Cuban Constitutionalism in a Global Context--A Conversation With Jorge Dominguez for the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy

 

The Association for the Study of the Cuba Economy (ASCE) with the support of the Coalition for Peace and Ethics (CPE), has undertake an interview series.  The object of this series is to draw attention to the work of leading scholars and actors involved in the examination of Cuban society, culture, politics, law, and economics from a national, regional or international perspective.

For the ASCE Series' next interview, Larry Catá Backer had the great pleasure of speaking with Jorge Dominguez. Now retired, Jorge Dominguez was a Harvard professor for 46 years and Harvard’s vice provost for international affairs for nine years, among other senior posts. He has been publishing books and articles about Cuba for about a half century. In 1989, Abraham F. Lowenthal described him in Foreign Affairs as the dean of U.S. Cubanologists. Dominguez' books touching on Cuba (without mentioning his excellent work on Mexico and other Latin American states) include: The Construction of Democracy: Lessons from Practice and Research; Between Compliance and Conflict: East Asia, Latin America and the New Pax Americana; The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century;  and Democratic Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Dominguez's germinal work,  Cuba: Order and Revolution (1978) whose look at the way in which changing elites made clams to legitimate rule in Cuba and its consequences, remains a foundational work for those studying Cuba, and its insights now appears to have increasing resonance in the conflicts among political elites in the contemporary US.

 

Our topic for this interview is the most recent Cuban constitutional project, one that produced a revised constitution approved by popular plebiscite after a period of mass consultation and more intimate consultations within the Cuban Communist Party from the time of the adoption by the PCC of its Conceptualización Del Modelo Económico Y Social Cubano De Desarrollo Socialista in 2017.  Our conversation revolved around three thematic questions:

(1) What is the most intriguing element for you in the new Constitution? Here Dominguez focused on key institutional changes wrapped around the institutionally momentous transition inevitable after the death of Fidel Castro.Some attention was paid both to the alignment of changes in the organization of the state via the constitution as against the organization of the PCC, as well as how the constitutional changes have appeared to change the working style of the highest levels of government.

(2) What is the most disappointing gap in the constitutional reform thus far? Here discussion entered on  the lack of change thus far to the electoral laws, and an examination of changes that could still be adopted within the framework of the current political regime. Comparisons with China and Vietnam were considered as well as differences between Leninist and  liberal democratic premises of elections.

(3) What are the salient changes in the Constitution that pertain to the economy? Here the focus was on the advances of private foreign investment and the preference for foreign over national firms e.g. turning nationalism on its head. The resulting constitutional internationalism represents a potentially shift from the traditional nationalism of post Revolutionary constitutions well worth exploration.  In the course of the discussion Dominguez considered the role for markets in Cuban economic ideology as well as the way that political ideology shapes economic principles embedded in the constitution.

We hope you find the discussion interesting and thought provoking  We welcome your views. The video is posted to the CPE YouTube Channel (ASCE Interview Series Playlist) and may be accessed HERE. 

 

 

 

 

Announcing Posting of Video Recordings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy's 2020 Virtual Conference: CUBA FROM THE CASTROS TO COVID

 

In conjunction with the Association for the Study of the Cuba Economy (ASCE) and the Coalition for Peace and Ethics (CPE), I am delighted to share the video recordings of the ASCE 2020 Virtual Conference, the theme of which was "Cuba From the Castros to COVID." From the Concept Note:

Before the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of 2020, Cuba and its friends and neighbors had been functioning within the framework of a broad equilibrium. American enmity was matched by the friendship of Venezuela, China, China, and Iran, while European provided a measure of protection to take the edge off of American efforts to destabilize the government. Internally, Cuba elite continued to refine its Caribbean variant of Marxist-Leninism, one substantially suspicious of markets. Yet the resulting formal structures of the economic system also provides a space for an informal economy tolerated because it is the price of stability, and useful because it provides a means of disciplining the population when it suits the state. Cuba's search for hard currency and global influence produced programs of providing medical services to other states (Cuban medical internationalism), which competitor states (and some of its participants) criticized for potential violation of human rights. Even this description can be incendiary precisely because Cuba lends itself to polarization of opinion. For example, while some are convinced that Cuban medical internationalism is deeply embedded within the political premises of Cuban Marxist Leninism, others believe that it constitutes a form of modern slavery in breach of the ILO conventions. And economists deride analysis describing declining economic growth as a broad equilibrium.

