricos (misioneros, oficiales del estado monárquico, soldados de una informe armada, misioneros de varias órdenes) consistió simplemente en el desmantelamiento de un tipo de orden (en Tawantinsuyu, en Anáhuac y en Yucatán) y la imposición paulatina de otro tipo de orden. El proceso de destrucción de un orden (el existente en el Incanato en Tawantinsuyu, en el Tlatoanato en Anáhuac y en la civilización Maya). Mientras que “revolución colonial” destaca el aspecto “positivo” que el concepto de revolución tiene para quienes la realizan (y en este caso, positivo y triunfante para los agentes ibéricos y para sus narradores), para los indígenas la “revolución colonial” fue un desastre y un caos. Para los Aymaras, la revolución colonial que iniciaron hombres ibéricos fue un Pachakuti, un vuelco y desorden. El intelectual Andino, Guaman Puma de Ayala, vertió el término Queshuaymara de Pachakuti como “el mundo al revés”, y a sí lo detalló en su fundamental tratado político Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno, concluída y enviada a Felipe III hacia 1616. También fue un vuelco y un caos para las poblaciones de Àfrica de cuyo seno se capturaron, esclavizaron y transportaron a América millones de personas. El equivalente de Pachakuti para un esclavizado y luego liberto como Ottobah Cugoano, fue su tratado ético-político (apropiado recientemente como “slave’s narratives”), Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery (1786, diez años después de la publicación de La riqueza de las naciones, de Adam Smith). El tratado de Cugoano se publico en las vísperas mismas del proceso que llevaría a la revolución Haitiana.

2.- El lector impaciente se estará preguntando de qué estamos hablando en un volumen conmemorativo del segundo centenario de la independencia en el Río de la Plata y a la constitución de la República Argentina. La historia oficial y la contra-historia son harto conocidas. Aunque siempre hay lugar de maniobra para una nueva interpretación partiendo de las pautas comunes que sostienen las interpretaciones existentes, si bien diversas y también en conflicto, mi intención aquí es precisamente socavar los cimientos sobre los que se asientan tales interpretaciones existentes, en su diversidad y en su conflicto. Estoy intentando una interpretación de-colonial más que post-colonial. Las interpretaciones post-coloniales parten de la afirmación, de la revolución colonial. Las interpretaciones de-coloniales parten del Pachakuti. Ahora bien, la perspectiva que instaura la revolución colonial borra la memoria del Pachakuti. En cambio, la memoria del Pachakuti no puede sacarse de encima la revolución colonial. Esto es, la interpretación de-colonial implica una epistemología de fronteras, un tener que dar cuentas sin poder ignorar la revolución colonial. Mientras que las interpretaciones post-coloniales son criticas de la revolución colonial aunque dejan intacto sus mismos supuestos. En este sentido, Bartolomé de las Casas es un crítico post-colonial: critica los excesos de la revolución colonial, pero no cuestiona su propia existencia y sus propios fundamentos.

Las revoluciones, independencias y rebeliones de finales del XVIII y principios del XIX son, por un lado, las primeras fracturas del orden moderno/colonial instaurado por la revolución colonial (en general descripta como “descubrimiento y conquista”) a finales del XV y principios del XVI. El orden moderno es inseparable del desorden colonial, tanto para Indígenas en América como para africanos en Africa y en América. Dicho de otra manera, la colonialidad es constitutiva y es el lado oscuro de la modernidad. Esbocemos entonces, en este marco, el carácter de las distintas rebeliones, revoluciones e independencias.

La revolución de los criollos Anglos, en las colonias Inglesas de la costa este de Estados Unidos, construye sobre la base de un triple orden de decisiones. Independencia del control británico; sumisión de las comunidades indígenas y explotación de esclavos africanos. Esta revolución se realiza, por otra parte, en un momento histórico en el cual Inglaterra y Francia están tomando el liderazgo de la política y la economía global que ni España ni Portugal supieron o pudieron mantener. La Revolución Gloriosa y la Revolución Francesa son los signos y los síntomas de un sacudón histórico en Europa; la Revolución Americana en las colonias. Curiosamente, las colonias inglesas a partir de las cuales se fundarán los Estados Unidos de América, se constituyeron recién a partir de las primeras décadas del siglo XVII mientras que los virreinatos en el área colonial hispánica y los pelourinhos en el área colonial portuguesa, fueron constituidos durante el siglo XVI. Cómo es entonces que la revolución en las colonial inglesas tiene lugar antes que en las hispánicas y portuguesas? Y cómo es, entonces, que la construcción de los Estados Unidos como estado-nación colonial tomó la delantera y se puso al lado de los estados-naciones imperiales (Francia, Inglaterra, Alemania) mientras que los estados-naciones en el Sur no siguieron el mismo derrotero (y hoy en día vemos las consecuencias)? Una posible respuesta estaría en considerar la conmoción del mundo colonial (único existente en ese momento, puesto que lo que será la colonización de la India por los ingleses está en sus comienzos y la colonización del Norte de África por los franceses recién comienza hacia 1830) como una réplica de las divisiones imperiales internas en Europa. Al sur quedan los países latinos, católicos. Al norte, países latinos pero calvinistas como Francia y los países anglo-sajones. Este es el momento de la segunda modernidad, la modernidad de la ilustración que desplaza la primera modernidad, la modernidad del renacimiento. La formación de Estados Unidos sobre las cenizas de las colonias inglesas, se gestó también en co-relación con liderazgo que Inglaterra estaba ganando sobre España y Portugal.

Es así que las independencias de las ex-colonias ibéricas y la formación de estados-nacionales post-coloniales, mantienen intacta la colonialidad en la que se fundó la revolución colonial (como lo hizo Estados Unidos) pero, además—y a diferencia de Estados Unidos—inauguran la continuidad imperial mediante imperios sin colonias. Veamos esto con más tranquilidad.
El concepto de “colonialismo interno” podría usarse pero no tendría mucho—o el mismo y cargado—sentido que tiene en las Américas, con excepción de Haití como veremos. Las revoluciones e independencias en manos de criollos de descendencia europea tanto en el Sur como en el Norte, tienen un elemento en común: el “colonialismo interno”, es decir, la re-producción y re-organización de la colonialidad (e.g., la lógica de la dominación y control imperial en las colonias) en manos de hombres nacidos en América en lugar del simple colonialismo en manos de hombres y funcionarios de los monarcas imperiales. Por qué colonialismo interno? Porque hombres blancos descendientes de familias europeas continuaron y muchas veces empeoraron las condiciones de Indígenas y esclavos, aunque esclavos libertos. Su condición de seres inferiores—en la conciencia de lso blancos—los marginó de la nación y de la ciudadanía. Haití es la excepción porque, desde el primer momento, se construyó como un estado-nación en manos de hombres negros descendientes de familias africanas o de familias de africanos esclavizados en las colonias.

