IT'S TIME TO ADOPT A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT.

"When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there"

(Augusto Monterroso, Guatemala ,1921-2003).

J.A.Morasan*

Nothing better than that microstory of the master Monterroso (RIP), to illustrate our reality, in light of historical events: In full XXI century, after several revolutions and cultural and technological progress achieved; Republicans, conservatives, Pepes and other fossils, yet are here.

Let's see a bit of history: from slavery to the twenty-first century socialism: The analysis of the history made by Marx on the basis of modes of production was a theoretical revolution in the social sciences. The existence of Community methods of production, slave, feudal and capitalist, for he did not obligate steps must pass all peoples.

As proof of this assertion, found that among the so-called "primitive communism" and slavery existed in some societies various socio-economic formations, like the "old" and, especially, the Asiatic mode of production that, in his view, still subsisting in the nineteenth century.

In the maturation process of the qualitative leap that occurs in societies to switch from one mode of production to another, there are periods of transition, whose complexity exceeds any scheme of evolution of peoples. One of those moments of its constituent companies of different types of transition that emerged from the dissolution of Aboriginal communitarianism. Others were following the crisis of the slave system, resulting in training not always resulted in a predominantly feudal mode of production.

And, between the mode of production or community primitive and slave mode of production of a lapse of about 50 centuries (4,500 BC - 476 AD). In this transition period, which opened after the dissolution of the Aboriginal community, were given various socio-economic forms, of which Marx identified, designated as the "old way." Similarly, in Egypt, the Middle East, India and China emerged the Asiatic mode of production or hydraulic society, characterized by the birth of an embryo of State had not yet cut the umbilical cord with community property.

As between the slave mode of production, the eighth century BC-300 AD Greco-Roman society and the feudal mode of production went another transitional period of about 5 centuries, from the third century, it enters the slave regime crisis the Roman Empire, until the eighth century when decanted feudal mode of production. This periodization is valid only for Western Europe, because Asia oriental feudalism persisted until the early twentieth century Eastern Europe was feudal forms and semi-feudal until the nineteenth century.

1 .- The Slave: (4,500 BC - 476 AD) Ancient. The appropriation of land and livestock by the most influential people in society (chiefs), were allowed to accumulate wealth based on agriculture, animal husbandry, mining and handicrafts. Event also allowed the social control, achieving higher surplus and given a life of luxury, and through broader marketing achieve higher yields; registering the trade caravans of old. Antagonistic social classes emerge: haves and have nots. Monarchs, the nobility, civil servants (scribes) and large land owners living at the expense of farmers, herders and craftsmen.

The property is exercised over the means of production and also on the people (slaves) who do not have any rights and forced to work through the threat, the whip and even death, in return only receive the food; the most rebellious work in chains. The work is done on large estates, mines, galleries and palaces, temples and homes of the aristocrats. Slaves were also bought and sold in public markets.

The first wars were for appropriation of property, then aimed to capture prisoners to become slaves. Slavery began as an external form, then generalized internally, usury and the accumulation of debt, ruining people and turned into slaves, in the end, the mere fact of poverty make the peasant, the shepherd and artisan slaves.

2 .- The Feudalism: (476 to 1453 AD) Age Media. The large estates made from the barbarian invasions, made up of duchies, kingdoms and other forms of the nobility and the feudal monarchies were established around the great castles and protection of a powerful force of knights. The lords, instead of submitting to the homeless using the chains and the whip did so veiled. The easement lived around the castle, was in the service of the landowners, could cultivate a piece of land to sustain his family and had to be ready for services requiring the feudal, whether in the castle, the estate or militia, its core activity was dedicated to the Lord and the rest of time cultivating for their own livelihood, of their own and pay taxes, rents, tithes and other requirements. Feudal paternalism while it was tied to the land, servitude and the wars he practiced Mr. landowner, submitted it to a power that drove the properties, the vassals or servants, army, justice, and religious forms culture. Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, and the like holding the scaffolding of feudalism, the Bible, the Torah, the Koran defined the truth about things and his interpretation was in the hands of priests and pastors.
Feudalism established a pyramidal hierarchy between social classes. The high nobility consisted of the dukes, counts and marquis, who reported directly to the king, the gentry, by the barons and gentry, were called knights or nobles.

The nobility and clergy enjoyed great privileges and monopolized the land. The nobility was based, moreover, their power, military force and the clergy, religious prestige and cultural.Los nobles were in charge of the warrior tasks, the clergy, regarding the religious life villains (inhabitants of villages), tillage and manual tasks.

The villains were in the lower social scale and their duties were numerous in relation to their rights: they worked great lordships, and in return for the land they ceded to their work and being afforded protection, should provide multiple services and benefits to their masters.

