{"id":199497,"date":"2021-12-13T12:00:17","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=199497"},"modified":"2021-11-15T04:59:22","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T04:59:22","slug":"create-or-help-create-dignified-livelihoods-that-do-not-depend-on-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/12\/create-or-help-create-dignified-livelihoods-that-do-not-depend-on-sales\/","title":{"rendered":"Create, or Help Create, Dignified Livelihoods That Do Not Depend on Sales"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the key, selon moi<\/em>, to solving the problems of the third decade of the twenty first century.\u00a0 Achieve dignified livelihoods for all and the chief obstacles to saving us from the six threats to humanity addressed by Project Save the World<\/em> fade away.\u00a0 For those not familiar with Project Save the World<\/em>, the six threats are: \u00a0War and Weapons, Global Warming, Famine, Pandemics, Radioactive Contamination, and Cyber Risks.\u00a0\u00a0 One could compose many other six-threat lists.\u00a0 They would all leave us with the question, \u201cWhere do we start?\u201d<\/p>\n

If I were to choose a one-word answer to the question, \u201cWhere do we start?\u201d instead of the twelve- word answer stated in the title of this Editorial, I would choose \u201cPatriarchy.\u201d\u00a0 Why \u201cPatriarchy\u201d?\u00a0 Briefly\u00a8: because some feminists\u00a0 — and I believe that among feminists they are the ones who most frequently rely on the term \u201cPatriarchy\u201d– find that the social and historical construction of the kind of human relationship (exchange relationships, as distinct from kinship relationships) that is at the root of our problems today began approximately twelve thousand years ago after the agricultural revolution.\u00a0\u00a0 That was when matristic female-centred cultures were replaced by warlike and exploitative male-centred societies.<\/p>\n

Seen in this light, \u201cCreate, or help create, dignified livelihoods that do not depend on sales\u201d is equivalent to saying \u201cWelcome home! You no longer have to sell yourself in the labour market so you can get money to rent a room, so that you will have a legal right to sleep somewhere.\u00a0 Now you are one of us, a sister, a brother.\u00a0 The positive gift economy has arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n

But before going farther, after declining to adopt the Project Save the World approach that assures us that there is no root problem, that we can be comfortable with the mainstream liberal worldview that all right-thinking good people share and get on with solving particular concrete\u00a0 problems, and after offering both twelve-word and one-word names for the root problem, why did I not choose for my one word answer to the question \u201cWhere do we start? \u201ccapitalism\u201d instead of \u201cpatriarchy\u201d? \u201cCapitalism,\u201d after all, has the merit of allowing no possibility of stereotyping almost half of humanity as sex-hungry violent emotional babies and excluding us from the conversation.<\/p>\n

Frank Jacob recently made an eloquent case for zeroing in on capitalism as the root problem.\u00a0 He wrote an introductory chapter for a multi-authored book recently published by the Institute for Political Studies in Belgrade, titled \u201cThe Five Lies of Capitalism.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The five lies of capitalism are Peace, Freedom, Equality, Access, and Future.\u00a0 Access refers to the lie that anybody and everybody can advance through merit to occupy a top position in society.\u00a0 Future, the most dangerous lie, refers to the lie that capitalism is physically compatible with the indefinite continuation of human life on planet earth.<\/p>\n

Jacob proves his case.\u00a0 Capitalism claims to create peace, but it is not true.\u00a0 Neither does it keep any of the other four promises Jacob mentions.\u00a0 \u00a0The other authors of the book concur. \u00a0\u00a0Some of them are female.\u00a0 Others are male. If I were also to write a concurring opinion, I would mention Immanuel Kant and Thomas Paine.\u00a0 For Immanuel Kant, the ethical and legal foundations of capitalism, literally the\u00a0 Weltb\u00fcrgerrecht<\/em>, constitute and define peace.\u00a0 Always obeying\u00a0 categorical imperatives featuring absolute respect for property rights and absolute respect for personal freedom, is identical to perpetual peace.\u00a0 Thomas Paine, the great pamphleteer of the American revolutionary war, touted the new American republic as a peace-loving \u00a0alternative to old Europe`s warring empires.\u00a0 Paine: \u201cOur plan is commerce.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Generally, Jacob deconstructs fa\u00e7ades that lie:\u00a0 The voluntary exchange of property among willing sellers and willing buyers defines capitalism and excludes violence. Wars are always and everywhere caused by radicals. Freedom, Equality, Access, and Future are lies too.\u00a0 Jacob summarizes:\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cCapitalism is evil, yet still alive\u201d<\/p>\n