El concepto de “diferencia imperial interna” que describe las tensiones entre el sur católico y el norte protestante de la Europa atlántica capitalista también puede conectar la América anglo con la América latina, aunque en los puntos opuestos del espectro de la diferencia imperial interna. La primera hola de revoluciones, rebeliones e independencias post-coloniales (es decir, que rompen los lazos directos con el imperio, pero que reproducen la colonialidad), inicia una nueva modalidad: imperialismo sin colonias. La formación de repúblicas (presuntamente autónomas y soberanas) sobre las ruinas de las colonias ibéricas, termina en realidad en manos de Francia e Inglaterra, aunque ni la una ni la otra tuvieron colonias. Manejaron, sin embargo, la escena económica y comercial (principalmente Inglaterra) y la escena política y cultural (principalmente Francia). Después que Inglaterra perdió las colonias en el continente, y el control de varias islas del Caribe, inició su colonialismo directo en India y su colonialismo sin colonias en América del Sur. Francia, después de Napoleón y después del tratado Guadalupe-Hidalgo que dejó en territorio Estadounidense vastas extensiones de tierras del estado Mexicano, inició una feroz campaña política en la que la diferencia imperial interna se fue trasladando del interior de Europa a su continuidad en América, Estados Unidos. Estos dos derroteros llevaron a Estados Unidos a integrarse al club de los países imperiales, y a tomar el liderazgo después de la segunda guerra mundial. Mientras que los estados-naciones del sur, independizados de imperios decadentes, de la primera modernidad, se entregaron al imán de los nuevos imperios, los de la segunda modernidad. George W. F. Hegel contó esta historia a su manera, aunque reveladora, en sus lecciones de filosofía de la historia, publicadas en 1822. El politólogo de Harvard, Samuel Huntingon, actualizó la historia de Hegel en su controvertido libro “La guerra de las civilizaciones”, tesis publicada en inglés, como artículo, en 1993.

Las repúblicas del sur entraron en una re-organización del mundo moderno/colonial que quizás sus líderes no entendieron cabalmente, desorientados por la trayectoria de Estados Unidos a lo largo del siglo XIX, desde la compra de Luisiana a Napoleón, a la impune apropiación de territorios mexicanos en 1848, a su afirmación definitiva en el orden global después de la guerra que dio el golpe de gracia al imperio hispánico en 1898. En el sur las ex colonias ibéricas se entregaban cada vez más al control británico y francés y, a partir de principios del siglo XIX, a Estados Unidos. Hoy, a doscientos años del sacudón postcolonial somos testigos, por un lado, de los destinos seguidos por los estados-naciones construidos en la tradición de Europa. Hoy, a doscientos años del sacudón post-colonial, estamos presenciando también el comienzo de procesos de-colonizadores.

La memoria de Pachakuti alimenta proyectos políticos e intelectuales como los que llevaron a Evo Morales a la presidencia y que recorren el suelo de América desde los Mapuches hasta Canadá. A los doscientos años de las independencias y revoluciones de criollos de origen Europeo, estamos presenciando acontecimientos como la III Cumbre Continental de Pueblos y Nacionalidades Indígenas de América. La conciencia de-colonial Africa es ya evidente en toda América del Sur, y siempre lo fue en el Caribe. El concepto de “afro-latinidad” es ya monedad corriente cuando hace diez años apenas, se asumía que la población africana en las Américas estaba en Estados Unidos o en el caribe inglés (es decir, afro-anglicanidad); o en el caribe francés cuya “latinidad” quedó oscurecida por el simple hecho de que el concepto mismo de “latinidad” es una invención de intelectuales y politólogos franceses. Afro-latinidad, en cambio, destaca las poblaciones afro-descendientes en la América hispana y lusitana.

En 1852, Juan Baustista Alberdi, comenzaba la introducción de su célebre Bases y puntos de partida para la organización nacional, con estas observaciones:

La América ha sido descubierta, conquistada y poblada por las razas civilizadas de la Europa, á impulsos de la misma ley que sacó de su suelo primitivo á los pueblos de Egipto para atraerlos á la Grecia; más tarde á los habitantes de esta para civilizar las regiones de la Península Itálica; y por fin á los bárbaros habitadores de la Germania para cambiar con los restos del mundo romano la virilidad de su sangre por la luz del Cristianismo.

Hoy, al ser no sólo conscientes de que la revolución colonial para unos fue un Pachakuti para los otros, podemos imaginar a los doscientos años de las primeras independencias, rebeliones y revoluciones del mundo moderno/colonial que los estados nacionales “las razas civilizadas de la Europa” se enfrentan con dos problemas. Uno, el conflicto a todo nivel “de las razas civilizadas” del Sur y del Norte. El otro, el de la emergencia de actores políticos, en el Sur, que fueron marginados de la construcción nacional. Y la emergencia, en el Norte, de una inmensa población “latina” cuya función social de transformación es semejante al protagonismo de Indígenas y afro-descendientes. En este panorama entrevemos el proceso de-colonial como una re-inscripción de Pachakuti: un vuelco de la razón. Esto es, un vuelco que comienza a llevarnos de la razón imperial a la razón de-colonial en cuyo espíritu están escritas estas páginas.
Publicado por Encuentro Buenos Aires en 9:55

Mexico
La farsa del mapa genómico de los mexicanos
Silvia Ribeiro

El pasado 11 de mayo, el Instituto Nacional de Medicina Genómica (Inmegen) presentó en un acto mediático, con la presencia entusiasta de Felipe Calderón, el llamado “Mapa del genoma de los mexicanos”. Se presentó como un gran avance científico, vinculándolo oportunistamente hasta con el estudio del virus de la gripe porcina. Obviaron sin embargo las cuestiones fundamentales: ¿avance para quién?, ¿quién se beneficia?, ¿a quién sirve?

Dieron a conocer la publicación en una revista científica de los resultados de cinco años de investigación en el proyecto ahora titulado “Proyecto de Diversidad Genómica de la Población Mexicana”. Inicialmente se proponían buscar las variaciones genéticas de las poblaciones indígenas de México, las cuales según los proponentes del Inmegen son una gran “oportunidad para la industria farmacéutica”. Posteriormente anunciaron que solamente tomaría muestras de poblaciones mestizas. Ahora el Inmegen reconoce haber tomado muestras de varias poblaciones indígenas, imprescindibles para “comparar” con el resto de la población.

Luego de años de costosos estudios, equipos y salarios (lo único gratis fueron las muestras de indígenas y “mestizos”), el Inmegen “demostró científicamente” que la población de México es una mezcla genética de poblaciones indígenas y europeas, con un pequeño toque de genes africanos en las zonas donde las plantaciones devoraban esclavos. Por si luego de 500 años de Conquista a alguien le hubiera pasado inadvertido.

Resaltan que en las muestras de México encontraron al menos 89 variaciones genéticas, cuya unicidad es que no habían sido detectadas en el proyecto internacional HapMap, un proyecto similar auspiciado por gobiernos y empresas farmacéuticas e informáticas, que en su primera fase se basó en el secuenciamiento genómico de 270 individuos de poblaciones africanas, asiáticas y europeas. En su tercera fase, el HapMap incorporó muestras de mexicanos residentes en Los Ángeles, pero el Inmegen no lo menciona.

