IN DEFENSE OF A NEW ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT TO SOCIETY TO END THE HUMAN CALVARY IN THE WORLD

Fernando Alcoforado*

This article aims to demonstrate the need for a new Enlightenment project to end the calvary in which humanity is subjected throughout history that reached its highest level during the existence of capitalism in the contemporary era, striving for the construction of a new model of society that provides benefits for all human beings. Calvary means martyrdom, suffering. An observer attentive to what happens in the world realizes the calvary suffered by humanity throughout history. This calvary is characterized by the exploitation of man by man with slavery during Antiquity, serfdom during feudalism in the Middle Ages and wage labor during capitalism from the 12th century to the contemporary era that contributes to the growth of social inequalities, the increase in crime and violence among human beings, the restriction of political freedoms in many countries and the escalation of international conflicts and terrorism.

1. The calvary of humanity.

The calvary of humanity begins with slavery in Antiquity, evolved into serfdom in the Middle Ages that were maintained in various forms in various parts of the world until the contemporary era. Slavery is an “institution” of the oldest in human history, and at the same time a problem of the present. Slavery operated in the early civilizations (such as Sumer, in Mesopotamia in 3500 BC). It became common in much of Europe during the early Middle Ages and continued into the following centuries. Slavery occurred with prisoners of war, for debt, punishment for crime, abandoned children and the birth of slave children born to slaves. Slavery arose in Antiquity due to the labor needs created by the invention of agriculture, when certain groups began to apply to slaves the same processes and the same instruments that they already used not only to control animals, such as the corral, the collar, the halter, the whip and the castration, but also to distinguish the possession, as the brand with burning iron and the cut in the ear.

With the end of slavery with the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a consolidation of the feudal system in the High Middle Ages in Europe in which the new social class that was emerging at that time - the great landowners - created the financial dependence of a lower class which was subordinate to these owners: the serfs who were workers on the large lands commanded by the “feudal lords” and lived in the vicinity of the property. They were linked to land through work and had no right to wages or benefits; they worked to live there and received the necessary supplies to feed themselves and survive. Unlike slaves, serfs could not be sold by feudal lords. They were responsible for the labor of the property, taking care of the agricultural part. Some women took care of the owner's domestic service and, at the same time, the local plantation.

Although slavery was abolished in Europe in the Middle Ages, the use of slavery is observed during the colonization of the Americas with the African slave trade, the starting point for the formation of modern overseas states and empires. From the 18th century until the end of the First World War, a second structural period in the history of slavery in the West was established, characterized by the development of imperialism, particularly the British, and industrial capitalism, marked by the shadow of slavery that contradicts the ideologies of free labor and of European civilization mission. In Brazil, the signing of the áurea law, on May 13, 1888, decreed the end of the right of property of one person under another, but the work similar to the slave was maintained in another way. The most found form after slavery in Brazil is that of servitude, or "peonage", for debt. In it, the person put his own ability to work or that of people under his responsibility (wife, children, parents) to settle an account. About 40.3 million people worldwide were subjected to activities similar to slavery in 2016, according to the 2018 Global Slavery Index report, published by the Walk Free foundation and presented at the UN. In Brazil, almost 370 thousand people are subjected to activities similar to slavery.

Slavery and serfdom are forms of exploitation of man-by-man that have been replaced by wage labor since capitalism came into existence in the 14th century. The calvary of mankind continued, too, under capitalism. According to Marx, all wealth in society is the product of work, created by the physical and mental efforts of the working class. Profits, which mean return on capital, are how Marx explained nothing more than unpaid labor to the working class, that is, the difference between the value that is produced and the value that reverts to workers in the form of wages. An increasing rate of profit, therefore, only implies an increasing exploitation of the working class, which necessarily means a greater part of the wealth in society accumulating in the hands of the capitalists - a small elite of exploiters. Marx demonstrated in his three volumes of Capital (Boitempo Editorial, S?o Paulo, 2013) how, by various means, capitalism can exploit the working class for greater profits: 1) extending the working day, through an intensification of work within a given time; and, 2) increasing the efficiency and productivity of workers, by replacing work with machines, etc. All of this is reflected in the increase in the proportion of unpaid work in relation to the value of what is produced by workers.

