Neoliberalism
an interview with
Franz Hinkelammert
Neoliberalism
An Interview with Franz Hinkelammert
[In this 1997 interview translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.berlinet.de, Franz Hinkelammert focuses on the problematic of private bureaucracy and "territory". Franz Hinkelammert is a liberation theologian living in Costa Rica.]
Question: Public discussion goes beyond governability and concentrates on administration.
Hinkelammert: That is the criterion of the ultraright. What is governable must be managed better. Something unmentioned is hidden behind that. For example, in the 70s and 80s, corruption in public administration was denounced and nevertheless continues. The present concern around corruption involves the private bureaucracy. This bureaucracy is corrupt. Business is corrupt and needs corrupt employees for its internal relations. Private administration is corrupt like public administration; both have the same standard. Corruption is a problem of bureaucracy in itself.
Non-governability turns into the corruption of present bureaucracy. Tackling this as a moral ethical problem is useless. Even the general secretary of the International Monetary Fund hearkens back to theological arguments. He sets great store in theological discourse because he recognizes that bureaucracies need this basic morality. They reach for this recourse to support their so-called "business ethic". That is the ethic of private bureaucracy which can hardly be sustained.
Question: The marginalization of segments of the population is a global phenomenon. How can societies be formed in which everyone has a place?
Hinkelammert: The organization of the whole present economy turns around business. Business functions with the people it has. When it doesn't need these people, it throws them away. The enterprise is not responsible for these people. When another firm needs people, it can take them under contract. Practically people are abandoned to their fate and must integrate themselves in society under their own steam. Informal sectors proliferate, survival in poverty and migrations. The exodus begins.
The enterprise is a power without citizens; non-citizens work in it. On the other hand, everyone is a citizen in a state and noone can throw you away because you belong to a territory. The enterprise has no citizens; it has certain agreements. When they don't need you, they give you a push and throw you away. These businesses are a kind of state without citizens.
On the other hand, internal civil rights must be regained in relation to the businesses which don't submit to the standpoint of citizens, the standpoint of citizens all over the whole. Something like a charter of citizens of the world must arise. The enterprise must be responsible toward these citizens instead of giving a kick to people no longer needed. Throwing people away is not tenable any more and reflects the crisis of governability of these states. Every alternative must also include rights of individual freedom and territorial principles. All persons have territories in the sense of having a place, some have many square meters and others very little. Still everyone is embedded within the territory. A territorial criterion is necesary that guarantees me the possibility of living on the territory where I am located. Migration is not only a movement but a territorial problem. The territorial criterion must stand above the criterion state since no one can be thrown away from the territory world.
Thus a society in which everyone has a place must have a vision starting from the territory. Business must adjust to the territory. It must make itself responsible to people and at the same time responsible for them. Businesses will never accept the crisis of governability. Through pressure, they want to dissolve pressure. Thus they call the churches to give sermons and solve the value problem. Today the loss of values is emphasized. However the value crisis is a crisis of all dimensions of human life. Businesses seek to transform it into a simple value crisis, as in Clinton's most recent State of the Union where he spoke of the value crisis, for example of education as an authority for producing values as though education could produce values as a factory produces sausages.
Question: Do fundamentalists gain with this reduction of the problem?
Hinkelammert: Obviously, there is fundamentalism everywhere. In the US, there are different fundamentalists: religious fundamentalism, neoliberal fundamentalism and fundamentalism of every kind. Undoubtedly the US is the avant garde of fundamentalism.
Question: What do you propose against this value crisis?
Hinkelammert: Discussion of the public interest is imperative. What is central is not producing values but joining public interest to the plane of rights. This presupposes a new meaning of ethics compared with positivist traditions. The value crisis must be understood in the context of possibilities of people and societies. In a situation where almost half of the population is excluded and marginalized, the question is whether we want this half of the population to have a possibility for life. The call to public interest is not abstract. It is a call to reflect, strengthen, surround and rebuild what exists. This call is the realization of human nature in identity with other human beings and nature. This doesn't mean sacrificing myself for others but recognizing that I cannot realize myself as a human being without others.