{"id":151646,"date":"2020-02-10T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T12:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=151646"},"modified":"2020-01-14T07:58:59","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T07:58:59","slug":"a-rationale-for-unbounded-organization-a-path-to-positive-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/02\/a-rationale-for-unbounded-organization-a-path-to-positive-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"A Rationale for Unbounded Organization: A Path to Positive Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"
    \n
  1. This is a proposal for a pragmatic, functional and realistic framework for talking, thinking and building institutions.[i]<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. The fundamental fact of human history and of social science is the existence of living human individuals. This implies the physical organization (k\u00f6rperliche Organisation<\/em>) of food production or gathering and, in general, of whatever is needed to make human existence possible. As Plato put it, \u2018The\u00a0true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our\u00a0 \u2026Now the first and greatest of necessities is food, which is the condition\u00a0of life and existence.[ii]<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Human beings are a species that organizes itself by creating cultures. Cultural rules constitute material positions (i.e. roles, i.e. relationships).\u00a0 The material positions constitute social structures.\u00a0\u00a0 The causal powers of social structures explain phenomena in social science in a way analogous to the way the causal powers of natural structures (e.g. molecules, cells, tectonic plates) explain phenomena in natural science.[iii]<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Human history is a history of organizations. K\u00f6rperliche Organisationen <\/em>are created by reflexive, playful, storytelling, spiritual and moral social creatures. They are tested in the fire of experience.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of these are sustainable.\u00a0 Some adapt to cope with new challenges.\u00a0 Some do not.[iv]<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. Every society has a basic cultural structure. It consists of the cultural rules that constitute the material positions (social structures) that determine how and whether the basic needs of people will be met; and how and whether the relationships of humans to the rest of nature will be harmonious.\u00a0\u00a0 Because humans are persons, their basic needs include dignity, freedom, self-esteem, inclusion, love, purpose and so on; as well as food, medical care, safety and so on.[v]<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Today most of humanity lives in a single worldwide neoliberal global economy. Its basic cultural structure pretends to have only one cultural rule: freedom.\u00a0 That one rule constitutes the material positions that define the free market.\u00a0 (Property in liberal thinking, sometimes implicitly; sometimes explicitly as in Kant, the Austrian school and Jean-Baptiste Say; is usually not a separate cultural norm, but an aspect or corollary of freedom.)\u00a0 The key positions are buyer and seller. Adam Smith expressed its spirit when he wrote that to get our daily bread we appeal always to our baker\u2019s self-interest, never to our needs or to his benevolence.[vi]<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Often when one writes, \u2018the basic cultural structure of liberal modern western (now global) modernity is (or claims to be) \u2019 <\/em>one could also write, following Sir Henry Maine, contract<\/em>; or following Andr\u00e9 Orl\u00e9an, s\u00e9paration marchande. <\/em>Separation is both a condition and a consequence of human relationships being reduced to what Lapp\u00e9 and Collins call \u2018money-based ties.\u2019 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Orl\u00e9an adds : \u2018\u2026la puissance de la monnaie ne supprime en rien la conflictualit\u00e9 marchande et les luttes de puissance.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0 [vii]<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. There is inevitably a class of losers, a class of people who fail to sell their labour power or anything else at a price sufficient to support a dignified and decent life. This is a logical consequence of separation, mistakenly called freedom, also called by many other names.