The Golden Mean in The Eco-Society
In the recent two decades the ecological crisis has continually worsened. In this century global warming is expected to grow, changing the Earth's climate, causing rising sea levels, catastrophic weather extremes, some kind of epidemics of infectious diseases, decreasing the arable land and the cultural capacity. The extreme neo-liberal financial and economic system structured around the brutally competitive view of "grow or die". In this extreme neo-liberal system the enterprises are driven by the endless seeking of profit for capital expansion at the expense of all other considerations. In this they have no real alternative of chasing the profit, otherwise their equally driven competitors will vanquish them. These state of affairs are standing radically at odds with the capacity of our planet to sustain the complexity of life. The 'usury-civilization of this interest-capitalism', which gives preference to commercial turnover, consumerism, speculation, and "shareholder value" to real-value-generating production, will plunder the planet, and it is to be imagined that the evolutionary clock will be turned back to a time when only simpler organism could exist.
Some fashionable ecological approaches do not recognize that the above-detailed ecological crisis is the product of the interest-capitalism that is functioning with a very destructive interest-automatism. This interest-capitalism is not productive, but basically unproductive system, and it is not a real economy but rather a money-producing system - called chrematistic by Aristotle. Some eco-researchers tend to wrongly hold other phenomena to blame. Firstly, they are arguing that overpopulation is the cause of the ecological crisis, that is, too many people using up too many of the Earth limited resources. The consequence of this thinking that only by reducing the rate at which human being reproduce can be reached an ecological balance. Other researchers are giving a mystical explanation and assert that the ecological crisis has religious origins, because God commended humans 'to be fruitful and multiple and to dominate other living creatures'. There is a third group of researchers, who are blaming science and technology for ecological damage. They are stating that if toxic-chemicals and nuclear power had never been invented, the Earth could be a livable place for humankind.
I object to these theses and views. Firstly, over-population does not cause ecological dislocations. The way in which people organize theirs societies is to blame, regardless of population sizes. Secondly, science and technology are not to blame. The real problem is the uses to which society, especially interest-capitalism society, puts science and technology. Thirdly, religious worldview is far less to blame then the social, financial and economical relations that underpin them. My main objections against these explanations that they ignore the imperative of interest-capitalism: trade for profit; endless industrial expansion forced by interest-automatism and the identification of progress with corporate profit and one-dimensional self-interest. The above-mentioned three explanations are focusing on the symptoms rather then the pathology itself.
Social ecology explains that the ecological crisis has its origins in social circumstances, that is, how human beings have been organized in to various economic and political institutions in the history. The dominating the natural world initially emerged with the social domination of human by human, that is, hierarchies and exploitative classes. Such domination by age, gender, ethnicity or race and economic classes, as well, preceded the idea of dominating the biosphere. The mastery of some human social groups by others made it possible to conceive of mastering the natural world in the interest of social and finally in the interest of the narrow-minded, selfish class elites. Social ecology therefore opposed to all forms of hierarchy and domination as well as to exploitation of the international financial community. For this reason we must strive to eliminate domination, be it in matters of race, gender, sexual identity and class exploitation. In our present world the immediate cause of the ecological disorder is the set of social relations, what we are defining as interest-driven chrematistic-capitalism. This system functioning on the collectivist principle, and an anonym group separates the property from the personal owner. In this sense, the state-property is an anonym one, without a responsible human being as an owner. And the interest-capitalist private-property is also an anonym one, where the natural human person is separated from the property. The power-elite rules in both kinds of collectivist system. In a socialist one, he is ruling by the help of the state ownership. In an interest-capitalist system - in the chrematistic - he rules by the help of the anonym corporation and bank ownership without social responsibility. In both collectivist systems - socialism and chrematistic - the power-elite maintain social control through monopoly of the use of state force or financial measures and instruments.
I strongly object to prioritize pantheistic or mystical "eco-spirituality" over social, financial and economical analysis. We are witnessing how a blind social mechanism, the so-called 'market', that is, the selfish interest of the international financial community is turning soil into sand, covering fertile land with concrete, poisoning air and water, and producing climatic and atmospheric changes.
