Social Change
Human survival or the survival of capitalism?
12/09/08 23:04
We may have to choose.
To those of you who might be afraid of economics and economic systems, don’t be! They are very simple. All that an economic system does is to make things, consume things and distribute things according to an allocation. That’s all!
Capitalism is equally simple...
“The decadent international but individualistic capitalism ... is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous—and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.” — John Maynard Keynes
In a way, that’s a remarkable quotation. Keynes was no revolutionary, but a very conservative and influential economist whose work inspired Western governments in their economic policy for decades, especially in the UK.
But going back to the nature of capitalism: Capitalism’s main characteristics are the accumulation of value, private ownership (of the means of production), production for profit, and hierarchical organisation of the workplace.
I feel much the same about capitalism as did Maynard Keynes. I’m equally perplexed.
I’ve been reading a lot of late about new and emerging theories about economics, politics and social organisation and came across an interesting set of criteria in some material about “participatory economics”. I’m not sure if I could accept all participatory economics’ (parecon for short) theory and ideas but I did like the six values against which these theorists evaluated the effectiveness of various economic systems.
Here they are:
1. Equity, or fair and just outcomes;
2. Caring and mutual respect among all people;
3. Diversity of outcomes which would benefit everyone;
4. Participatory self-management, or having a say in decisions to the extent that one is affected by their outcomes;
5. Efficiency, or not wasting resources;
6. Environmental sustainability.
For me, that is the most sensible and desirable list of criteria for an economic system I have ever seen. But looking at this list, capitalism doesn’t do very well. Let’s see:
• Capitalism generates atomised, self-interested behaviour, not caring and mutual respect among people.
• Capitalism generates inefficiency, since it’s based on individual behaviours.
• Capitalism’s environmental record speaks for itself; it destroys biodiversity.
• Capitalism does not promote self-management, but instead generates a situation where a few make decisions for the many.
• Capitalism does not generate diversity.
• Capitalism’s consumption is characterised by the total neglect of others. Consumers think of only themselves and can ignore the effects of the goods they buy on the environment and on the workers who produced the goods.
I’m not swinging in any political direction here either, since most of the same criticisms can be applied to socialist economic models too.
I’m not so sure about capitalism at all. It’s based on the infinite expansion of consumption. Does that work for you? Try eating more and more, year on year and see where that gets you. It’s an absurd idea I know. Capitalism is as absurd.
The American biologist E. O. Wilson estimates that if the entire world consumes at the same rate as the USA, then we would need four planet earths to sustain mankind now.
Hysterical or common sense? Better believe it’s common sense, since if we don’t address this issue in the twenty first century, there may not be a twenty second.
To those of you who might be afraid of economics and economic systems, don’t be! They are very simple. All that an economic system does is to make things, consume things and distribute things according to an allocation. That’s all!
Capitalism is equally simple...
“The decadent international but individualistic capitalism ... is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous—and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.” — John Maynard Keynes
In a way, that’s a remarkable quotation. Keynes was no revolutionary, but a very conservative and influential economist whose work inspired Western governments in their economic policy for decades, especially in the UK.
But going back to the nature of capitalism: Capitalism’s main characteristics are the accumulation of value, private ownership (of the means of production), production for profit, and hierarchical organisation of the workplace.
I feel much the same about capitalism as did Maynard Keynes. I’m equally perplexed.
I’ve been reading a lot of late about new and emerging theories about economics, politics and social organisation and came across an interesting set of criteria in some material about “participatory economics”. I’m not sure if I could accept all participatory economics’ (parecon for short) theory and ideas but I did like the six values against which these theorists evaluated the effectiveness of various economic systems.
Here they are:
1. Equity, or fair and just outcomes;
2. Caring and mutual respect among all people;
3. Diversity of outcomes which would benefit everyone;
4. Participatory self-management, or having a say in decisions to the extent that one is affected by their outcomes;
5. Efficiency, or not wasting resources;
6. Environmental sustainability.
For me, that is the most sensible and desirable list of criteria for an economic system I have ever seen. But looking at this list, capitalism doesn’t do very well. Let’s see:
• Capitalism generates atomised, self-interested behaviour, not caring and mutual respect among people.
