(I belong to the Quebec Group on Contextual Theology. Over the past year we have reflected on the economic crisis and have now published two reflections.
Here is the second part of the reflection--February 2010. You will find the first part in the post below- April, 2009)
Just at the point when we share these reflections, Haiti has suffered another terrible blow. A new catastrophe displays before the world the misfortune of this people, held in the grip of a bad development that aggravates once more the consequences of a natural disaster. At the same time there arise out of this tragedy some reasons for hope: the Haitians have given new proof of an astonishing moral and spiritual strength; the international community has mobilized in a vast surge of solidarity. For how long? Obsessed by the phantom of the recession and the hope for a recovery, will well-off societies maintain a cap on their objectives for cooperation or will we see their economic and political interests commit the promised aid for reconstruction? Are another Haiti and another world really possible?
In an initial text on the current crisis (Who Will Help Us Cross the Desert? April 2009), devoted above all to an economic and political analysis, we took up the question of hope: By what path is the future opened up? Suspicious of the plans for economic and financial recovery proposed by world leaders as ways out, we looked toward the alternatives emerging among the innumerable groups that form the network of social movements. They already announce, by their prophetic practices, the possibility of a different world, on condition that we manage to integrate the cultural dimension to the efforts of social transformation.
" As important as they might be, our commitments to social transformation remain sterile if our mentalities, our deep attitudes, our vision of the world, in short the common culture is not transformed as well in order to become more permeable to human meaning " (page 6).
In this perspective, we announced a follow-up to our reflection, one that would take up more explicitly the cultural and moral dimension of the current crisis. This is what we want to attempt in the text that follows.
At the heart of the crisis:
We now know enough about the financial and economic mechanisms that burst upon us, starting with the housing market that caused this crisis. Nor is that crisis over. It would be useless to go over that again here. Beyond the technicalities,1 we want to look at the underlying movement that has pushed capitalism onto this reef and in particular the values that have driven this slide. It’s true that the speculative excess2 that provoked the current crisis is quite rightly understood as the product of the ethical choices of capitalism itself. Those choices being the 18th century and continue right up to its latest version in neoliberalism.
In fact, these choices were already germinating since the beginning of the system in the 18th century and even a bit before that. Already we find there a concept that sees society as resting only on business relations between people defined as individuals who are deeply egotistic and greedy when faced with material gain. This greed is justified thanks to a concept of scarcity based on the assumption of an incapacity in nature to directly satisfy human needs. This makes it easy to explain, by a “physical” source, the persistence of poverty. The concept of scarcity was invented by liberal philosophers and economists of the 16th and 17th century. They took it as their mission to “make up for it” by a constant accumulation of riches, by putting in place legislative and economic mechanisms supposedly founded on an implacable natural and rational law. In this view, the free exercise of individual cupidity is promoted as the best way to achieve riches and general well-being. It makes the free market an automatically beneficent mechanism, and the most voracious players become the benefactors of humanity. This formula of the self-regulating market is the heart of savage capitalism in the 19th century and led directly to the great crisis of the 1930s. The defenders of the market coldly pretend that such repercussions, far from invalidating their theory, are necessary for economic progress.
The subsequent forty years will see the establishment of the protective mechanisms of society that will civilize capitalism for a time, at least in the North. But after the 1980s, capital is once again “freed” from the social straitjacket to return to its original extremes. This time it is assured of the complicity, consensual or not, of States and their power to legalise new rules for “laissez-faire.”3 This ends up guaranteeing the “free circulation” of the fox in the chicken coop! The president of the industrial group ABB, Mr. Percy Barnevick, formulated the new horizon of neoliberal deregulation in this way: “The freedom for my group to invest wherever it wishes, for the time it wishes, to produce whatever it wishes, in taking its provisions and in selling wherever it wishes, and in having to deal with the least amount of constraint possible in matters of workers’ rights or social conventions.”4 We could not offer a better definition of globalized neoliberalism today. As a result there is a disaster well documented by the economists5 in terms of inequalities6 and exclusion, as much between countries as within each of them. The world has been the victim of a fraud, of a major blow from ideologies profiteering from the Keynesian crisis in order to propose this return to savage capitalism.
Already in 1930, the great economist Keynes had grasped very well the pathological and morbid character of the ethic underlying capitalism. It is only because of a problem of scarcity that he thought it was justified, “for another hundred years: to pretend to believe that what is just is bad and that what is bad is good.”7 He predicted that the arrival of a “new Society” “would take place gradually” and he saw it already appearing in his own time.8
Eighty years later, there is no longer a problem of scarcity. We are in over-production; the system is fueled only by over-consumption with its horrendous environmental and social consequences that we know only too well.
