This article aims to demonstrate the need for a new Enlightenment project to end the calvary in which humanity is subjected throughout history that reached its highest level during the existence of capitalism in the contemporary era, striving for the construction of a new model of society that provides benefits for all human beings. Calvary means martyrdom, suffering. An observer attentive to what happens in the world realizes the calvary suffered by humanity throughout history. This calvary is characterized by the exploitation of man by man with slavery during Antiquity, serfdom during feudalism in the Middle Ages and wage labor during capitalism from the 12th century to the contemporary era that contributes to the growth of social inequalities, the increase in crime and violence among human beings, the restriction of political freedoms in many countries and the escalation of international conflicts and terrorism.

1. 1
IN DEFENSE OF A NEW ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT TO SOCIETY TO END
THE HUMAN CALVARY IN THE WORLD
Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to demonstrate the need for a new Enlightenment project to end the
calvary in which humanity is subjected throughout history that reached its highest level
during the existence of capitalism in the contemporary era, striving for the construction
of a new model of society that provides benefits for all human beings. Calvary means
martyrdom, suffering. An observer attentive to what happens in the world realizes the
calvary suffered by humanity throughout history. This calvary is characterized by the
exploitation of man by man with slavery during Antiquity, serfdom during feudalism in
the Middle Ages and wage labor during capitalism from the 12th century to the
contemporary era that contributes to the growth of social inequalities, the increase in
crime and violence among human beings, the restriction of political freedoms in many
countries and the escalation of international conflicts and terrorism.
1. The calvary of humanity.
The calvary of humanity begins with slavery in Antiquity, evolved into serfdom in the
Middle Ages that were maintained in various forms in various parts of the world until the
contemporary era. Slavery is an “institution” of the oldest in human history, and at the
same time a problem of the present. Slavery operated in the early civilizations (such as
Sumer, in Mesopotamia in 3500 BC). It became common in much of Europe during the
early Middle Ages and continued into the following centuries. Slavery occurred with
prisoners of war, for debt, punishment for crime, abandoned children and the birth of
slave children born to slaves. Slavery arose in Antiquity due to the labor needs created by
the invention of agriculture, when certain groups began to apply to slaves the same
processes and the same instruments that they already used not only to control animals,
such as the corral, the collar, the halter, the whip and the castration, but also to distinguish
the possession, as the brand with burning iron and the cut in the ear.
With the end of slavery with the fall of the Roman Empire, there was a consolidation of
the feudal system in the High Middle Ages in Europe in which the new social class that
was emerging at that time - the great landowners - created the financial dependence of a
lower class which was subordinate to these owners: the serfs who were workers on the
large lands commanded by the “feudal lords” and lived in the vicinity of the property.
They were linked to land through work and had no right to wages or benefits; they worked
to live there and received the necessary supplies to feed themselves and survive. Unlike
slaves, serfs could not be sold by feudal lords. They were responsible for the labor of the
property, taking care of the agricultural part. Some women took care of the owner's
domestic service and, at the same time, the local plantation.
Although slavery was abolished in Europe in the Middle Ages, the use of slavery is
observed during the colonization of the Americas with the African slave trade, the starting
point for the formation of modern overseas states and empires. From the 18th century
until the end of the First World War, a second structural period in the history of slavery
in the West was established, characterized by the development of imperialism,
particularly the British, and industrial capitalism, marked by the shadow of slavery that
contradicts the ideologies of free labor and of European civilization mission. In Brazil,