\u00a0 There is no duty to buy.\u00a0\u00a0 Hence although there is an ethical duty to serve society, there can be no ethical duty to find a job, much less a job that pays enough to support a family.\u00a0 A job requires a labour-buyer, not just a labour-seller.\u00a0 Freedom to buy and sell includes freedom to not buy.\u00a0\u00a0 The fact that one person needs a good job, does not obligate any other person to hire him or her.\u00a0\u00a0 Beginning with the first plebeians (people belonging to no tribe) and proletarians (people with no property) ca. 500 B.C. in Rome, western basic cultural and social structures have generated losers.[viii]<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. Pope Francis in Laudato Si <\/em>(2015) perhaps did not realize that in adopting key terms from orthodox economics he was using words whose technical meanings assume the b.c.s. of modernity. Yes, saving the biosphere and saving humanity from extinction are public goods.\u00a0 Yes, this is a case of market failure.\u00a0 Yes, government intervention is therefore justified.\u00a0 BUT what is called the fiscal crisis of the state, fuelled in part by tax competition lowering taxes to encourage investment, leaves governments unable to do what they should do. The necessity to put investor confidence ahead of ecology is a consequence of a k\u00f6rperliche Organisation<\/em> that makes the lives of most people physically dependent <\/em>on the accumulation of capital by a few people. The same b.c.s. makes growing inequality the long-term trend.\u00a0 As the early Habermas spelled out in detail, the market is the primary institution; the government secondary.[ix]<\/a><\/li>\n
  10. The b.c.s. tends to punish responsible wealth-holders who share their surplus (by sharing they avoid avarice, one of the traditional seven deadly sins, defined as taking more than you need). Over time, families who concentrate single-mindedly on accumulating capital and then reinvesting it to accumulate more capital will, ceteris paribus<\/em>, by the laws of compound interest gain more power and influence than the good citizens who care and share.[x]<\/a><\/li>\n
  11. If you start with freedom, defined (mistakenly) as what E.F. Schumacher called \u2018institutionalized irresponsibility\u2019, you end with an ungovernable economy. Governments cannot correct market failure.\u00a0 In addition to corruption and power politics, there is a fundamental structural imperative making everyone\u2019s lives dependent on highly efficient well-capitalized producers.\u00a0\u00a0 The inevitable (i.e. inevitable given the b.c.s.) process of concentration of economic power is called \u2018the law of substitution\u2019 by Alfred Marshall.\u00a0\u00a0 It is called the superior efficiency of well-capitalized round-about production by Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk.[xi]<\/a><\/li>\n
  12. Unbounded organization proposes a framework for changing the present disastrous course of history by changing its root cause: the b.c.s., separation, mistakenly called freedom. It calls for alignment across sectors to serve the common good. It grew out of community development and popular education practice in Brazil, Honduras, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and several other Latin American and African countries; and a critique of the Lewinian (behaviour is a function of person plus environment) psychology once dominant in development circles.\u00a0 Its methodologies apply Vygotskyan Cultural Historical Activity Theory.\u00a0 It is not bounded because it does not treat the person or the organization as existing for its own sake; as if were the centre of the universe, devoted to its own objectives and implementing its own self-centred strategies. And because for any given problem the number of possible solutions is in principle unbounded. UO practices cognitive justice, learning from the epistemologies of the Global South.\u00a0\u00a0 It takes a long and inclusive view of human origins and history. The emphasis shifts from negative critique to positive community-building. Space limitations forbid saying more here about how it is done. The above eleven points briefly outline why it is necessary.[xii]<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    [i]<\/a> \u201cProposal\u201d in the sense expressed by Richard Rorty, The Linguistic Turn<\/em>.\u00a0 (1967) p.24.<\/p>\n