All of the delicate components of these external and internal balancing, the aggregation of which defined the state of the nation (its economics, politics, law and social ordering), have been substantially disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This conference has been organized to consider some of the more important aspects of that disruption and its potential consequences for the Cuban state, Cuban society, and its economics and international affairs. Participants will consider

(1) The Cuban Economy and Prospects after COVID-19; (2) The Cuba Venezuela Relationship; (3) "Destrabando" the Cuban Economy: An Assessment of Reforms and the Road Ahead; and (4) a Roundtable on Developments in Moving Beyond Cuba's Dual Currency System. The featured event, the Carlos Diaz Alejandro lecture will be given by the annual Carlos Diaz Alejandro Lecture. This year's lecturer is Alejandro de la Fuente, Harvard University, who will speak to “Racism with Equality? Measuring Racial Inequality in Cuba, 1980-2010.” Lastly, ASCE will recognize a group of extraordinary students whose papers will be presented to end the conference.

Videos of each of the six panels may be accessed separately. The links follow below. The videoa may also be accessed through the CPE YouTube Channel HERE.

The Conference website and its rich set of materials may be accessed HERE. 

 

Meaning Making History--Donald Trump: Columbus Day Proclamation; Indigenous Peoples' Day Proclamations of the Governors of California and Vermont

Here are the indigenous people Christopher Columbus and his men could not annihilate

Shared history within a political community has always been difficult; all the more so when history moves, as it must, from the relation of events to its judgment.  History has always been well embedded in judgment, and judgement in values that serve as the structures through which the world (and the events which take place) are recognized, and in that act of recognition, placed within the value systems it is meant to validate and confirm.  Indeed, the word itself, ultimately derived from the Greek--"historein "be witness or expert; give testimony, recount; find out, search, inquire," and histōr "knowing, expert; witness," both ultimately from PIE *wid-tor-, from root *weid- "to see," hence "to know." (Etymology Online-history). Seeing and knowing, then, produce a complex interplay between the witnessing of events (which itself is the product of a judgment that an occurrence is worthy of noting) and its knowing (that is to recognize the event for what it is in relation to other events constrained by the structures of perceiving and of meaning making within a community).  

Leif Erickson Day

History, in this sense, is an act of creation in the image of its creators--the community that determines the values within which events are recognized and given meaning that in turn confirm the values around which the knowing of events is developed. It is in this sense that, especially where a community is in a dynamic stage of transforming its values, or where there is conflict among distinctive factions that view the world through different value measures, that history becomes both contested and political-cultural.  Yet what is contested at its core are the values that make it possible to see and know a thing in relation to the values around which seeing and knowing are given meaning. The search for historical truth, then, can be understood better as the search for the affirmation of values through the truth extracted from historical events which are acknowledged, and invested with moral, normative, political and cultural value.  Signification, then, is the way in which history is necessarily "curated"  (China to revise textbook language on anti-Japanese war ("To revise 'eight-year war of resistance' into '14-year war of resistance' not only is the consensus among Chinese historians, but also conforms to historical truth," said Wang Jianxue, vice chairman of the China Association of Historians Studying Modern Chinese Historical Materials)).

These are the States Ditching Columbus Day

Of course, those within the contests over history cannot see it that way--they are in history rather than beyond it.  And that history making is central to the core contest over the way in which meaning is made and values are legitimated and applied to the construction of communal self understanding. These contests over history occur everywhere today (e.g.,What Japanese history lessons leave out;  Vladimir Putin Wants to Rewrite the History of World War II). But they also touch on the way that historical events may themselves be manufactured to advance the legitimacy of the values they are meant to represent.  This continuum is possible only because of the relationship between seeing and knowing, between recognizing a thing and the context within which recognition is possible (for an interesting analysis of the continuum, see the Rand Corp's Truth Decay).  The problem of the manufacture of historical events is challenging enough; but the larger issue becomes clearer and more potent when the issue of "accuracy" is removed.  That is, what one sees and knows as history can be quite distinct eve when two or more communities are "seeing" the same thing but "knowing them" differently.

