Chapter 20. Changing the key to open the door.

While the change of values, customs and behaviours is sually slow and it becomes dangerous to practice from outside the persons because of ideological or religious pressures, the instrumental change, today technically feasible, of a hypothetically key-tool, according to tragical historic results, may help to state, cleaner, freeer, more solidary and liable new rules of the game than up to now. The central hypothesis is that the lawful State and the economic equity formally proclaimed by Western culture are impossible to reach under the present monetary system. With a new type of currency we shall be able to find out if this is really a key piece which favours the emergency of a new civilization or if, on the contrary, it is an unimportant element.

The Earth is sick. The human species has become the most dangerous pest for the planet's life, and therefore also for the human beings themselves. Human population increases over one million every five days.

Let us examine some of most serious symptoms of the sickness. The destruction of the ozone layer (probably by the carbonate fluoride gases) and the hothouse effect (produced by the massive combustion of hydrocarbon) worsen the already worrying pollution of air, water and soil, radioactivity, desertization, the exhaustion of non- renewable resources... All these facts produced by the human species attempt against the basic balances which have been forming during millions of years and which have allowed the development of life on this planet.

The growth of the world population worsens many of these imbalances. But paradoxically, it is not the areas of the world with a greater population increase who are mainly responsible for the destruction of these balances. The model of 'Western' civilization -industrialist, productivist and consumist- is the main agent of destruction of resources and of contamination. Transnational companies are the missionaries which carry it all over the planet. The dynamics of supernational neocapitalism needs the world expansion of its markets: it imposes an accelerated rythm in all levels of life and produces a strong concentration of power of decision in a few transnational companies which are above the Nation-States and the international bodies.

This expansion of the markets appears, often, under the euphemism of 'co-operation with the underdeveloped countries'. It creates false hopes in millions of persons who cannot, and never will, live in the 'heavenly' consumption society without converting the Earth into a vast rubbish chute. The Western system offers 'goods' (and 'evils') and 'services' (and 'disservices') to a small part of the world population thanks to the exploitation of the majority and to the debasement of the planet.

The expansion of the markets, limited by the lack of purchasing power of the exploited and indebted populations, has been orientated for long decades to the military industry. In the last years, with the reduction of the arms race, produced by the changes in the East/West conflict, industrial compounds have found other openings for their 'pacific' expansion. In an indirect way, the Permanent Court of the Peoples, meeting in Berlin in 1988, offered a solution in this sense. After denouncing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as mainly responsible for the indebtment of most non-Western States, the Court suggested to 'cut the military expenses per year in a 20 per cent and that the savings be applied to reduce the debt of the Third World. This would eliminate the debt in 5 or 6 years' as 'we must be aware that the Third World debt is slightly higher than a trillion dollars; and that the present expense for military purposes in one year is approximately the same¹'.

All this complex situation, -increased by the impact of the mass media- produces simultaneously alarm in the population and a paralysis in the politicians of the States and international bodies. At the same time, we are discovering that many of the great problems which affect us will become irreversible in the next decades if everything stays as it is, if we do not take conscientious decisions. And catastrophes will not only reach the poor, as up to now, the rich also will suffer the consequences.

It seems that present formal democracy has not been designed, nor is ready, to face complex problems nor vertiginous and permanent changes. Democratic political institutions are demonstrating that they are not able to or cannot take urgent or long term decisions. According to Harvard Professor Daniel Bell, 'the Nation-States are too small to face the great problems and too large for the small problems'. Politicians -together with Parliaments, are conditioned by the votes of citizens, who are not always aware of the seriousness of the situation or who do not want to lose their privileges. But politicians are also conditioned by the financing of electoral campaigns. Banks and companies are the main supporters (either legal or illegal) of parties. The factual powers -thanks mainly to the anonymity of money- are the ones which, as a last resort, condition the taking of decisions through their support to the parties, bribing politicians, judges and officials, and through their control of the mass media (and therefore of the conscience of the population).