Greed continues to be valued and, encouraged by the certainty of its impunity, it leads us to the point of no return. It has made the team on the ship of the world economy drunk after they have forced the whole planet to get on board. It has contaminated the dominant culture. Everything is impregnated with a look-after-yourself that produces a closing up into comfort and indifference. The urgency of turning the ship around and inventing new alternatives is becoming more and more evident. These alternatives need to be based on new values and references that dwell elsewhere in other experiences already underway on a smaller scale.
From Ethics to Politics
When even Chiefs of State like British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, solemnly affirm that «the markets not only need money but also morality,”9 we can be sure that a threshold has been reached, that the model has hit its limits. This recall to a moral urgency poses the question of the relationship between ethics and politics. Because we are accustomed to consider ethics as concerning first of all inter-subjective relations, we easily suppose that it is not very pertinent in the perspective of a structural transformation of society. We think it is politics that seems to be the privileged means to get to this other world that is possible. A dissociation that cuts ethics off from politics could nevertheless lead to a new blindness.
The function of politics is to translate the ethical intuition of responsibility and of care of the other into institutional structures. It does so through a set of norms and sanctions that are intended to protect the collective project of living together. This moral imperative is at the root of the political project, its condition of legitimacy.10 There is no socially effective ethics without politics, but neither do politics exist without a socially shared ethic. The current crisis reveals a double flaw in this connection that should lead from ethics to politics.
1) A moral flaw. Ethics calls on the capacity to consider the other as having the same dignity and the same rights as oneself. It is at the root of the solidarity that makes us struggle for a more just distribution of wealth, for the equality of the sexes, non-discrimination or the recognition of our collective responsibility toward future generations. This sort of ethics is nevertheless countered by the dominant values of a culture that makes immediate satisfaction the centre of personal preoccupations and that legitimizes greed as the motor of the economy. This cult of one’s own interest, and indifference to the general interest, undermines the moral fiber of our societies.
2. A political failure. The current crisis makes clear the effects of this ethical slide in our relationship with politics. Beyond the vague promises of vigilance and regulation, who really believes that our governments are going to rebuild a system that is tainted in its roots? Who is still waiting for them to present a collective project and institutional arrangements that will translate a certain sense of justice and recognition of the other? After they fell under the neoliberal domination of major economic interests, they showed how particularly incompetent they are. We could think, for example, of the growing gap between the rich and poor across the planet; or of the persistence of Canadian child poverty that remains at the same level as 1989 (10%), even though the House of Commons was unanimously in favour of abolishing it before the year 2000. There is also the paralysis of the Quebec government in putting into practice the law against poverty voted unanimously by the National Assembly in 2002. In these cases, as in so many others, we can do well to know what doesn’t work and what needs to be done. What is lacking is the necessary political will to get there. Even as we find ourselves faced with the threat of a planetary catastrophe, we had, once more, to note a discouraging political prevarication during the recent summit in Copenhagen. Even fear and necessity appear insufficient to carry the day against the concubinage between the interests of the major economic actors and those of the political parties.
This political failure is inseparable from the moral flaw evoked earlier. Our leaders are not the only ones responsible. They can find shelter in the shadow of a culture that is complicit. The ethical demands present in civil society are still too weak to create a strong expectation for political action. It is weakened by sophisticated communication strategies thanks to which capitalism knows how to manipulate our freedom and make us voluntary captives of a system that dehumanizes us. In the end, we still want to honour the great values like justice, equality or ecology. From time to time we want to make certain gestures that reflect those values, but not to the point of paying the price by adopting, for example, fiscal laws or a coherent pattern of consumption based on these values. Our moral liberty is conditioned, and conditional. This collective ethical vacuum prepares in large measure the political failure. It is very much like an anthropological mutilation.
An anthropological mutilation11
In human terms, the relationship to the other passes always through the mediation of a third. The viability of the relationship to the other is not established in a binary but a ternary mode. Just as it isn’t enough to put two individuals together in order to create a couple, the simple juxtaposition of particular interests, and much less their opposition, will never form a society. Inter-subjective relationships are formed around shared interests or objectives and the social bond is mediated by strong common points of reference (homeland, territory, project for a society, laws, customs, values, “gods”), that are recognized as such and that guarantee this bond. This is what allows us to go beyond particular interests and to believe in an “Us” gathered around a common good and its protection. We are talking here of a constitutive anthropological structure of our humanity.