The villains were all farmers, but were divided into free and slaves. Free peasants could leave the land they worked and seek protection in another home and dominion, if they so wished. In contrast, the servants had no freedom at all and could not leave the glebe (land or inheritance) where they worked. The villains had to pay Mr., taxes in kind and labor, including the so-called "droit de seigneur."

3 .- Capitalism: (1453 to date, with a break in 1917). Modern Age. The Renaissance is one of the great moments of world history which marked the passage of the Medieval World to the modern world. It is a very complex phenomenon that permeated all levels, thus going beyond the purely artistic and wanted to be. During the Renaissance set the conditions for the emergence of capitalism. Libraries were established, universities and introduced the printing press.

For many authors began in 1453 with the Turkish conquest of Constantinople. According to another is a new term that arises from the discovery of printing, and even considered not occur until Copernicus discovered the heliocentric system, but the deadline is 1492, with the discovery of America.

Both merchants and trade have existed since the dawn of civilization, but capitalism as an economic system did not appear until the sixteenth century in England, replacing feudalism. According to Adam Smith, human beings have always had a strong tendency to "make trade-offs, changes and exchanges of one thing for another." The natural impulse to trade and the exchange was emphasized and nurtured by the Crusades, which were held in Western Europe since the eleventh century until the thirteenth century. The great voyages and expeditions of the XV and XVI reinforced these trends and promote trade, especially after the discovery of the New World and into Europe in enormous quantities of precious metals from those lands. The economic order resulting from these events was a system in which the predominant trade or business, whose main objective was to exchange goods and not in production. The importance of production did not appear until the Industrial Revolution which took place in the nineteenth century.

However, even before the onset of industrialization had appeared one of the most characteristic of capitalism: the employer, which, according to Schumpeter, the guy who takes no personal financial risk. A key element of capitalism is the initiation of an activity in order to obtain benefits in the future, since this is unknown, both the ability to profit as the risk of incurring losses are two possible outcomes, so that the role the employer is to assume the risk of losses or gains. The road to capitalism from the thirteenth century was raided by the philosophy of the Renaissance and Reformation. These movements changed dramatically in society, facilitating the emergence of modern nation states that provided the necessary conditions for growth and development of capitalism in European nations. This growth was made possible by the accumulation of economic surplus generated by the private entrepreneur and the reinvestment of this surplus to generate more growth, which led industrialization in the northern regions.

As cities grew Burgos-trade-were gaining prestige arise guilds (Hansa) or trade associations. Traders were gradually breaking down the barriers tax (tolls, fees for using the bridges-pontazgos, tithes and first fruits) and in general the feudal structure. The servants were leaving the farms and craft workshops in the payment of wages and a productive way to greater freedom.

Following the capture by the Ottoman Turks in the city of Constantinople (Byzantium), Europe had to find new trade routes, Portugal, around Africa and Spain, traveling from west to east found America. The discovery, conquest and colonization of America was a great expansion of world trade. The early capitalist developments are in Italy, then in France and England.

At this stage of the rise of capitalism, remained absolutism and despotism under monarchical rule. Holy Roman Empire are configured the new nations: France, England, Spain.

Clashes between capitalist and feudal started in places where Burgos appeared, then spread to different countries. Thomas Cromwell led an uprising against the English monarchy that led to the establishment of the republic.

In the second half of XVII century on the basis of observation and experimentation science gains its maturity, to these major contributions to science and culture was called the Enlightenment: Descartes (1596-1650)-rationalism;In the arts Corneille, Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine. Scientific societies were founded in England and France. The development of astronomy, physics and mechanics to Newton (1642-1727)-law of universal gravitation, optics, the microscope allows the development of biology, anatomy and medicine, the barometer and other measuring instruments. At the end of editing the Encyclopedia (Diderot, D'Alembert, Holbach, Helvetius, Monstesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau). England is the first country to take the step of business accumulating industrial investment, s mid-century. This is where the industrial revolution occurs.

The most significant struggle between bourgeois and feudal occurred in France in 1789, the Jacobins (Robespiere, Danton, Marat) conducted a revolutionary process that had great connotations, in Europe led to a series of republics, with their parliaments, a division of the branches of power (executive, legislative and judicial). Some nations had to make concessions, forming constitutional monarchies and republics with monarchical presence.

Germany gets a rebound based on the English industrial revolution and the French Revolution, but becomes embroiled in war and remains divided, its most important contribution is that of modern philosophy (Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach).