This type of exploitation is inherent to capitalism. If workers do not get back the full value of their labor - which is necessarily the case in a system of private ownership and production for profit - then they cannot buy back all the goods they produce. This situation tends to create situations of overproduction that, historically, have resulted in a fall in production and an increase in unemployment, which inevitably leads to crises tending to depression like the one we experienced in 1929 and today, in which all the accumulated contradictions in the world capitalist system are getting worse. Marx shows the real causes of social inequalities that are related to the expropriation of workers' income by capitalists who own the means of production. To overcome this problem, Karl Marx defends the end of capitalism with the implantation of socialism and, later, communism to end social inequalities.

Social inequalities have been increasing across the globe. Thomas Piketty states in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2014, that free market capitalism has tended, throughout history, to produce increasing levels of inequality. This is exactly Marx's theoretical conclusion, in the first volume of his version of Capital. In Marx's Capital, inequality is seen not as the result of the distribution of wealth as Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century presents, but as an inevitable result of the production of wealth under capitalism.

The increase in crime and violence among human beings is increasing worldwide. Violence kills more than 1.6 million people worldwide each year, according to a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO). Today, violence is the main cause of deaths of people between 15 and 44 years old, accounting for 14% of deaths for men and 7% of deaths for women [See the article Violência no mundo mata 1,6 milh?o de pessoas por ano (Violence in the world kills 1.6 million people per year) published on the website <https://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/notícias/2002/021003_violenciamv.shtm>]. In the past 30 years, homicide victims in Brazil have reached more than 1 million people [See the article Violência no Brasil: pior que Iraque, Angola e Afeganist?o (Violence in Brazil: worse than Iraq, Angola and Afghanistan) published on the website <https://blogdotas.terra.com.br/2011/12/28/violencia-no-brasil-pior-que-iraque-angola-e-afeganistao/>].

Political freedoms are being curtailed in many countries. Currently, 49 countries in the world live under a dictatorial regime - according to a survey by Freedom House, an American NGO that annually monitors democracies around the world. The NGO's 2018 report informs that there is a global democratic crisis - since, for the 12th year in a row, Freedom House found a “negative balance”: the number of countries that suffered from turns towards authoritarianism was greater than that of nations that have had positive developments in their democratic systems. These nations do not allow periodic popular voting to choose the rulers, nor do they allow freedom of expression. In some of them, governments say they are democratic and even organize elections. However, opposition candidates are always threatened and end up giving up or dying "mysteriously" just before the election and there are several accusations of fraud in the elections.

The escalation of international conflicts is increasing worldwide. There are several countries that can become the focus of international conflicts in the world, especially Syria, Palestine, Israel, Iran and North Korea. Igor Gielow, an expert in international journalism who covered conflicts in Lebanon, Israel, Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, among other countries, made a prognosis about the main risks of international conflict that humanity would run in 2018, presented in the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. The main risks of conflict in the world in 2018 were evaluated by analysts from consultancies and institutions such as the Council on Foreign Relations (USA), Geopolitical Futures (USA), International Institute for Strategic Studies (United Kingdom), the Analysis Center Strategies and Technology (Russia) and others. A war between the US and North Korea, involving South Korea and Japan, confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia following a missile attack by Shi'ite rebels in Yemen against Riyadh, a new intifada, coupled with a coordinated attack of Hizbullah against Israel, civil war in Venezuela, Islamic terrorism in Europe and North America and widespread cyber attacks are some of the risks that threaten humanity [GIELOW, Igor. Saiba quais s?o os principais riscos que a humanidade corre em 2018 (Find out what are the main risks that humanity runs in 2018). Available on the website <https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2017/12/1946506-saiba-quais-sao-os-principais-riscos-que-a-humanidade-corre-em-2018.shtml>, 2017).