    [ii]<\/a> Marx and Engels, The German ideology<\/em>.\u00a0 (1845-46) p.6.\u00a0 Marx\/Engels Internet Archive version; Plato, Republic<\/em>, Book Two. Jowett Translation.<\/p>\n

    [iii]<\/a>C.H. Waddington, The Ethical Animal (<\/em>1960); Douglas Porpora (1993) Cultural Rules and Material Relations Sociological Theory <\/em>Vol. 11, pp. 212-229; Roy Bhaskar (fourth edition 2015) The Possibility of Naturalism\u00a0 <\/em>p. 38.<\/p>\n

    [iv]<\/a> Jared Diamond, Collapse:\u00a0 How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive <\/em>(2005); Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History <\/em>(1934)<\/p>\n

    [v]<\/a> Christian Smith, What is a Person<\/em>?\u00a0 (2011); Victor Frankl, Man\u00b4s Search for Meaning.\u00a0 <\/em>(1946).\u00a0\u00a0 Many writers use different words to make points the same or similar to those we make with the concept of basic cultural structure.\u00a0 For example, Max Weber and Karl Marx write of social relations (their Verh\u00e4ltnisse <\/em>= our structures), such as the wage relation.<\/p>\n

    [vi]<\/a> Howard Richards, Understanding the Global Economy <\/em>(2004); Joseph Stiglitz Globalization and its Discontents <\/em>(2002). dam Smith.\u00a0 Wealth of Nations <\/em>(1776) Book I, Chapter Two. \u2018A liberal society is one that has no ideal except freedom.\u2019 Richard Rorty, The Contingency of Community. London Review of Books<\/em>, 24 July 1986.<\/p>\n

    [vii]<\/a> Maine, Ancient Law. <\/em>However, in explaining modernity, Maine gives almost equal attention to property, contrasting the modern West with other property institutions, virtually all of which were more collective and less individualistic. Andr\u00e9 Orl\u00e9an, L\u2019Empire de la Valeur <\/em>(2011) p. 165. Frances Moore Lapp\u00e9 and Joseph Collins, Food First <\/em>(1974).<\/p>\n

    [viii]<\/a> Keynes devoted about a third of his General Theory <\/em>(1936) to the chronic weakness of demand, and the consequent ubiquity of unemployment, under employment, and low wages; and about a third to the chronic weakness of the inducement to invest.\u00a0 He glimpsed but did not grasp that these are not in the last analysis economic or psychological discoveries. These are consequences of social structure, and of the basic cultural structure that constitutes the social structure<\/p>\n

    [ix]<\/a> Jurgen Habermas, The Legitimation Crisis.\u00a0 <\/em>(1975)<\/p>\n

    [x]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Milton Friedman remarks in Essays in Positive Economics <\/em>(1953) that anybody in business who is diverted by other concerns from maximizing the accumulation of profits will not be in business for long. Marx writes in the preface to the first edition of Capital (<\/em>1867) that however much a capitalist may rise subjectively to a higher moral level, he remains a creature of objective social relations he cannot change Numerous studies cast doubt on their reasoning, but it remains worthwhile to keep their point in mind.<\/p>\n

    [xi]<\/a> Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics <\/em>(first edition 1890); Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest <\/em>(1884)<\/p>\n

    <\/a>[xii]\u00a0<\/a> https:\/\/unboundedacademy.org\/<\/a> – Gavin Andersson, Unbounded Governance:\u00a0 A Study of Popular Development Organisations.\u00a0 <\/em>(2018) (A 2004 doctoral thesis in development studies at Open University UK. Gavin Andersson and Howard Richards.\u00a0 Unbounded Organizing in Community.\u00a0 <\/em>(2015) (a practical step by step guide.) \u00a0www.unboundedorganization.org<\/a><\/p>\n

    _____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/em>Prof. Howard Richards now teaches at the University of Santiago and the University of Cape Town.\u00a0 He is a member of the\u00a0<\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/strong><\/a><\/em>. He was born in Pasadena, California but since 1966 has lived in Chile when not teaching in other places. Professor of Peace and Global Studies Emeritus, Earlham College, a school in Richmond Indiana affiliated with the Society of Friends (Quakers) known for its peace and social justice commitments. J.D. Stanford Law School, MA and PhD in Philosophy from UC Santa Barbara, Advanced Certificate in Education-Oxford,\u00a0 PhD in Educational Planning from University of Toronto. Books:\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Dilemmas of Social Democracies\u00a0with Joanna Swanger,\u00a0<\/em>Gandhi and the Future of Economics\u00a0with Joanna Swanger,\u00a0<\/em>The Nurturing of Time Future, Understanding the Global Economy\u00a0(available in PDF on line),\u00a0<\/em>The Evaluation of Cultural Action, <\/em>Following Foucault:The Trail of the Fox (with Catherine Hoppers and Evelin Lindner),\u00a0 <\/em>(on Amazon as an e book), Unbounded Organizing in Community (with Gavin Andersson, also on Amazon),\u00a0 Rethinking Thinking <\/em>(with Catherine Hoppers),\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Hacia otras Economias\u00a0with Raul Gonzalez, free download available at\u00a0<\/em>www.repensar.cl<\/strong><\/a><\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>Solidaridad, Participacion, Transparencia: conversaciones sobre el socialismo en Rosario, Argentina.\u00a0<\/em>Available free on the blogspot lahoradelaetica.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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