In the past few weeks and on the topic MEL Convention – Europe and the Freedom Movement, in the media space, there was an attempt to cancel the public debate led by various agents who, one way or another, took the opportunity to question whether the Right has a future as an alternative to the government, and what are the votes that should have the right to vote in public debate. For my part, this is more than just commenting on what happened there, or feeding a deeply uninteresting controversy, and MEL’s aspiration to be “a platform for civic intervention that can provide the public and political parties with reflections and measures that open up the horizon of hope for modernization and freedom for Portugal.“Sounds commendable, I will use the lines in this column to add my input to the discussion.

In my opinion, today we are in deep agony due to the inability to follow the disruptions of the second wave of the digital revolution, or Revolution 4.0., And to reconcile the political world and its actions with the countless economic and social transformations taking place, which is the fundamental root of omission not only of the right space. , but also of the entire party-political spectrum.

The modern state in the form in which we know it was conceived from the premises of popular legitimation of power, separation of powers, but, above all, from the idea that the state exists to protect citizens and promote the common good: people will be available to voluntarily renounce some their freedoms, obeying the laws of society and the state, in exchange for an atmosphere of peace and security in which everyone can have space to achieve their legitimate aspirations. This relationship between citizen and state has been metaphorically called the “social contract” and explained in ways that were not necessarily agreed upon by thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, or Rousseau.

The establishment of the modern state should also be seen as a political response to the period of economic growth that emerged from the first three industrial revolutions, during which the so-called Western world underwent an accelerated transition from a largely manufacturing-based economy to a manufacturing environment. in which automation, new forms of energy and raw materials have radically changed the living conditions of the entire population, having a direct impact on all aspects of daily life. If this confirmation of the Modern State and industrial revolutions (especially the restrictions imposed by the so-called “life in society”) coincides with a period of optimism and significant improvement in living conditions and freedom unprecedented in human history, this is not the case. However, this should make us forget that the process was not linear, and this did not prevent us from doing it in the conditions of obvious tension and the struggle against ideologies, which, especially in the 20th century, did everything to eliminate the separation of powers and weaken freedoms in the state itself. , design is a recipe for the Common Good, which does not recognize popular sovereignty, separation of powers, pluralism and the concept of happiness defined by each of them.

The third industrial revolution, which took place in the post-war period, between 1950 and 1970, was designed around computation, improvements in industrial systems and communications following the improvements resulting from mass industrialization associated with the second industrial revolution (1870-1945). ) relies heavily on the benefits of electricity and steel. Between 1970 and the end of the 20th century, the world economy was limited to improving the processes that had arisen as a result of previous disruptions, bringing production capacity to the limit, integrating them and spreading them throughout the planet: in geographic regions such as Japan, China and everything else. the countries of Southwest Asia or Central and South America have gone through – in their own way – in less than a century economic and social transformations that in Europe and the United States have stretched over several centuries.

With the turn of the new millennium, and only tangibly in the last ten years, the world has fallen prey to the upheavals of the fourth industrial revolution. The so-called 4.0 revolution. its transformational lever is the processing of data at a scale that was unthinkable just a few years ago. Integration of computing, large-scale processing and automation powered by Revolution 4.0 artificial intelligence. changed the way we feel about creativity, how we consume, how we work, how we learn or have fun, pushing the boundaries of production possibilities and the way we combine factors, far beyond the concepts of the previous period, generating formulas of knowledge and value that radically change the rules of life in society.

Unlike the Modern State, which was the political expression of three previous industrial revolutions, seizing the opportunity to establish itself in the economic and social expansion of that period, today we are witnessing a profound discrepancy between the political response and the ongoing disruptions. … Think about Welfare state, For example. This is in line with a political response that found support in the post-war climate of economic, demographic and social expansion and earned some degree of mutual recognition among democracies and even “non-democratic countries” in the 1950s and 1980s. Today, from the point of view of social security relations, we find that a significant part of public policy is gradually going beyond the aspirations of a significant part of citizens and, above all, the tasks and needs of the future. So, if there was already a full criminal record, some years agothat the pension system now includes deep intergenerational inequalities, with replacement rates when establishing pensions on a permanent basis at the peak; these predictions with glitches caused by the 4.0 revolution. they tend to be further questioned by not considering the impact that changes in the world of work and the circulation of skilled labor will have on the calculation of income. But not only: the existing system does not live up to the expectations of the new employee, who will have to reinvent himself several times throughout his life, manage his career and the moment of retirement in a completely different way due to the peculiarities of demographics. , an increase in life expectancy, geographical mobility, the release of contract work for more independent production, among other assumptions of the new era, which are not understood by the political system we inherited from the past.

And if the expiration of social security is a good example of the inability of modern states to respond to emerging challenges, in all areas there is no shortage of concrete expressions that show us how we are today invited to think about the present and the future according to the rules, new times and ongoing destruction. … We continue to discuss migration and migrants when it is time to deepen hybrid statutes of global citizenship, reflecting on how we allow mobility and finance education, health care, housing, welfare or work organization. We continue to design cities and mobility, forgetting that digitization will very quickly and profoundly change the way we think about space and time. We pretend not to understand that government currencies are increasingly becoming just a medium of exchange and less and less a store of value, while we accumulate deficits and debts in states, which at any time and at first glance can be abandoned by most of the them. valid and productive, who will tend to prefer more competitive areas of attraction for themselves and their own. As a political community, we cannot incorporate digital processes into society’s day-to-day response by wasting resources on ineffective actions while responding with tremendous fragility to issues such as aging, environmental sustainability, access to health care or housing, and skills that provide autonomy and support. … , or to justice as soon as possible. We don’t think at all about how to distribute the benefits of new disruptions and mitigate existing negative impacts whenever sudden changes occur. Even worse, we continue to ignore reality, instead of looking ahead, we drive, constantly looking in the rearview mirror.

Moments of destruction provide countless possibilities and allow wellbeing to be projected onto those who are attentive to signs and adjust to change. Moreover, it is during periods of failures and crises that the rules and values ​​of the subsequent cycle are determined. This is why we need – to simplify – a new social contract. Anticipate new rights and responsibilities in his articles and rekindle hope.

As we have seen with the assertion of modernity, which broke with previous modernity, the new social contract must necessarily distance itself from many assumptions that, being valid for two centuries, cannot project themselves into an integrated world. globalized and digital. We will still have to free ourselves from the myriad ideological bonds that prevent us from understanding the present and the future, which, when they arise, present themselves without anchors or references in the past, since they represent innovation, not just evolution.

There will be many people who enjoy painkilling themselves – and putting society to sleep with them – inappropriate. And not those who, in their ignorance, are blinded by the past, do not find in it the illusion of modernity. At a time when there are more than right-wing or left-wing parties, bastions defending ideological purity, poor restoration of the great lost flags of the 60s and 70s, or the re-edition of government policies of the past, there is an urgent need to find answers to these questions. challenges of time. Without them, we will continue to get poorer, older, and lost in hopelessness.