2. 2
the signing of the Áurea law, on May 13, 1888, decreed the end of the right of property
of one person under another, but the work similar to the slave was maintained in another
way. The most found form after slavery in Brazil is that of servitude, or "peonage", for
debt. In it, the person put his own ability to work or that of people under his responsibility
(wife, children, parents) to settle an account. About 40.3 million people worldwide were
subjected to activities similar to slavery in 2016, according to the 2018 Global Slavery
Index report, published by the Walk Free foundation and presented at the UN. In Brazil,
almost 370 thousand people are subjected to activities similar to slavery.
Slavery and serfdom are forms of exploitation of man-by-man that have been replaced by
wage labor since capitalism came into existence in the 14th century. The calvary of
mankind continued, too, under capitalism. According to Marx, all wealth in society is the
product of work, created by the physical and mental efforts of the working class. Profits,
which mean return on capital, are how Marx explained nothing more than unpaid labor
to the working class, that is, the difference between the value that is produced and the
value that reverts to workers in the form of wages. An increasing rate of profit, therefore,
only implies an increasing exploitation of the working class, which necessarily means a
greater part of the wealth in society accumulating in the hands of the capitalists - a small
elite of exploiters. Marx demonstrated in his three volumes of Capital (Boitempo
Editorial, São Paulo, 2013) how, by various means, capitalism can exploit the working
class for greater profits: 1) extending the working day, through an intensification of work
within a given time; and, 2) increasing the efficiency and productivity of workers, by
replacing work with machines, etc. All of this is reflected in the increase in the proportion
of unpaid work in relation to the value of what is produced by workers.
This type of exploitation is inherent to capitalism. If workers do not get back the full value
of their labor - which is necessarily the case in a system of private ownership and
production for profit - then they cannot buy back all the goods they produce. This situation
tends to create situations of overproduction that, historically, have resulted in a fall in
production and an increase in unemployment, which inevitably leads to crises tending to
depression like the one we experienced in 1929 and today, in which all the accumulated
contradictions in the world capitalist system are getting worse. Marx shows the real
causes of social inequalities that are related to the expropriation of workers' income by
capitalists who own the means of production. To overcome this problem, Karl Marx
defends the end of capitalism with the implantation of socialism and, later, communism
to end social inequalities.
Social inequalities have been increasing across the globe. Thomas Piketty states in his
book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, published by The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2014, that free market capitalism has
tended, throughout history, to produce increasing levels of inequality. This is exactly
Marx's theoretical conclusion, in the first volume of his version of Capital. In Marx's
Capital, inequality is seen not as the result of the distribution of wealth as Piketty's Capital
in the 21st Century presents, but as an inevitable result of the production of wealth under
capitalism.
The increase in crime and violence among human beings is increasing worldwide.
Violence kills more than 1.6 million people worldwide each year, according to a report
released by the World Health Organization (WHO). Today, violence is the main cause of
deaths of people between 15 and 44 years old, accounting for 14% of deaths for men and

3. 3
7% of deaths for women [See the article Violência no mundo mata 1,6 milhão de pessoas
por ano (Violence in the world kills 1.6 million people per year) published on the website
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/notícias/2002/021003_violenciamv.shtm>]. In the
past 30 years, homicide victims in Brazil have reached more than 1 million people [See
the article Violência no Brasil: pior que Iraque, Angola e Afeganistão (Violence in Brazil:
worse than Iraq, Angola and Afghanistan) published on the website
<http://blogdotas.terra.com.br/2011/12/28/violencia-no-brasil-pior-que-iraque-angola-e-
afeganistao/>].
Political freedoms are being curtailed in many countries. Currently, 49 countries in the
world live under a dictatorial regime - according to a survey by Freedom House, an
American NGO that annually monitors democracies around the world. The NGO's 2018
report informs that there is a global democratic crisis - since, for the 12th year in a row,
Freedom House found a “negative balance”: the number of countries that suffered from
turns towards authoritarianism was greater than that of nations that have had positive
developments in their democratic systems. These nations do not allow periodic popular
voting to choose the rulers, nor do they allow freedom of expression. In some of them,
governments say they are democratic and even organize elections. However, opposition
candidates are always threatened and end up giving up or dying "mysteriously" just before
the election and there are several accusations of fraud in the elections.
The escalation of international conflicts is increasing worldwide. There are several
countries that can become the focus of international conflicts in the world, especially
Syria, Palestine, Israel, Iran and North Korea. Igor Gielow, an expert in international
journalism who covered conflicts in Lebanon, Israel, Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan,
among other countries, made a prognosis about the main risks of international conflict
that humanity would run in 2018, presented in the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. The main
risks of conflict in the world in 2018 were evaluated by analysts from consultancies and
institutions such as the Council on Foreign Relations (USA), Geopolitical Futures (USA),
International Institute for Strategic Studies (United Kingdom), the Analysis Center
Strategies and Technology (Russia) and others. A war between the US and North Korea,
involving South Korea and Japan, confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia following
a missile attack by Shi'ite rebels in Yemen against Riyadh, a new intifada, coupled with
a coordinated attack of Hizbullah against Israel, civil war in Venezuela, Islamic terrorism
in Europe and North America and widespread cyber attacks are some of the risks that
threaten humanity [GIELOW, Igor. Saiba quais são os principais riscos que a
humanidade corre em 2018 (Find out what are the main risks that humanity runs in 2018).
Available on the website <http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2017/12/1946506-
saiba-quais-sao-os-principais-riscos-que-a-humanidade-corre-em-2018.shtml>, 2017).
The escalation of terrorism tends to grow in the world. Any act or organization that uses
violent or threatening methods to achieve a particular political objective can be
considered as terrorists. Thus, kidnappings, attacks on public and private places, air
strikes, murders or other forms of aggression can be related to terrorism. The world is
currently experiencing two types of globalized terrorism: 1) State terrorism practiced by
the great capitalist powers, especially by the ruling sectors of the United States and their
allies aimed at the conquest of natural resources and the domination of the markets of the
peripheral capitalist countries; and, 2) the terrorism practiced by organizations that react
to imperialist action all over the world, especially Arabs, fighting the military occupation
of their countries by the western powers, as occurs in Iraq and Afghanistan, or acting in

