Alliance Programme for
Health, Peace and Social Justice
3. Making Social Justice A Reality
Our social policy stands, without concession, for social justice for all and protection of the weak and marginal groups in our society and throughout the world. Riding roughshod over others and social Darwinism (the law of the survival of the strongest) are the wrong path. Our analysis shows us that the material constraints that supposedly render it necessary do not actually exist. Instead what is needed is the political will to give our societies back the human face they have lost through untrammelled economic liberalism. This decisive insistence on a humane society also determines our policy in relation to people suffering from any kind of disability, whether physical or mental. Integration instead of exclusion is the core motto for us here.
3.1. Perspectives for the younger generation
The younger generation is increasingly dominated by anxiety and insecurity. For young people too, the subjection of almost all social domains to company group interests has led to fear of the future and lack of prospects and perspectives. Millions of young people are particularly badly affected by youth unemployment, which in many cases has appalling consequences for their future plans.
One of our most important goals is to offer a secure future for the younger generation.
The development of a healthy, peaceful and socially just world is a programme which appeals to young people from all walks of life. The young people of today will be the first to enjoy these goals once we have achieved them together. We are targeting younger people in this programme because we need their active commitment to realise it with us. In specific terms this means pursuing the following goals:
A right to schooling and training
Youth unemployment and lack of training places for young people is one of the biggest economic and social problems in throughout the world. Since young people carry no weight as a voting group, few of the established political parties (with notable exceptions) has a real interest in tackling and solving this problem. For millions of young people sufficient education and training places must be guaranteed. Offering training is part of responsible enterprise. The framework conditions must be structured in a way that renders it not only easy but also beneficial to train young staff members. Big companies that do not meet their duty to offer training will be compelled to make a contribution to the creation of new training places through an obligatory training tax.
Healthy children and adolescents in a healthy and just world!
Increasing numbers of children and young people are falling victim at an ever earlier age to avoidable endemic diseases. In ever more unscrupulous ways their bodies are becoming a market place for the pharmaceutical “business with disease.” AIDS, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer are increasingly affecting young people.
Against this, as a prime aim, we will set a comprehensive plan for disease prevention. Healthy nutrition, health insurance incentives (bonus programmes) for a healthy lifestyle, and effective natural remedies in patient treatment will ensure that children and young people are not rendered dependent on synthetic drugs from an early age, as happens in the case of chronic illnesses such as asthma or increasingly prevalent allergic diseases.
Product advertising, which makes children and adolescents into the physical and mental victims of consumer terrorist tactics, must be prohibited in a targeted way. It is indefensible to render children and adolescents dependent on substances proven to be harmful, supposedly so as to boost a flagging economy.
Children and adolescents must also be protected from exposure to violence in the media. Computer games, which run counter to education for peace and conflict resolution through dialogue, must be prohibited. A productive, creative relationship with the “new media” should be cultivated however.
In our view it is young people in particular who will be the architects of a new health system and a new, more humane world. To prepare them for this role, we must educate them for social responsibility rather than for elbowing their way egotistically to prime positions. The trust and self-confidence which young people need arises in the best and most positive way when they experience solidarity and reliable support, also as provided by the state and its institutions. Education for social responsibility is at the same time the best protection against consumer terrorism and flight into drug abuse.
Education for mutual solidarity and peace also includes the capacity to relate to and have respect for foreign cultures. Multiculturalism, a normal condition in tomorrow’s world, represents, in our view, the positive face of globalisation. While we are strongly opposed to uninhibited globalisation in the interests of company groups, we promote this positive globalisation in the interests of human beings.
A secure future for our young people also means, ultimately, not passing on burdens of all kinds – whether economic, ecological or political - to the next and all future generations. In the context of a covenant between the generations, it is not only the older generation that has a claim to appropriate welfare state provision. Young people too rightly deserve that sustainable use of the available resources will, in the long term, be able to offer a life of security and dignity to all.
3.2. Working people
Full employment, it is clear, must be achieved primarily through reduction of ancillary wage costs by ending the “business with disease.” But redistribution of work through new workplace models that take account of human needs must also be the goal of a reorganisation of the world of work. It is indefensible for ever fewer people to work ever longer hours, while increasing numbers of people have no work at all. All adults must have the opportunity to actively use their skills and capacities in their working and economic life. Employees must no longer be seen as mere cost factors in production sequences. The health sector will be one of the most important social domains of the future. In consequence, collaboration in the development of a new health system based on natural remedies will be one of the most important fields of work.
At the same time, creative models for flexible structuring of working hours must be pursued so that people can engage in cultural and social activities and develop all-round skills.
People’s leisure time should no longer be misused as a sales market for commercial goods. New, socially orientated provision of purposeful, enriching leisure time activities will contribute to personal development. This new “leisure time culture” will vanquish a consumer mentality and assure real and far-reaching renewal of energy for work.
As in the schooling and training field, international exchange programmes in the work domain will likewise contribute to understanding of international relations, and allow each individual to perceive his global responsibility. Thus all people who are interested in doing so will acquire the opportunity to actively participate in a healthy, peaceful and socially just world.
3.3. The elderly
Older people must have the right to a carefree, healthy old age. Here, health provision based on effective natural remedies will play a decisive role. This will be the basis for avoiding infirmity and physical and mental destitution, and for guaranteeing that the older generation participates actively in society.
Older people have rightly enjoyed high regard in all traditional societies, bringing their life experience and the “wisdom of old age” to bear on daily life. Even if the changes in industrialised society mean that the extended family is more or less a thing of the past, it is important to ensure that older people are not increasingly marginalised. The aim must be integration of old people rather than isolation. The extreme “glorification of youth” disseminated by media and advertising must no longer dominate. We must return to a new appreciation of old age.
For older people in particular, effective, economical healthcare is a fundamental need. Here too, effective, economical natural remedies without side effects must replace harmful pharmaceutical medicine - which considers it unnecessary to treat causes rather than symptoms of disease in the elderly. On the basis of natural remedies, carefully designed health programmes must be developed and offered to the elderly, allowing people to grow old in health and vitality, at the same time relieving the pressure on welfare resources. Thus, for the elderly too, a dignified old age and active participation in social and cultural life will be possible.
3.4. National insurance
With the end of the pharmaceutical “business with disease” through public control of health services, and the consequent restructuring of society in the interests of all its people as described in previous sections of this programme, large-scale social welfare systems will be given long-term sustainability.
The discrepancy between the billions of profits of company groups and the empty pockets of social welfare funds is leading to ever-increasing misery for broad swathes of country’s populations, to increasing child poverty and intentional “dismissal” of a whole section of society. Today already, pension fund obligations are covered to a small extent only, and it can be foreseen that their means will be insufficient in future to make required pension payments. Compulsory contributions to pension cover will, for many, be a tax they have paid in vain.
This state of affairs can only be ended by a political programme that undertakes profound restructuring of country’s economic and social frameworks.
The ending of the pharmaceutical “business with disease” will smooth the way for extensive eradication of endemic diseases. In the long term this will release hundreds of billions that can be used to secure pension funds and expand, rather than restrict, the national insurance system.