Según el Inmegen, haber encontrado estas variaciones es un paso para desarrollar una “medicina personalizada”, basada en la composición genética de cada individuo y diseñando fármacos específicamente adaptados para las variaciones genéticas de la población mexicana.

La búsqueda de variaciones genómicas parte del supuesto que las diferencias genéticas indicarían la predisposición a adquirir o resistir ciertas enfermedades. Por tanto, además de encontrar variaciones, es necesario identificar si están asociadas a alguna dolencia.

Para ello, como describe el artículo presentado por el Inmegen, se usan mayoritariamente dos enfoques: uno llamado “asociación de genoma completo” y otro “mapeo por mestizaje”. En el primero se comparan las variaciones genómicas de personas con una determinada afección con el de otras que no la tienen. En el segundo, las diferencias con poblaciones ancestrales.

Lo que no aclara el Inmegen es que estos métodos han dado resultados extraordinariamente pobres para predecir y mucho menos para atender enfermedades.

Según una serie de artículos científicos publicados recientemente en la prestigiosa revista New England Journal of Medicine (23/4/2009), pese a los cientos de proyectos en curso y los miles de millones invertidos a nivel global, los estudios de asociación de genoma completo no han servido para explicar los vínculos genéticos con enfermedades, más que de una manera tan general, que finalmente no han sido útiles.

Por el contrario, para lo que han servido las variaciones encontradas y este tipo de estudios, es para dar jugosas ganancias a las compañías que fabrican kits de diagnóstico genético. Es decir, pruebas de ADN para diferentes afecciones, que analizan si el cliente –que pueda pagarlas– tiene determinadas variaciones genéticas que estarían supuestamente relacionadas con ellas. No sirven, pero eso no impide que actualmente haya más de 1000 kits de este tipo en el mercado, cuyas ventas en 2007 fueron de 730 millones de dólares y crecen a un ritmo de 20 por ciento anual. (Ver reporte de ETC “Pruebas personales de ADN y el mito de la medicina personalizada”).

Salvo en el caso de las enfermedades monogénicas (determinadas por un solo gen), la composición genética no es más que una ínfima parte del surgimiento de las enfermedades. Las variaciones existen en una enorme complejidad de interacciones genéticas y bioquímicas de las que poco se sabe, y el desarrollo de enfermedades no es independiente del ambiente, incluyendo realidades alimentarias, sanitarias, económicas, ecológicas, culturales y muchas otras.

La medicina genómica es un enfoque extremadamente fragmentario, que deja fuera del ámbito de estudio la mayor parte de los elementos esenciales a tener en cuenta al pensar en salud y enfermedad.

Las enfermedades que investiga el Inmegen (asma, obesidad, cáncer y lupus), tienen un enorme peso de factores socioeconómicos y ambientales, determinados por pobreza, contaminación ambiental, mala nutrición, componentes tóxicos en alimentación y vivienda, etcétera, todos fuera de su investigación.

Si pese a estas graves condicionantes, los estudios del Inmegen derivaran en algún tipo de base para una “medicina genómica”, todas las herramientas para vincular las variaciones con enfermedades y para el desarrollo de medicinas farmacogenómicas están patentadas en manos de unas pocas empresas farmacéuticas y de informática. Varias de las cuales tienen, obviamente, una estrecha relación con el Inmegen, esperando ansiosamente nuevos insumos para aumentar sus ganancias.

Por tanto, los resultados de estos estudios, si no resultan completamente inútiles, estarán totalmente fuera del alcance de las poblaciones que, como los indígenas, aportan sus genes para finalmente enriquecer a las empresas de diagnóstico y a las farmacéuticas.

But there is another trajectory (or perhaps trajectories) unfolding beyond the university system, acting and thinking a philosophy of education geared toward the communal. It is indeed a de colonial philosophy that nourishes Amawtay Wasi in Quito; and UniTierra in San Cristobal de las Casas and y en in Oaxaca.

I wonder if similar initiatives started or are planning to start in Sub-Saharan Africa, East and South East Asia, Central Asia or in the Middle East? Initiatives as the one i listed here are engaged in epistemic de-linking, building indeed de-colonial visions of the future.

Los sucesos desarrollados alrededor de las investigaciones de Andrés Carrasco sobre el herbicida empleado en la siembra y cultivo de la soja es un eslabón de una larga cadena y de una creciente tendencia de varias caras que miran en la misma dirección. Las investigaciones de Carrasco ponen de relieve un principio general de la economía llamada capitalista. En ella, todo se somete al aumento de producción y de las ganancias, no importa quien caiga. Como el fin son las ganancias, el fin justifica los medios. Esto fue así desde el comienzo histórico del capitalismo en el siglo XVI, cuando la trata de esclavos hizo que las vidas humanas fueran desechables en pos de la producción, la acumulación y las ganancias.

Ese principio se ha generalizado de tal manera que, curiosamente, el director del departamento de estudios de las religiones en la Universidad de Columbia, Mark Taylor, publicó un artículo de opinión hace un par de semanas en el New York Times, titulado “El fin de la universidad como la conocimos.” Compara la universidad actual con el colapso de Wall Street y de la industria automotriz en Detroit: sistemas ya fuera de funcionamiento que necesitan remozamiento y regulación. La universidad -argumenta- necesita remozamiento y regulación. Una de los lastres que carga es haberse convertido en centros de investigación y docencia alejados de los problemas actuales de la sociedad. Hasta ahí estamos de acuerdo. El filósofo jamaiquino Lewis Gordon adelantó argumentos semejantes hace ya un tiempo describiendo esta situación como una “decadencia disciplinaria”, que pone la ortodoxia del método en primer lugar, y los problemas en segundo. El método precede y supera al problema.

¿Qué propone Taylor? Plantea que en vez de la organización actual en departamentos disciplinarios se organicen unidades de investigación en torno a problemas urgentes. El problema del agua, por ejemplo. Ahora bien, la investigación creativa, como la describe Taylor, en torno al problema del agua estará guiada por dos tipos de intereses. Una vertiente es la de las corporaciones que ya hicieron del agua una mercancía. Las investigaciones en esta orientación tendrán primero el ojo puesto en las ganancias, en cómo se puede hacer más dinero con la comercialización del agua. Usarán la retórica del progreso y el desarrollo sustentable, sin duda. Otra vertiente es la que defiende Vandana Shiva en su libro Las guerras del agua: investigaciones creativas para revelar los subterfugios de las corporaciones interesadas en las ganancias y en la mercantilización del agua, no en la vida. La mercancía-agua viene primero, después se verá cuántos la pueden comprar, y cuánto adelantan los inversores de bolsa para incrementar el precio del agua a futuro.

