A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

Chapter III
THE COMMON GOOD OF HUMANITY SEEN FROM
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
1 The Workers’ Movement
A COMMENT FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF WORKERS 123
EDUARDO ESTÉVEZ MARTIN 124
The ‘common good’ and the conservation of the ‘common goods’ have
been fundamental objectives of the workers’ movement, which later developed
into a trade union movement and is now moving towards the
building of a movement of workers. It is a contradictory concept of the
model of neo-liberal capitalism from which we are presently suffering
and that favours individualism and the accumulation of wealth in the
hands of a minority which is richer every day, with a growing majority
that every day is poorer and more marginalized.
The text certainly deepens the analysis and situates it in the present serious
systemic crisis that is overwhelming the [whole] world, particularly
the more developed countries, although it doubtless have an impact on
the whole of humanity if governments do not succeed in taking over responsibility
for the control of the financial world.
In fact, at the present time the responsibility of the State as a guarantee
of the ‘common good’ is being influenced, limited or greatly conditioned
by the financial groups, linked to the huge transnational corporations (oil
companies, medical laboratories, agro-industrial complexes, agro-chem-
123 This is a personal comment. However, it is based on different documents, declarations
and positions taken by organizations.
124 Former Secretary General of the Latin American Confederation of Public Service
Workers (CLATSEP), ex Assistant Secretary General of the World Confederation of
Labour (WCL). Adviser to the Argentine Workers’ Central Union and other worker
organizations in Latin America
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