A measure of progress

No relativism, no nihilism. No march towards any kind of socialism. No plans for vast planetary income redistribution. No big-scale welfare state. No forced enlightenment of the masses by the ‘Avangarde des Proletariats’. No substitution of ‘God’ for ‘Science’. No huge increase in GDP´s. No revolution…

If humankind is to show any degree of moral progress, it should take the form of Richard Rorty´s insightful definition: human solidarity, understood as “the ability to see more and more traditional differences (of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like) as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation - the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of ‘us’” (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 192).

Hobbesian doubt 1: fraud

Let us imagine we live in a distant future society in which the ownership of all goods remains in private hands and all the production and distribution -even of public goods- is carried out through the market. This is the libertarian world advocated by the anarcho-capitalist ideologues of the ‘minimal state’. According to those theorists, in this social order the state would have marginal, though important, functions, compared to our present states: defending nations against external enemies, preventing people from harming or coercing each other, and making sure voluntary contracts are respected.

In our radically free, libertarian society, states should not determine which kind of goods or services would be sold, who could buy or provide them or in which quantity. That means, for instance, that anyone could claim to be an architect or a doctor, and that consumers would have to rely solely on reputation by means of the information provided by the market. Individuals would then be forced to face the consecuences of their free, rational and informed -or prejudiced, stupid and ill-informed- choices. In due time, bad providers would have less and less clients and would eventually vanish from the market, whereas good ones would experience the rewards to their probity.

In this kind of society, should governments proceed against fraud? Could we not just think that cheaters would be ‘naturally’ ousted from the market? Remember, reputation is the key, so why not let people find out about bad architects or doctors for themselves, when the house they built for them falls on their heads or the treatement they recommended worsens their heath condition? Could we, on the other hand, consider fraud as a form of unilaterally breaking an ‘implicit’ contract? Remember as well that states should guarantee citizens observe contracts, since people acting otherwise would ensue chaos. So, what is the nature of this implicit contract, if any? Nowadays, if you buy, say, a medicine to lower your blood pressure, but you discover instead it has been made of cocaine, that is fraud and you may sue the company which manufactured it. But if you pay a psychic who promises you will be able to chat with your late grandfather, you cannot sue her if that communication does not occur, since it is considered you voluntarily purchased the services of a cheater out of sheer superstition. In our libertarian world you could buy the service of an alleged doctor who promises to cure you of your cancer by means of you listening, say, to the whole discography of Elton John. Should you be able to proceed against her for fraud? Then, why not go against the catholic church -or any other religious sect-, which promises you eternal life? Fortunately, belonging to a religious community is not mandatory -except in some Islamic countries-, but neither is it buying this product or that service if we are not forced to do so from a monopoly, and still governments act sometimes against liers, even when we voluntarily buy from them. Let us bear in mind fraud would be eventually wiped up from the market, so why intervene? However, we should also consider that a) even when liers and bad producers will eventually leave the market, nothing may prevent other liers and bad producers to get in -in fact, the reality will be surely closer to this constant in-and-out flow than to a perfect situation of honest and competent producers; and b) it make take some time until the public at large realizes the fraud and stops buying from a particular cheater, and, as as result, tragedies may occur, sometimes involving massive deaths, and often without time passing but rather all of a sudden. In many cases, government intervention does avoid those awful outcomes: think of air companies regulation or food and drug administration, to name but two examples. Could a truly free market provide this level of safety, or even a higher one? I really think so, but, at what initial price in human lives?

So, in our ideal libertarian world -indeed in our present world- should governments care for the accuracy of the information available to us and prosecute cheaters? Always? Never? Sometimes? When, then? Which are the criteria for a legitimate public intervention in this area? Nowadays is widely thought consumers may distinguish rather easily among good and bad food or shoe producers, but not so among good and bad oncologists, for instance, health care being such a specialized and complex good that governments should regulate its provision, be it public or private. Is it really so? Could we not get reliable information solely on market basis, however complex or crucial (even unreparable) the choice to be made? Do we have different answers to this question depending on the area? And, if markets are not providing the information we need to make decisions, does government intervention solve the problem? If so, at what price? Alternatively, could we have any sort of market solution to it? If so, at what price?

Post-colonial hypocrisy

In the EU-Africa summit that took place in Lisbon this past weekend, the Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi declared Europeans ought to compensate Africans for their past colonialism. He said a billion euros would be a suitable figure to start with. Notwithstanding how ill-managed most foreign financial help has been in the hands of corrupt and incompetent African governments, and the fact that such a sum would never reach ordinary Africans, Qadhafi shows an endless capacity for hypocrisy. Like many others, he is merely banging the drum for the idea that African backwardness is the direct consecuence of colonialism. Of course, this kind of language suits well the Western illiberal, antiglobalization ideologues and their supporters, but historical facts point otherwise. That evidence should not lead us to deny, for instance, the pernicious colonial policies of the British Empire in late ninetieth and early twentieth-centuries in Southern Africa, which destroyed a whole functioning social order and replaced it with a great deal of disarray and suffering. However, this is not equivalent to stating that without Western intervention in the continent, it would now be composed of peaceful and developed nations. Most probably it would have not, since African problems are rooted both in the past and in modern times.