 The current contests over the "history" of Christopher Columbus provides a very clear example of this meaning making in periods of substantial instability in the underlying values from which stories may be "properly" related (for the challenge to the old orthodoxy, see reporting, eg here, here, here, and here). The competing ways of "seeing" and "knowing" the colonization and foreign settlement of the Western hemisphere (after its initial settlement much earlier) tell one as much about the state of shared history in the United States as it exposes the great incoherence in that sharing among the different sub communities in the nation. The nature of those rifts are nicely exposed by comparing President Trump's 2020 Columbus Day Proclamation with that of the Governors of Vermont and California proclaiming Indigenous Peoples' Day. (See also Archives of Indigenous Peoples' Day).

All three follow below.

Announcing Publication of "Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative Public Memory, Identity, and Critique" (Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek, eds, Springer 2021)

 

I am delighted to share the announcement of the publication of Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique. It will be published by Springer ad available in hardback in 2021 (ISBN )

The collection of essays provides a quite compelling approach on color-coded sign systems in flags, presenting a well developed cultural legal studies approach to the meaning of flags in the collective imaginary that cements a nation, and examining flags as a sense of uniqueness.

A brief summary of the work, short bios of the editors, plus a list of authors and essays follows. All may be accessed on line HERE.

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: "The China Deep Dive: A Report on the Intelligence Community’s Capabilities and Competencies with Respect to the People’s Republic of China

 

Adam Schiff is no friend to the Trump Administration (e.g., here).  And yet it appears that the House intelligence Committee he chairs has now produced a Report that aligns quite nicely with President Trump's  National Security Strategy of the US with which the America First Initiative is conjoined (Ruminations 76: From Global to Fortress America; Thoughts on "National Security Strategy of the United States" (4 Dec 2017)). It also joins coherently with underlying policy development that has been produced over the last four years through the work of the  bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC). One begins to see the alignment of views (belatedly) among all current American political factions at least with respect to the People's Republic of China.

The Report,  "The China Deep Dive: A Report on the Intelligence Community’s Capabilities and Competencies with Respect to the People’s Republic of China," has not received much attention. The Wall Street Journal provided perhaps the best summary: 

The report, most of which is classified, portrays the $85 billion-a-year U.S. intelligence community as overly focused on traditional targets such as terrorism and adversaries’ militaries. Pandemics, as evidenced by the coronavirus, and China’s technological prowess in areas like artificial intelligence present an equal threat, according to a summary of the report released Wednesday. The report recommends fundamental changes in the way intelligence agencies operate, including providing greater support to the Commerce Department, the National Science Foundation, public health organizations and other agencies outside the usual national security bureaucracy. (House Committee Says U.S. Spy Agencies Are Failing China Challenge).

The lack of attention is understandable given the tenor of the times. And yet The China Deep Dive is worth a careful reading if only for a sense of the almost inexcusable tardiness of the focus on a quite dynamic relationship with China that appears no longer driven by the United States, and for its continued evidence of a shallowness that ultimately will not serve the interests of the United States. The Report contained remarkably little finger pointing, and what there was (e.g., Report pp. 4-6 in summary) was well deserved.

The 37 page portion of the Report made public may be downloaded HERE and follows below along with brief reflections.  

Submission to the EU on the EU Regulation on Mandatory Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence Made by the Professional Training for Lawyers & Barristers in the UN Guiding Principles in Business & Human Rights Working Group

 

I am delighted to pass along the "Submission to the EU on the EU Regulation on Mandatory Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence" for the Professional Training for Lawyers & Barristers in the UN Guiding Principles in Business & Human Rights Working Group. We are grateful to Linda Wood for her leadership in the preparation and submission of this input.

