A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

8 Today´s World and the Winding
SEARCH FOR THE COMMON GOOD
AURELIO ALONSO
The lines that follow are both mine and not mine. They are mine because
I have written them and they express my thoughts, — though imperfect,
in an unfinished process of formation. “As it should be!”, anyone wanting
to obviate this clarification would sensibly say. But I do it anyway, to
avoid the risk that my opinions seem apodictic. They are not, because
they simply express reflections motivated by the reading and exchanges
of opinions had with François Houtart 173 about the world that the turn of
the century has left us, the catastrophic plans which imperial hegemony
presages, the unexpected revival, with voices and a say, of the American
protest, the possibilities to construct the other unresolved America, and
the commitment of a generation to find solutions and routes for the survival
of mankind. Routes that can only be conceived in the universal,
theoretical and practical recovery of the Common Good of Humanity.
A few days ago I heard Eduardo Galeano assert, before reading some
passages from his next book, and with that inexhaustible ingenuity
which characterizes him, that he had reached the conclusion that time
determines space. I did not take it too seriously from the outset, but his
statement did not abandon me, and refloated in my memory when I was
looking for the general scenario which would provide a context for these
appraisals.
Today, as never before in history, it is essential to start from the fact that
we are moving between extremes in a world with no cervices or recesses:
that of the global system and the local system, to say it briefly
and simply. The totum – that which, in this case, Inmanuel Wallerstein
173 I refer to François Houtart´s essays, “From the common goods to the Common
Good of Mankind” and “The Concept of sumak kawsai and its correspondence
to the Common Good of Mankind”, both included in this volume.
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