If we want really deeply analyze and understand what is happening with our Earth, we cannot ignore the impact that hierarchical and class-society, more exactly: the speculative interest-capitalism has on the natural world. Economic growth, making endlessly more money from money, gender and ethnic domination combined with corporate, state and bureaucratic interests are shaping much more the future of the natural world, then any kind of privatistic forms of spiritual or religious self-regeneration. Forms of the selfish and narrow-minded financial domination must be confronted by collective action of major social movements. These movements can represent the joint interest of all human beings. The present highly cooptative society is striving to foster personalism and ecological rhetoric to its advertising and customer-public relations efforts.
The idea of domination is not inherent in the human species. The primary source of dominating the nature is the domination of human by human, and in the structuring of the natural world, into hierarchical order. It is well-known that there is a natural tendency toward greater complexity and subjectivity in first nature; this is the nisus toward self-consistence and the natural selection in evolutionary development. The humankind's natural capacity intervene into the first nature has given rise to a second nature - a cultural, political and social nature. After coming into existence it has virtually absorbed the first nature. The second nature is an unfinished and inadequate development of evolution. Hierarchy, class, private property, private financial monopoly, the state, and other similar phenomena are evidence of the unfulfilled potentialities of nature to actualize itself as nature both in reflection and in practice. The future of the biosphere depends on whether second nature can be transcended in a new system of social and organic complementarities of free nature. This free nature would be a conscious and ethical nature, embodied in an ecological society.
The neo-conservative thinking is outdated
The neo-conservatives are saying that the economic mix of the contradictory polar systems of free and unfree economy, of the unplanned and the planned, of the individualist and collectivist, are slowly deteriorating or rapidly rotting both socially and economically. According to their view, freedom itself is corroded in the western democracies. The United States, for example, which they regarded to be the freest land in the world, has become unfree and degenerated into a social democracy, a welfare state, with increasing government takeover of the economy. Only one extreme system, the free, unplanned, individualist market can produce wealth. The other extreme, totalitarian, collectivist planning destroys both political and economic freedom, producing only collective poverty with shrinking profits, falling investment and plunging growth-rates.
It is doubtful, whether an absolutely free economy existed at any time and can exist in the future in a long run. It is also very doubtful that the neo-conservatives' narrow definition about social freedom - absence of any kind of social regulations and governmental constrains - is the main cause of the accelerated decline of our civilization. It has proved to be false belief that incessant growth of the economic wealth expressed in "shareholder value" must be an absolutely good thing, irrespective of what has grown and who, if anyone, has benefited. After scrutinization we can verify the only fact that in the real world there are countries with a mixed economy to a certain degree, because private and public ownership, free market and planned economy, freedom and state constrains of freedom, are complementaries rather than opposites. The good and just governmental, or social constrain in a true democracy with productive economy is the freedom of the majority to assert social responsibility contrary to the particular interest of any social minority - first of all the international financial community. This financial community has monopolized for himself the control over the central banks and the global monetary system as a whole.
The crucial question is what kind of combination of above-mentioned extremes is necessary to develop a just and effective economic system, which serves not only the growth of economic wealth but of human happiness, general well-being, culture, peace and harmony. The neo-conservative kind of economy, which is rather can be called 'chrematistic', dominated by a private global monetary monopoly and extreme free enterprise system with anonym private ownership, cannot exist without radical change any longer. Firstly, because of developing of the modern world-vide industrial system, with its large scale enterprises, monopolies and multinational company empires. Secondly, the unrestricted private and anonym ownership is unacceptable both in theory and in practice. Thirdly, to make more money from money through speculation with the securities and derivatives, and profitability alone in the trade and industrial sector is not conducive to general social progress, moral and cultural enrichment.