Pix credit HERE

The submission emphasizes the importance of capacity building to any project of mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence.   While the West has cultivated a (self) conceit around its own capacity to robustly engage in human rights and environmental due diligence, the reality is that except for that small group of (mostly self selected) drivers of this project, the need for capacity building among members of the local legal establishments is as great in developed states as it may be in the "usual suspects" developing states. A greater challenge is the need to internalize the values  and principles around which due diligence is undertaken and the systems created for its implementation effectively used to measure compliance.  And the greatest challenge--to create a dynamic and well informed community clear in its driving principles but strong in its capacity to resist rigid and inflexible orthodoxy in pursuit of common goals centering around context based respect for the great principles of human rights and sustainability (including climate change) that have emerged in the first quarter of this century.

And that is where the hard work of implementation will begin. To move beyond the use of this regulatory project as something more than another contribution to fashionable virtue signalling--by states, international public and private organizations, enterprises, and individuals in academia, the bar and elsewhere--then sufficient resources will have to be devoted to internalizing the values represented by due diligence It will also require a sustained and coordinated program of teaching values and mechanics to its  gatekeepers, data collectors, code writers, analysts and modellers. The current generation of lawyers will require training not just on the mechanics of due diligence and its application to human rights and sustainability; it will require training in the values reflected in the due diligence, and ultimately, as envisioned in 2011 with the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, with the incorporation of human rights and sustainability risks into the way in which economic actors price their activities and make choices among alternatives to the creation of wealth for humanity and the world that humans occupy. 

 

Data-Driven Values-Based Hedging in the Shadow of COVID-19: Cuba and Costa Rica Open their borders to Tourism

  

Pix Credit: (Marc Frank, Cuba opens most of country to tourism as enters "new normality", Reuters)

 

In a recent reflection (Simulating Politics in the Shadow of COVID-19: " 'like the school nurse trying to tell the principal how to run the school') I suggested the difficulties of generating consensus among national elites in meeting the challenge of COVID-19. That difficulty was not merely a matter (as has been the political line of the opponents of the current American Administration) of a refusal to conform policy to science and scientific knowledge expressed as the product of simulation models.  Rather, the challenge comes when competing simulations, grounded in quite distinct moral and policy measures of values, compete to serve as the basis for political, economic, and societal response to crisis. In the United States that expressed itself in the fight between those who advanced a medical and public health centering set of simulation models against those who advanced models that centered economic stabilization.  One model centered aggregated human life; the other centered the long term collective life of society. 

To choose a particular form of simulation is to choose a set of values that are to be advanced by the simulation.  But more than that, to choose a particular form of simulation is meant to foreclose any debate on the premises on which that simulation was chosen.  Choosing simulations is a form of choosing sides in a political contest. In the case of COVID-19, that necessary fragmentation was understood as separating out those who placed a greater value on economic simulation against those who would value health more. Both of course are after the same ultimate result--the maximization of the welfare of the American people--but each of their conceptual universes produce highly different pathways to that goal--and with those pathways quite different effects on individuals (e.g., Ruminations 90: Sacrificing the Most Humble on the Altar of Leadership). (Simulating Politics in the Shadow of COVID-19: " 'like the school nurse trying to tell the principal how to run the school')

This battle of the models has produced, in the absence of a string centralized response, an effective policy of hedging by states. That hedging differs, and sometimes substantially, form state to state.  Some states have "opened up" for business more than others.  But no state has either shut down as close to completely as possible, and none have opened  up as if the pandemic never occurred.  The battle of the simulations continues--and quite ferociously. It is a data driven policy argument with substantial political consequences to be sure.  At its core, however, it is a battle over values and valuation and reflects an ancient contest between the obligations of the states (and other institutions) to the individual or to the collective, or better said, a contest over where a society draws the line (that is gives effect to values  based on data driven consequences understood through the values based construction of predictive analytics).
 

Pix Credit here

This is not a challenge unique to the United States or even to developed states, though it manifests most prominently there because these places tend to be home to the great engines of social media (as well as of economic, social, and cultural power).  Indeed, the problem highlighted in the case of the United States plays an even more crucial role in developing states.

This post considers  the way this simulation hedging has been manifested in Cuba and Costa Rica.  It is read against growing controversy in developed states about the primacy of siloed medical modelling as the sole basis for the construction of responsive policy (Coronavirus: Health experts join global anti-lockdown movement).

