Is it possible to establish a world peace culture built on human rights?
Yes - surely - if we do not believe in this, we have nothing to do here!
What is not, can be! But it is not possible without some very special conditions are fulfilled!
Our fight for establishing a world peace culture is also a fight for a new world order which must be based upon a new economic and political system with a completely different aim for its practice! And that means we have to answer some very important questions:
These are political questions and realizing them is a political piece of work. Answering these questions are important because that we cannot take for granted that it means the same in every connections and in every part of the multi-cultural world in which we live. But despite of this original manifold that is one thing which more and more is levelling out these original differences; A world capitalistic system. Which is the economic basis of what is called "modernity"- a way of constructing new and different social relationships or a new social order, and which is said to be born with the 16 th. and 17 th. Century - in Europe.
This "modernity" in which it is said we live, has also other institutions as its basics or fundamentals:
All this together brought forward what we today know as the military culture which in many ways is an a metafor for the modern society.
But - in my opinion the most important of these "modern" social elements - is the capitalistic system with its production of commodities.
And from Europe it has spread nearly to every part of the globe till we today are observing the last and final (?) aspiration to be a really world wide social, economic, information and political system (NB Internet = www). And from this fact we have to start. What then does it mean that our building ground is capitalistic and that our building material - the existing human race - we - ourselves - have been formed within such surroundings which have fostered more wars, violence and unhappiness in our own century than in all the earlier centuries together? And in a century where it looks as if capitalism would be the definite victor even in the struggle over the minds of people? This is of vital importance because within capitalism as the leading socio-economic system there will not be possible to reach our common end.
Why? What are the characteristics of capitalism? Let us hear what Marx and Engels said over 150 years ago:
"Capitalism has without mercy torned sunder the many relations between people and left behind just the naked egoistic selfishness, the money relations. It has drowned the pious passion, the chivalrous enthusiasm, the feelings of holly sentimentality in the icecold waters of egoistic calculations. Capitalism has established the open, shameless, direct and naked exploitation.
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It has done away with the sentimentality as far as family relations are concerned and reduced it to plain money-relations.
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Capitalism cannot exist without constant revolutionize the production instruments and thereby the relationsships between people in the production process and in every other social relations.
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It is this continually changing of the production, this non-stop shaking of every social condition, the constant uncertainty and "action"- that is the "trade mark" of the capitalistisc epoque. In short: capitalism makes the world in its own image."
It this that leaves the human being in an alienated situation and as an alienated being. The creator of the system - the human being - feels that it does not master the world which they have established . But the real tragic is that this creature - the human being - does not understand what is happening, and it does not understand that the world is a consequence of the special type of production relations they - the humans - so long have accepted as the only possible one, as the natural one. And curiously enough - this makes every human being powerless - even if there are great differences between the classes and the means of power which are at their disposal. In these times with privatization - the most important object of this campaign is the privatisation of the mind. In my opinion the most important piece of work we have to perform is to start with fighting this. That is why a world wide network is of such great significance!
But - if we do not succeed in building new institutions, establishing new ethical codes based on social responsibility) developing new answers to the age old questions of humanity, every network will not be of any use, yes, it will really turn into a collaborating part of the established system. Just because the old mechanisms which were there when we tried to work out solutions earlier, still are with us and they will be the most important hindrance to the possibility of fulfilling our utopian, but nevertheless realistic dreams. What we have to do may be said to make a brake with the fundamental elements in "modernity" - that means we have to establish a new world order with new production relations, with a new scientific society built on, as I have said, social responsibility, a new way of finding rational answers - a way which must be miles away from Kafka's world which fostered the holocaust and which is quite capable of doing this once more.
17.01.2002