Prédicas para débiles mentales (fin) / Oswaldo Barreto

Sermons for Mental Weaklings (end)

It is surely under the influence of what Marx wrote in that famous first chapter of his magnum opus that all the world’s dictionaries today define merchandise as the Larousse does in all its languages: “product that is sold and bought.” Consequently, from the air of Paris or less exotic mechanical pencils to the most sophisticated scientific knowledge or surgical techniques, at the moment they’re produced to be sold, they become merchandise. But this is where Mr. Monedero has arrived to reveal for us that this isn’t true, that the real truth and, moreover, the truly revolutionary truth is, there are products “that are public: electricity, water, food, health, a basic education, banks” and others that are not, such as the means of production. And to build the new gospel on the base of this revolutionary axiom: Above all, he asks us to accept without hesitation that “The State has to regulate public goods,” since “it is barbaric for there to be obstacles for accessing essential goods because their production and distribution is privatized by determined companies who in an inhumane manner have merchandised elements essential for human development.” And, as a fundamental reason to fervently support the firm crusade to which his gospel invites us, he spits out this other luminous axiom with candor: “Common sense itself tells us that the right to eat is above the right to private property.”

So then, during this phase of the construction of 21st century socialism, we should abhor and persecute the private property of public goods such as health care, at the risk of unleashing the anger of you know who and of Monedero himself who can also get very angry (since for him “those businesses are enemies of humanity and I have no sympathy for them”). Against all the fears that tend to be induced by evangelical sermons, we should merely remind Monedero that the real problem facing humanity for a while now is not the lack of awareness that “the right to eat is above the right to private property” but that instead, unfortunately, private property has been revealed as indispensable for satisfactorily providing food to any type of people.




{ Oswaldo Barreto, Tal Cual, 2 October 2007 }