 

Call for Abstracts and Panel Proposals: ASCE's 30th Annual Meeting(II), 'Caught in a Perfect “Storm”: Are Havana’s Responses Sufficient?'

 

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS and PANEL PROPOSALS

ASCE's 30^th Annual Meeting, Part Two

 

Caught in a Perfect “Storm”: Are Havana’s Responses Sufficient?

 

January 4-6, 2021

 

                                                          Virtual Conference

 

Following in the success of ASCE’s August 2020 virtual conference ASCE will host a second session this coming January. We are asking for new proposals for papers and panels.

 

Requirements: Abstracts or panel proposals should describe original work related to Cuba’s economy in a broad sense, including legal, sectoral, and social aspects of economic development, or Cuba’s exodus and the Cuban diaspora and its economic and social relationship to the island.  

 

The theme of ASCE’s January conference will focus on Cuba’s current economic problems and the Cuban governments announced responses (reforms). We are specifically looking for papers that suggest policies that improve those reforms within the authors’ understanding of what the Cuban Government may be willing or able to do. In the language of economists, we are seeking second or third best solutions that might attract dialogue on the island. Of course, if the author believes that second best solutions cannot bring significant improvements to the Cuban economy, that debate is welcome as well.

 

While our theme focuses on economic reform, we also welcome Cuba- focused papers dealing with the political or social economy. In other years, ASCE’s program has included sessions organized around development issues; legal issues; U.S. policy towards Cuba; regional comparisons; self-employment; tourism; the Constitution; agriculture; internationalism; origins of the revolution; the “special period”; commercial relations; education; public health; social welfare; demographic issues ; authoritarianism; civil society; human rights; and environmental issues.

 

Note:  Proposals submitted for but not accepted for ASCE’s August 2020 conference need not be resubmitted. The decision to move from an in-person to a virtual conference limited the number of papers we could accept. Those papers will be considered for the January conference.

 

Abstracts or panel proposals must not exceed 250 words and must be accompanied by a 150-word biography for each author. For consideration by the Program Committee, abstracts, panel proposals, biographies, or full papers if already completed, should be sent via email to:

 

jperezlopez703@gmail.com.

 

Deadline:  November 2, 2020.

 

Please include the words "ASCE January 2021 CONFERENCE SUBMISSION" in the subject line. Authors of accepted papers or panels will be required to register for the Conference.

 

Deadlines: Deadlines for submitting abstracts, papers or panel proposals for the conference are as follows:

·      Abstract, paper or panel submission deadline:               November 2, 2020

·      Notification of acceptance by the Committee:                November 23, 2020

·      Papers due to discussants:                                                 December 15, 2020

·      ASCE 30^th Annual Conference:                                          January 4-6, 2020

·      Submission of papers for Conference Proceedings:       February 15, 2021

 

 

 

 

Convocatoria de ponencias y paneles PROPUESTAS

30a^th Reunión Anual de ASCE, Segunda Parte

 

Atrapado en una "tormenta" perfecta: ¿Son suficientes las respuestas de La Habana?

 

4-6 de enero de 2021

 

Conferencia Virtual

 

Siguiendo con el éxito de la conferencia virtual ASCE de agosto de 2020, ASCE será sede de una segunda sesión el próximo mes de enero. Estamos pidiendo nuevas propuestas de documentos y paneles.

 

Requisitos:  Los resúmenes o propuestas de los grupos especiales deben describir el trabajo original relacionado con la economía de Cuba en un sentido amplio, incluyendo aspectos legales, sectoriales y sociales del desarrollo económico, o Cubas éxodos y la diáspora cubana y sus relaciones económicas y sociales a la isla.

 

El tema de la conferencia de enero de ASCE se centrará en los problemas económicos actuales de Cuba y los gobiernos cubanos anunciaron respuestas(reformas). Estamos buscando específicamente documentos que sugieran políticas que mejoren esas reformas dentro de la comprensión de los autores de lo que el Gobierno cubano puede estar dispuesto o puede hacer. En el lenguaje de los economistas, buscamos la segunda o tercera mejor solución que pueda atraer el diálogo en la isla.  Por supuesto, si el autor cree que la segunda mejor solución no puede aportar mejoras significativas a la economía cubana, ese debate también es bienvenido.