Jean Jacques Rousseau, in his book The Social Contract, develops concepts about the general will and sovereignty, arguing that the powers that govern the society is the general will look for the common good of all citizens. This can only take effect when each of the members of a society is joined by association on the condition, as described by Rousseau, that "Each of us puts together his person and all his power under the supreme direction of the general will , and each member is considered as an indivisible part of all. "

It is claimed that the Social Contract, Rousseau gave way to democracy. "In the political model of Rousseau, the village appears in two dimensions, which is subject and object of sovereign power. Each individual is the subject of sovereignty because it gives all rights to the community, but at the same time is the subject because, as part of a whole, is giving itself. In establishing this agreement, sovereignty resides in the people and as a result, it is inalienable, indivisible, absolute and infallible because it is contradictory that the sovereign as a people implement something against himself as a subject. "(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia free).

Capitalist developments were the emergence of the working class that is beginning to gain leverage in the maturity period of capitalism. In 1848 an active participant in the events in which France intends to apply some principles of socialism and in 1871 came to power in the events of the Paris Commune. In this period, Luddism, Chartism, the cooperative, the tradeunions (unions), the first workers' parties and the socialist and communist thought are the new expressions of the forms of thought and organization of the working class.

Financial developments occur after a large accumulation is industrial and commercial. The bank acquired the modern forms we know today.

As the means of production are owned by the capitalists, the working class and the other members of society (the majority) work as employees to get their support.

4 .- The New Democracy and Socialism (1917-1989): In the first two decades of the twentieth century new forms of social and economic organization are opposed to capitalism.

"The major powers antagonize the distribution and control of the colonies, the scramble leads to clash in the First World War (1914-1919). The Entente composed of Britain, France and Russia, with support from the United States and Italy, due to the Powers of Central Europe: Germany, Austro-Hungary and its ally Turkey. The Bolshevik Revolution (October 1917) is implemented to take power by the working class in the USSR.

It has the great economic crisis of capitalism (1929). The discontent of the world total of the first war and the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany and fascist Italy triggered the Second World War (1939-1945). The Soviet Union supported the United States, England and France (the Allies) are due to Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain, which was its support (Axis).

The USSR with a great sacrifice in lives and resources to defeat Hitler gets a last-minute support of the United States and Britain. However, the ultimate beneficiary was the United States had no major human casualties or resources.

To handle international problems after the war formed the United Nations-UN and to manage the economy for their own benefit established calls Breton Woods Institutions: World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Treaty General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), now World Trade Organization (WTO)।

Then began the struggle between socialism and capitalism worldwide. In production, in the struggle for economic and social system in space affairs and culture.

Following the advance of socialism and the struggle between the imperialists in China also the working class comes to power and a number of countries set up socialism and the Socialist Bloc (USSR, Albania, East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Communist China, North Korea, Cuba, Communist China, Mongolia and Vietnam. We follow other countries in Asia and Africa and is accompanied by the release to get some countries of imperial colonialism of England (India -1945 - , Pakistan -1947 - -1948 Burma and Sri Lanka - Malaysia -1957 -) and France (Algeria -1955 to 62).

The intensification of the confrontation between the capitalist powers and the socialist world shaped the Cold War.

In 1957 he produced the major setback of Soviet socialism in the USSR, to the death of Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev removed the foundations of socialism. China, Mao Tse-tung and the CCP initiated a controversy that remains from 1957 until 1964, since which the CCP ordered the revisionist CPSU and then, after the withdrawal of Soviet aid, and the invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, denounced the social-USSR. (Even today the Chinese government seems to have fallen into the same thing you criticize your neighbors, or what we might call socialesclavismo).

The Cuban Revolution triumphed on January 1959, overthrowing the dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the previous day, before the advance of the guerrilla columns commanded by Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, who came to the forefront of the rebel army led by Fidel Castro.

In order to counteract domestic revisionism and prevent the restoration, Mao and the CCP, organized in the economic development of the People's Communes and political - social and superstructure, the Cultural Revolution in China, which for ten years (1966-1976), sought to bring the social to economic.

In this framework, produce the Student Labor Movement France, 1968 and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Capitalism moves his chips, depose Sukarno, with a balance of 300,000 "communists" dead. In 1970, Salvador Allende introduces his essay socialist in Chile under the concept of peaceful revolution, which culminated in the coup, his overthrow and death, followed by bloody repression (1973).

In 1975 the United States is defeated in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and other parts of the world, but the revolutions fell into the hands of Soviet expansionism. Where the new leadership of the USSR is measured every inch on the ground to the U.S. military, to the extent that it neglects the production, falling each time in a greater dependence on Western leading finally to Gorbachev to declare openly to the USSR capitalist, through perestroika (openness) and glasnost (transparency), whose ultimate effect is the division of the USSR in several states and the loss of its strength as first-rate power in 1989. These events are followed by similar steps in Popular China Mao's death in 1976, when Teng Hsiao-ping takes the reins of power and restore capitalism in China.