Volvamos a Taylor. La visión de la universidad futura que él propone coincide con el enunciado de una circular lanzada por los organizadores del Foro Universitario Mundial que se hará en Davos en 2010: “Una de las paradojas de nuestro tiempo es que el pensamiento más creativo proviene más de las empresas, los políticos y los líderes sociales que de la academia. El Foro Universitario Mundial se ha creado en la creencia de que hay una necesidad urgente para los académicos de conectarse más directa y arriesgadamente con las cuestiones fundamentales de nuestro tiempo. De la misma manera en que el Foro Económico Mundial se ha forjado un rol de liderazgo global para los políticos, los empresarios y los líderes sociales”. En este párrafo, se asume que hay un solo tipo de creatividad, la creatividad positiva para el desarrollo. No se tiene en cuenta, por cierto, la creatividad investigativa que pone de relieve lo que la investigación positiva oculta (como los casos de Andrés Carrasco o Vandana Shiva). La filosofía que subyace en la organización del Foro Universitario Mundial es la creatividad para el desarrollo. La misma creatividad que desembocó en el derrumbe de Wall Street.

En cambio, lo que necesitamos es otro tipo de creatividad: respuestas como las que ha dado la comunidad académica en Argentina ante el “affaire Carrasco.” Oponerse al proyecto de Davos es sólo una parte y quizás mínima del problema. Es necesario trabajar creativamente en opciones descoloniales a futuro (en vez the reproducir y remozar las opciones desarrollistas) del saber y de la investigación, con miras a la creación de futuros globales comunales (ya no la universalidad capitalista ni la comunista, hermanas gemelas de la Ilustración). La ecuación desarrollo/libertad es cada vez menos evidente.Tal creatividad tendrá que comenzar a partir de horizontes en los que ya no será posible por puro sentido común, ni aún para los propios terratenientes argentinos ni para la propia Cámara de Sanidad Agropecuaria y Fertilizantes, aceptar acciones devastadoras como las de Monsanto y otras corporaciones semejantes. También los organizadores del Foro en Davos tendrán que advertir que están azuzando el fuego de una carrera hacia la devastación. El problema ya no es declararse anticapitalista. El problema es de vida o muerte si el capitalismo se reconstruye después de su propio intento fallido de suicidio. El problema fundamental del capitalismo es haber generado sujetos moldeados por el éxito, y el éxito por las ganancias, y la felicidad por la posesión de objetos. Subjetividades de muerte bajo la convicción (o la mala fe) de ser generadores de vida y de bienestar.

It called my attention for two reasons. The first I explain here is that I saw it coming: the struggle of the twenty-first century will be a struggle for the control of knowledge. Up to this point the control of knowledge was not yet at the same level of conflict than the control of authority (international relations, military budgets and nuclear control agreements) and the control of economy (free trade, Doha Rounds, NAFTA, etc.). The second reason I stopped, opened and read it, was a ” coincidence.”

The coincidence was that on April 26 the NYT published an op-ed, signed by the Chair of the Religion Department at Columbia University, Dr. Mark C. Taylor titled ” End the University as We Know it”

There is a flat paragraph (just showing half of the story) in the call for papers, which is somewhat recast in the article by Taylor. The paragraph is the following:

“One of the paradoxical characteristics of our time is that some of the most creative thinking comes from business, politician and other community leaders rather than academe. The World Universities Forum has been created in the belief that there is an urgent need for academe to connect more directly and boldly with the large questions of our time. In much the same way that the World Economic Forum has forged a role of global intellectual leadership for politicians, business people and community leaders.”

Why does the author of this paragraph focus on a paradox and I see a flat paragraph hiding half of the story? Common sense will say that indeed the paradox is true. And that is exactly the point that Taylor is making in the NYT op-ed. The paradox is truly cast in terms of the World Universities Forum. Although in the past two decades (particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union) universities (particularly in the United States and Western Europe but also around the world, from Argentina to India) has embraced corporate values (instead of the humanistic values of the Kantian-Humboltian type of university that was dominant from the 1900 to 1945), the corporate university become prominent recently. It should not surprise us then that recent re-orientation of universities became strictly connected to corporate values and corporate needs. The crisis of Wall Street was not just a financial crisis, it was an epistemic crisis: it showed that the rational models in computers, the calculation of consumer reactions, the extreme confidence in numbers and computer models, was all just fine as an entertaining kids game, not serious knowledge. Kids are fine to forget about ” reality”that is why they are kids. But arrogant and unethical grown ups belong to the category of “crimes against humanity” that Human Rights organizations have been successful in pursuing and penalizing (Pinochet, various truth commissions around the world, Milosevich, etc.). There were a few who inflicted self-penalty and committed suicide, which the media exploited telling long stories and showing pictures to make believe that the guilty also suffer. So, there is something wrong in a paradox that promotes, from The Economic Social Forum, the rethinking of the university and of knowledge production. What is wrong is that half of the story is being told: an-other knowledge is needed.

I suppose that the organizers of the World Social Forum are already examining the consequences of The World Universities Forum. It will be indeed great and necessary, but much more is needed beyond what the World Social Forum may do. What is needed is a global epistemic and conceptual discussion of the de-colonial politics of knowledge: a massive and global debate about learning to unlearn what is presupposed in the call for papers and in Taylor’s article. What is needed then is a network of Worlds Epistemic and Ethic Fora toward communal futures, which means de-westernizing and decolonizing knowledge and education.

II.
The World Universities Forum embodied corporate interests and the transformation of the university being thought out presupposes knowledge at the service of corporate values and horizon of life. This horizon, in its more acceptable formulations, would be “development and freedom” as argued by Amartya Sen. The problem is that ” development”is not a taken for granted horizon. Arguments showing that beyond the rhetoric of development the seed of exploitation of human labor and natural resources continues, has been mounting since 1990. The problem is that while Davos has the resources provided by development projects, those who suffer the consequences, or are aware of the devastating consequences of development, do no have the same resources (institutions, main stream media, book industry) to promote a communal, rather than corporate, life horizons.

Thus, while many of us who see that “development is the problem”and would agree with organizers of The World Universities Forum and with Mark Taylor that the university is in need of transformation, we do not agree in what transformations are needed. And we do not believe that these decisions can be only taken at Davos. While defenders of corporate values in research and education are entitled to their own arguments, they are not entitled to act as if the final truth lies in devastating global futures of which we are having plenty of examples (food crisis, Wall Street, virus caused by lack of hygiene among food producers, water crisis, growing economic differences between the shrinking global economic elite and the global poverty masses). “Development and growth”are not the answer. Mark Taylor has a good point: universities, like Wall Street and Detroit, need to be regulated. Who will do the job and with what purpose? If we, all of us, want to live well instead of living better than our neighbors, as Bolivian President Evo Morales has been stating based on the tradition of Aymara philosophy instead of the tradition of Greek and European enlightenment philosophy of life, for which “nature” has to be known and dominated, then regulation has to be pluri-versal and not uni-versal and the main office of universality set on Davos.