In any case, being a former colony does not necessarily amount to dealing with a corrupt government and a backward and caothic economy. Many former colonies are now success stories, challenging the partial and biased claims of dogmatic populists and nostalgic collectivists. Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea are good examples of ex-colonies which made policy choices that, in turn, eventually prompted a ‘virtuous circle’ in terms of development and modernization.

Singapore was a British crown colony from 1867 until 1957, when it became a self-governing nation, though it was only in 1971 when the British withdrew their military presence. After the first and second Opium Wars (1839–42 and 1856-60), China was forced to put Hong Kong in British hands. Then, the Convention of 1898 stated that Hong Kong would be leased to Britain for 99 years (it returned to Chinese hands in 1997, though keeping a special status). Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, and then suffered a war from 1950 to 1953 -between its Northern and Southern parts- that cost four million lives. Nowadays -data are for 2006- Singapore enjoys a per capita income of US$29,473, the equivalent figures for Hong Kong and South Korea being, respectively, US$27,342 and US$18,220.

The complex array of reasons behind present African developmental and political difficulties lays not in its colonial past but somewhere else, and it deals more with the lack of respect for human rights, the non-existence of the rule of law and the aversion towards free markets and their necessary institutional frames (independent judiciary, democratic checks and balances, a stable economic-legal system). Some African leaders should stop looking so often for those reasons abroad and take a closer look at themselves and the policies they are pursuing.

Photo: Seme Beach, Southwest Province, Cameroon, 2005 © phil h

Against land mines, against government falseness

Ten years ago, representatives of 122 countries gathered in Ottawa, Canada, to sign the treaty banning the use, production, trade and stockpiling of antipersonnel mines. Though the treaty was hailed as a milestone in the fight towards the indiscriminate use of weapons in wars, still much has to be done to acomplish the goals set by the delegates in Ottawa. To begin with, the number of signatories has risen to 156, but key actors remain outside the treaty, such as -oh, surprise!- China, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States. Also, though in the current year only Burma and Russia have used this kind of mines, trade is almost non-existent, and the number of producing countries has dropped dramatically, signatory countries have only devoted one tenth of the money they commited to start removing mines from the ground and supporting survivors. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) network is doing an invaluable job to achieve a worldwide ban on antipersonnel mines, campaigning for the universal membership of the 1997 treaty, and helping the survivors. On the other hand, the Spanish government behaviour offers a perfect example of this bittersweet moment in the fight against land mines. Whereas the current socialdemocrat government -claiming to embody a progressive spirit in international aid policy- has tenfolded its contribution towards the goals set in the Ottawa treaty -as compared to the insignificant amount of money the previous conservative government devoted to the cause-, it has also multiplied by two the volume of Spanish arm exports.

Moreover, if we want the protection of civilians in armed conflicts to stop being a fallacy, the 1997 treaty has to be completed with another universal ban on cluster bombs. Currently, international summits and conferences are taking place -the last one just ended in Vienna- to draft a treaty which should be signed in 2008, but all this is occurring amidst the weakening manoeuvres of the same countries -sadly, some of them democratic and some others purporting to be- that have opposed the antipersonnel mines ban throughout this period.

These days, “Vidas minadas” (”Mined lives“), an exceptional exhibition on land mines and the experiences of the survivors by the much-awarded war photographer Gervasio Sánchez, is traveling to several Spanish cities. If you happen to be in one of them, do not miss it. Seriously.

Read more:

International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)

Vidas minadas, by Gervasio Sánchez

Photo: Sofia Elface Fumo (1997), ‘Vidas Minadas’ series, by Gervasio Sánchez © Fundación Chandra

The thin line between life and death

The darkness in the small old church of San Gallo, in the center of Venice, is almost complete. One can barely distinguish the shape of the three stone altars, above which hang -we should say ‘float’, since those images, which materialize themselves in the dark, are not limited by any physical boundaries- Bill Viola´s most recent video works. Blurry black and white shapes of people seem to come from very far away, slowly approaching us in the distance. Suddenly, they reach an invisible threshold -a wafer-thin courtain of water, completely transparent and imperceptible to us until the figures cross under it. Passed the water door -which symbolizes the very thin line between the world of the dead and the realm of the living-, the figures appear to our eyes extremely detailed and in full colours (as usual, Viola employs hi-definition video plasma screens to show his work). After lingering in the world of the living for a while, they slowly turn their back on us, cross the water film again -visible just for the very moment the bodies touch it- and return to the distant hereafter. Actually, calling this hereafter ‘distant’ is paradoxical, since the very point of this work is to remind us of the proximity between our world and that of the dead. Indeed, blink, and you are dead, or remain alive. Such is the very short distance -both in terms of time and space- separating death and life, that we cannot deny -though we are intentionally oblivious to it most of the time- the dead inhabit our lives in manifold ways. Bringing this truth to us is the great virtue of Viola´s latest and impressively beautiful work.

Ocean without a shore
Bill Viola
Chiesa di San Gallo, Venezia, Biennale.
(The Biennale di Venezia 2007 ended November 24)

Photo © Kira Perov