by Lucian Sârbu

România liberă, Wednesday, February 20, 2002, page 28: a colour picture shows me two cadavers, two tiny dead bodies, half buried in earth. Two children from Brăila - Nicuşor, 5 years old, and his brother, Florin, 11 - were digging in trash, looking for old iron items, and suddenly the hole they made swallowed them. They died because of asphyxiation, and lied several hours in earth, until a man saw one of their legs. The picture shows two soldiers - it is impossible to see their faces, as if the State's institutions have nothing to declare about - preparing to lift the bodies. One - probably Nicuşor's - is so tiny, that looks like a three years child's. Obviously, Nicuşor never had too many food in his plate.

Their father is imprisoned since 1999. The paper didn't say why, but it's easy to guess: shoplifting, robbery - something like this. Brăila, once a "pride" of the communist industrialization due to its shipyard and excavators factory, became after 1990 one of Romania's poorest cities. The successive governments closed almost every industry in town. The official explanation seems to be very rational: the old communist industry lacked productivity. This is the implacable thought of Reason, ok. But the Reason didn't told us yet why should be "rational" for two children, first - to have a father unemployed, than - civil criminal, and finally - to die digging for old iron items in trash.

And what about their mother? Well, she still has a child. One year old. Too young to dig in trash. But she lost 2/3 from her revenue! Yes, because her only revenue was children's allowance: 300.000 lei / month, or 10 USD. Beside this, of course, she was earning some few more money selling the old iron items gathered by her former sons. From now on, this "source" is no more available.

Meanwhile, our intellectual elite has a big problem. Mr. Patapievici, the notorious essayist, published a new book, Omul recent [The Recent Man]. It is a book as "thick as a brick" [Jethro Tull]. The essayist is fighting against the post-modernity and post-moderns (or the modernity and the moderns; whatever). Hit, the "post-moderns" (or the "moderns"?!) are fighting against Patapievici. Cuvântul awards his annual prize to Patapievici. Observator Cultural attacks Patapievici in a dedicated issue. Some intellectuals said that Patapievici attacks liberalism, rationalism, civilization itself… 22 defends Patapievici, and so on.

For me, it looks like between the death, in a trash hole, of Nicuşor and Florin and the debating themes of our intellectual elite, is a distance as giant as between earth and stars. If other children will die looking for old iron items, or will be saved - definitely not the intellectuals will be the rescuers called to rescue. And a curious question passes through my mind. I admit that everyone has the right to stay away, to live like an ostrich - head in sand. But what if one day the intellectuals themselves, threatened by corporations and markets, will need help?... And nobody will care?... Why if Humanitas Editing House, that build up the celebrity of Mr. Patapievici, will be bought by an Arabian sheik willing only to publish books about football, zodiacs and Bin Laden?...

Children dead under a load of trash - this remembers me some pages, even some chapters from Marx's Capital. Yes, I cannot deny the truth: in 2002, in my country, Marx's Capital is a book that still has something to say to us. This is the first temptation of our age: obscured by despair, to think that Marx helps us understand what is happening here. I remember the scenes with children and poor women taking the places of men in factories dominated by machines. Marx explains: this is because the children and women work easily with the machines.(1) The "capitalism" is a world were young and powerful man is step by step impoverished and destroyed. The "capitalism" tends to use more and more only machines, children and women - because these creatures can be easily subjected. And the excluded men will prepare the Revolution, and the Revolution will set up a more socially justified society. We already know what is wrong in Marx's model: he was unable to consider the division of labour and specialisation. The machine means more productivity, but the machine needs workers to maintain it working. So, the worker will still have a work to do, to be paid for, because the machine is not a kind of perpetuum mobile, but a mechanism which needs to be constructed and then maintained by humans. Also, Marx was unable to understand capitalism's capacity of adaptation and capitalism's capacity of including workers ideals on its agenda - at least formally. Later, Eduard Bernstein understood all these and chose the parliamentarian-revolutionary way of action, splitting up the workers' international movement. This is why the social-democracy - which is, in fact, Marx's doctrine revisited - is still attractive and adaptive (see also the contemporary concept of "the third way")(2), but the rigorous Marxism is dead for good and all.

However, it seems that we live in a "rigorous-Marxist" reality: Nicuşor's and Florin's father (the man) is absent (imprisoned). As in Marx's Capital, the society seems to be exclusive towards men and illusory inclusive only towards children and women. Firstly, the father had a work to do, than he became unemployed - the economical, implacable and definitely correct Reason subjecting him to exclusion - and finally he refused society's laws, committing some sort of crime. Rebelling and being imprisoned.

Something is obvious: the concept of "social justice" isn't very beloved by Romanian constructors of reality (politicians, businessmen, newspapers owners, attitude leaders, etc.), or the social class that Marx would name "capitalists". But we will show later why Marx doesn't help us in understanding Romanian reality.

Meantime, our elite sees liberalism as a new Mecca of conscience. The second (and opposite of the first) temptation of our age is to think, obscured by optimism, that liberal-democracy represents more than an historical and particular form of political organisation, not subjected - as any other political regime - to the erosion. [This could be also named: Fukuyama's temptation.] Everyone reads Popper's and Hayek's books as the Bible. The best and biggest editing houses (Humanitas, Trei, Institutul European, Polirom, etc.) are publishing more and more titles undersigned Karl Popper or F.A. Hayek. If one critically questions about the concept of "open society", one can be subjected to ironies and culturally excluded. May God protect our minds and mouths of thinking or speaking otherwise than adulating the "open society"! Or questioning about what is truly "open" in the "open society"!

