A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

an entirely different basis of interaction between human beings and nature”
(Echeverría, 2008:9). If there is to be a different interaction between
humans and nature there will have to be a new kind of technology
that makes it possible to decide on “the introduction of new means of
production and promoting the transformation of the technical structure
of its tools and equipment.” (Echeverría, 2008:9). In this sense, changing
productivity as the key to human work makes it possible, for the first
time, to look at the relationship with nature, the non-human, as one of
collaboration, and not to regard it as an enemy that has to be subjugated
through ritual. This is what Echeverría terms ‘potential’ modernity. 116
This potential modernity would make it possible to realize the basic
essence of modernity among as many peoples as exist. However, the
development of modernity has been coupled with the region known as
‘the West’, because of the expansion and productivity generated by this
technical revolution. There were two reasons why Europe and capitalism
became synonymous with modernity. First, the region is relatively small
compared with other continents so that it was easier for a more rapid
exchange in the different forms of this technical revolution (neo tech -
nics). Secondly, features of capitalist attitudes were already present in
the European mercantilist economy. These two factors enabled the
modernity of European industrial capitalism to impose itself as Modernity
at a world level.
Nevertheless, this ‘actually existing’ modernity, this capitalist modernity,
has constantly been revealing its cracks. The modernity of industrial capitalism
discards the possibility of a different relationship with nature and
continues to see it as an enemy that has to be worked, to be exploited.
As concerns the theme of the present work, it should be noted that one
116 Potential modernity can be described as the positive response of civilized life to
a factor hitherto unknown, that productive practice recognizes when it ‘perceives’
that the key to the productivity of human work no longer lies in the improvement or
inventive use of inherited technology but has moved on to concentrate on the invention
of new technologies. That is to say, not in the gradual perfecting of the old
tools, but in the planned introduction of new tools (Echeverría, 2008:11)
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