4. 4
the central capitalist countries, as evidenced by the attack on the World Trade Center in
New York.
2. The failure of the Enlightenment, Modernity and Socialism to change the world
for the benefit of humanity
There were three major events in the history of humanity that brought much hope that
building a world and a new man would begin with the removal of the chains of oppression
in thought, the elimination of social inequalities and restrictions on the process of
development. The first major event concerns the Enlightenment, the second, the birth of
Modernity and, the third, the construction of Socialism. With the Enlightenment,
tolerance, humanism and respect for nature were expected to prevail and the right to
freedom and equality between men would be affirmed. With Modernity, it was expected
that society would, in turn, achieve uninterrupted progress for the benefit of humanity
thanks to science and technology. With Socialism, the emancipation of humanity was
expected with the end of the exploitation of man by man, the elimination of social
inequalities and the achievement of happiness for all human beings in an egalitarian
society.
It should be noted that the Enlightenment is the name given to the ideology that was being
developed and incorporated by the bourgeoisie in Europe from the revolutionary struggles
of the late 18th century whose themes revolved around Freedom, Progress and Man. The
purpose of the Enlightenment was to correct society's inequalities and guarantee the
individual's natural rights, such as freedom and the free possession of goods. The
eighteenth-century Enlightenment humanism already proposed that the human being and
his dignity be the center and fundamental value of all sciences, thus also imposing that he
should be the utmost concern of every legal system.
The Enlightenment provided the motto of the French Revolution (Freedom, Equality and
Fraternity) and fertilized it as its followers opposed injustices, religious intolerance and
the privileges of absolutism. The political theses of the Enlightenment were driven by the
ideal of freedom, equality and fraternity that never happened anywhere in the world. Since
the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789 until the present
moment, the political promises of the Enlightenment have been abandoned throughout
the world with the adoption of imperialist practices by the bourgeoisies and the
governments of the great capitalist powers associated with them, the triggering of 3 world
wars (1st World War, 2nd World War and the Cold War), the advent of fascism and
Nazism, the realization of military interventions and the support of coups d'état in several
countries on the capitalist periphery.
The failure of the Enlightenment paved the way for the advent of Marxist ideology around
the world that proposed to take a step forward with the construction of Socialism seeking
the end of the exploitation of man by man with the reduction of economic inequalities
between social classes and , in the future, its complete abolition. The facts of history show
that the Enlightenment theses that guided the bourgeois revolutions in the 18th century
and the Marxist theses on the basis of which the socialist revolutions were carried out in
the 20th century failed because they did not fulfill their historic promises to achieve
human happiness.

5. 5
Socialism failed in the Soviet Union and other countries throughout the twentieth century
because the holders of power had their historic opportunity based on a two-step strategy
to transform the world (take over state power, then transform it ), and who had not
fulfilled their historic promise. Socialism failed in the world because it did not adopt the
universal motto of “freedom, equality and fraternity” aiming at achieving the happiness
of human beings, seeking only the equality that has not been achieved in practice
anywhere, not even with the implantation of dictatorships and the terror regime. Socialism
failed because it did not provide the happiness for human beings that can only be obtained
insofar as the motto "Freedom, Equality, Fraternity" as an inheritance of the
Enlightenment at the end of the 17th century and invoked for the first time during the
French Revolution be placed in practice. This motto is universal because it reflects the
desires of all human beings, becoming the cry of activists in favor of democracy and the
overthrow of oppressive governments and tyrants of all kinds and which, erroneously,
was only associated with the bourgeois revolutions that occurred in history , and it was
not adopted in the socialist revolutions that occurred in the world, but only the search for
equality. This was one of the main factors responsible for the failure of socialism in the
world. Therefore, the search for equality is not enough to win the people's happiness (See
the article The causes of failure in the construction of socialism and its future by us on
the website
https://www.academia.edu/44220949/THE_CAUSES_OF_FAILURE_IN_THE_CONS
TRUCTION_OF_SOCIALISM_AND_ITS_FUTURE).
Modernity, in its turn, was born in the 18th century with the 1st Industrial Revolution
meaning an extraordinary intellectual effort by Enlightenment thinkers to develop science
and reason and discover universal laws. Science has acquired a fundamental importance
for human progress, through continuous technological innovations. The idea was to use
the accumulation of knowledge generated in pursuit of human emancipation and the
enrichment of daily life. Modernity is also defined as a period identified with the belief
in the progress and ideals of the Enlightenment. However, what was observed was that
the expectations regarding the fruits of science were painfully interrupted by events that
marked today's society. The main one was undoubtedly the catastrophes of World War I
and II. In fact, science contributed to the barbarism of two world wars with the invention
of powerful and destructive weapons. Science and technology came to be used for good
and for evil.
Add the fact that science has lost its value because of disillusionment with the benefits
that associated with technology has brought to humanity. All of this scientific
development has culminated in the current era with a global ecological crisis that can
result in catastrophic global climate change. In this sense, one can doubt the real benefits
brought by scientific and technological progress. In their work A Dialética do
Esclarecimento (The Dialectic of Enlightenment), Zahar Editora, 1985, Theodor Adorno
and Max Horkheimer deconstruct the myth that the Enlightenment would bring freedom
by investing men in the position of masters, for overcoming domination itself, which was
replaced by the reason of market capitalism. In turn, control over nature had been
maintained, but worsened in the form of domination over men. And market capitalism
has become the privileged instance of this type of control. Being global and ubiquitous,
market capitalism has the necessary technique, provided by science, to make men cogs in
its engine, canceling them out, through the economic principle of total competition. The
totalitarianism of market capitalism extinguishes autonomous thinking and reinforces