With the modern industrial system, and with the global monopoly of the private monetary power, the really free market with its relatively large range of competition disappeared for once and for all in the most important sectors of the economy. There is no international anti-trust law restricting the global monetary monopoly of transnational financial community. As to the real economy, namely the productive sector, only the anti-trust law, a governmental constrain, was able in the last century to preserve the free market for a transitory period. Big business demands for his speculation an absolutely free range of movement globally, an almost absolute economic freedom to gain larger profit. Despite of its rhetoric about the free market, the big business threatens constantly the free market with total destruction through monopolistic market practices, if larger profits and interests can be made in such a way.
The private monetary monopoly of the international financial community and the unrestricted anonym private ownership, that is, the very basis of the neo-conservative enterprise system is unjustifiable both in theory and practice. A sole human being is unable to create anything alone, for instance to manufacture one single pin in his whole life with dedicated efforts. Much rather it is true that he cannot bring into existence a big company solely through his own efforts. Private ownership in a large-scale enterprise is a fiction for the purpose of enabling functionless owners to live parasitically on the labors of others. Therefore it is just to socialize with the help of a mixed economy and ownership, the wealth, which is the result of collective effort of the whole society and the generations one after the other.
Profitability alone, and the unrestricted speculation with money, securities and derivatives are not conducive to the wealth and well-being of the whole society, and the humankind. Profitability and speculation do not lead to moral and cultural enrichment of the majority. The neo-conservative free market, with its anonym private ownership is compelled to be only profit seeking and necessarily aims at a narrow and selfish end. Anonym private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only what it gains from production and speculation. In a neo-conservative, totally free market system nobody is responsible for anybody but himself. In this neo-conservative system everything is equated with everything else by quantification. Qualitative distinctions of vital importance for man and society are suppressed. For this reason the neo-conservative free enterprise and so-called market system with its global speculation are the institutionalization of extreme individualism and non-responsibility.
Since the healthy economic and social life is a living reconciliation, necessarily a mixture of opposites, we must develop as soon as possible an optimized, mixed economy with just social control and the best possible socialization process, both in regional and global levels.
We need a mixed-economy, the combination of real democracy and efficient management on reformed basis of ownership, avoiding unnecessary centralization and the intervention of the organized state and private power. Private ownership in our present advanced society derives very large benefits from the infrastructure, which has built up through public expenditure. Hence society ought to receive a certain part of the profits, of large scales of private enterprise, not by means of profit taxes but by means of certain percent obligatory ownership of the equity. Private ownership in the large-scale enterprise or corporation must be restricted furthermore because it is divorced from work and becomes more and more passive property for acquisition and pure power. In small scale, and partly middle-scale enterprises private ownership attached to a concrete managing person is natural, fruitful and just, therefore it must be protected.
This healthy mixture ought to be a well-balanced system of social and economic freedom and responsibility, which could express and enforce the general interest of the whole society against the selfish particular interest of the wealthy minority, that controls the monetary power and the multinational corporations globally. With the strain and stretch apparatus of this well-balanced system, with a social engine and brake system, we can perform the simultaneous requirements of order and freedom. Without order, planning, predictability, social control, accountancy, obedience, discipline, that is, without general social responsibility everything disintegrates. Without freedom, the happy abandon and disorder and entrepreneurial venturing, the risk and gamble, the creative imagination, the progressive innovation, without these everything static and lifeless and does not develop and grow.
A mixed economy with impersonated reformed ownership can give more freedom of choice of objectives and can therefore be used for any purposes not only for material and financial well-being, but also for moral and cultural enrichment of the society. A mixed economy is not restricted to the one-dimensional objective of the present neo-conservative anonym private ownership. It is not restricted to forced and limitless economic growth and profit necessarily combined with greed and envy. To get rid of these restricted objectives is of vital importance for the future of humankind because unlimited growth in our limited world is not only impossible but dangerous, as well. Through greed and envy, it creates conflicts not only between individuals and social strata but among nations, too. We are witnessing that it leads permanent war and not to permanent peace.
Sustainable growth or sustainable resources?
