Importante e controverso artigo do Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, filosofo católico, sobre a crise econômica e o capitalismo. Manifesto anti-capitalista, segundo Sandro Magister, retoma teses superadas do Marx e de outros pensadores e apresenta uma visão romantica do mundo anterior ao capitalismo, já criticada pelo conhecido teologo luterano Wolfhart Pannenberg. Serve, contudo, como uma especie de aquecimento para a tão esperada nova enciclica social do Bento XVI, a "Caritas in veritate", prometida para o dia 29 de junho
"The financial and consequently economic crisis that has struck us and is still far from over raises many questions. Was it caused by the irresponsibility and greed of various banks, especially investment banks? Or by the lack of strict rules for the international financial markets, by the lack of effective oversight of banks and finance, by the separation and independence of a virtual (and acrobatic) economy from the real economy of production and assets? Probably a number of such factors contributed, combined with a naive trust in a "free" and unregulated market.
But looking for causes only in this direction does not take us very far. In fact, the system that has been set up in this area for decades with success and with significant material profits, but also with a growing distance between poor and rich, that "turbo-capitalism" (called this by Helmut Schmidt) which reached a new level with globalization before causing a collapse, cannot be defined and explained only by making reference to the wrongful actions of individual persons or even of groups.
This certainly could have played a part, but more generally it is a matter of the results of an established and very widespread system of interaction that follows its own functional logic, and subjects everything else to it. This system of interaction was transformed into a system of action: modern capitalism. This forges the economic (and in part the non-economic) activity of individuals, and integrates it into the system. These individuals are certainly the ones who act, but in their action they do not follow so much their own free impulses as the stimuli produced by the system and its functional logic.
THE INHUMAN CHARACTER OF CAPITALISM
But how does modern capitalism present itself more precisely as a system of action? We can get help in this from a great humanistic sociologist of the last century, Hans Freyer. In his book "Theorie des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters [Theory of the present era]," he discusses "secondary systems" as specific products of the modern industrialized world, and analyzes their structure in detail (1).
The secondary systems are characterized by the fact that they develop processes of action that are not connected to preexisting arrangements, but are based on a few functional principles that give them their form and makeup. These processes of action integrate man not as a person in his entirety, but only with the active forces and the functions that are required by the principles and their implementation. What persons are or should be is left aside.
These kinds of processes of action are developed and consolidated in a diffuse system characterized by its specific functional rationality, which overlaps existing social reality, influencing, changing, and shaping it.
This is the key to analyzing capitalism as a system of action. It is based on just a few premises: the general freedom of the individual and of associations of individuals in matters of purchasing and contracts; full freedom in matters of transferring goods, business, and capital across national borders; the guarantee and free control of personal property (including the right of succession), intending by property the possession of goods and money, but also of information, technology, and capacity.
The functional objective is the general liberation of a potentially unlimited profit interest, in addition to the possibilities for earnings and production, which operate on the free market and enter into competition with each other. The decisive impulse is given by an egotistical individualism that drives the persons involved to buy, innovate, and profit. This impulse constitutes the engine, the active principle; it does not pursue a preexisting content objective that establishes measures and limits, but an unlimited expansion, growth and enrichment. For this reason, it is necessary to eliminate or set aside all of the obstacles and regulations that are not required by the aforementioned premises. The only regulating principle must be the free market."
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