6. 6
uniformity and unanimity in a mass, amorphous society as we live in the contemporary
era in the world.
Associated, distant from individuals, capitalism, science and technology, now merged as
if they were a single instance, they consolidate their supremacy over contemporary
society, determining their directions with the same boldness and impersonality of an
invisible hand, according to Adorno and Horkheimer. Michael Lowy, a Franco-Brazilian
sociologist and philosopher, says that modern barbarism or “barbarism generated within
so-called civilized societies” is characterized by the use of modern technical means
(industrialization of homicide, mass extermination thanks to cutting-edge scientific
technologies), for the impersonality of the massacre (entire populations - men and
women, children and the elderly - are "eliminated", with the least possible personal
contact between decision makers and victims), bureaucratic, administrative, effective,
planned, "rational" management (in instrumental terms) of barbaric acts and the use of
legitimizing ideology of the modern type: biological, hygienic, scientific [See Barbárie e
modernidade no século 20 (Barbarie and modernity in the 20th) century by Michael
Lowy, published in Brazil by the newspaper "Em Tempo" - emtempo@ax.apc.org and,
originally in French, in the magazine "Critique Communiste" nº 157, hiver 2000].
3. How to change the world to end human calvary
How to build a new society that contributes to the end of capitalism to end the human
calvary represented by the exploitation of man-by-man, social inequalities and violence
against human beings to enable the use of science and technology for the benefit of all
humanity and the achievement of happiness for all human beings? The solution proposed
by Karl Marx to bring an end to capitalism is the implantation of socialism and, later,
communism, which is considered utopian by many analysts in view of the failure of real
socialism implanted in the Soviet Union and other countries. Eric Hobsbawn offered an
answer to this dilemma in an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian on
16/04/2009, under the title Pressupostos teóricos da "economia mista" (Theoretical
assumptions of the "mixed economy"), when he stated that we know two practical attempts
to realize both the socialist and capitalist systems neoliberal, in its pure form: on the one
hand, the centrally planned, Soviet-type economies of state planning; on the other, the
free-market capitalist economy is exempt from any restriction and control. The first came
down in the 1980s, and with them the European communist political systems; the second
is decomposing before our eyes in the biggest crisis of global capitalism that occurred in
2008.
Hobsbawm said the future belongs to mixed economies in which the public and the
private are mutually linked in one way or another. This means that Social Democracy
with the welfare state, the most successful system ever implemented in the world, which
incorporates the most positive elements of both socialism and capitalism, especially in
Scandinavian countries, where the aim is to put into practice the universal motto of
freedom, equality and fraternity, could be the solution to the problem of restrictions on
the exercise of freedom in various countries of the world, the growing social inequality
that overwhelms the planet on which we live and the lack of fraternity among human
beings.
Social Democracy with the welfare state, which incorporates elements of both socialism
and capitalism, the most successful system ever implemented in the world, especially in

