[asia-apec 164] Lutheran leader attacks 'totalitarian' global economy

[daga]

Lutheran leader attacks 'totalitarian' global economy
Ecumenical News International, 9 October 1996   
by Stephen Brown

The president of the Lutheran World Federation has launched an outspoken
attack on the international economic system, describing the all-embracing
free market economy as the "most modern form of totalitarianism," and
calling on the LWF to resist the "destructive forces" of globalisation.

Gottfried Brakemeier, a prominent Lutheran theologian from Brazil, told the
opening session on 24 September of a meeting in Geneva of the LWF's council
- or governing body - that "by globalising the market", neo-liberalism had
"undermined the hard-fought-for social guarantees of the nation states".

"The welfare state is crumbling and being ridiculed. Poverty is growing.
Justice only exists in the form of the law of the fittest," Brakemeier said.

Pointing to the example of the Internet - the world-wide computer network -
Brakemeier said the process of globalisation was developing a "breathtaking
dynamic". The LWF was called, he said, "to resist, not globalisation per se
- for this is something that cannot be undone - but the destructive forces
it releases."

Human rights and labour rights were excluded from this process of
globalisation. "If we had global rules [in these areas] things would be
different. We have an Olympic games without rules - and that is war, that is
not competition," Brakemeier said.

"How could the Lutheran World Federation be true to itself it it capitulated
in the world economic war euphemistically called international competition?"
Brakemeier asked the LWF Council. "It will have to insist that global
justice prevails, and, with many allies, fight for the establishment of the
necessary structures on the planet."

The LWF has 122 member churches which between them represent 56 million
Lutherans world-wide. This year's meeting of the LWF council is particularly
significant, as it is the last full council meeting before next year's LWF
Assembly which takes place in Hong Kong a week after the handover of power
to the People's Republic of China. Next year will also be the 50th
anniversary of the founding of the LWF. 
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