We may pose this question such a way: money or life? The humankind has to decide in the 21st century, which will be the object of its devotion? Inequality and injustice are not accidental results of global interest-capitalism, but they are its essential characteristics. In an interest-capitalist regime, based on private monetary monopoly, money is regarded as the measure of all value. The maximization of returns to financial capital has become the interest-capitalist society's main goal. There is no real competition because this is a monopolistic system. There is no real individualism either, because the decision-making power is in the hands of a small group, the so-called international financial community. This is the system of chrematistic and in it materialism is nurtured as favored cultural norm. Shareholder-value, stock prices and gross domestic products are the accepted measures of the so-called progress and general well-being. Inflation of land and stock-values are furthered while wages are held increasingly depressed. This situation creates ever-growing inequality by increasing the financial assets of the international financial community, that is, a small group relative to the working-part of the society.
Interest-capitalism favored institution is the publicly traded limited liability corporation, which concentrates power in the hands of chief-corporate executive, who is accountable only to absentee owners. These owners themselves are guarded from public accountability for the decisions made on their behalf. The legal structure of the corporation is compelled for pursuing the unlimited growth. Though it is an utmost over-used banality that living capital - human-, social-, institutional- or national resources - is the ultimate source of all real wealth, despite of this fact, interest-capitalism assigns no value to living capital and makes no accounting for its depletion. The hegemonic power over governments and multinational corporation empires resides with the international financial community and with the global financial markets in which speculators gamble day by day with hundreds and thousands of billions of dollars in borrowed money.
Corporate ownership of the mass-media and financial control of the politicians render democracy meaningless. The financial institutions controlled by the transnational financial community rewrite laws to free themselves from public regulations, economic borders. This internationally organized private power is capable to eliminate competition through mergers, acquisitions and other monopolistic and oligopolistic alliances.
We are told by the organized money power that the fairest and most effective way to end poverty is to expand the economic pie through economic growth, this way improving the living standard of everyone. In fact the economic growth we currently experience is destroying the real living wealth of society and reducing the wealth of the world.
We are told that the global victory of interest-capitalism is a victory for democracy and the market-economy, which is the fairest and most efficient structure for distributing and allocating economic resources. In fact, interest-capitalism is the mortal enemy of real democracy and real market economy based on equal opportunity and free competition. Interest-capitalism is a system that concentrates economic power in the hands of a small group to the exclusion of the many, who are creating value with productive efforts. The ownership in interest-capitalism is anonym, and this type of ownership is an engine of destruction and upward redistribution.
Life is the measure of value
Considering the possibility of a planetary eco-society in which life is the real measure of value, we have to refer to the views of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. They stated in the Declaration of Independence:
'When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.'
According to the Founding Fathers the natural rights of men consist of life, liberty and property. They regarded maintenance of life as the basis of all human existence, with natural law giving men the right to do any reasonable thing to preserve it. Thus, liberty is freedom from every rule except the law of nature. Property is the right on the natural law to control the objects necessary to the preservation of life. And whenever a man introduces his own labor into any such object, it becomes his private property to use, to trade or to give away.
In order to protect and preserve life, liberty and property, according to some thinkers, the man forms a political community by so-called 'social contract'. Government comes into being as an instrument through which the law of nature is enforced. Each individual therefore by surrendering his natural right to carry out the laws of nature gives execution to the judgments of government. Consequently, the aims of political society are to fix a uniform interpretation of the laws, which establish the rights of life, liberty and property. As impartial agency, the government or state has to apply this interpretation between individual members of society.
Liberty to the belief of the Founding Fathers was a God-given right. No power, economic, financial or political could shatter the belief. The right to life, liberty and property could not be legitimately denied by the organized public power of the state or by the organized private power of the financial community based on its monetary monopoly. The state regarded to be the servant of the individual and not the individual the servant of the state. But the organized private power also ought to be the servant of the natural persons and not the natural persons are the servants of the organized private power, which is the power of a small and closed group hiding in anonym legal entities. This organized private power structure in our time has more power than the organized public power. This background "quasy state" and its global shadow government control the formal states and international organizations informally.