The current crisis puts at risk this anthropological foundation. Ultraliberal capitalism tries to present the marketplace as this third pole, as the structuring common reference for society. This brings with it serious consequences for our living together. At first view, the ternary logic, which is in principle favourable to social bonds, is always there.But, in fact, the tendency of the market itself, that is to say of competition, belongs to the binary logic of division. When the market becomes an exclusive, inflexible reference that no longer refers us back to something beyond itself, it has free course as the sole logic of power and domination. And like all idols, it assuredly carries with it the elimination or exclusion of the weakest and the dissolution of society. With a reference as harmful and symbolically empty as this, our exchanges—and notably those that are economic—are reduced to their simple monetary equivalent in the immediacy of mercantile exchanges instead of being the mediation of a meaning that goes beyond them or provides a foundation for them. They become reptilian reflexes of “taking” or of greed.12 This constitutes an anthropological aberration whose effect is to put us in opposition to others instead of binding us together.
A civil society in search of a collective project
How can we work for the general interest in this perspective? For the moment, it is impossible to count on credible political parties that would be in a position to take power and introduce effective global institutional transformations. Those that move in that direction deserve our support and they contribute to the cultural change that we have just evoked. In the current context, however, the responsibility for the social project to be brought about collectively rests largely with civil society. Every alternative movement on the local and international plane provide examples. Even though they are minority phenomena, they bring together a large variety of spaces on a human scale where the ethical view of justice and equality can be incarnated. By way of examples, we will develop the point by referring to two particularly significant movements in a moral and cultural perspective: the feminist and the ecological movements. Each in their own way place in evidence the profound roots of the relationship of domination from which our culture has to be liberated if humanity wants to survive and continue to be humanized.
The women’s movement, highly symbolized today by the World March of Women, is bearer of a project of society that looks to bettering the well-being of humanity and the survival of the planet on the ecological, economic, political, social and cultural levels. It pursues the objectives of justice, equality, liberty, solidarity and peace that are values inscribed in the Charter of the World March of Women for humanity.13 Grounded on a more clearly intuitive and holistic feminine style of analyzing and understanding reality, this movement denounces the oppressive character of the patriarchal, racist and capitalist system that is responsible in multiple ways for exploitation, discrimination, intolerance and exclusion. Globally it is the way of relating between human beings and their environment that is profoundly questioned here. According to eco-feminism, the damage done to the Earth and the oppression of women flow from the same patriarchal system of domination. Instead, we need to promote recognition of the interdependence between nature and human beings. The feminist approach is not hierarchical, founded on an acute sense of fundamental equality between all persons. Preferring the horizontal circulation of ideas and proposals, it aspires to a non-pyramidal organization of society and institutions. This perspective has begun to bear fruit. It has given rise to a larger recognition of women in the workplace, in places of power and of culture. A multitude of grassroots initiatives have had an appreciable effect on the condition of life of individuals and on the social tissue of settings where they are rooted. With regard to the overall action of women, Hélène Pedneault, now passed away, speaks of an “unending revolution, that is perhaps the most pacific, but also the longest, in the history of humanity.” 14
The ecological movement also links the social and environmental issues more and more explicitly. At the heart of the ecological movement can be found the critique of a model of production and consumerism based on the search for unlimited growth. An economic system like that perpetuates the inequalities between the rich and poor because it can never satisfy more than the appetite of a minority. In a parallel way, it leads straight into the draining of resources, the destruction of biodiversity and to climatic upheavals. The ecological movement invites us to abandon this approach of domination and conflict toward an objectivized nature that has been separated from what is human, in order rather to return to the awareness of our living together with all the species that share the same habitat. This new paradigm, proposed by a growing number of contemporary authors, integrates contributions from modern science, such as molecular biology, quantum physics, and the history of the universe. It leads to a vision of the economy as an oikos-nomos (norm for the shared house), where human labour rediscovers its social and spiritual mission. So, we clearly have here an effort to rethink an ethical and cultural paradigm by questioning once again, and radically, the way human beings relate to one another and with our planet.
The feminist and ecological movements witness to the need for a mutation in our practices and our ways of imaging the world. Each in its own way shows where the anthropological mutilation spoken of earlier can lead. They are nevertheless the object of fierce resistance. This forces us to sound the issue out with precision and to ground the hope that animates us solidly.