 

Si bien nuestro tema se centra en la reforma económica, también damos la bienvenida a Cuba-- documentos centrados que tratan de la economía política o social. En los años, el programa de ASCE ha incluido sesiones organizadas en torno a cuestiones de desarrollo; cuestiones jurídicas; política de los Estados Unidos hacia Cuba; comparaciones regionales; autoempleo; turismo; la Constitución; la agricultura; el internacionalismo; los orígenes de la revolución; el "período especial"; relaciones comerciales; educación; salud pública; bienestar social; cuestiones demográficas; autoritarismo; sociedad civil; derechos humanos; y  cuestiones ambientales..

 

Nota: Las propuestas presentados, pero no aceptados para la conferencia de agosto de 2020 de ASCE no necesitan ser reenviados.  La decisión de pasar de una conferencia presencia a una conferencia virtual limitó el número de documentos que podríamos aceptar. Esos documentos serán considerados para la conferencia de enero.

 

Los resúmenes o propuestas de grupos especiales no deben exceder las 250 palabras y deben ir acompañados de una biografía de 150 palabras para cada autor. Para su consideración por el Comité del Programa, se deben enviar por correo electrónico abstractas, propuestas de paneles, biografías o documentos completos si ya se ha completado, a:

 

jperezlopez703@gmail.com.

 

Fecha límite:  2 de noviembre de 2020.

 

Incluya las palabras "ASCE enero 2021 SUBMISSION DE CONFERENCIA" en la línea de asunto. Los autores de documentos o grupos especiales aceptados deberán registrarse en la Conferencia.

 

Plazos: Los plazos para presentar resúmenes, documentos o propuestas de paneles para la conferencia son los siguientes:

·      Fecha límite de presentación de resumen, papel o grupo especial: 2 de noviembre, 2020

·      Notificación de aceptación por parte del Comité:                   23 de noviembre, 2020

·      Documentos pendientes de ponentes:                                  15 de diciembre, 2020

·      Conferencia Anual ASCE 30:^th                                                 4-6 de enero, 2020

·      Presentación de documentos para las actas de la Conferencia:        15 de febrero, 2021

 

 

 

 

"Fratelli Tutti": Social Solidarity and Faith Against the Reason of the Market

 

On the anniversary of St Francis of Assisi's death, Pope Francis celebrates Mass before the Saint's tomb and signs his Encyclical "Fratelli tutti". Pix Credit HERE

 There is a greatness in simplicity that tends to cut through the self deception of complexity.  And more to the point--there is a power in innocence that exposes the the errors of even those who think themselves well fed from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen. 2:9). That innocence and the simplicity with which it is clothed serves humanity well. It is the necessary counter balance and anchor (the fides (faith)), to the striving not just for knowledge but, through the power of data and its analytics and within the institutions built to incarnate them, also for collective life in knowledge alone (the ratio or reason). "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves" (John Paul II; Fides et Ratio (Encyclical 1997)). 

Francis, both the Saint and the present Pontiff, represent that blessed innocence and simplicity--as well as its power. It is natural, then, that this Pontiff, on this day, would call that faithful (and those others who might be moved) back to the simplicity and innocence to which all humanity--eventually--may hope to embrace. That calling back is meant to re-call (used here both in the sense of memory and return) humanity and its institutions to its core values, its faith in the brotherhood of humanity, in its social solidarity. From there, to the (re)design of those relationships, methods, and objects, to which it is given to reason to advance for the greater glory of humanity as a reflection of and a striving toward th Divine.  The object of reason, then, is to give expression to fraternity and social friendship--to the core spiritual good which expresses the supreme value of human striving.  It is only to those ends that the great factories of reason--its institutions, its striving toward the material, its economics, its cultures, and politics-- are meant to operate. 