The problem with Mark Taylor’s recommendations, what I surmise are Davos too, are only formal. And they are only formal because the supposition is that there is one, only one way to go: “forward, development, improvement of the existing horizon of life”which began to be formed and spread during the sixteenth century, in the Atlantic, under the leadership of Europe, the labor of Africans and the lands taken away from the Indians in the Americas and the Caribbean. It is not Greece we should place at the center of modern/colonial history if we really want to democratize the economy and put education at the service of economic democracy. However, after Wall Street the debates are not about economic democracy but about saving capitalism. And that the way of life, the ethics and the subjectivities (produce, save and accumulate; consume, consume, consume and be happy), cannot be solved with a transformation of the curriculum and the expansion of technology that, today, is part of the problem: water pollution in small towns, where metal extractions are being implemented by transnational corporations in Argentina for example (Cerro de Fátima), that polluted the water in order to wash the stone and the detritus and extract mineral to produce more cell phones, ipods, mini and maxi computers, etc.)

III.-
III. 1. The paradox mentioned in the call for papers that creativity lately takes places outside of the university is partially true. Indeed, biographies of political celebrities, comedians and anchors of economic programs like Lou Dobbs, are more successful in quantity of book selling than most faculty publishing academic books. “Success”in selling is one story. It has to do with information and books as commodities. “Creativity”is another thing. An area of impressive creativity in between the university of the world outside of the university has been the all kind of investigations, from violations of human rights, violations of security measures like in the case of the pork shine in Mexico recently (May 2009), all kind of water pollution incurred by mining corporations who are careless about the consequences of water pollution and endangering the health of communities along the river, Monsanto, Singenta, Dupont and other corporations speculating with food stock prices to increase gains at the expense of millions of human beings suffering the consequences of magnificent economic gains.

If as Taylor says in his article, universities need to be regulated like Detroit and Wall Street, so do the corporations, not just the universities. The World Universities Forum at Davos could be one of the places, together with the World Social University Forum initiated in Porto Alegre, as well as many other organizations like the Indigenous Summit of the Americas and the extremely well conceived, creative, ground breaking, life-oriented Amawtay Wasi (House of Knowledge), Universidad Pluri-cultural de los Pueblos y Naciones Indígneas del Ecuador. From the leader of Amawtay Wasi to Taylor’s article and the organizers of the World Universities Forum, and many of us, are all in agreement that the university as we know it today needs to be re-oriented to respond to the most pressing needs of our time. But of course, not in its totality, and here is where Taylor’s article is in need to be strongly amended. Two amendings are most pressing:

a) What are the needs of our time cannot be decided uni-laterally. And even less, what are the solutions. If there is an agreement between Bolivian organizations, the leader of the Summit of the Americas and the leaders of World Universities Forum, in consultation with all involved parties, that water is a pressing problem, the solution cannot be determined at Davos: Davos is not the United Nations but only a group of interest, a particular group of interest that advocates “development and economic growth”under the conviction, the belief, or just the interest that economic growth and development is the way to freedom and happiness. That is not a commonly shared view, not even a majority view;

b) It would be detrimental for the future of society and life on the planet if the university turns completely to support corporate values. It is crucial that the University remains the place of free thinking and research, where “creativity”is not valued in relation to pressing needs but will indeed contribute to anticipate future problems. What is crucial is that research at the university will contribute to “regulate corporate toxic excess in massive production and corporate legal excess in hiding and persecuting creative researchers who reveal their violations of the law and of human rights.” The World Universities at Davos could make a significant contribution to regulate the excesses of the values it defends. A just world and democratic economy, needs the collaboration of all sectors involved, and not just one, the economic elite more often than not supported by States drawn into corporate values (like the late G.W. Bush’s administration).

c) And that touches to the problem of tenure. It is imperative for a free and creative community of researcher and free thinkers, that tenure be maintained. It is imperative that researchers and free thinkers doing investigation to regulate the excesses of the corporate world and politicians be not only granted tenure but the necessary security of their life and families, and not be prosecuted, killed and sometimes forced into suicide. What could be done is that a sector of the university, say 25% of it, be organized around “creativity and corporate values”and that sector of the university will not grant tenure but it will work under contract regulations connected to the corporations. In other words, the corporate sector will be allowed to use university facilities and hire their researchers under contract.

III.2. Let me illustrate my previous considerations. I offer three examples, although there are thousands of them from the multiple denunciations prompted by the Bush’s administration, including parallel ones like the Enron scandal, the Wall Street jambalaya, Katrina’s negligence (which could have been taken advantage of “creative research,”but creative research that prevents and denounce do not deserve the same attention as “creative research”like Wall Street that expands to the limit of the sky the financial planetary growth and the paradise of globalization).

1) The creative research of organization such La Via Campesina and Sovereignty of Food are two unparalleled developments of the kind both creativity and research that shall be supported by all organizations working toward “democratic economy”(instead of “saving capitalism”), for the well being, full participation of the population of the planet. Beyond the creative, looking forward, imaginative in devising and implementing measures to build social organizations not pushed and managed by corporate and state interests, they do creative research to unveil the strategies used by corporations, in many cases with the assent of the state, to prevent such development. Corporations interested in exploiting natural resources are not interested in having “competitors”like La Via Campesina who are not competitors in the same terrain, but organizations that are de-linking from the rules of the game established by corporations who are interested in increasing gains and not let people improve their quality of life. Monsanto, or any other corporation, cannot decide what quality of life is for peasants who are producing their own knowledge, leading their own life, and not competing with Monsanto in terms of gain but competing in terms of the vision of life and quality of life.

One of the major roles of the non-corporate sector of the University, the free thinking and research sector, confronted with the problems of our time is, precisely, to contribute to regulate the corporations and the state, rather than leaving the state and the corporation to regulate the university. In a balanced situation, indeed, the three entities should regulate each other. One of the main changes, that is not clear in Taylor’s article and in the principles of the World Universities Forum, is that there is no zero point of regulation. Corporations are entitled to defend their interest, but they have no right to impose their interest to other sectors of society.

For example, there has been a significant amount of controversy over the combined project, Bill’s and Melinda’s Gates-Rockefeller Foundations to enhance agriculture in Africa. The controversy has been detailed, and creatively researched, and professionally reported by the etc.group , in March/April 2007. One can not doubt that both Foundations have the best intention to improve conditions in Africa, but it so happened that African Farmers and organizations like La Via Campesina have their own ideas of how to improve conditions in Africa, but their ideas have been mostly ruled out and African actors and agencies are placed in a position of “receivership.”Experts in the West, living in the West, with life experience in a developed country supposedly know what is good for people living in Africa. Christian missionaries operated on the same principles for over 500 years. That we move from theology to economy and international relations shall not hide the fact that the philosophy is the same.

And that is the main problem we, all as students and faculty at the university and citizens, will face with projects like the World Universities Forum if the leaders of such organization do not open up their projects to promote and enhance “critical research toward economic democracy and communal”(not communist, communal—based on the principles of Indigenous organization and not on the European commune after the enlightenment); and “critical research destined to regulated development enterprise which, with good or bad intention, will continue to operate uni-laterally.”