The escalation of terrorism tends to grow in the world. Any act or organization that uses violent or threatening methods to achieve a particular political objective can be considered as terrorists. Thus, kidnappings, attacks on public and private places, air strikes, murders or other forms of aggression can be related to terrorism. The world is currently experiencing two types of globalized terrorism: 1) State terrorism practiced by the great capitalist powers, especially by the ruling sectors of the United States and their allies aimed at the conquest of natural resources and the domination of the markets of the peripheral capitalist countries; and, 2) the terrorism practiced by organizations that react to imperialist action all over the world, especially Arabs, fighting the military occupation of their countries by the western powers, as occurs in Iraq and Afghanistan, or acting in the central capitalist countries, as evidenced by the attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

2. The failure of the Enlightenment, Modernity and Socialism to change the world for the benefit of humanity

There were three major events in the history of humanity that brought much hope that building a world and a new man would begin with the removal of the chains of oppression in thought, the elimination of social inequalities and restrictions on the process of development. The first major event concerns the Enlightenment, the second, the birth of Modernity and, the third, the construction of Socialism. With the Enlightenment, tolerance, humanism and respect for nature were expected to prevail and the right to freedom and equality between men would be affirmed. With Modernity, it was expected that society would, in turn, achieve uninterrupted progress for the benefit of humanity thanks to science and technology. With Socialism, the emancipation of humanity was expected with the end of the exploitation of man by man, the elimination of social inequalities and the achievement of happiness for all human beings in an egalitarian society.

It should be noted that the Enlightenment is the name given to the ideology that was being developed and incorporated by the bourgeoisie in Europe from the revolutionary struggles of the late 18th century whose themes revolved around Freedom, Progress and Man. The purpose of the Enlightenment was to correct society's inequalities and guarantee the individual's natural rights, such as freedom and the free possession of goods. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment humanism already proposed that the human being and his dignity be the center and fundamental value of all sciences, thus also imposing that he should be the utmost concern of every legal system.

The Enlightenment provided the motto of the French Revolution (Freedom, Equality and Fraternity) and fertilized it as its followers opposed injustices, religious intolerance and the privileges of absolutism. The political theses of the Enlightenment were driven by the ideal of freedom, equality and fraternity that never happened anywhere in the world. Since the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 until the present moment, the political promises of the Enlightenment have been abandoned throughout the world with the adoption of imperialist practices by the bourgeoisies and the governments of the great capitalist powers associated with them, the triggering of 3 world wars (1st World War, 2nd World War and the Cold War), the advent of fascism and Nazism, the realization of military interventions and the support of coups d'état in several countries on the capitalist periphery.

The failure of the Enlightenment paved the way for the advent of Marxist ideology around the world that proposed to take a step forward with the construction of Socialism seeking the end of the exploitation of man by man with the reduction of economic inequalities between social classes and , in the future, its complete abolition. The facts of history show that the Enlightenment theses that guided the bourgeois revolutions in the 18th century and the Marxist theses on the basis of which the socialist revolutions were carried out in the 20th century failed because they did not fulfill their historic promises to achieve human happiness.

Socialism failed in the Soviet Union and other countries throughout the twentieth century because the holders of power had their historic opportunity based on a two-step strategy to transform the world (take over state power, then transform it ), and who had not fulfilled their historic promise. Socialism failed in the world because it did not adopt the universal motto of “freedom, equality and fraternity” aiming at achieving the happiness of human beings, seeking only the equality that has not been achieved in practice anywhere, not even with the implantation of dictatorships and the terror regime. Socialism failed because it did not provide the happiness for human beings that can only be obtained insofar as the motto "Freedom, Equality, Fraternity" as an inheritance of the Enlightenment at the end of the 17th century and invoked for the first time during the French Revolution be placed in practice. This motto is universal because it reflects the desires of all human beings, becoming the cry of activists in favor of democracy and the overthrow of oppressive governments and tyrants of all kinds and which, erroneously, was only associated with the bourgeois revolutions that occurred in history , and it was not adopted in the socialist revolutions that occurred in the world, but only the search for equality. This was one of the main factors responsible for the failure of socialism in the world. Therefore, the search for equality is not enough to win the people's happiness (See the article The causes of failure in the construction of socialism and its future by us on the website https://www.academia.edu/44220949/THE_CAUSES_OF_FAILURE_IN_THE_CONSTRUCTION_OF_SOCIALISM_AND_ITS_FUTURE).

Modernity, in its turn, was born in the 18th century with the 1st Industrial Revolution meaning an extraordinary intellectual effort by Enlightenment thinkers to develop science and reason and discover universal laws. Science has acquired a fundamental importance for human progress, through continuous technological innovations. The idea was to use the accumulation of knowledge generated in pursuit of human emancipation and the enrichment of daily life. Modernity is also defined as a period identified with the belief in the progress and ideals of the Enlightenment. However, what was observed was that the expectations regarding the fruits of science were painfully interrupted by events that marked today's society. The main one was undoubtedly the catastrophes of World War I and II. In fact, science contributed to the barbarism of two world wars with the invention of powerful and destructive weapons. Science and technology came to be used for good and for evil.

