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This page offers a condensed text defining the intellectual and ethical concerns expressed in the texts published on the site under the title "development - modernity without shores".
The circumstances privileged me to be a direct witness of the phenomena occurring on the global and regional scene during the last half century, to be involved intellectually and morally.
Having served during the fifties in various positions in Customs, I acquired a working knowledge in trade and development issues. At the same time, I completed my studies and obtained a license in French law. A year that I spent, later on, in Sofia revealed to me some facts about certain practices of the communist regime.
In Geneva (1960-1970), I continued my academic formation, first with thorough studies in public international law, and then in economics and obtained a doctorate on the then hot topic: Culture and Economic Development in Syria and retarded countries1. This long stay in the country of Calvin, Rousseau, and UN organizations enriched me with a cultural experience extremely useful for understanding development issues and international relations.
When went back home, I had the opportunity to engage in various pursuits: scientific research, journalism, conferences, top economic adviser, and consultant for the UNIDO to study development in Mauritania where I was able to find out the bitter reality of underdevelopment due -to a far extent- to the irresponsible greed of imperialism.
Our contemporary era has seen 4 fundamental development projects, alternatives to the liberal capitalist project:
Responsible of developing the Western modernity and the industrial revolution, going through a general crisis from 1914 and falling into bankruptcy during the Great Depression and its aftermath, the then liberal project disappeared from the scene. Apparent disappearance certainly, since it will lead immediately to it countering its rebellious offspring, a merciless war called "Cold War", which led to enormous waste and inflamed the entire planet, pushing the entire humanity into a state of exhausting lassitude, and thereby paving the way to the triumphant coming back of conservative forces.
These, then (in the 80s) started the building of the neoliberal project which -taking advantage particularly of the collapse of socialism and the brilliant scientific revolution- became very attractive and conquered the world. We witnessed then a full reversal of the global system, the collapse of previous projects, and even a denigration of the ideas that had always been the splendour of the West, those of the Enlightenment, modernity, progress, etc... On the contrary, and at the same time, it spread the borderless globalization and its unique discourse of the "global village".
Like countless people in Europe and elsewhere, I lived those times with feelings of anxiety and apprehension, and posed troubling questions that aroused in my mind a sort of crisis of conscience: What are the reasons of those reversals, of those errors, of those unprecedented extremes? Were our hopes for a better world extravagant, erroneous? Is life purely animal, nonsensical? Or is this a game of objective forces of the long movement of history? How then to imagine our days ahead?
The questioning then guided me beyond economics, to social sciences, political philosophy in particular, to better understand the reality, the conditions of its transformation and the potential role that can be played by man. In short, a sort of upheaval began to take place in my culture, constantly questioning the way I see and judge things and myself.
But what about the real world? Did the neoliberal project keep its fantastic promises?
What we are witnessing during the past two decades seems to be frankly disappointing and even aberrant: Wars, crises, violence, terrorism, fanaticism, widespread hubris close to madness, disenchantment everywhere -our Arab region being the best served.
Is this the rout of the neoliberal "madness", as tend to show the gigantic bankruptcies, the endless wars, the current financial crisis (2008-2009) and the great economic storm that blows?
Are we thus nearing the ruin? Perhaps not, but in any case, this proves the failure of the project, its "de-legitimacy", signs of a world that is coming to an end and, on the other hand, another world that buds.
The state of the world, therefore, does not open on to a "Happy Tomorrow"; quite the contrary. "There is no alternative", never stop proclaiming with arrogance the followers of globalization and many others -although not for the same reasons. Is the catastrophe, therefore, the only alternative?
The alternative! That's the secret, the key question that is posed today on humanity. It does not come, however, out of the mind of some genius. Let's notice, though, that it has begun to build up, there's been already a century or so. Unsuccessful attempts, certainly, but this is not the end of the world. This is then the business of the reality, of the history. But what is the reality, if not the actions of men on themselves and on the things? So this is our task -people of the 21st century-; certainly a long-term task, thus it is the task of the coming active generations. The history and especially the great upheavals of the last century taught us that the development is not linear, it is a circular dialectical process, complex, and without shores, and thus we must "know how to wait", but at the same time and above all know how to prepare the ground for the change. In such a global dialectic lays the ambition of the works on the site.
1. The term "retarded", coined by the author in this thesis itself, emphasizes the fact that the development is hindered especially by some forces inherent in the dominant system.