V. Conclusion: the Global Economy and the Future of Developing Countries. The Demand for Equity

We are experiencing changes which will reorganize the policies and economies of the next century. The task of providing a human dimension to development in the era of Globalization has become a major challenge, since all of us have to deal not only with a radically new reality, but especially with the ethical vacuum which the idolatry of the marketplace has caused and which the demise of the revolutionary utopias has exacerbated.

If, through Globalization, the economy becomes the conditioning factor in the realm of production and management, the same does not apply in the realm of values. It is necessary to separate the concrete facts ushered in by Globalization from a pseudo-ideology which is building up around the phenomenon, with uances which range from the uncritical preaching and celebration of the "virtues" of the emerging system, to the affirmation of the inevitability of the loss of relevance of the nation state.

In this regard we need to reflect on how Globalization, which signals the onset of an era of prosperity unprecedented in the history of Mankind _ a new Renaissance, as I have already stated _, can be oriented toward the fulfillment of the demand for equity on the part of 4/5 of humanity which subsist in conditions of poverty and sickness. How can we reinvent the sense of community on the international plane, so as to avoid social exclusion and segregation? How can we strengthen the social responsibility of the cultural and economic elites?

This last question regarding the social responsibility _ or as some would have it, national responsibility _ of the elites requires, as I see it, a more pondered response. Independently of the "democratization" of Capital, of which I have already spoken, and even for precisely this reason, the mechanics of the reproduction of the elites has become more robust. At the same time, the elites begin to close themselves off in the defense of their own more particular and narrow interests, which threatens not only the idea of democracy but also the very concept of the Nation. This irresponsibility of the elites fosters an exacerbation of individualism and a culture of conflict which cannot be sustained. What can be done to revive this social responsibility of the elites is one of the great challenges of our times. The appeal for an ethics of solidarity, a redefinition of national values and, especially, the struggle against inequality, which the elites today consider as something quite natural and even acceptable, are ideas which only Politics, as the art of building consensus, can resolve.

I have the conviction that the developing countries can contribute, perhaps even more than the developed countries, to this conceptual passage from the realm of the economy to the realm of values. Because, more than ever before, we have to exercise our creative capability of responding simultaneously to the challenges of the new reality and the overcoming of a social legacy which grieves and shames us.

It is not a question of going back to the values of the past, reviving utopias which no longer explain the contemporary world nor mesh with the prevalence of democratic values and the market economy. The olution to contemporary problems goes beyond national borders and demands universal mobilization.

A key to the framework of thoughts that I have attempted to address at this Conference is the lack of definition which prevails at the present time as to who are to be the social protagonists in the building of the future. I do not believe that it is any longer possible to identify a specific social class with this role of helmsman of the nation on the path to development, in the midst of the turbulence of change. Giving a human dimension to progress, strengthening the ethic of solidarity both in the national and international dimension, has increasingly become a collective, dispersed and fragmented exercise: a veritable composite of partial utopias. No single social class or group today has the monopoly over the demand for equity.

It is precisely for this reason _ I once again persist in saying _ that we must revitalize the essential values of humanism, of wise understanding and of tolerance. These are the distinguishing characteristics par excellence of modern legitimacy. A real engagement on the part of the Government and society is necessary to counter the current climate of exacerbated and nihilistic individualism, which conspires against our very notion of national identity.

Governments, intellectuals, the leaders of civil society _ all have a vital role to play so that the new enaissance may bloom with all its capacity to transform History.