• Capitalism generates inefficiency, since it’s based on individual behaviours.
• Capitalism’s environmental record speaks for itself; it destroys biodiversity.
• Capitalism does not promote self-management, but instead generates a situation where a few make decisions for the many.
• Capitalism does not generate diversity.
• Capitalism’s consumption is characterised by the total neglect of others. Consumers think of only themselves and can ignore the effects of the goods they buy on the environment and on the workers who produced the goods.
I’m not swinging in any political direction here either, since most of the same criticisms can be applied to socialist economic models too.
I’m not so sure about capitalism at all. It’s based on the infinite expansion of consumption. Does that work for you? Try eating more and more, year on year and see where that gets you. It’s an absurd idea I know. Capitalism is as absurd.
The American biologist E. O. Wilson estimates that if the entire world consumes at the same rate as the USA, then we would need four planet earths to sustain mankind now.
Hysterical or common sense? Better believe it’s common sense, since if we don’t address this issue in the twenty first century, there may not be a twenty second.
|
O Brave New World!
09/09/08 13:34
Where to from here? My answer is that I’m as unsure as the rest of us.
I do believe in freedom, autonomy and voluntary association as human values in which to aspire.
It surprises me how many people I talk to about freedom who appear terrified of it. I know many people are frightened of freedom, perhaps in the same way that they are frightened of responsibility. I’m not altogether sure where that fear comes from. In psychological terms, it may be from anxiety about maturation, from the desire not to leave the succour and the emotional sustenance of the providing parent. I’m not sure that is right entirely. We live in a world where we do as we’re told, and where we often conform to an infantilised state of mind. Psychologically, I wonder too what this fear of responsibility is about. Is conformity and responsibility an antithesis? It may be. Conformity is the easy way out too. It means copying someone else because another says it’s the right thing to do, rather than feeling or thinking for oneself. It is easier not to think.
There are two aspects of freedom, I believe, and they are “freedom from” that is a negative connotation and “freedom to be” which is its positive opposite. This is a little like the infant growing up. The “freedom from” is a freedom from oppressive and overbearing institutional way of life where we are told how to act, think or feel, rather than do it for ourselves. The “freedom to” part is to experience ourselves as loving, creative, constructive, responsible, actualised, and sometimes fulfilled, human beings. Resisting freedom in social terms may be the same as resisting growing up in human development.
And what of autonomy, how does that differ from freedom? Autonomy is simple. It’s the exercise of responsibility for oneself. It means taking responsibility for one’s own actions and moral decisions.
Perhaps there is a little more than that in our economic world to consider: There is the difference between “having” and “being” and how we define ourselves as human beings. If we define ourselves in economic terms, by what we have, then we lose our identity, our autonomy, if we lose our possessions. We become nothing if we have nothing.
As the psychologist and philosopher, Erich Fromm wrote: Being is about nothing more than the productive use of our human powers. “(Being means)…to give expression to one’s faculties, talents, to the wealth of human gifts with which every human is endowed. It means to renew oneself, to grow, to flow out, to love, to transcend the prison of one’s isolated ego, to be interested…to give.”
Freedom does present problems to humankind that have been overlooked by many individualist liberal philosophers. The major problem with freedom is that it requires individuals to exercise a high degree of personal, social and moral responsibility, rather than have someone else tell them what to do and take decisions for them.
There’s a favourite quote of mine by Nobel Prize winning American economist, James Buchanan, that I have mentioned elsewhere. He is talking about the “parental” role of government and the state:
“With parentalism…we refer to the attitudes of persons who seek to have values imposed upon them by other persons, by the state, or by transcendental forces. This source of support for expanded collectivization has been relatively neglected by both socialist and liberal philosophers, perhaps because philosophers, in both camps, remain methodological individualists.
Almost subconsciously, those scientists-scholars-academics who have tried to look at the “big picture” have assumed that, other things being equal, persons want to be at liberty to make their own choices, to be free from coercion by others, including indirect coercion through means of persuasion. They have failed to emphasize sufficiently, and to examine the implications of, the fact that liberty carries with it responsibility. And it seems evident that many persons do not want to shoulder the final responsibility for their own actions. Many persons are, indeed, afraid to be free.”