2) Second case. “Consider, for example, a Water program” Taylor suggests. And he continues “In the coming decades, Water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of wter will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges.”

Indeed!!

This is indeed a good point. Aymaras in Bolivia reminded us once and again, during the “water war” that ended up expelling the multinationals run by the giant Bechtel, of a basic truth that coloniality of knowledge managed to make us forget. In that process Aymaras insisted in that “water is a human right, not a commodity.” Any creative investigation to solve the water problem shall start with this crucial point. To do research to solve the problem of water while at the same time maintaining it as a commodity, is a problem without solution.

Now, there are two trajectories under which research to solve such problems could be done. One would be under the horizon of life guided by ideals o economic development and social modernization. In this case water will be a commodity and research may be more oriented toward generating gains for the corporations than solving problems for the humanity.

The second trajectory would be to do research demonstrating why water problems could not be solved as far as water remains a commodity. This kind of research (technically, ethically and politically) had to show a) that a new type of economy is needed; b) that the knowledge of local Western experts has to be complemented with the knowledge local communities that for centuries were successful in solving water problems; c) Western local expert would have to submit themselves to the needs and knowledge of communities to help solve the problems and not to bring with solutions based on abstract knowledge and not in living experiences and knowledge accumulated for centuries. This second trajectory of research, creative research, would have to unveil the danger of coloniality; that is, of the ideology of economic development and of modernization

For example, in Water Wars (2002) Indian scientist and activist Vandana Shiva reports about the principle and structure of knowledge that for millennia allowed people in desert zones to build balanced systems of irigations that insure the water availability under adverse climatic conditions.

Another example that requires precisely the kind of “creative research around problems” that Taylor asks for. Recently in Argentina, noted scientist Andrés Carrasco denounced the poisoning of soya seeds, covered up under the rhetoric of increasing productivity and economic growth (that is, rhetoric of growth, development and modernization). Not surprisingly, the corporate sector (which one would surmise would support world university forum in Davos and most likely the kind of research promoted by Taylor). The end result is that is no longer the state but the corporate world repressing creative research.

These are indeed a paradigmatic examples to understand that “creative research”toward communal futures and economic democracies, has to solve the combined problem of the ignorance of Western experts and the knowledge of non-Western ignorant (ignorant, of course, from the perspective of Western experts).

One day the experts from the West came, with technology, tubes and water-pumps, all explained in their rhetoric of modernization and development. Technology will solve the problem. They dug into the dry desert and splashed water …for a while. The millennial system of irrigation built in the process of building knowledge by doing and living, was dismantled by the ignorance of the expert. The local generated knowledge in the process of organizing their life. The expert acquires knowledge to help economic growth by ignoring his ignorance by imposing his or her expertise.

Another example, a extremely creative research by Vandana Shiva about “the disappearing knowledge system”and the “appearing of the monocultures of the mind.”
Western experts go to an Indian Forest or to the Amazon. They see timber and weeds. They are ignorant about properties of the “weed”that has been organized and transmitted by millennia by local knowledge of people living in the forest, to which the local knowledge of the expert living in the city or university, is totally clueless. But the expert has the support of the corporations and of the local state where the timber and the weed are. So, weed are being destroyed because of uselessness and tress too because timber is needed to enhance development.

Yes, the university needs to be reformed. Students and future generations need to understand that corporate values at the university are reinforcing the uni-lateral view, which beyond being uni-lateral, is deadly. The struggle for the control of knowledge is imperative in the twenty-first century. Knowledge controlled only by the corporations and States supporting corporate values will be the last weapon for a ruling corporate elite managing a totalitarian society with the sweet chants of consumptions and happiness.

3) Another case. The Amazon Rainforest is the world’s greatest natural resource – the most powerful and bio-actively diverse natural phenomenon on the planet. Yet still it is being destroyed just like other rainforests around the world. The problem and the solution to rainforest destruction are both economic. This is a case in which accumulation of wealth at expenses of life promotes the production of objects over the reproduction of life. Common sense will say that this is totally irrational, but the rhetoric of modernity is constantly converting the irrational into the rationality of progress and development. highlight production instead of regeneration. Thankfully, this viable economic alternative does exist. Many organizations have demonstrated that if the medicinal plants, fruits, nuts, oils and other resources like rubber, chocolate and chicle, were harvested sustainably – rainforest land has a much more economic value than if timber were harvested or if it were burned down for cattle or farming operations. Sustainable harvesting of these types of resources provides this value today as well as more long term income and profits year after year for generations to come. However, viable economic alternatives are important but not yet enough: it is imperative to shift the geography of reasoning and understand that the ” conquest and domination of nature” is one of the most detrimental principles of modernity.

This is no longer a theory. It is a fact and it is being implemented today. Today, entire communities and indigenous tribes earn 5 to 10 times more money wild harvesting medicinal plants, fruits, nuts and oils than they can earn by chopping down the forest for subsistence crops – another reason why so much rainforest land is lost year after year. This much needed income source creates the awareness and economic incentive for this population in the rainforest to protect and preserve the forests for long term profits for themselves and their children and is an important solution in saving the rainforest from destruction. Once again, while it is crucial to have economic incentive in a still capitalist economy, de-colonial future horizons do not accept that economic incentives are the only ones. Economic incentives make sense only in the philosophy of capitalist economy. But, as I am arguing here, economy and capitalism are not the same, and non-capitalist economies are thinkable and available. Democratizing the economy will be one specific and concrete way of thinking de-colonially and promoting de-colonial creative research.

4) A couple of examples from the Humanities, although the Humanities shall be the overarching frame for critical investigation toward communal futures and critical investigations unveiling excess in the name of development and growth hiding personal and group economic private interests.

4a) Taylor reports the following, in his op-ed published in the NYT:

Just a few weeks ago, I attended a meeting of political scientists who had gathered to discuss why international relations theory had never considered the role of religion in society. Given the state of the world today, this is a significant oversight. There can be no adequate understanding of the most important issues we face when disciplines are cloistered from one another and operate. on their own premises.

Certainly; for many of us dwelling in the modern/colonial history of the South Atlantic since 1500, international law, theology, political economy (before it existed as such) and racism, went hand in hand. Francisco de Vitoria in Spain, and his followers in Spain and Portugal, had to deal with questions of divine, natural and human law; recognize the humanity of the Indians, but at the same time, justify the Spaniards right to disposes from their land. About half a century later, when Hugo Grotius was working at the service of Dutch interests, and defending Dutch interests from those of Spain and England, was rehearsing Vitoria not vis-à-vis Indians in South America, but Indians in India. Indeed, here is an issue of enormous relevance to investigate, not as a historical treasure trove, but in the very fact that we are living under the same presupposition, although the make up has changed somewhat. But most interesting, is that there are already significant numbers of “creative scholars”doing “creative research”at various universities; research I suspect leaders of the World Universities Forum are not well informed (perhaps Taylor is not even aware of it), perhaps not interested. But if they are not interested, it doesn’t mean that the issue is not interesting.

