[A new manifesto calls for building "a sustainable social pact for
the 21st century" in which "our rights are guaranteed, not based on
our ability to pay, or on whether a system produces profit, but on
whether it enables all of us to live well together in peace and
equality."]
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‘OUR FUTURE IS PUBLIC’: SANTIAGO DECLARATION ENVISIONS END OF
NEOLIBERALISM DEATH SPIRAL  
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Kenny Stancil
January 27, 2023
Common Dreams
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_ A new manifesto calls for building "a sustainable social pact for
the 21st century" in which "our rights are guaranteed, not based on
our ability to pay, or on whether a system produces profit, but on
whether it enables all of us to live well together in peace and
equality." _

Organizers from across the globe met in Santiago, Chile from November
29 to December 2, 2022 to draft a manifesto for asserting democratic
control over public services., People Over Profit

 

An international coalition made up of more than 200 trade unions and
progressive advocacy groups on Thursday published the Santiago
Declaration
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a manifesto for "a complete overhaul of our global economic system."

The undeniably anti-neoliberal document proclaiming that "our future
is public" is the product of a meeting held in Chile—the "laboratory
of neoliberalism" where Milton Friedman and his University of Chicago
acolytes' upwardly redistributive economic model was first imposed at
gunpoint by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military junta.

From November 29 to December 2, more than 1,000 organizers from over
100 countries gathered in Santiago and virtually to germinate a
left-wing movement against "the dominant paradigm of growth,
privatization, and commodification."

"Who owns our resources and our services is fundamental. A public
future means ensuring that everything essential to dignified lives is
out of private control."

"We are at a critical juncture," the manifesto begins. "At a time when
the world faces a series of crises, from the environmental emergency
to hunger and deepening inequalities, increasing armed conflicts,
pandemics, rising extremism, and escalating inflation, a collective
response is growing."

"Hundreds of organizations across socioeconomic justice and public
services sectors—from education and health services, to care,
energy, food, housing, water, transportation, and social
protection—are coming together to address the harmful effects of
commercializing public services, to reclaim democratic public control,
and to reimagine a truly equal and human rights-oriented economy that
works for people and the planet," reads the document. "We demand
universal access to quality, gender-transformative, and equitable
public services as the foundation of a fair and just society."

The Santiago Declaration continues:

The commercialization and privatization of public services and the
commodification of all aspects of life have driven growing
inequalities and entrenched power disparities, giving prominence to
profit and corruption over people's rights and ecological and social
well-being. It adversely affects workers, service users, and
communities, with the costs and damages falling disproportionately on
those who have historically been exploited.

The devaluation of public service workers' social status, the
worsening of their working conditions, and attacks against their
unions are some of the most worrying regressions of our times and a
threat to our collective spaces. This is deeply linked with the
patriarchal organization of society, where women as workers and carers
are undervalued and absorb social and economic shocks. They are the
first to suffer from public sector cuts, losing access to services and
opportunities for decent work, and facing a rising burden of unpaid
care work.

Austerity cuts in public sector budgets and wage bills are driven by
an ideological mindset entrenched in the International Monetary Fund
and many ministries of finance that serve the interests of
corporations over people, perpetuating dependencies and unsustainable
debts. Unfair tax rules, nationally and internationally, enable vast
inequalities in the accumulation and concentration of income, wealth,
and power within and between countries. The financialization of a wide
range of public actions and decisions hands over power to shareholders
and undermines democracy.

Against the heavily privatized status quo, "we commit to continue
building an intersectional movement for a future that is public," the
document says. "One where our rights are guaranteed, not based on our
ability to pay, or on whether a system produces profit, but on whether
it enables all of us to live well together in peace and equality: our
_buen vivir_."

According to Global Justice Now, the Transnational Institute, and
other signatories, the creation of an egalitarian and sustainable
society hinges on ensuring universal access to life-sustaining public
goods delivered by highly valued workers.

"We need to take back control of decision-making processes and
institutions from the current forms of corporate capture to be able to
decide for what, for whom, and how we provide."

"Who owns our resources and our services is fundamental," the
manifesto argues. "A public future means ensuring that everything
essential to dignified lives is out of private control, and under
decolonial forms of collective, transparent, and democratic control."

As the Santiago Declaration explains:

A future that is public also means creating the conditions for
enabling alternative production systems, including the prioritization
of agroecology as an essential component of food sovereignty. To that
end, we need to take back control of decision-making processes and
institutions from the current forms of corporate capture to be able to
decide for what, for whom, and how we provide, manage, and
collectively own resources and public services.

The public future will not be possible without taking bold collective
national action for ambitious, gender-transformative, and progressive
fiscal and economic reforms, to massively expand financing of
universal public services. These reforms must be complemented by major
shifts in the international public finance architecture, including
transformations in tax, debt, and trade governance.

Democratizing economic governance towards truly multilateral processes
is critical to overhaul the power of dominant neoliberal organizations
and reorient national and international financial institutions away
from the racial, patriarchal, and colonial patterns of capitalism and
towards socioeconomic justice, ecological sustainability, human
rights, and public services. It is equally essential to enforce the
climate and ecological debt of the Global North, to carry out an
expedited reduction of energy and material resource use by wealthy
economies, to hold big polluters liable for their generations-long
infractions, to accelerate the phasing-out of fossil fuels, and to
prioritize finance system change.

The call to build "a sustainable social pact for the 21st century,"
the coalition observes, "follows years of growing mobilization around
the world."

It also comes as a complementary alliance convened by Progressive
International meets
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to map out
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an emancipatory "new international economic order."

During Friday's opening session, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis
Varoufakis called for the establishment of a movement capable of
dismantling "the existing, exploitative, catastrophically extractive
imperialist international economic order so as to build a new one in
its place... in which people and planet can breathe, live, and prosper
together."

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Kenny Stancil is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel
free to republish and share widely.
 

* Santiago Declaration; International Trade Unions Meeting; Public
Advocacy Groups; Anti-Neoliberalism;
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