A hope to be made explicit
You might think that the realization of a social and environmental vision with an ethical inspiration is not possible without the collective recognition of principles and values to which we give a normative character that corresponds to their necessity in our living together. The charters looked to that. Is this enough? Although they serve to constitute a society of law, they do not allow us to go beyond individual or particular demands by making them converge toward a collective project of humanization and safeguard of creation. Even the universal application of individual rights will not be sufficient to provide foundations for a society that is humanly just and in solidarity, where the general interest effectively prevails. A project for a society like that appeals to a capacity for solidarity, compassion and fraternity, to a sense of responsibility and service of others that no charter or legislation would ever adequately assure. Dispositions like that go beyond the juridical or legislative order. They are on the level of ethics and culture. How then and under what conditions can we hope to arrive at such a human quality of life in society?
When we affirm our hope in another world that is possible, what do we mean? That it is always possible to do better, to establish a little more justice and peace, conviviality and humanity? That’s already significant! Or do we really believe it is possible to achieve a world that is globally “other,” founded on values that are radically different? What sort of change would not only lead to a situation where we would find ourselves faced with a relative improvement in society, but to one where the world is structurally renewed? Could we agree collectively on what should constitute the fundamental originality of this world? Can we give ourselves a common reference that would transcend particular interests?
During our lifetime we have already been witnesses of important changes that make this world different from what it was a century ago. Different, yes, but is it really “new?” Before the fall of the Berlin wall, many East Germans hoped to find a new world in the West. Now that Germany is reunited, we see a broadly based disenchantment. In other places, populations submitted to tyrannical regimes have achieved a democracy of law, which represents quite rightly a better world in their eyes. And yet, those who have already enjoyed that kind of democracy for a long time denounce the injustices and deceptions that continue to be perpetrated there. The end of neoliberal capitalism would certainly mark the raising of a heavy structural burden to the hope and advancement of humanity. Yet it wouldn’t mean the elimination of inequalities, violence and brutality among human beings.
In spite of the sporadic and yet often important advances that need to be recognized and celebrated, we still do not have a society so fundamentally transformed that we could speak of a new world.For the new world to be transformed in the measure of our hope, we would especially have to surmount the double ethical and political flaw of which we were speaking earlier. On the one hand, this would presuppose that responsibility toward the other prevailed over greed in a way that would be generalized enough in civil society itself to create a culture of solidarity, justice and peace. That achievement would moreover require a political translation of that new culture into laws and institutions that would protect it with sufficiently effective means. It is undoubtedly possible to move forward and to better the current state of society.We could not renounce that effort without betraying our humanity. Hope imposes nevertheless a dose of realism: we do not have the means of assuring, all by ourselves, the moral transformation required to replace greed with solidarity as the dominant cultural axis, nor to inaugurate a corresponding and durable political order. Even as we take courage from certain positive results of our efforts, we need to recognize clearly that they are always partial and provisory. They are fragile in the tangle of the opposing tendencies that they are bound up with.
The transformation that we hope for is of such a breadth and brings together so many complex and fundamental issues on the economic, social, cultural and environmental levels that it would be naive to think that a mutation of civilization like that is within our reach. Is the hope therefore for “another world that is possible” bound to fail? The Biblical tradition opens perspectives that allow us to couple lucidity about the present state of the world with hope for its renewal.
Biblical Perspective on the Renewal of the World
The Gospel parables present the transformation of the world as a reality toward which we are invited to firmly commit ourselves. (Lk 9, 62) But that Reign acts in the world in the discrete way of a grain of mustard (Mark 4, 30-32), of a leaven in the mass (Lk 13, 20-21) or of a seed that germinates even as it is hidden in the earth (Mk 4, 26-29) and that is called to become a great tree (Matt 13, 31f). This new world is the fruit of an original divine gift to which our human efforts respond in preparing its coming. We collaborate in a «work» that is first of all that of the Father and of Jesus: “My Father is always working, and I am too.” (Jn 5, 17).
Attention to this active presence of God in the world has inspired great figures in the Biblical tradition. It is what seems to have allowed Moses, for example, to continue to march toward the Promised Land despite thirst, famine and the torments of a hard and long journey. He was sustained by the “yes” of a promise that made him able to say “no” both to the slavery of Egypt and to the temptations to turn back. His people were led by a cloud that lit the way for them (Ex 13,21f) and out of which God made known his word (19, 9; 33,8ff). “The cloud made it dark for the Egyptians, but gave light to the people of Israel.” (14, 20) The cloud did not eliminate the need for discernment. Signs arose all along the way. A new society already began to form, founded on the Covenant. Moses observed, listened and withdrew into silence in order to discover the right path. He led by following.