I was recently in a dissertation defense. The dissertation’s fist sentence was something like: “Human beings are political animals, we’ve known it since Aristotles.”I will accept that Aristotles said so, but from the fact that Aristotles said it doesn’t follow that indeed human beings are political animals. Certainly Aristotles is entitled to his own opinion and he certainly had reason and needs to make such an assertion. Aymara and Quechua intellectuals in the Andes, when the Spaniards arrived with the same Aristotelian convictions in their shoulder, I suspect their (Aymara and Quechua intelligentsia, man of wisdom as much as Aristotles), would have reacted with a strange expression on their face, a sound of surprise, and looking at each other would have said in their language: “what are these guys talking about.?”

4b) Let’s take the case of the artist. Artists are not necessarily at or interested in the University. However, more and more departments of Art History, Literature, Drama, Film and Video, etc., are hiring “artists”since the “scholar”doesn’t have the same experience. This is indeed a welcome change at the University that, I hope, will transform that sector of the university in the next decades. Immanuel Kant’s (invoked by Taylor) devised three primary disciplinary formations in the radical transformation, in Europe, between the Theological University in the Renaissance period and the Secular University that, in Europe, unfolded after the Enlightenment. Unless we decide that artist do not have nothing to do with “crucial issues of our time”and that their role is entertainment and enjoyment when the world population is not concerned with survival, death, war, violence, and the like, their role at in the Future De-Colonial and Humanistic university is essential.

Why? For many reasons, but let’s just take one, which is the most crucial and perhaps the most invisible for the leaders of The World Universities Forum at Davos: the distinction between labor and work. This distinction which can be found in Karl Marx was elaborated in the sense I am taking it here by Hannah Arendt in her book The Human Condition (1958). The basic distinction is this: in a communally organized society you have to work to live. In a capitalist organized society, you live to work: this is labor. Labor is a force of de-culturation, it takes your soul out of you, like in the slave system, as you labor for somebody else. The trick of a capitalist society has been build a type of subjectivity in which the religious belief is that you are “free to choose”between labors. That was the justification for the end of slavery when labor was needed for the new stage of capitalism. William Walker, the character played by Marlon Brando in Queimada (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1969), says it is all in front of the governing elite in the Island. “Gentlemen, said Walker during a business meeting, what is more convenient a wife or whore?” Walker response is longer but the essence is this: whore you pay by the hour, wife you have to take care and invest in her. While “labor as freedom”is the rhetoric of modernity, the other side, the “labor as cheaper service”is the logic of colonialilty.

V
Now, imagine that part of the curriculum, the interdisciplinary and international curriculum in the new, de-colonial university, will elaborate on the distinction of labor and work, and the distinctions between a concept of economy that promote “creative research to accumulate wealth”and a concept of economy that will promote “creative research toward communal life?”Remember, not communist, but communal. Communism did not make the distinction between labor and work and turned the exploitation of labor in the direction of the all powerful state instead of doing in benefit of private investors and corporations. Because the society we are envisioning and the university we need are communal, not communists, corporations should be allowed to have their creative research corner to improve “commodities”that will be no longer such but “goods”for the well being of the community which will not report gigantic gains to the corporations. Therefore, the corporations will maintain their previous name but their function will change: they will work toward the communal not toward the board of trustees and the shareholders accumulating money without labor and working in their own interest. However, this work will be unethical as far as their work is possible because of the labor of others. That is why capitalism and communism are brothers who do not get along. Global Fora for de-westernizing and de-colonizing knowledge and transforming the university toward a non-capitalist horizon of life is what we all shall strive for: a democratic economy that will allow the plu-versality of communal organization in different parts of the world, allowing people to live and re-create languages, histories, religions, values, etc., that over the past five hundred years have been eroded by the belief (in the West and among elites in the non West) that Western life-style, industrialization, technology and the like was the point of arrival in the history of Human civilization. While Western civilization has made a great contribution to the history of the humanity, the achievement is not a good enough reason to expect that everybody else does the same. There is a global consensus, among de-westernizer and de-colonial that that cycle has been close, and that global futures will be decided by many and not by one (be that United States, European Union, China or a globally spread Islam).

Desde hace más de un año los medios de comunicación y el clima generado por la catástrofe de Wall Street (a poco tiempo de la catástrofe de Iraq y la catástrofe del huracán Katrina), pareciera mantener en vilo a la población mundial. Entre tanto, el Tsunami el azotó Indonesia en diciembre del 2004. Los diseños “naturales parecieran haberse puesto de acuerdo con los diseños del “globalismo”político y económico propulsado por el proyecto neo-liberal.

Estas catástrofes son de distinta índole, aunque están relacionadas. Katrina afectó a la mayor proporción de habitantes pobres de New Orleáns, en su mayoría gente de color. El Tsunami de Indonesia, no distinguió entre turistas ricos y nativos pobres. La invasión de Iraq provocó la muerte de un número indeterminado de Iraquíes, aunque arriba de los 100 mil, y de unos 5 mil soldados Estadounidenses, también ellos de distintos colores. Con epicentro en distintas regiones (New Orleáns, Indonesia, Iraq), las catátrofes naturales y políticas afectaron por igual a pobres y ricos, a hindúes y budistas, a musulmanes y cristianos. No obstante, las elites gubernamentales y económicas de Estados Unidos no sufrieron en carne propia ni el drama de Iraq y de Katrina, y menos aún el de Indonesia.

La crisis de Wall Street parece haber invertido el proceso. El informe de Global Issues más reciente estima que más de la mitad de los habitantes del mundo (3 billones y medio de personas), viven con menos de $2,50 por día. Al menos 80% de la población mundial (es decir, alrededor de 5 billones y medio de personas), viven con menos de $10 por día. De modo que 20% de la población vive con más de esta cantidad. Pero que significa vivir con $20 en vez de $10 al día en términos de la crisis financiera? Según UNICEF 25,000 niños mueren cada día debido a la pobreza. Alrededor del 80%de la población mundial habita en países donde las división económica creció en el último cuarto de siglo.

A cuantas personas afecta “dramáticamente”la crisis de Wall Street? Quizás a un 10% de la población mundial, es decir, a unas 700 millones de personas, lo cual es significativo, pero es una cantidad mucho menor de los 6 billones para quienes la crisis de Wall Street es un problema ajeno. Para este 80% de la población no hay drama en la devaluación de sus ahorros para la jubilación. Tampoco hay drama en posponer la compra de un nuevo yate para el próximo verano en el Mediterráneo o, siendo más modesto, cambiar el Suburú 2003 (que ya está viejo), por un Saba 2010.

