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A review by il_principe_ignoto
Ρευστοί καιροί: Η ζωή την εποχή της αβεβαιότητας by Zygmunt Bauman
5.0
[Bauman readings: Social rights. The forgotten and the forbidden task.]
Trumpshits around the world eventually will lose! My bet.
Bauman is very harsh in his language, almost he employs a highly enraged, bitter language about his concerns for this world. Yet, he seems infuriated and very displeased, to say the least, about the management, by the few, of this world. A careless, mindless if not offensive and irresponsible endeavor to cast off their waste (human and material)!
His thoughts are dark and future pessimistic. Fear and the need for security is the reason. But the means to achieve them, by promising more security, have driven our societies off-course. I suspect the right course was to keep fulfilling the promise of providing justice to a society that enjoys personal, political and social rights. Peace presupposes and needs justice after all. It follows:
‘A vigorous welfare programme’, as d’Arcais sums up his argument more than half a century after Beveridge, ‘ought to be an integral, and constitutionally protected, part of every democratic project.’ Without political rights, people cannot be confident of their personal rights; but without social rights, political rights will remain an unattainable dream, a useless fiction or a cruel joke for the large number of those to whom they have been granted by the letter of law. If social rights are not assured, the poor and indolent cannot practise the political rights they formally possess. And then the poor will have only such entitlements as governments think it necessary to concede, and as is acceptable to those with the genuine political muscle to gain and keep power. As long as they remain resourceless, the poor may hope at most to be receivers of transfers, not subjects of rights.'
Paolo Flores d'Arcais, "The US elections: a lesson in political philosophy: populist drift, secular ethics, democratic politics" in Zygmunt Bauman (2007). "Liquid Times. Living in an Age of Uncertainty." Polity, p.65.
Trumpshits around the world eventually will lose! My bet.
Bauman is very harsh in his language, almost he employs a highly enraged, bitter language about his concerns for this world. Yet, he seems infuriated and very displeased, to say the least, about the management, by the few, of this world. A careless, mindless if not offensive and irresponsible endeavor to cast off their waste (human and material)!
His thoughts are dark and future pessimistic. Fear and the need for security is the reason. But the means to achieve them, by promising more security, have driven our societies off-course. I suspect the right course was to keep fulfilling the promise of providing justice to a society that enjoys personal, political and social rights. Peace presupposes and needs justice after all. It follows:
‘A vigorous welfare programme’, as d’Arcais sums up his argument more than half a century after Beveridge, ‘ought to be an integral, and constitutionally protected, part of every democratic project.’ Without political rights, people cannot be confident of their personal rights; but without social rights, political rights will remain an unattainable dream, a useless fiction or a cruel joke for the large number of those to whom they have been granted by the letter of law. If social rights are not assured, the poor and indolent cannot practise the political rights they formally possess. And then the poor will have only such entitlements as governments think it necessary to concede, and as is acceptable to those with the genuine political muscle to gain and keep power. As long as they remain resourceless, the poor may hope at most to be receivers of transfers, not subjects of rights.'
Paolo Flores d'Arcais, "The US elections: a lesson in political philosophy: populist drift, secular ethics, democratic politics" in Zygmunt Bauman (2007). "Liquid Times. Living in an Age of Uncertainty." Polity, p.65.