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Date Posted: 06:37:20 06/15/07 Fri
Author: Antônio de Oliveira Sette Câmara
Subject: TASK 4

POLITICAL PANACEA
Is There a Political Solution for World Problems?

It is generally believed that the solutions for the conflicts that are tearing our world apart must come from politics, but I beg to disagree.

We are told that either socialism or economic liberalism, communism or capitalism, a so-called Third Way between these extremes or some other political recipe must offer a way out of our predicaments. But the fact is that political ideology has proven divisive and useless, a zero-sum game, and none of the societies that embrace either system has reached a peaceful solution of its conflicts.

On the one hand, political liberalism, which is the theoretical result of individualism, would deliver most powers into the hands of the individual, aiming at ensuring personal freedom as a result. But the sum total of all conflicting individual interests cannot logically, and in fact does not, add up to the COMMON good of society as a whole. Just look at the legal and social mess created by the litigation mania in the United States of America.

On the other hand, communism and socialism, which are the logical outcome of collectivist thinking, assign all decision-making to an all-powerful State bureaucracy, and the result is never a free society, for there is no guarantee of respect for individual decisions and private property or enterprise in a collectivist society. It will suffice to recall the old Soviet Union regime to prove this point.

Thus, both systems, which rest on polar-opposite principles (individualism x collectivism), are contradictory and cannot bring about enduring social peace.

Political democracy is defined as the administration of conflicts with the alternance in power of different political views and philosophies, but it looks like it can in fact only PERPETUATE conflicts. And since autocracy or dictatorship are not satisfactory alternatives, we must conclude that the modern world has reached a deadlock, and politics doesn’t seem to offer a way out.

Yet, in spite of all this, we must agree with Churchill's famous dictum : "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all other forms that have been tried...".

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