In a planetary eco-society with mixed economy and direct democracy human rights and political sovereignty reside in real concrete persons on the basis of one-person one-vote. Civic associations facilitate the practice of direct democracy, but we have to take into consideration that all civic associations in our time are dependent on who is financing them. The state has financial measures through the taxing monopoly. The organized private power has financial measures through monetary monopoly, that is, creating money and credits and collecting interest. Therefore, a civic association is either under the control of a state organization or of a private organization belonging directly or indirectly to the organized money power. In the reality there is only very few independent civic organization. If there is, they have to be practically under-financed and therefore weak. Public founding of elections and free access for political candidates to mass media could minimize the role of money in elections in the new planetary eco-society.
The alternative to the present global chrematistic could be this eco-society on the basis of vitality, diversity and productive potential of the society's human, social, institutional and natural capital. In this new society economic life centers on well-regulated self-organizing markets that function within a strong ethical culture of cooperation and mutual responsibility. In this mixed economy the firms are human-scale and owned by real natural persons and not by artificial and anonym legal entities. These natural owners are workers, customers, suppliers and community members. There are a lot of forms of enterprise including proprietorships, cooperatives, partnerships and other stakeholder owned corporations. The most important difference has to be the disappearance of the publicly traded limited liability corporation. These types of anonym ownership may not exist any longer.
The right of each human being to the means of livelihood is the most basic of human rights. This right is secured in part through owning a share in the assets on which one's livelihood depends. Concerns for equity and public accountability are very important factors of the mixed economy.
Productive economy instead of chrematistic
Money is only a mediating medium of the economy. Money is society's servant, not its master, and is used only to facilitate productive investment and beneficial exchange. In the planetary eco-society financial speculation is strongly discouraged by regulation and tax policy. From this follows, that finance is predominantly local as are the majority of the enterprises and production. The different countries trade their surplus production based on their comparative natural endowments. Cultural and economic diversity are highly valued. Individual, local and national economies are a mix of public and private ownership. Experience, culture, information and technology are shared without obstacles among people, communities and nations through scientific and electronic communication.
Each community or nation has the right to determine what and how much it will trade, with whom, and under what circumstances. A fair and balanced trade that serves the mutual interests of the trading partners has to be welcomed. However, the planetary eco-society has a natural preference for local production to strengthen local control and economic security. A planetary eco-society takes seriously the principles of market and trade theory, including the principle that markets must be regulated to maintain the conditions of efficient market function. By the help of regulatory and fiscal measures, it maintains a reasonable balance in trade between countries, and keeps finance and ownership predominantly national.
Only a planetary eco-society with mixed economy and participatory democracy can create a healthy and benign relationship to the natural world. The creation of such a type of eco-society requires the elimination of all hierarchy and delegitimation of all forms of discrimination. The humankind needs a mixed economy with real democracy and efficient management to evolve a more democratic and dignified system of industrial administration, a more human employment of machinery and technology, and a more intelligent utilization of the fruits of human innovations, ingenuity and efforts. It is a said fact that currently stagnation, inflation, constant unemployment and growing indebtness and other socio-economic difficulties affect countries with economy structured mainly on the views of neo-conservatism. We have to emphasize that neither extreme can be a solution in the economy and in the society both in national, regional and global levels. Not in the final degree is a solution for our civilization making a fetish of limitless economic growth and financial speculation. It then becomes more and more pathological, unhealthy, cancerous growth and it is disruptive and destructive. We are firmly convinced there is only an ever-developing living solution on the basis of full recognition that opposites are valid to a certain extent. For this reason, the present historical task for the humankind is to find the Golden Mean in the economy and society, a just, effective and beautiful mixture of freedom and responsibility, liberty and equality.
BOOKS OF REFERENCES:
2003
Dr. Drábik János: Uzsoracivilizáció III.
11. fejezet