Without either freedom or responsibility, one cannot have existence by voluntary association, since voluntary association requires that humans collaborate and cooperate freely and responsibly to achieve their common goals. An intelligent observer of my writing suggested that we might need leaders since we are not necessarily capable of acting consensually, collaboratively and cooperatively. She makes a very good point.
It’s true that our present social systems are based on an authoritarian hierarchy that purports to be democratic. It is far from being truly democratic since other than deciding on the election of the “haves” or the “have mores” there is no general participation in decision-making. I have no influence over issues around health, poverty, education, social welfare and defence, other than those prescribed by alternative candidates. It’s token democracy where strong government is synonymous with state authoritarianism. The combination of the authoritarian state and multi-national capitalism means that I am told how to act, behave, think, work and consume. It erodes my humanity, since I am no longer free, but a thing, a means to someone else’s end. I am homo consumens, the consumer man.
My friend also makes an important point too indirectly about knowledge and belief. We have only very limited knowledge and experience of freedom and the exercise of personal and social responsibility since all aspects of our society are organised around leadership hierarchies where leaders take responsibility for telling others how to act. We might believe that we need leaders, since we have no experience of being without them.
I have two experiences of leadership experiments, both where, at least notionally, I was the leader.
The first was a quirky accident of fate. I was invited to join the board of a large mental health project based in London. They had a problem. They had too much money and were at risk of losing some very large government grants unless they got rid of a lot of cash quickly. Rather unflatteringly, at least so I thought at the time, I was asked to go there since their treasurer (a CPA known to me from university) felt I would know how to spend money "creatively"!
I joined the board of trustees, and within about six months, I was asked to stand to be chairman of the board. It was a trustee's voting nomination that I accepted. I accepted and was appointed.
It was an executive chairman's post and part of my job was supporting its management and staff. Within the trust, there was a deeply democratic ethos. Any employee, could attend a board meeting, and exercise voting rights in common with a board member. The only rights I had as chairman were the exercise of a casting vote in a deadlock, or a veto vote that deferred a decision to the next board meeting (that could be exercised only once).
My commercial training, and by day I worked as a chief executive of a computer software company, might have told me that this was a recipe for disaster. On the board, we had legal, financial and medical advisers, experts whose views and advice might theoretically be overturned by a junior employee.
It never worked that way, since there was a deeply respectful management style. Management’s role was not perceived to be one necessarily of leadership, control or authority, but of support, and access to the resources (including human resources) that enabled staff to undertake their work.
In theory, the employees through access and contribution to the board decision process might have caused a manager to be discharged or appointed. It never worked that way, because the role of management was to support and facilitate, rather than control.
What was even more rewarding was that not only did this odd management style that was properly democratic work, but it was enormously successful! It was so successful, in fact, that the Trust was appointed by the UK National Health Service to be its principal adviser and consultant on projects of its type. On a personal note, it was also the most alive and enjoyable place I have worked in my entire life. One of the things that distinguished this special project was the enlightened and involved attitude of its entire staff who cared deeply for what happened in their organization and jointly took responsibility for its wellbeing and its purpose.
In the nineties, I also had the experience of attempting to turn over a technology business to employee ownership and broader management participation. It could not have been more different. Some managers and employees had such profound difficulties in taking on responsibility that they teetered on the edge of sanity. Destructive sub-cultures formed who tried to usurp, seize or break off parts of the business that they could steal for themselves. In the end, I put a stop to it and returned it to its previous paternalistic management style that was, at least, largely benevolent and benign.
Of course, there was a major difference between these environments. The staff of both organizations were well paid, that much they had in common. The mental health organization had growth in its sights, but it was not its main purpose. The mental health project functioned as a trust for the benefit of those in its care; the company was a capitalist enterprise run for the benefit of its shareholders.
Despite a massive investment in culture change programmes, the underlying culture of the company was difficult to change. All that extended ownership achieved was to make manifest the unhealthy, political, opportunistic and often dishonest dynamics that existed in the workplace at almost every level. The ethos was that people worked in order to make its shareholders rich. People were a means to an end. When it was proposed to change ownership, it was seen as an opportunity by some to do to others, what had been done to them.