Add the fact that science has lost its value because of disillusionment with the benefits that associated with technology has brought to humanity. All of this scientific development has culminated in the current era with a global ecological crisis that can result in catastrophic global climate change. In this sense, one can doubt the real benefits brought by scientific and technological progress. In their work A Dialética do Esclarecimento (The Dialectic of Enlightenment), Zahar Editora, 1985, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer deconstruct the myth that the Enlightenment would bring freedom by investing men in the position of masters, for overcoming domination itself, which was replaced by the reason of market capitalism. In turn, control over nature had been maintained, but worsened in the form of domination over men. And market capitalism has become the privileged instance of this type of control. Being global and ubiquitous, market capitalism has the necessary technique, provided by science, to make men cogs in its engine, canceling them out, through the economic principle of total competition. The totalitarianism of market capitalism extinguishes autonomous thinking and reinforces uniformity and unanimity in a mass, amorphous society as we live in the contemporary era in the world.

Associated, distant from individuals, capitalism, science and technology, now merged as if they were a single instance, they consolidate their supremacy over contemporary society, determining their directions with the same boldness and impersonality of an invisible hand, according to Adorno and Horkheimer. Michael Lowy, a Franco-Brazilian sociologist and philosopher, says that modern barbarism or “barbarism generated within so-called civilized societies” is characterized by the use of modern technical means (industrialization of homicide, mass extermination thanks to cutting-edge scientific technologies), for the impersonality of the massacre (entire populations - men and women, children and the elderly - are "eliminated", with the least possible personal contact between decision makers and victims), bureaucratic, administrative, effective, planned, "rational" management (in instrumental terms) of barbaric acts and the use of legitimizing ideology of the modern type: biological, hygienic, scientific [See Barbárie e modernidade no século 20 (Barbarie and modernity in the 20th) century by Michael Lowy, published in Brazil by the newspaper "Em Tempo" - [email protected]  and, originally in French, in the magazine "Critique Communiste" no 157, hiver 2000].

3. How to change the world to end human calvary

How to build a new society that contributes to the end of capitalism to end the human calvary represented by the exploitation of man-by-man, social inequalities and violence against human beings to enable the use of science and technology for the benefit of all humanity and the achievement of happiness for all human beings? The solution proposed by Karl Marx to bring an end to capitalism is the implantation of socialism and, later, communism, which is considered utopian by many analysts in view of the failure of real socialism implanted in the Soviet Union and other countries. Eric Hobsbawn offered an answer to this dilemma in an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian on 16/04/2009, under the title Pressupostos teóricos da "economia mista" (Theoretical assumptions of the "mixed economy"), when he stated that we know two practical attempts to realize both the socialist and capitalist systems neoliberal, in its pure form: on the one hand, the centrally planned, Soviet-type economies of state planning; on the other, the free-market capitalist economy is exempt from any restriction and control. The first came down in the 1980s, and with them the European communist political systems; the second is decomposing before our eyes in the biggest crisis of global capitalism that occurred in 2008.

Hobsbawm said the future belongs to mixed economies in which the public and the private are mutually linked in one way or another. This means that Social Democracy with the welfare state, the most successful system ever implemented in the world, which incorporates the most positive elements of both socialism and capitalism, especially in Scandinavian countries, where the aim is to put into practice the universal motto of freedom, equality and fraternity, could be the solution to the problem of restrictions on the exercise of freedom in various countries of the world, the growing social inequality that overwhelms the planet on which we live and the lack of fraternity among human beings.

Social Democracy with the welfare state, which incorporates elements of both socialism and capitalism, the most successful system ever implemented in the world, especially in Scandinavian countries, is an example of a mixed economy suggested by Hobsbawn that could be adopted in the future after the neoliberal “tsunami” that dominates the planet we live on. Scandinavian countries are those with the best economic and social indicators in the world. In 2013, The Economist magazine stated that the Nordic countries are probably the best governed countries in the world. The UN's World Happiness Report 2020 shows that the happiest nations are concentrated in Northern Europe. Nordics have the highest ranking in real GDP per capita, the highest healthy life expectancy, the greatest freedom to make life choices and the greatest generosity.

