8765542387789

: O Futuro dos Recursos # 1, outubro de 2003 1

THE LUGANO REPORT

or the reasons behind the unfeasibility of the population excluded from

globalization

Neide Patarra1

GEORGE, Suzan. ORelatório Lugano. São Paulo. Boitempo,

2002, 222 p. Translation and notes by Afonso Teixeira Filho.

The Lugano Report, published in France in 1999 and presented in Portuguese at

the Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2002, constitutes an eloquent alert on the

exclusionary effects of current globalization: on the “banquet table”, a growing number

of countries and social groups must be rapidly excluded in order for the capitalism of

the XXI century to survive its crises and inherent contradictions; the present crisis of

international capitalism is clearly heading towards what the books defines as inexorable

– the progressive extermination of the excluded. As Laymert Garcia dos Santos

emphasized in his presentation of the edition in Portuguese, the author examines with

acuity and foresight the logic of globalization – that is, the logic of extermination.

The opportuneness of its content and actuality of its analysis are reinforced by

the posterior international occurrences: the September 11th attack in New York and the

subsequent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the context of Bush’s conception of

preventive war.

The philosopher and political scientist, Suzan George, simulates the hiring of a

multidisciplinary group of nine top-level international consultants, extremely well

remunerated, that, on the paradisiacal island of Lugano, in Italy, in one year, should

produce a confidential report to later be sent to chiefs of state and international security

agencies that should use its recommendations, suggested with total “liberty” and

produced with total “dignity”.

Utilizing the simulation expedient, a Group of Instructors commends a Work

Group to carry out the arduous and challenging task of:

1 Professora Livre-Docente aposentada da UNICAMP. Pesquisadora Titular da ENCE/IBGE


1. identifying the threats to the liberal capitalist system and the obstacles to its

generalization and preservation as we enter the new millenium;

2. examining the present course of world economy in the light of these threats

and obstacles;

3. recommending strategies, concrete measures and changes in bearing with the

objective of increasing to the maximum the possibilities that the capitalist system of the

open, globalized market will provide.

The group must, however, accept, without restrictions, the premise furnished by

the Group of Instructors of the Report: “...a liberal, globalized system, based on the

economy of the market, should be not only the norm but also the triumphant system in

the XXI century. We see an economic system based on liberty and individual risks as the

guardian of other liberties and other values” (p. 25).

Furthermore, the group of consultants should “...leave aside sentiments,

prejudices and preconceived ideas...” (p. 26).

In the end, the Work Group delivers the completed task, announcing that “This

report has attempted to provide the Group of Instructors with a clear and responsible

evaluation of the situation of global capitalism and of the economy of the market for the

XXI century (Part I) and theoretical and practical means of avoiding the potential

disaster and paralyzation (Part II)”, based on the basic premise and on economical,

political, business, financial, ecological and demographic premises regarding the

functioning of the global capitalistic system.

The diagnostic addresses the dangers, threats and obstacles to the system:

a) ecological disequilibrium: “It is estimated that 70% of the world population

are already living in areas where water is scarce. Ecological conflicts will first occur in

the Middle East, in the southern region of the Sahara Desert and in Asia, later involving

more favored regions, with unforeseeable results to the economy” (p. 29).

b) pernicious growth: “If growth has at one time been intimately related to the

improvement in the well-being of all, this is no longer the case. More and more,

economic growth is provoked by social phenomena that the majority of persons prefers

to avoid” (p.31). The economic paradox signifies that the growth of the Internal Gross

Product expands with the costs of security, construction of prisons, rehabilitation of

drug addicts, reparations of destruction caused by terrorists, etc.

c) distribution of wealth: the growing inequality and contrasts constitute a true

threat, with a new characteristic: “the tendency of the rich in information to provoke


anger and violence in the poor in information” (p.32). The poor in information become

dysfunctional, social discards, since their disposition to work and their muscular force

are irrelevant in the era of information. “Other disparities can be completely irrelevant

in this dialectic of anger and violence. An example, frequently mentioned by moralists,

concerns the approximate 450 billionaires whose totaled wealth, they say, is equivalent

to the totaled wealth of half a billion people in the Third World...” (p. 33).

d) gang capitalism: large-scale crime, parallel economies, traffic of drugs,

contraband of weapons, laundering of money, corruption of every sort. Large areas of

the planet are already outside State jurisdiction.

e) external debt: “heavily indebted countries profit far more by exporting

drugs, light arms or emigrants than primary, legal consumer products” (p. 36).

f) financial collapse: inherent volatility of the financial markets.

The diagnostic is completed by concluding that, more and more,

economical growth becomes the source of impoverishment; the undesirable social

effects can undermine the economic benefits, the illegal economies are gaining force;

geopolitical disorder; unstable, threatening financial markets.

In the light of this diagnostic, the mechanisms of the outdated and ineffective

international institutions (UN, IMF, World Bank, etc.) are examined, with the exception

of the World Trade Organization, the only organization directly striving to assure that

excluded developed countries and entire non-developed countries participate in the

banquet.

The acuteness of the crisis is configurated: “It should not surprise us that

unregulated (or ‘self-regulated’) markets be perfectly capable of producing tensions

(high-scale tensions, social agitation, degradation of the environment, financial ruin)

that consume the market itself. In the present model, there are no worldwide shock

absorbers capable of softening these blows. Since we are facing an inherently fragile

system that lack regulations to legitimate it, we cannot help but put ourselves on guard

against a global accident at the beginning of the XXI century, if not before” (p. 52).

