If it is true that in the past the politician was on the verge of abandoning the search for social justice like the north of society, especially in 2020, we are witnessing its total renunciation.

By William Alberto Méndez Garita

Over the past two years – a short period compared to 70 years of constitutional history inspired by the “Christian principle of social justice” – attempts have been made to replace the human-centered vision with a production model-centered vision. .

Social justice is now solved by the cold calculation of the cost for public finances, revenue and expenditure; it is not an investment but an expense. In other words, he lost his human face to become a number without sensitivity.

We have gone from people with human rights and protected by the vision of a “permanent policy of national solidarity”, as stipulated in the Political Constitution, to empty and depersonalized statistics.

If the economic situation of the country has gradually deteriorated, it is because of the repeated proposals of groups which have discredited the interpretation and the understanding of the social problems of the human being himself and of his central role in the society. , in order to worship a “reductionist” economic theology.

They are part of the problem, even if they find it hard to accept it.

This situation has been aggravated in recent years by the disappearance of political leaders who defend the model and principles of social justice. At the same time, there has been a loss of space in political, social and business organizations due to the arrival of socially insensitive cadres.

The disarticulation of the defense of social justice can be observed at three levels.

First, those who speak from a social perspective are pejoratively disqualified as “progressives” or center-left.

Secondly, there are not many references left capable of making statements on the rule of social law and social justice in accordance with the updated perspective of the founders and foundresses of the Second Republic and of the important social movements that laid the foundations of our modern society.

Some of them, lacking ideological coherence and with astonishing pragmatism, embraced the once renegade conservatism.

Third, in the current context of the country, the few voices advocating social causes are silenced because they do not belong to the club of the Greek god of wealth Pluto, also known as Eniato.

For example, during the formation of the so-called government dialogue roundtables, neither social justice experts nor organizations that could incorporate this perspective into discussions and agreements were invited to substantive discussions.

If we look at government programs, national development plans, as well as many proposals that have been made in relation to the country’s crisis, it is possible to see how people stop thinking in terms of social justice and do not find answers only in business models that have the bold and shameless attempt to assert themselves as absolute truths.

In an investigation by sociologist José Luis Vega Carballo (who died a few days ago and who was my first instructor in social research at UCR), citing the economic and social thought of Rodrigo Facio, he comments: Facio was and remains at this day a leading intellectual and political figure of progressive reformism, a politico-ideological current which likes to play the intermediary and which still tries – perhaps in vain – to give a “human face” to capitalism in order to move towards a moderate, liberal and “a la tica” market socialism (Social Sciences Review 138: 41). (Rev. Social Sciences 138: 41-52 / 2012 (IV)

The vision of the groups that have taken hold of politics does not even come close to Rodrigo Facio’s reflection on the economy and social justice.

As well explained in classical social conflict theory, societies are not just the sum of individuals, as the current approach to public policy is.

Under this premise, we can say, as others have pointed out before, that society is the result of the interactions of people (human beings) and the conflicts that arise from their relationships. (H. Heller and K. Marx).

But groups that have taken hold of politics, inside and outside government, do not see society as a system in which subsystems operate and which must be understood in the context of the complexity of the human being himself. .

Instead, they prefer to resort, as we said earlier, to repeated doses of economic individualism, which transforms the human being into an instrument of the economy and a commodity.

If one thinks of the metamorphosis of “Kafka” in which “Gregory Sansa” loses – not by his will – his condition as a human being, the political has turned into a desperate attempt at survival in which, unfortunately, ” the end justifies the means”.

In this sense, to paraphrase the schools of socio-political thought, what is interesting is not necessarily who owns the means of production or “all the factors involved in the production process”, which are guaranteed in the political constitution, but rather the possibility that with them there is hope and the possibility of a distribution of wealth which will allow to have a positive impact on sectors in a situation of social exclusion (Marcelo Prieto Jiménez, Essay written in 1971).

This is what politics has lost.

This inspiration must be present in all areas, whether political, economic, social, cultural or environmental, of social justice with a sensitivity centered on the human being as the guiding source of the public and the political.

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William Alberto Méndez Garita is a lawyer and political scientist

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