In defense of the public university

National
Nationalism
In defense of the public university
By: Carlos Damián January 2, 2012
Socialism and homeland
México. - The press informs for umpteenth time on the federal government's intentions of reducing the budget of the public universities. It doesn't understand each other that of these institutions the future of Mexico depends and that when strangling its financing, it is mortgaged the general advance of the education, the science and the national technology, and in consequence, it is increased backwardness, the dependence and the articulation disadvantage in the process of capitalist globalization. The economic hardship has already affected the relief generacional in most of our work centers, impeding the worthy jubilation to which we have dues of those who have given its life to the teaching professional and the investigation, and in turn, making practically impossible that new charges exist for the young graduates.

Following the prevailing neoliberal pattern and government's style, sectarian and excluding, a disloyal competition has been fomented by scholarships, funds and academic dowries to the interior of the universities and public investigation centers, facilitating the creation of groups of power that rivals eliminate, they pursue divergent opinions and they suspect of the intellectual creativity.

Even, several authorities of university spaces, investigation and formation of human resources, they have given the alarm voice about the separation of the collegiate life and the loss of values generated by the imposition of a model of “administrative excellence” in our institutions of public character. However, these politicians seem to have been assumed by university colleagues that reproduce the styles of corruption daily, opportunism, intolerance, mediocrity, abuse and prevailing greed in the federal and local government's instances.

It is urgent that investigators and educational we leave this individualistic model of competitions that the educational politicians have imposed in the academic means of the country behind. Let us fulfill our commitment of substitution generacional and let us make the possible thing to leave the new generations a more generous and more independent academic life, with an enough budget and in accordance with the national interests, to reconstitute universities, investigation centers and educational aware of their paper in the construction of a fairer and more democratic Mexico that the one that now have.

For we propose it a consistent strategy in summoning to a first meeting of academics interested in transforming the current dependence relationship among the universities, investigation centers and educational with the Mexican State, with the purpose of making a diagnosis and a combined proposal that it will be presented to the civil society and the powers executive and legislative.

A new democratic model in the Mexican State
In this proposal we reject that Mexico has as only option for the development, the implementation of a model centered in the control of the inflation and the public deficit but unable of to generate employments and to grow distributing the economic and social resources in an equal it. For what we think that we should assume the following points: 1). to guarantee the access from the whole population to the well-being, recognizing that no society can prosper if it is divided by big breaches of economic inequality; 2). to build a social state of right been founded in an unyielding democratic vocation and with the capacity to become the great one relating for the integration and the social cohesion; 3). to build a generating economy of employment and with distributive capacity of the entrance in order to break up with the logical concentrate of wealth, and that it allows to guarantee levels of worthy life for all the Mexicans;

4). to sketch the social politics, with the central objective of building citizenship, to guide and to give cohesion to the national development. This social politics will deploy its centrality in a planning system directed to overcome the regional disparities and to recover the sense of a solidarity and fair nation for all; 5). to redefine the priorities of the social development, in order to build a society for all the ages, in which the coexistence and intergenerational solidarity are in the base of the social relationships, and an appropriate Mexico guarantee for the childhood, all the youths' including and able of protecting in the age, having as axis rector the right to an active aging.

6). to participate actively in the construction and fair globalization, in order to stop that the regional and planetary inequality continues being deepened, having as main objective the solidarity and peaceful relationship among the nations, as well as to promote a new dialogue intercultural and of international fraternity. Based on above-mentioned we should restate the mechanisms by means of those which to give to our country a new development model for the equality. It intends the following points: a). to impel the invigoration of democratic and socially ingrained Government's system, based on the full guarantee of the economic, social, cultural and environmental rights.

We consider that this will be possible in the measure in that the fundamental political pacts are directed to the construction of a new model of “State of Welfare", laid the foundation in a new civic culture for the peace, the justice, the legality and the dignity of people; b). we consider that the “State of Welfare” should be characterized, at least for: A). A system of universal social protection, from the birth until the older -age by means of the integrated régime of social forecast, opportune access to services of health of quality, as well as to basic social and economic benefits, such as the universal basic rent.

B). An universal and gratuitous education’s system for a lifetime, through the one which people, in the context of a global society of the knowledge have the opportunity to re-learn in function of the constant scientific and technological innovations, as well as in the complexity of the social and humanistic thought. C). A new system of security would feed. With these characteristics this State demands: 1). to impel a reformation of tax like base of a social system for the justness. It should be understood that the fiscal politics is constituent part of the social politics and not to the inverse one. That the social justice is only possible when it is distributed the wealth and the access equally to the well-being.

In that way, the regime of exceptions, the preferable treatment to who more they had rich, as well as the protection of the speculative logic, they are elements that should be eradicated of our tributary system. The same thing should happen with the current public expense and of capital whose assignment should contemplate explicit criterions of equality and social justness, as well as those that come off of the objective of channeling Mexico in the route of sustainable development. (La Jornada, política, p. p. 11-13. December 7, 2011)