Based on this diagnosis, the Work Group attempts to synthesize the impact of

the situation by using the well-known equation:

Impact (on the earth) = consumption X technology X population

Limited natural resources and the inexorability of technological growth in the

capitalistic system make the population the key variable, crucial and decisive for the


safeguarding of the system. In reality, in view of the pressures imposed by the

biosphere, a feasible economic future depends on three elements:

• the number of people in the world

• the quantity, quality and nature of what they consume

• the technology used to produce what they consume and to treat the trash

they produce

•

The approach adopted by the author permits her to unravel the ideological

dimensions as well as the implications of the founding concepts in the recurring

analyses of globalization. In this way, for example, the consultants “choose”, as a

measure of impact, the concept of “the ecological mark”; in other words, the quantity of

ecological resources necessary to subsidize the necessities of a given population with a

certain level of consumption and technology. This method divides the area of the

planet’s productive ecosystems by the number of world inhabitants.

The consultants believe that this concept is better than that of the “load capacity”

or “burden capacity”, since the preferred measure integrates factors such as commerce

and urbanization and turns geography into a truly globalized science.

In the populational dimension, the author takes her logical argumentation to the

extreme: the consultants come upon a worldwide population of approximately six

billion inhabitants... absolutely unfeasible in the analyzed context: “In 1948, when

the signatories of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights met in assembly,

approximately 2.5 billion people lived on this planet.

Even then, this objective was utopian; today, it is completely out of the question:

it is impossible to guarantee these ‘rights’ to six billion people, the greater part of

which live in misery” (p. 71).

Although the world population is reducing its rate of growth, projections made

by the United Nations indicate that world population could reach the cipher of 7.2 to 8.5

billion people in 2020!

Furthermore, the greater part of this total is composed of an impoverished and

miserable population, residing in less-developed countries; the great migratory fluxes

only worsen conflicts and poor women want to have a large number of children due to

the economical need for them. However, the aging of the population is a fact and even

the poor manage to live longer.


The argumentation underestimates the large and growing demand of poor

women for methods of contraception in various parts of the world, at the same time as

the “economic utility” of children has clearly been diluted due to the working conditions

and exclusion in the contemporary capitalist society.

On the other hand, the “demographic consultant” did not recognize the effects of

demographic inertia (or demographic metabolism) that signifies an interval between the

lowest levels of fecundity and its expression in absolute numbers of births. In any case,

Malthus is alive in contemporary neo-liberal thought:

“To guarantee stable and correctly remunerated jobs, to reduce the risk of

civilization shock, to integrate the new generations into the market culture in order for

the state to preserve its function as a supplier of infrastructure and guarantee the safety

of its citizens, to avoid the collapse of the supply of water and energy” - it is necessary

to drastically reduce the population. “The only way to guarantee the happiness and well-

being of the great majority of the population is to reduce the number of inhabitants on

the planet. This is the true meaning of the expression ‘sustainable development’”

(extracted from chapters 3 and 4).

The problem, therefore, is not if we should considerably reduce the population,

but how to do it.

Aside from ideologically unraveling the structural concepts of currently

dominant thought, the author, with her logical expedient, also ironizes the ‘form’ of

reports of this type, where the objectives and goals must be clearly explicit.

In this case: “Starting with 6 billion inhabitants in 2002, our goal is to establish

the cipher of 4 billion in twenty years . The curve would continue to rise at the

beginning but, in the final stage, it would show an annual decline of 280 million in

2005. Five years later, in 2010, it should reencounter its present level of 6 billion. It will

then continue in an absolute and more rapid decline until 2020” (p. 93).

The positive Malthusian checks are necessary because “The XXI century must

choose between discipline and control on the one side and disorder and chaos on the

other. The only manner in which to assure the well-being of the greatest number of

people, preserving capitalism, is to diminish the population” (p.89).

The “modus operandi” for the reduction of 4 billion people by the year 2020 is

anchored, on the one side, in the strengthening of the scourges that already involve

humanity at the beginning of this century, represented here by the current configuration


of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Conquest, War (with international commerce of

arms and intervention), Famine and the Pest: “The conquests, wars, famine and the pest

always served to inhibit the excessive growth of the human race and, even today, have

not lost their importance. We must show how they could be adapted to modern

circumstances” (p. 167).

The preventive checks also have their role through the incentive of policies for

the inhibition of reproduction: abortion, masculine and feminine sterilization and

contraception.

The populational diagnosis points to the contrast between rich countries and

poor countries in terms of populational totals, differential growth rates and populational

aging. In this part, the critic is emphatic in relation to the “non-anticipated effects” of

social policies; in spite of reducing their offspring, the excluded continue to be

excluded, even more so.

At the end, the author introduces herself and defends the idea of the simulation

pointing out her final comments, that is, her personal positions; her position is polemic

regarding the “policies of identity”; the policies in defense of ethnic, sexual, linguistic,

racial or religious groups can gain strength in detriment of nationality and of the main

identity of each individual as a member of the “human species”, losing sight of the

notion of citizenship.

According to the author, these movements can exasperate the conditions of

exclusion even more and weaken the possibilities of global struggles, giving force to the

philosophy of “divide more to reign better”.

The Lugano report is, doubtlessly, a controversial book; it signifies, however, a

vehement statement against the devastating effects of globalization on ample and

growing contingencies of the planet’s population.

The clever resource adapted arouses the reader’s interest and the logic of the

reasoning is very attractive. Its principal contribution is exactly the explicitness of

dimensions that are not apparent in the discourse and practices of dominant groups of

the globalized system, but also in the alternative proposals of the unsuspecting who do

not evaluate the implications of their positions, all the way down to the final

consequences.

The scrutiny with respect to the Malthusian logic-reasoning implicit in many of

the discourses and many of the practices constitutes a very relevant contribution,


especially considering that this type of criticism is not frequent in demographic studies.

It is a worthwhile debate!

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