From 2013 to today, whenever the UN World Happiness Report (WHR) publishes its annual country ranking, the five Scandinavian or Nordic countries - Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland - are all in the top ten first in the world, with the Nordic countries occupying the first three places (See the website <https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/the-nordic-exceptionalism-what-explains-why-the-nordic-countries-are-constantly-among-the-happiest-in-the-world/>). The highest measure of happiness achieved by Scandinavian countries results from the fact that they have practice a high level of democracy and respect for political rights, the absence of corruption, trust among citizens, security felt by the population, social cohesion, gender equality , equal income distribution and high Human Development Index. These indicators place the Nordic countries in the top global positions.

Scandinavian social democracy can be considered as a paradigm of a new model of society to be built in substitution of capitalism because the social democracy built until today in Scandinavian countries is the only model of society that allowed simultaneous economic, social and political advances. The Nordic or Scandinavian model of social democracy could best be described as a kind of compromise between capitalism and socialism. It is neither totally capitalist nor totally socialist, being the attempt to merge the most desirable elements of both into a "hybrid" system.

In addition to building Scandinavian social democracy to replace capitalism in every country in the world, it is necessary to establish a world government to promote progress in international relations aimed at eliminating chaos in the world economy, guaranteeing world peace and preventing the degradation of the environment. planet's environment. The world government should be elected by the world parliament to be constituted with the participation of countries around the world. World government is necessary because the world economy operates chaotically without any planning and control, international relations do not have a global body capable of mediating conflicts, preventing wars, guaranteeing world peace and the planet's environment is threatened by the depletion of natural resources and climate change that can be catastrophic for humanity. Current international organizations, such as UN, IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, among others, do not have the power to promote progress in international relations on the planet.

As long as humanity does not build a common world power, the law of the jungle will prevail, this is the state of nature at the international level. Until the emergence of a world government, international relations will be governed by the law of the strongest. And this is the worst scenario because no country, no matter how powerful, will be able to build world peace or solve the planet's problems. The main cause of international insecurity is the lack of a common world power and the only way to do that is for all national states to consent to share their sovereignty with a world government. This means that national governments would continue to exercise full powers in their territory, but, in terms of international relations, they would accept the decisions taken by the world parliament representing all the countries in the world that would have the world government as executor.

The economic, financial, ecological, social and political crises, the development of current illegal and criminal activities and the advance of terrorism show that they are insoluble without the existence of a world government. It is necessary to understand that the problems that affect the world economy and the global environment and those that contribute to the advance of terrorism can only be solved with the existence of a truly democratic world government representative of all the peoples of the world. International law cannot be applied and respected without the presence of a world government that is accepted by all countries and ensures their governability.

4. Conclusions

From the above, the bases of a new model of society are established that would make it possible to build a world of peace and progress for humanity. The disappearance in today's world of the last reserves of critical rationality advocated by the Enlightenment and the failure of Modernity and Socialism, which have degraded in successive processes of self-destruction over time, require contemporary thinkers to mobilize themselves in the reinvention of a new project Enlightenment as the eighteenth century thinkers did based on what we have just proposed aiming at the construction of a new world that brings to an end the calvary of humanity.

To enable the construction of social democracy in Scandinavian molds in every country in the world and a world government we must adopt the strategy proposed by us in our book Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (How to invent the future to change the world), published by Editora CRV de Curitiba in 2019, which considers it is necessary, at the outset, to establish a World Forum for Peace and the Progress of Humanity by civil society organizations from all countries of the world. In this Forum, the objectives and strategies of a world movement for the construction of social democracy in Scandinavian molds in each country of the world and for the constitution of a government and a world parliament should be discussed and established in order to sensitize the world population and national governments in order making a world in which freedom, equality and fraternity prevail in every country in the world and international peace and progress for all humanity. This would be the path that would make it possible to transform the utopia of universal fraternization into reality and end humanity's calvary.

* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic  planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globaliza??o (Editora Nobel, S?o Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, S?o Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, S?o Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,https://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globaliza??o e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, S?o Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporanea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, S?o Paulo, 2010), Amaz?nia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, S?o Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econ?mico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudan?a Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revolu??es Científicas, Econ?micas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Inven??o de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017),  Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associa??o Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).