Recently, Polirom published Filozofia socială a lui F.A. Hayek(3) [The Social Philosophy of F.A. Hayek]. It contains some papers by Hayek and some good and critical comments. I will retain here only a curious idea: for Hayek, the concept of "social justice" is an atavism. Hayek gives us two explanations for this curious statement. First, the historical explanation, totally stupid: this "atavism" appeared in an age, thousands and thousands of years ago, when people were living all together and commonly shared food and goods. Ok, let's admit that Hayek knew how people were living and thinking 10.000 years ago. But the second - the economical - explanation is more serious: the "social justice" is an atavism, because the free market's processes are essentially a-moral. And the ideal of the "social justice" means morality. So, if one tries to melt morality and market, one will destroy both the morality and the free market. The free market is seen as a "game" where one can and must be successful only if one respects the internal rules of play.

So, if we think in Hayek's logic terms, the death of Nicuşor and Florin doesn't represent a social injustice. They died only because their father was unable to adapt himself (and consequently his family) to the fair, rigorous, correct and intellectually brilliant rules of a free market economy.

Yes, maybe. But let's ask ourselves: what "free market economy"? Now it's time to show why both Marx and Hayek are two cadavers as dead as Nicuşor's and Florin's: in Romania, after 1990, never existed a truly "free market economy".(4) Years 1990-1992 are dominated by the Government's reticence towards an economical reform. Years 1992-1996 are dominated by a false privatization (most of the State-owned companies rested public companies, and the so-called "privatization through coupons" of Văcăroiu Government was only a ridiculous attempt of "mass" privatization). During this years appeared the so-called "căpuşă" (="tick") enterprises, that is enterprises specially build up (by State officials having access to key information) to devaluate State-owned companies. Years 1996-2000 are dominated by a fever of privatization, which led to great abuses, long time analyzed in mass-media. Neither Marx nor Hayek help us in understanding the Romanian reality. Against Marxist interpretation of reality (first temptation) we can state: the social exclusion and the poverty in "transitional" Romania has nothing to do with market processes (or capital's circulation and investment), but with political decisions which influenced, year after year, the economical status of the country.(5) Against Hayekian interpretation (second temptation) we can state: as long as Romania doesn't have a truly free market economy, the social justice still is and must be a functional ideal.

Romania is a country like a laboratory. Between 1944 and 1989, it was subjected to the Biggest Social Experiment that Human ever made: the communism. Since 1989, it is subjected to another Big Experiment: how to implement the market economy after the achievement of the formal democracy. The history teaches us that, starting with the big Western democracies - USA, Great Britain or France - and finishing with recent democracies like Taiwan or South Korea, the implementation of democracy as political regime always was preceded by the implementation of the market economy. The rational logic of this process was always so obvious, that Benjamin Constant noticed it in its notorious conference, De la liberté des anciens comparée à celles des modernes, almost 200 years ago, speaking about the importance of trade for giving birth to free consciences.(6) The creation of a strong economy which produced the free consciences that eventually led to democratization, lasted in South Korea only 12 years, from 1969 to 1981. Spain, after Franco, needed only 6 years to become a NATO member and 8 to become an EU member.(7) We live here, in Romania, in a vicious circle: without a real free market economy, it seems that we cannot have a real democracy; but without a real democracy, we cannot have the positive liberty which give us the opportunity of developing truly free market processes. I do not argue here in the favor of a "development dictatorship", simply because now is too late.(8) But I argue against any attempt to understand and modify the Romanian reality through Marx or Hayek's ideas. In other words, I argue against the Marxism and neo-liberalism.

***

Now, after rejecting both Marx and Hayek as being useless in conceptualizing Romanian reality, we can set up some themes for a future philosophy.

1. The Romanian philosophers must conceptualize the concepts of exclusion and inclusion otherwise than as simply economically-generated processes. The exclusive and inclusive practices have, in Romania, a historical-political background, which has nothing to do with a supposed fair/unfair competition inside a supposed free market.

2. The Romanian philosophers must conceptualize from an ethical point of view this new Experiment, which is the implementation of a free market economy after the implementation of a formal democracy. In other words: the Romanian philosophers must conceptualize from an ethical point of view the "Transition" age. They must understand what kind of ethics led - among other events - to the tragic death, under a load of trash, of the two little boys from Brăila - Nicuşor and Florin, and what kind of ethical ideals should be judged as fair or unfair.

Unfortunately, not Marx and Hayek's cadavers are lying in dirt and trash, but Nicuşor's and Florin's. Those who were destined to live, are dead now, and those who were believed to be dead, are more alive than the living ones.

(february 2002)

© Lucian Sârbu 2002
http://luciansarbu.ifrance.com

3. Adrian-Paul Iliescu (ed.): Filozofia socială a lui F.A. Hayek. Polirom: Iaşi, 2001. (back)

5. We largely argued this these in our book Adevăr şi democraţie [Truth and Democracy], Paideia: Bucureşti, 2001, first essay: Scrisoare despre Paulo Freire [Letter about Paulo Freire]. (back)

7. See Jean-François Revel, Revirimentul democraţiei. Humanitas: Bucureşti, 1995, especially chapter 10. (back)