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Abstract
This article is a reflection on the social processes that had taken place sixty years after the 1955 unprecedented historical meeting in Bandung organized by the nations and peoples of Africa and Asia to declare their right to reclaim their independence, which subsequently took place over several decades until the 1990s. But Bandung claimed more than regaining political independence to the extent that this had to be complemented by the reconstruction of the concerned societies, economically, socially and culturally. The right to education is a fundamental human right, which is inseparable from economic development and people’s aspirations to a full and a wholly authentic democracy. Even in the real existing world governed by capitalism, development must be holistic as economic progress must mean progress of society and individuals, and access to, and the effective exercise of, all individual and collective rights, and in all domains of social existence, including education.
Global capitalism as practiced today is a complex matrix of states (sovereign nations in principle), peoples, nations (be they “homogenous” or not), and social classes formed by the capital/labor conflict inherent to the capitalist mode of production. As such, conflicts between states and class struggles are interwoven in a close relationship of interdependence. The interdependence of social struggles in various countries of the world, therefore, depends on how the various dominant blocs exploit the possibilities at their disposal in the international arena. Success here depends upon the value of their respective political and social projects. This article argues that the cooperation of independent nation states founded on the Sovereign Popular Project (embracing industrial self-sufficiency, food sovereignty, and popular democracy) is a fundamental precondition for a progressive move beyond the current international system of imperialist hegemony.