And therein lies both the great power and the constant challenge of Pope Francis' Encyclical Fratelli Tutti (3 October 2020). The entire Encyclical is worth careful reading. But it is Chapter 5 that is of substantial relevance to those who command the structures and operation of globalization grounded in large part on the power of markets to guide and govern.

168. The marketplace, by itself, cannot resolve every problem, however much we are asked to believe this dogma of neoliberal faith. Whatever the challenge, this impoverished and repetitive school of thought always offers the same recipes. Neoliberalism simply reproduces itself by resorting to the magic theories of “spillover” or “trickle” – without using the name – as the only solution to societal problems. There is little appreciation of the fact that the alleged “spillover” does not resolve the inequality that gives rise to new forms of violence threatening the fabric of society. It is imperative to have a proactive economic policy directed at “promoting an economy that favours productive diversity and business creativity”[140] and makes it possible for jobs to be created and not cut. Financial speculation fundamentally aimed at quick profit continues to wreak havoc. Indeed, “without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfil its proper economic function. And today this trust has ceased to exist”. The story did not end the way it was meant to, and the dogmatic formulae of prevailing economic theory proved not to be infallible. The fragility of world systems in the face of the pandemic has demonstrated that not everything can be resolved by market freedom. It has also shown that, in addition to recovering a sound political life that is not subject to the dictates of finance, “we must put human dignity back at the centre and on that pillar build the alternative social structures we need”. (Fratelli Tutti footnotes omitted).

The faith in the return of the baroque system of human activity to its simple and innocent core--to a faith in the human person rather than on the wealth that might be produced by and through them--suggests both an important  call for the reconsideration of the way in which human activity is valued, and its fundamental purpose.  The Marxist Leninists understand this (irrespective of their failure sto realize their own goals): for them the object of all activity is to create wealth sufficient to usher in or make possible the establishment of a communist society.  For Francis it is equally ambitious--to recall Aquinas' ancient insight that the superfluities of human activity are most highly valued when they are distributed in solidarity with the community that made the creation of such wealth possible. Human centering is also at the core of the project of business and human rights. In that sense it too strives to reassert the humanity of economic activity--not wealth for its own sake, but for the greater glory of the collective. 

And yet, and yet, that innocence and simplicity fails to see the divine in reason. Here it is not just Fides et Ratio, but Pope Benedict's Deus Caritas Est (2005) that might prove helpful in fleshing out the purity and simplicity of Fratelli Tutti. 

Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable.[20] The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. (Deus Caritas Est )

For the problem of markets may not lie in a magical belief, or in the failures (or unbalance) of reason, but rather in the false faith that reason itself is always unreasonable.  The problem with markets lie only in the faith that the means of markets becomes ts own ends--that is that markets may operate without a fundamental structure of values.  And, indeed, the language suggests a loss of faith that itself undermines the reason that makes faith in the betterment of humanity reasonable. Or to put it another way--Francis might be too quick to appear to lose faith in reason; or to lose sight of the rationality of faith. Reason is a moral project, one grounded in faith in the core values that give it structure; faith is incarnated in reason--Logos must be felt and understood as word and as the meaning of the word. That applies to markets, and it applies to markets based systems itself.  

 A loss of faith suggests no more than that the system of reason has lost its moral compass; it ought not t imply either nonsensical magic or the silo effect that separates faith in reason from the rationality of faith. That was precisely the determination of the Chinese Communist Party with respect to the rationality of its socialist modernization project, one that need the correction of a renewal in the moral basis of Marxist Leninism. Markets based systems in liberal democracy may undergo the same process of realignment of value systems with its rationalization.  The imperfection of reason is not cause to lose faith in the enterprise, but rather to strive toward its perfection in the same way that faith strives for a more perfect connection with the Divine. Yet the core question remains, and remains undisclosed even in Fratelli Tutti--to what ends human economic activity.  To center it on human dignity may not be sufficient, for a  planet bereft of its climate and bio-diversity.  And to center production on collective wealth requires a path toward reason that faith alone will not provide.  The simplicity and innocence of Fratelli Tutti, like that of the great Saint it honors, might be enriched by reading it alongside Fides et Ratio and Deus Caritas Est.

