A speech by François Houtart, a Belgian sociologist, the winner of 2009 UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize
Millions of people deserve the Madansheet Singh prize: all those who, by combining their efforts in spite of their differences of culture, religion and philosophical convictions, have not lost their hope of transforming a world subjected to the logic of the market. In response to the cries of the oppressed and those of the earth, they are trying to build societies in which justice becomes a central value and spirituality regains its rightful place. This is the reason why it is worthwhile reflecting, in the spirit of this prize, on tolerance and non-violence in a world that needs to be transformed.
To put tolerance into practice presupposes the recognition that there are situations that cannot be tolerated. The financial speculation, which is largely responsible for the food crises in 2007 and 2008, thrust more than 100 million people below the poverty threshold, into destitution and hunger. That is intolerable.
To emit increasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, while devastating the places that absorb them like the forests and oceans, is also just as intolerable. Lobbying the international organizations, at the European and world level, like the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, in order that the rights of the market prevail over the rights to life, is intolerable. To establish networks of military bases over the planet to control natural resources, especially of energy, and not to hesitate in launching war to guarantee such control: this also is intolerable.
To promote and reproduce an economy that creates immense wealth that ignores externalities – that is, the ecological and social destruction that is not taken into account in economic calculations – is intolerable. To accept that the distribution of assets serves as a source of inequality never attained before in history is no less intolerable. True, millions of people have also risen out of poverty but at the same time hundreds of millions of others have stayed there or been precipitated into destitution, which is intolerable.
As for non-violence being a basic element in human relationships, this requires tackling the causes of violence, that is, the economic, social and political structures that oppress people and groups, to the point of denying them the right to exist. The advance of humanity is strewn with struggles and their violence or non-violence testifies to the refusal of the dominant classes to cede their power and their privileges. Today, the convergence of social resistance has become the means of creating a new historical subject in the progress towards emancipation. The movements of landless peasants, worker unions, indigenous peoples’ movements, women’s movements, religious organizations, committed intellectuals, political regroupings can tilt the balance of power, thus making it possible to build other kinds of society.
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