But wait-a-minute.\u00a0 We may be sliding down a slippery slope into a deep swamp where nobody wants to drown.\u00a0 Capitalism did not destroy pre-existing peace, freedom, equality, access, and sustainability.\u00a0 Its advocates predicted that it would achieve what previous social formations did not achieve, including peace, freedom, equality, access, and sustainability.\u00a0 It did not.<\/p>\n

If we could make an impossible calculation, adding up all the evils of capitalism on one side of the ledger and all the good done by capitalism on the other side of the ledger, surely the sums on both sides would be, respectively, awesome and awesome.\u00a0 And from a practical point of view, trying to estimate what it might be possible to accomplish given the mentalities and the powers now entrenched, this impossible calculation would prepare us to regard the following advice from Buckminster Fuller as worth considering:\u00a0 \u201cYou cannot transform existing reality by fighting existing reality.\u00a0 You can only transform it by creating a new reality that makes the old reality obsolete.\u201d<\/p>\n

Creating dignified livelihoods that do not depend on sales is a way (indeed, it includes innumerable ways) to create a new reality that makes the old reality obsolete. \u00a0It invites the capitalists into the game, instead of stereotyping every one of them as to blame for every sweatshop in Indonesia, and for every time striking workers were murdered by the police or by the army. \u00a0It paves the way for other structural changes that are now unachievable.\u00a0 As my anarchist grandfather used to say, it builds the new society in the shell of the old.<\/p>\n

My co-authors and I have found it useful to work with the neologism \u201cBasic Cultural Structure\u201d\u00a0 (BCS).\u00a0 The BCS of the modern world can be regarded as one of the consequences of patriarchy and as a cause of capitalism.\u00a0 (See Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex and Power<\/em>, 1984)\u00a0 Its \u00a0centrepiece is what Andr\u00e9 Orl\u00e9an calls \u201cs\u00e9paration marchande.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0\u00a0Orl\u00e9an echoes and develops in detail the famous passage in The Wealth of Nations, <\/em>where Adam Smith writes that to satisfy a basic need like food, it is useless to appeal to one`s own needs.\u00a0 It is useless to appeal to the human feelings of the baker.\u00a0\u00a0 The only thing that will move the baker is his own self-interest: a sale.\u00a0 Money for bread.\u00a0 Bread for money.<\/p>\n

These two main features of the BCS \u2013 (1) separation, (2)reliance on sales to get money\u00a0 to live– already imply the two main findings of J.M. Keynes General Theory<\/em>: (1) A chronic insufficiency of effective demand (the fact that we need to sell our labour power for a\u00a0 wage sufficient to lead a human life and support our family, does not mean there is effective demand for our services in the labour market),\u00a0 and (2) the weakness of the inducement to invest.<\/p>\n

With just these few considerations, without going into more detail here, the answer to the following questions is perhaps already becoming clear.\u00a0 The questions are: \u201cWill a day ever come when there are enough\u00a0 investors who find it profitable to hire people, and to pay them good wages out of the revenues generated by the sale of the goods or services\u00a0 that the people hired contribute to producing?\u00a0\u00a0 Can this approach create sustainable dignified livelihoods for everybody?\u201d\u00a0 The answer is: \u201cNot bloody likely!\u201d<\/p>\n

Therefore: Dignity for all requires flows of resources that do not always come from selling what the employees produce, using some of the funds generated by those sales to pay wages.\u00a0 It requires thinking and acting outside the box of the BCS, as is done, for example, at the showcase sites of South Africa\u00b4s Community Work Programme (CWP).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here is a second example:\u00a0 I review my budget and I find I have no surplus time, but I do have a thousand South African Rands every month that I do not need.\u00a0 I donate it to a non-profit.\u00a0 My donation combined with donations from others creates a dignified livelihood for somebody.<\/p>\n