And that leaves us with a question for those who have read this far: why would this discussion hold any interest to anyone other than perhaps the Catholic community of believers?  And the answer: Fratelli Tutti, ironically like the CPC Basic Line, and the human rights and sustainability work of the United Nations since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights all share a common set of assumptions and a common working style. Starting from radically different sources (faith, scientism, humanism), each is premises on the assumption that the rational organization of human communities (and their activities)  must proceed from a set of core values from out of which it is possible to value the world, humanity and humanity's relation to the world. Each seeks the perfection of its understanding and application of its values in the way in which human collectives organize themselves and hold themselves to account. Human rights, economic globalization, national constitutionalism and the like, then are merely reflections of the (still imperfect) way in which as community understand, articulates and applies its values to the structures it has created and operated for the greater glory of those values an unalterable faith in which serves as the foundation of legitimacy and authority of all efforts at human connectivity.  Human rights in economic activity, sustainability, and climate change, then, are first and foremost moral projects.  The battles around them, are contests over the moral universe within which organization is possible.  And, once that moral universe is established as authoritative, then around the way in action is valued and those values are applied to judge the conformity of action with morals. That, in essence, is the project of human collectivity.  The rest is detail; yet the world is no more than the aggregation and consequences of this detail.  In the case of Fratelli Tutti, the CPC Basic Line and the UN Human Rights and sustainability project, that detail centers on the way in which such values are recognized and incorporated in "costing" action and judging it worth (e.g., building the full cost of the degradation of water sources for a local community as a result of the way in which an economic enterprise uses local water resources, the "real cost" of carbon footprints; the by the operation present value of the cost, the value of wealth contribution to the community whose resources are exploited, etc.).    

And it is in this way that one might find a common basis for discussions about a shared set of values based objectives to continue to increase the value of human activity in the world in which humanity is condemned to inhabit for some long time yet to come. Judge for yourselves.  The relevant excerpt of Fratelli Tutti Chapter 5 follows. It is easy enough to translate its message into the moral language of the UN business and human rights project, as well as the moral project underlying the Chinese New Era ideology.

"Elites have to get out of the way"; Coalition for Peace & Ethics Input to the UNGPs +10: "Toward a Decade of Global Implementation"

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a prior post I passed along the announcement by the UN Working Group for Business and Human Rights of a Call for Input for  its new global project, ‘Business and human rights: towards a decade of global implementation.” Also known as “UNGPs 10+ / Next Decade BHR.” (Open Call for Input from the UN Working Group for Business and Human Rights: Next Decade 10+ "Business and human rights – towards a decade of global implementation). I there noted:

The Call for Input is thus an important marker for the measurement of the UNGP, and for its placement within its own life cycle. One gets that sense, of course, from the way that the Call for Input is framed. One might learn as much from the questions posed as from the answers to be harvested, and thus harvested, processed, packaged and refined for public consumption. The guidance for inputs center on five key projects: (1) bettering UNGP implementation; (2) identifying (and avoiding) failures and the work left to be done; (3) identifying people and institutions (as well as narratives and ideas) that continue to stand in the way of preferred progress; (4) a barely concealed effort to reorient the UNGP from centering economic activity in human rights to the of human rights as the language of (the currently best candidate for supplanting the UNGP) sustainability and climate change ; and (5) the evolution of data driven measures to which the enterprise might be reduced. From these, it is presumed, that the Working Group will seek to develop a 2nd Ten Year Plan for the UNGP.  ((Open Call for Input from the UN Working Group for Business and Human Right)

I am delighted now to share the input of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics provided to the Working Group. 

Taken together and reduced to a single insight the great gap and challenge that remain is inherent in the stubborn determination made during the course of the first ten years after the endorsement of the UNGPs that (a) enterprises ought to be treated as public administrative agencies, whose sensibilities and ideologies, and whose working style they ought to adopt, and only then as vehicles for the production of wealth; and (b) that the state somehow remains aloof from the practice and implementation of human rights and sustainability objectives other than as a source of law and in the case of “leading” states, of lecturing others, especially with respect to their own wealth creating activities. None of this is helpful.

The CPE Input Statement follows below and may be accessed HERE.