I’ll continue to think about this dilemma. I am unsure as to whether freedom and capitalism are contradictory forces. In my past, I had thought that, in a way, capitalism might embody freedom, but now I’m undecided. I’ll go away and think about the human values that underpin our capitalist societies. By the way, I’m opposed to socialism in all its previous manifestations too. Capitalism may be the lesser of two evils, where socialism represents authoritarian, and often totalitarian, state control.
More soon…
I do believe in freedom, autonomy and voluntary association as human values in which to aspire.
It surprises me how many people I talk to about freedom who appear terrified of it. I know many people are frightened of freedom, perhaps in the same way that they are frightened of responsibility. I’m not altogether sure where that fear comes from. In psychological terms, it may be from anxiety about maturation, from the desire not to leave the succour and the emotional sustenance of the providing parent. I’m not sure that is right entirely. We live in a world where we do as we’re told, and where we often conform to an infantilised state of mind. Psychologically, I wonder too what this fear of responsibility is about. Is conformity and responsibility an antithesis? It may be. Conformity is the easy way out too. It means copying someone else because another says it’s the right thing to do, rather than feeling or thinking for oneself. It is easier not to think.
There are two aspects of freedom, I believe, and they are “freedom from” that is a negative connotation and “freedom to be” which is its positive opposite. This is a little like the infant growing up. The “freedom from” is a freedom from oppressive and overbearing institutional way of life where we are told how to act, think or feel, rather than do it for ourselves. The “freedom to” part is to experience ourselves as loving, creative, constructive, responsible, actualised, and sometimes fulfilled, human beings. Resisting freedom in social terms may be the same as resisting growing up in human development.
And what of autonomy, how does that differ from freedom? Autonomy is simple. It’s the exercise of responsibility for oneself. It means taking responsibility for one’s own actions and moral decisions.
Perhaps there is a little more than that in our economic world to consider: There is the difference between “having” and “being” and how we define ourselves as human beings. If we define ourselves in economic terms, by what we have, then we lose our identity, our autonomy, if we lose our possessions. We become nothing if we have nothing.
As the psychologist and philosopher, Erich Fromm wrote: Being is about nothing more than the productive use of our human powers. “(Being means)…to give expression to one’s faculties, talents, to the wealth of human gifts with which every human is endowed. It means to renew oneself, to grow, to flow out, to love, to transcend the prison of one’s isolated ego, to be interested…to give.”
Freedom does present problems to humankind that have been overlooked by many individualist liberal philosophers. The major problem with freedom is that it requires individuals to exercise a high degree of personal, social and moral responsibility, rather than have someone else tell them what to do and take decisions for them.
There’s a favourite quote of mine by Nobel Prize winning American economist, James Buchanan, that I have mentioned elsewhere. He is talking about the “parental” role of government and the state:
“With parentalism…we refer to the attitudes of persons who seek to have values imposed upon them by other persons, by the state, or by transcendental forces. This source of support for expanded collectivization has been relatively neglected by both socialist and liberal philosophers, perhaps because philosophers, in both camps, remain methodological individualists.
Almost subconsciously, those scientists-scholars-academics who have tried to look at the “big picture” have assumed that, other things being equal, persons want to be at liberty to make their own choices, to be free from coercion by others, including indirect coercion through means of persuasion. They have failed to emphasize sufficiently, and to examine the implications of, the fact that liberty carries with it responsibility. And it seems evident that many persons do not want to shoulder the final responsibility for their own actions. Many persons are, indeed, afraid to be free.”
Without either freedom or responsibility, one cannot have existence by voluntary association, since voluntary association requires that humans collaborate and cooperate freely and responsibly to achieve their common goals. An intelligent observer of my writing suggested that we might need leaders since we are not necessarily capable of acting consensually, collaboratively and cooperatively. She makes a very good point.