7. 7
Scandinavian countries, is an example of a mixed economy suggested by Hobsbawn that
could be adopted in the future after the neoliberal “tsunami” that dominates the planet we
live on. Scandinavian countries are those with the best economic and social indicators in
the world. In 2013, The Economist magazine stated that the Nordic countries are probably
the best governed countries in the world. The UN's World Happiness Report 2020 shows
that the happiest nations are concentrated in Northern Europe. Nordics have the highest
ranking in real GDP per capita, the highest healthy life expectancy, the greatest freedom
to make life choices and the greatest generosity.
From 2013 to today, whenever the UN World Happiness Report (WHR) publishes its
annual country ranking, the five Scandinavian or Nordic countries - Finland, Denmark,
Norway, Sweden and Iceland - are all in the top ten first in the world, with the Nordic
countries occupying the first three places (See the website
<https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/the-nordic-exceptionalism-what-explains-why-
the-nordic-countries-are-constantly-among-the-happiest-in-the-world/>). The highest
measure of happiness achieved by Scandinavian countries results from the fact that they
have practice a high level of democracy and respect for political rights, the absence of
corruption, trust among citizens, security felt by the population, social cohesion, gender
equality , equal income distribution and high Human Development Index. These
indicators place the Nordic countries in the top global positions.
Scandinavian social democracy can be considered as a paradigm of a new model of
society to be built in substitution of capitalism because the social democracy built until
today in Scandinavian countries is the only model of society that allowed simultaneous
economic, social and political advances. The Nordic or Scandinavian model of social
democracy could best be described as a kind of compromise between capitalism and
socialism. It is neither totally capitalist nor totally socialist, being the attempt to merge
the most desirable elements of both into a "hybrid" system.
In addition to building Scandinavian social democracy to replace capitalism in every
country in the world, it is necessary to establish a world government to promote progress
in international relations aimed at eliminating chaos in the world economy, guaranteeing
world peace and preventing the degradation of the environment. planet's environment.
The world government should be elected by the world parliament to be constituted with
the participation of countries around the world. World government is necessary because
the world economy operates chaotically without any planning and control, international
relations do not have a global body capable of mediating conflicts, preventing wars,
guaranteeing world peace and the planet's environment is threatened by the depletion of
natural resources and climate change that can be catastrophic for humanity. Current
international organizations, such as UN, IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization,
among others, do not have the power to promote progress in international relations on the
planet.
As long as humanity does not build a common world power, the law of the jungle will
prevail, this is the state of nature at the international level. Until the emergence of a world
government, international relations will be governed by the law of the strongest. And this
is the worst scenario because no country, no matter how powerful, will be able to build
world peace or solve the planet's problems. The main cause of international insecurity is
the lack of a common world power and the only way to do that is for all national states to
consent to share their sovereignty with a world government. This means that national

8. 8
governments would continue to exercise full powers in their territory, but, in terms of
international relations, they would accept the decisions taken by the world parliament
representing all the countries in the world that would have the world government as
executor.
The economic, financial, ecological, social and political crises, the development of
current illegal and criminal activities and the advance of terrorism show that they are
insoluble without the existence of a world government. It is necessary to understand that
the problems that affect the world economy and the global environment and those that
contribute to the advance of terrorism can only be solved with the existence of a truly
democratic world government representative of all the peoples of the world. International
law cannot be applied and respected without the presence of a world government that is
accepted by all countries and ensures their governability.
4. Conclusions
From the above, the bases of a new model of society are established that would make it
possible to build a world of peace and progress for humanity. The disappearance in
today's world of the last reserves of critical rationality advocated by the Enlightenment
and the failure of Modernity and Socialism, which have degraded in successive processes
of self-destruction over time, require contemporary thinkers to mobilize themselves in the
reinvention of a new project Enlightenment as the eighteenth century thinkers did based
on what we have just proposed aiming at the construction of a new world that brings to
an end the calvary of humanity.
To enable the construction of social democracy in Scandinavian molds in every country
in the world and a world government we must adopt the strategy proposed by us in our
book Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (How to invent the future to change
the world), published by Editora CRV de Curitiba in 2019, which considers it is
necessary, at the outset, to establish a World Forum for Peace and the Progress of
Humanity by civil society organizations from all countries of the world. In this Forum,
the objectives and strategies of a world movement for the construction of social
democracy in Scandinavian molds in each country of the world and for the constitution
of a government and a world parliament should be discussed and established in order to
sensitize the world population and national governments in order making a world in which
freedom, equality and fraternity prevail in every country in the world and international
peace and progress for all humanity. This would be the path that would make it possible
to transform the utopia of universal fraternization into reality and end humanity's calvary.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System,
member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional
Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of
strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the
books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem
Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os
condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de
Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora
Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos
na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica,
Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate

9. 9
ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores
Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no
Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba,
2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV,
Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua
convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro
para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).