After the landslide of the USSR, the United States stands as the first power and struggles to become a unipolar hegemon, imposing, with the support of the European Community, the so-called neoliberal model under the framework of globalization. China and other Third World countries make it difficult for their claims. In Asia was a huge setback to the economic models promoted under the name of the "Asian tigers." With the launch of the war for oil in Iraq is a strong resistance that complicates their imperialist plans. This model is untenable, because he came to deepen economic and social inequality, inflation and financial crisis, coupled with the devaluation of the dollar and the food crisis, which increased the popular discontent and social and political instability worldwide.

In March 2003, the Presidents of the United States, Britain and Spain: Bush, Blair and Aznar, along with then president of the European Commission and the Portuguese government chief Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, following the dismantling of government led by the Taliban in Afghanistan and "despite the rejection of the UN, the repeated warnings of former UN inspector Hans Blix that there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and mass demonstrations around the world made deaf ears and insisted on the existence of undeniable evidence of the intelligence services that Saddam Hussein possessed such weapons and hid, launching the war against Iraq, in what they called a "preemptive strike" to overthrow the government and stop the threat, as they represented the "security of the West." What was only the pretext to put against the wall under the terror of arms (these if mass destruction), to seize its oil resources and the occupation of the country blood and fire, with serious damage to the civilian population.

Increased attacks on Lebanon and Palestine by Israel, the U.S. government's unconditional support, increasing both the atmosphere of hostility and threats of attack against Syria and Iran.

Economic recovery and politics favored by the Russian government has allowed politics to counter the expansionist United States on countries that were previously under the purview and influence of the former USSR, as well as on other geographical areas, giving rise to an approach Return to the scheme of the Cold War.

Simultaneously witness the political and economic strengthening the People's Republic of China and India in Asia, the emergence of socialist-oriented governments under the name of XXI century socialism in Venezuela, which joined Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and countries of Caribbean also arise moderate leftist governments in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and recently in Peru, within the Latin American context.

This is in contrast to the imperialist projects aimed at maintaining the "status quo" on the continent and other regions of the world, the intervention for the recovery and / or expanding its sphere of influence, such as the dismemberment of Serbia with the declaration of "autonomy" of Kosovo, the missile shield installation in Poland and plans to split a case of Colombia and the countries bordering Georgia's attack on South Ossetia and Abkhazia, in complicity with the government of Israel to expand its hegemony, in order to control strategic resources, please add the launch of the Fourth Naval Fleet in the waters of the Atlantic, as prevention to the countries 'rebels' in the Americas, that are targeted and that its "manifest destiny" as part of its "backyard", remains in place, policies that must be changed if America is to retain its status as world leader.

The constants in successive schemes presented are: the prevalence of inequality and the confrontation between the owners of the means of production and workers, with notable performances of the governors to serve the first, being that in theory should respond to the interests general.

This confirms that the only alternative capable of modifying the terms of the systems prevailing in each period is the revolution, as evidenced in the course of history from the slave rebellion, the French Revolution, Russian, English, Mexican, Cuban, Venezuela and XXI Century Socialism, Iceland, today the Arab world and the movement of indignation in Spain, with repercussions on the rest of Europe. This requires the adoption of a new social contract, ratifying and define universal principles:

I. That the only sovereign is the people whose vote is universal, equal and direct, that the popular consultation or referendum shall be the highest authority to ratify or revoke the ruling and decide other matters transcendental;

II. The absolute respect for individual rights and freedoms;

III. Equitable redistribution of wealth nationally and internationally;

IV. Universalize health care and free education from the State;

V. Encourage agricultural production, giving priority to organic foods, pharmaceuticals and other essentials;

VI. Ensuring full employment and retirement at age 60 with wages that meet the needs.

VII. Rulers prohibit the use of repression for political reasons or those who require the satisfaction of their needs in carrying out the duties established by the Constitution and secondary laws;

VIII. Abolish the imperialist wars and unjustified, redirecting economic resources at the research; transform armies in peace brigades and armaments in equipment and tools for production and recovery of the environment.

Implementation and monitoring of this new social contract would be on the Organization of the United Nations, on the democratization of its management bodies, whose decisions shall be binding, modifying the schema that has prevailed until today in many cases, such as the partition of the Palestinian territory for the establishment of two states and the subsequent string of invasions and violations inflicted by the governments of Israel on the Palestinian people, without their decisions have some effect.

(Source: World History and History of International Relations.)

* J. A. Morasan, BA in International Relations, author of the book: Neither neoliberalism nor more death, 'just revolution.