The States, with their available tools, are unable to protect themselves from the supranational strategy of the large banks, which dictate the international economic order (financial dictatorship), control more and more the same transnational companies and use the public posts of the States and of the international bodies to introduce the economic policy which suits their interests. «Corporations have started to be dominated by the magicians of finance, who know very little about production but know everything about financial strategies²».

The so-called «free market» -the panacea of self-regulation- practically does not exist anywhere, neither within the Nation-States nor within the world trade. Monopolies, oligopolies and public intervention cover almost all the strategic markets or the most profitable. And behind all of them, «helped by the revolution in the information and communication technologies, private bankers preside today a network made up of global finances³» which dominates all the markets -oligopolistic, monopolistic and of imperfect competition-. Even the market of ideas, of information and of politics belongs to this network.

All the proposals in favour of a new economic international order, of an improvement of the level and of the quality of life of an impoverished population, of the defence of environment... must not only go through the sieve of electoral interest of the States Parliaments and through the sieve of the information mass media, but also through the (undemocratic) right of veto of the United Nations, and, above all, through the right of veto of the International Monetary Fund and of the World Bank (the patrons trade unions of the «Money Mandarins»). These money mandarins, motivated by the short term benefits, are creating, without any democratic legitimation, a supranational economic order which bears upon the planet's life and which shuts the doors to the changes which should be introduced.

The central hypothesis which has been submitted in this book is the following: the bases of democracy -a State with law and social justice- have been and ever will be only formal -not real- for most people, as long as the type of currency allows the factual powers to go unpunished and a radical improvement of the economic science and of its practical effectivity be made impossible. To modify the type of monetary instrument appears therefore a necessary condition -even if not sufficient- for the necessary decisions to be taken democratically. In other words, as long as there is a sort of anonymous and uninformative currency, the political changes will be apparent, without much influence on the most important facts, because there will always be somebody with enough money to stop the right decision to be taken, or to diminish its effectivity if it happens to be taken.

A change in the type of currency might create the conditions to overcome this blockade and to open the door to democratic decisions. Without demanding a change of ideology nor of faith, without attacking what every society considers good, we basically suggest an agreement on the modification of an instrument allowing to make liable, to optimize and to modify the rules of the game introduced by every society.

The changes of tools are much less violent than the changes of imposed customs. «The trick of the change of hour shows how easy it can be to get everybody up, every day, one hour earlier, by stating that, from one day on, when it is six o'clock for the sun everybody should read that it is already seven o'clock. Without any doubt, to reach the same result directly or by coercion, many bills would have to be passed, many time-tables to be changed, to put up a great network of guardians... And, what is most disturbing, to bear many complaints and, perhaps, to have to face a few riots of the people who do not like to get up early⁴». This is the fun of instrumental changes, changes which are put in practice by the Governments at any time in economic policy, completely within the law.

Not always are changes necessary, but even when they are, they may not always possible. Inertia, ignorance or vested interests often stop changes from being introduced. In critical moments, those who have an interest in keeping a privileged situation foster a feeling that everything is right, that it could not be better, that human condition is such and nothing can be done, that nothing is perfect, and that it is dangerous to look for a new situation.

Only when the crisis is serious enough feel people compelled to look at haste for other ways. But sometimes, because of the seriousness of the crisis, we loose the ability to find them when they are most needed. The crisis itself upsets and pushes us to trodden paths without any way out or to paralysis.

What we have been explaining tries to stimulate the need for change and to help to get it in a given direction. Change for its own sake is as absurd as is tradition for its sake. The direction is important, and sometimes it happens to be wrong. But the way to get there is not less important, and sometimes, because of ignorance, even the direction has been lost. In other words, we propose a tool to try to overcome one of the common problems of historical revolutions: that everything changes, but that the power of a few goes on.

Notes:

¹Permanent Court of the Peoples. «About the policies of the IMF and the WB», West Berlin, 1988.
²Howard M. Wachtel, «The Money Mandarins», Pantheon Books, New York, 1986, p. 3.
³Ib., p. 3.
⁴Joan Casals, «Europa a l'any 2025» (not published), Barcelona, 1976, p. 7.