Los debates en programas radiales y televisivos, los artículos periodísticos de todo tipo sobre el futuro del capitalismo abundan en los últimos meses. Una de las conclusiones, aún de los críticos, es que a pesar de todo no hay otro sistema mejor. Imagino que se refieren al socialismo. El cual es un capitalismo de estado y de regulación en vez de ser capitalismo de empresa privada y de libre mercado. Tanto las ideas socialistas en el siglo XIX como su primera versión histórica en la Unión Soviética, no escaparon a lo que ya era un tipo de economía de acumulación. Más allá del capitalismo y el socialismo, había y hay otros sistemas económicos posibles. El sistema comunal (no comunista) sería otro, por ejemplo, Por lo tanto, el capitalismo es el mejor sistema que se conoce para los 700 millones de personas hoy, esclavizados ambos, los delincuentes de Wall Street y la clase media consumerista. Al igual que el amo y el esclavo en la sociedad esclavista, ambos estan involucrados en un sistema de miedo y de muerte que el el amo se empeña en mantener.

Los debates de los expertos están enredados en las reglas de juego y las reglas del juego determinan que el problema es “el futuro del capitalismo;” que la preocupación será como salvarlo; y que la pregunta nos lleva a pensar en cómo será el capitalismo en el futuro. Ahora bien, si el capitalismo que es el mejor sistema que conocemos tiene hoy como consecuencia 6 billones de pobres y 700 millones de gentes con disponibilidad económica y una minoría (quizas un 1%, es decir, 700 mil muy acaudalados y acaudaladas) de super-ricos. Pues ya sabemos entonces de qué se trata—la pregunta sobre el futuro del capitalismo indica que se trata de salvar y mantener estas proporciones, teniendo en cuenta el crecimiento demográfico en el planeta en los próximos 25 años.

La cuestión en serio no es por lo tanto el futuro del capitalismo sino el futuro de la economía, de una economía que asegure una vida digna para los casi 7 billones de personas en el planeta. Una vida digna no significa un igualitarismo comunista forzado ni tampoco una ilusión de oportunidad y libertad. Desarrollo liberal y libertad no van de la mano. Por otro lado, capitalismo y economía no son sinónimos. Mientras que debates y tecnicismos se dirijan a salvar las instituciones y al reciclaje de las ciudades y no a dignificar el vivir y convivir de las personas y la regeneración de la vida y la grandeza planetaria, iremos por mal camino. Mientras se continúe distinguiendo democracia como un asunto político y desarrollo como un asunto económico, no iremos muy lejos.

La alternativa económica no es entre capitalismo y socialismo (el argumento clásico de F. A. von Hayek en su libro The road to serfdom (1944)), sino entre una economía democrática que administre la escasés (sistema comunal) y que estimule la reciprocidad más que una economía que promueva la privatización de la vida, que confunda acumulación privada con crecimiento colectivo, que imagine un mundo en que el que la acumulación no tiene límites. Estamos viendo que la con-fusión entre acumulación privada y crecimiento sin límites fue la inconsciencia suprema del globalismo (globalismo y no globalización) neo-liberal.

No esperemos que la reunión de los G20 ponga prioridad en este cambio ético político. No obstante, seamos consciente de que este cambio no es sólo posible y necesario, sino que está ocurriendo más allá de los 700 millones de personas entrampados en la debacle de Wall Street. La economía comunal es el horizonte más allá del capitalismo y del socialismo.

No obstante, “cómo salvar el capitalismo”es una pregunta que genera recetas de todo tipo. Pues en este escenario hay dos cuestiones paralelas y complementarias para considerar en vista a los derroteros de los futuros globales.

Pongo dos asuntos sobre la mesa para contribuir a pensar los futuros globales:

a) La primera es la naturalidad con que académicos y periodistas se abocaron a pensar cómo salvar el capitalismo. A nadie—que yo sepa—se le ocurrió pensar que la cuestión no es salvar al capitalismo sino a la humanidad. Si el capitalismo u otro tipo de economía es más conducente al propósito de salvar a la humanidad del hambre y de la explotación, es la verdadera cuestión a debatir.

La economía capitalista opera sobre el principio de que la acumulación de ganancias conduce al desarrollo y al crecimiento, y que ambos son beneficioso para todos. Opera también sobre el mito liberal de que la sociedad organizada sobre la base de una economía capitalista, promueve la invención y que la invención motiva la humanidad y la empuja hacia la búsqueda de un futuro cada vez mejor; de la felicidad en suma. La bio-tecnología, hoy, construye su imagen sobre este lema: “la búsqueda de la felicidad.”Desde esta perspectiva la única pregunta válida es “como salvar al capitalismo”de sus malos momentos: la legal ilegitimidad de los ejecutivos de Wall Street (nadie fue preso por la debacle) y la necesidad de la guerra para defender el capitalismo del “eje del mal.”

b) Si en vez de salvar el capitalismo el objetivo es salvar a la humanidad, la pregunta sería salvar a la humanidad de qué? La respuesta perversa sería: del capitalismo. Una respuesta más conciliadora sería: del hambre, de la inseguridad económica, millones de gentes el cuidado de la salud asegurado, sin posibilidades de educación, millones de personas privadas de agua o bien porque es propiedad privada o bien porque, por ejemplo, las compañias privadas de explotación minera emplean billones de litros de agua para separar la paja del trigo, los minerales buscados de la piedra que los envuelve. De modo que si el objetivo es salvar la vida (esto es, la regeneración por sobre el reciclaje de la biotecnología y la biología sintética, pues la economía capitalista no es quizás la mejor manera de hacerlo.

En el caso a) se pone el carro delante de los bueyes: primero las instituciones, despues la sociedad y la regeneración (natural) de la vida. En el caso b) se ponen los bueyes delante del carro: primero la vida humana y la re-generación de la vida en el planeta, luego las instituciones que mejor conduzcan y guíen hacia esos objetivos.

En el primer caso se trata de una economía que promueve la acumulación; en el segundo, una economía que (como la etimología de la palabra lo indica) que administre la escasez. Sin duda, David Ricardo andaba cerca de hacer tal propuesta. Sólo que para Ricardo, la administración de la escasez dependía del principio capitalista de acumulación. La versión actual, e institucional, de Ricardo son instituciones como el Banco Mundial y el Earth Institute (en la Universidad de Columbia, dirigido por Jeffrey Sachs). En esta version no se trata de una economía que administre la escasez, sino de mantener la economía de tipo capitalista que—generosamente—haga lo posible por mantener trabajadores que, al mismo tiempo, son consumidores.

Pensar instituciones económicas y gubernamentales (estatales o no), que administren la escasez, que aseguren el agua y la alimentación, la salud y la educación, no puede ya estar solo en manos de un pensamiento socialista sino más bien y también de un pensamiento descolonial. Tanto el capitalismo real como el socialismo fueron organizaciones sociales imperiales/coloniales. Ambas guardan la memoria de un pensamiento basado en universales abstractos. Entre la caída del capitalismo real y del socialismo real, comienza a levantarse el espectro de lo que ambos reprimieron y apabullaron: el espectro de la descolonialidad–de futuros globales ni uni-versalmente capitalistas, ni universalmente socialistas, ni universalmente islámicos ni cristianos, sino futuros globales pluri-versalmetne configurados. Esto es, literalmente, la construcción de un mundo en el que quepan muchos mundos.