How many examples would it be possible to give?\u00a0 The concept of unbounded organizing<\/em> coined by Gavin Andersson, offers answers to many questions and this is one of them.\u00a0 The answer is: an unlimited number.<\/p>\n

To get an unbounded approach off the ground we need ethics (an ethic of caring and sharing).\u00a0 We need psychology (consider Lindner`s and Hartling`s studies of dignity and humiliation; consider assuring normal moral development at least up to Kohlberg`s stage three;\u00a0 paying attention to Maslow`s higher needs, not just to paying enough money to keep\u00a0 the lights on and pay the rent; Viktor Frankl`s meaning and purpose:\u00a0 Erikson`s insights on identity\u2026.).\u00a0\u00a0 Ongoing conversations and learning on such \u201csoft\u201d topics make unbounded solutions \u201coutside the box\u201d feasible. (For examples see www.unboundedacademy<\/a>.org<\/u>)<\/p>\n

The key economic change is, as Keynes said, not so much learning new ideas as freeing ourselves from the grip of old ideas.\u00a0 It is emancipation from the illusion that economic development, investor-friendly politics, or education, or microcredit, or law and order, or everyone becoming an entrepreneur, and\/or mass therapy curing addictions that make many people unemployable,; and so on and on \u2026 \u00a0will somehow magically create revenues from sales large enough to pay dignity sustaining wages (or mini business profits) to everybody in the world who needs a good job.<\/p>\n

We also need to be sure that sharing property income, and sharing surplus from other sources, is empowering.\u00a0 It must build character not feed decadence (i.e. be morally uplifting instead of corrupting, cf. Aristotle and his contemporary followers like Alasdair McIntyre and Martha Nussbaum).\u00a0 Means become ends.\u00a0 Means that humiliate or corrupt cannot be expected to achieve dignity.<\/p>\n

The answer to the questions, \u201cIs racism going to end while the total number of decent jobs is inflexible, so that more good jobs for people\u00a0 of one ethnicity necessarily means fewer good jobs for people of other ethnicities<\/em>?\u201d ; \u201cWill sexism end while more good jobs for one gender necessarily means fewer good jobs for other genders<\/em>?\u201d ; \u201cWill narco-cultures and organized crime profiting from vice disappear while legitimate dignified livelihoods are still impossible for many people<\/em> ?\u201d;\u00a0 and \u201cCan global warming be reversed while not \u00a0burning coal or burning coal \u00a0is an issue of ecology vs. jobs<\/em>?\u201d \u00a0\u00a0is also \u201cNot bloody likely!\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard Richards` new book, Economic Theory and Community Development,<\/em> will soon be available from the publisher, Dignity Press, and from Amazon and other major booksellers, as a print book and as an e book.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

\"\"<\/a> <\/em>Prof. Howard Richards is a member of the\u00a0<\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/strong><\/a><\/em>. He <\/em>is a philosopher\u00a0of social science <\/em>and<\/em> Research Professor of Philosophy at <\/em>Earlham College, Richmond<\/em>, Indiana<\/em>, USA<\/em>.\u00a0He was educated at Redlands High School in California, Yale, Stanford, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of Toronto, Harvard and Oxford. He currently teaches in the University of Cape Town`s EMBA programme.\u00a0His books include:\u00a0<\/em>The Evaluation of Cultural Action; Letters from Quebec; Understanding the Global Economy; The Dilemmas of Social Democracies; Gandhi and the Future of Economics; Rethinking Thinking; Unbounded Organizing in Community;\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0The Nurturing of Time Future.\u00a0His new book, written with the assistance of Gavin Andersson, <\/em>Economic Theory and Community Development: Why Putting Community First Is Essential for Survival, is scheduled to be published in July of 2021.<\/em> howardri@earlham.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Project Save the World\u2019s six threats to humanity: War and Weapons, Global Warming, Famine, Pandemics, Radioactive Contamination, and Cyber Risks. Question: \u201cWhere do we start?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":198781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[984,1334,380],"class_list":["post-199497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial","tag-paradigm-change","tag-social-conflict","tag-solutions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}