It’s true that our present social systems are based on an authoritarian hierarchy that purports to be democratic. It is far from being truly democratic since other than deciding on the election of the “haves” or the “have mores” there is no general participation in decision-making. I have no influence over issues around health, poverty, education, social welfare and defence, other than those prescribed by alternative candidates. It’s token democracy where strong government is synonymous with state authoritarianism. The combination of the authoritarian state and multi-national capitalism means that I am told how to act, behave, think, work and consume. It erodes my humanity, since I am no longer free, but a thing, a means to someone else’s end. I am homo consumens, the consumer man.
My friend also makes an important point too indirectly about knowledge and belief. We have only very limited knowledge and experience of freedom and the exercise of personal and social responsibility since all aspects of our society are organised around leadership hierarchies where leaders take responsibility for telling others how to act. We might believe that we need leaders, since we have no experience of being without them.
I have two experiences of leadership experiments, both where, at least notionally, I was the leader.
The first was a quirky accident of fate. I was invited to join the board of a large mental health project based in London. They had a problem. They had too much money and were at risk of losing some very large government grants unless they got rid of a lot of cash quickly. Rather unflatteringly, at least so I thought at the time, I was asked to go there since their treasurer (a CPA known to me from university) felt I would know how to spend money "creatively"!
I joined the board of trustees, and within about six months, I was asked to stand to be chairman of the board. It was a trustee's voting nomination that I accepted. I accepted and was appointed.
It was an executive chairman's post and part of my job was supporting its management and staff. Within the trust, there was a deeply democratic ethos. Any employee, could attend a board meeting, and exercise voting rights in common with a board member. The only rights I had as chairman were the exercise of a casting vote in a deadlock, or a veto vote that deferred a decision to the next board meeting (that could be exercised only once).
My commercial training, and by day I worked as a chief executive of a computer software company, might have told me that this was a recipe for disaster. On the board, we had legal, financial and medical advisers, experts whose views and advice might theoretically be overturned by a junior employee.
It never worked that way, since there was a deeply respectful management style. Management’s role was not perceived to be one necessarily of leadership, control or authority, but of support, and access to the resources (including human resources) that enabled staff to undertake their work.
In theory, the employees through access and contribution to the board decision process might have caused a manager to be discharged or appointed. It never worked that way, because the role of management was to support and facilitate, rather than control.
What was even more rewarding was that not only did this odd management style that was properly democratic work, but it was enormously successful! It was so successful, in fact, that the Trust was appointed by the UK National Health Service to be its principal adviser and consultant on projects of its type. On a personal note, it was also the most alive and enjoyable place I have worked in my entire life. One of the things that distinguished this special project was the enlightened and involved attitude of its entire staff who cared deeply for what happened in their organization and jointly took responsibility for its wellbeing and its purpose.
In the nineties, I also had the experience of attempting to turn over a technology business to employee ownership and broader management participation. It could not have been more different. Some managers and employees had such profound difficulties in taking on responsibility that they teetered on the edge of sanity. Destructive sub-cultures formed who tried to usurp, seize or break off parts of the business that they could steal for themselves. In the end, I put a stop to it and returned it to its previous paternalistic management style that was, at least, largely benevolent and benign.
Of course, there was a major difference between these environments. The staff of both organizations were well paid, that much they had in common. The mental health organization had growth in its sights, but it was not its main purpose. The mental health project functioned as a trust for the benefit of those in its care; the company was a capitalist enterprise run for the benefit of its shareholders.
Despite a massive investment in culture change programmes, the underlying culture of the company was difficult to change. All that extended ownership achieved was to make manifest the unhealthy, political, opportunistic and often dishonest dynamics that existed in the workplace at almost every level. The ethos was that people worked in order to make its shareholders rich. People were a means to an end. When it was proposed to change ownership, it was seen as an opportunity by some to do to others, what had been done to them.
I’ll continue to think about this dilemma. I am unsure as to whether freedom and capitalism are contradictory forces. In my past, I had thought that, in a way, capitalism might embody freedom, but now I’m undecided. I’ll go away and think about the human values that underpin our capitalist societies. By the way, I’m opposed to socialism in all its previous manifestations too. Capitalism may be the lesser of two evils, where socialism represents authoritarian, and often totalitarian, state control.
More soon…