This is also what sustained Daniel in the midst of the Exile, when the empire that held the people of Israel captive seemed all-powerful. He foresaw that this imposing colossus had feet of clay, that it was hollow and that a small stone would be enough one day to bring it crashing down (Dan 2, 31-34). This stone was, in his eyes, the small and humble people who remained faithful to Yahweh. He saw in that people the germ of a new humanity whose triumph he predicted (2, 44-45; 7, 18.22.27) in his vision of a “Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven.” (7, 13) and incarnating God’s project for humanity.
For the Gospels, the Reign of God to come is revealed first of all in the person and in the project of Jesus in whom the Spirit who “renews the face of the earth” acted. In presenting Jesus as the principal figure of the Reign, the Gospels demonstrate the integral link that attaches the new world to a new humanity. And for this reason, it is not only in the victories of justice and of rights that the New Testament invites us to see the Reign coming. For Paul and John, this Reign is already present in the Passion of Jesus, “lifted up” on the cross as a sign of victory over evil (Jn 8, 28). Thus, the Resurrection will not abolish injustice and violence on earth. God will assert his sovereignty in another way: by ratifying, in the glorification of Jesus, his way of being and acting as it is condensed in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. The Reign is brought into fruition above all in a radically transformed way of being human. Our various struggles and commitments have as goal not only a kind of social order, but also a becoming human in accord with God’s project.
A New World and a New Humanity
History is a witness to the possibility of this sort of human transformation. From Buddha to Jesus, from Claire and Francis of Assisi to Gandhi or Dorothy Day, women and men have opened up paths toward justice, compassion and universal fraternity. Through their experience, these prophetic figures announced the possibility of a renewal of the world: welcome for the stranger, respect for the dignity of every person, solidarity with the neediest, the struggle for justice, the choice of non-violence, forgiveness of enemies. These are all practices that have made possible and have progressively brought about real collective advances like the abolition of slavery and of the death penalty, the affirmation of human rights, the equality of the sexes, the social security system, participative democracy, and so on.
In fact, this new humanity is in evidence at every moment, daily, in the gestures of mutual help and goodness, in initiatives of liberation and solidarity, in the creativity of those who are ready to give all in the service of peace, justice or the integrity of creation. Everywhere on the planet, people and groups invent paths that bear the future, sometimes in a striking way, but more often in the shadows and with discretion. They weave a vast web for the regeneration of the world by giving witness to a true mutation in the way humans can enter into relationships, washing each others’ feet, giving their lives joyfully, resisting idols, inventing new ways of producing and consuming, reshaping the covenant with nature and walking the many paths of non-violent solidarity in the Spirit of Jesus. Mutations of human experience like these are the sign of a world that is already present, always coming to us. It will be new in the sense that it will be a world socially organized in new ways only if the human life that is lived out there is itself radically renewed.
Attention to the coming of this new world can teach us to live in hope in spite of the limits of our achievements. There is a given that goes before us, a presence, a certain movement of life that is determined to renew the world, one stone at a time, through all our commitments but also without our knowing it, in our victories at the heart of realities that can continue to be quite dramatic. Isn’t this the way we can understand, for example, the determination of thousands of groups all over the world to create alternatives like cooperatives, ecological agro-food projects or social-economy businesses even as neoliberalism flourishes and proclaims itself the only economic path possible? Think also of the resistance of intellectuals and journalists, living at the heart of dictatorships, who dare to speak a free word even under the threat of repression. Nothing prevents the renewal of the world, whatever the circumstances. In refugee camps or in shantytowns, among populations decimated by famine, natural catastrophes or war, people witness to another way of being human even as violence, injustice or misery still seem to hold sway. Have we not all been awestruck by the testimony to dignity in the midst of trial, of attention to victims and of a tenacious hope evidenced by so many Haitians following the recent earthquake? In all sorts of other situations, we can observe the same paradox: the poor open paths to the future without ceasing to be poor, victims pardon their aggressors, murderers are introduced to non-violence inside the brutality of the prison itself, people who have been socially excluded give excellent example of living together, the weak help the weak, the chronically ill offer whatever is left of their lives in prayer for the suffering people of the world.
Is another world really possible? To keep hope alive, we don’t need to water down our objectives but instead radicalize the problematic. Whether it is a question of social or planetary issues, questions of justice or the environment, we are invited as human beings to a fundamental mutation of our ways of being, thinking and acting, to a deep reconciliation with our own humanity and with the nature we are rooted in. Everyone, whatever their philosophical or religious convictions, can recognize in this a fundamental aspiration.
Christians see in this the expression of God’s plan in creating men and women in his/her image. They remember that in Jesus, this image of God is given to be encountered in the person of those who are hungry, sick, prisoners or excluded: “You did it to me….” (Mt 25). In this way God offers to the most vulnerable God’s own standing as transcendent reference, making of the relationship with them the ultimate measure of the relationship with God. It is a liberating relationship to this common reference that will constitute the new horizon for a revolutionary living together among the first communities. It is the same conviction that will push the Fathers of the Church in the fourth century to proclaim the universal destination of goods. It is this radical inspiration that will nourish the living Church, that of the saints and prophets, throughout the subsequent centuries.
Is it possible to hope that the achievement of our common humanity, on the personal and collective levels, could serve as the cornerstone for a project of society? Or that a fundamental reciprocity established between human beings equal in dignity would allow the foundation of a society where personal interests are inscribed in the search for the general interest? For that to happen, each member of society would need to feel him- or herself directly implicated by what happens to all the others. Humanity as a whole is wounded in every victim of contempt, of violence or injustice. It grows through every gesture of liberation and disinterested service. This intuition of a shared destiny on a planet that is our common habitat is revealed, for example, in the international mobilization around issues like that of the food crisis, climate warming or the reconstruction of devastated countries. From there, to hope that this announces a new collective awareness and a new figure of humanity, there is a leap that requires a certain act of faith.
NOTES
1 For some clarifying analyses of the mechanisms of the current crisis, you might want to consult, for example,Éric Pineault, «Crise du capitalisme financiarisé», À bâbord, N? 28, Feb-Mar 2009, p. 9-11; Louis Gill, «Une crise annoncée», Ibid., p. 6-7.
2 To give an idea of the size of this financial bubble, note that in 2007, the value of derivatives taken together came to 670,000 billion dollars, that is to say eight times the gross world product (GWP). In 2008, it reached ten times this GWP. (See Louis Gill, «La vraie source de la crise», La Presse, December, 28, 2008).
3 Thus, President Sarkozy recently refused to raise taxes among those in the highest income bracket citing international competition that made it practically impossible to increase the fiscal burden on the actors in the market for fear of a capital flight. Society was thus prevented from controlling the economy and instead found itself placed in dependency where it pays the price by a downward spiral of working conditions and of life in order to satisfy the dictatorship of capital.
4 Quoted in François Normand, «Et le bien commun?», Le Devoir, November 30, 1999.
5 E. Desrosiers, «La mondialisation n'a pas tenu ses promesses», Le Devoir, October 24, 2004, p. 1 et 8.
6 Philippe Langlois, «Les inégalités, racine de la crise économique», Le Devoir, November 28, 2008.
7 J.-M. Keynes, Ensayos de persuasion, Barcelone, Ed. Critica, 1988, p. 331, quoted in Francisco Gomez Camacho, «Le marché. Histoire et anthropologie d’une institution socio-économique», Concilium, 270, 1997, p. 22.
8 Ibid., p. 33, quoted in Ibid., p. 23.
9 AFP, «Brown refuse une réforme financière au ‘plus petit commun dénominateur commun’», Le Devoir, March 8, 2009.
10 Cf. J. Beauchemin, La société des identités, Outremont, Athéna, 2004.
11 With reference to this whole section, see Dany-Robert Dufour, L’art de réduire les têtes. Sur la nouvelle servitude de l’homme libéré à l’ère du capitalisme total, Paris, Denoël, 2003, pp. 13-16.
12 According to a long-time observer of the world of business who was commenting on the scandals of Enron and Worldcom, before 1980 the leaders were ambitious men who wanted to change things, to become more powerful, richer, but money wasn’t the main modus operandi for them..” («Le capitalisme saisi par la cupidité. Entrevue avec Félix G. Rohatyn», Le Débat, N° 123, January-February, 2003, p. 22.
13 See the preface to the Charte mondiale des femmes pour l'humanité, 2005.
14 Manifeste des femmes du Québec, 2000.
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