Part II
Ancient and Current Teachings versus Market Capitalism’s Value System
There are a number of virtues and values, commonly touted by church leaders, moral philosophers, populists, which are earnestly sought to be practised by many individuals in their non-commercial activities. They clash with the market model’s vision of human nature and society and, therefore, with capitalism’s quintessential values.
In our so-called private lives, we want our personal relationships to be built on trust and on tenderness for each other. We like to think that we would not take advantage of other people’s needs to profit, to make gains that we otherwise would not obtain. In pre-capitalist societies these were not just meaningless platitudes. These kinds of values were considered vital to a well-functioning society. For centuries, the notion of working for profit, of working only for selfish reasons, only to satisfy greed – that is, to do what capitalism and its implementing machinery, the market, claims to be inherently natural and good – was pictured to be despicable behaviour.
“In the numerous treatises on the passions that appeared in the 17th century, no change whatever can be found in the assessment of avarice as ‘the foulest of them all’ or in its position as the deadliest Deadly Sin that it had come to occupy toward the end of the Middle Ages.” From Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1977.
While many societies did not live up to the ideal, they felt they should, unlike our current social sense of values. It was understood that to live in harmony, that for human beings to fulfill their potential, for contentment to reign in a society, required the eradication of any tendencies toward self-seeking, satisfying greed, creating of fear rather than trust.
“And hence it is, that to feel much for others, and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which constitutes their whole grace and propriety.”
This ringing rejection of the bases for the market model and the capitalist system that it serves was penned by none other than the founding father of market capitalism’s theoretical foundations:
Adam Smith. (The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Indianapolis: Liberty Classics; emphasis added).
Smith, as a philosopher, understood full well that his later (and much more famous) prescription as a political economist ran counter to all accepted moral and political teachings, teachings whose wisdom he accepted. It is clear that, unlike his modern followers, he knew that the market model he favoured was to be pursued because, if it approximated the theory that underpinned it, would lead to an economically efficient use of resources and talents. Remarkably, Adam Smith, the inspiration for today’s market capitalism’s claims to legitimacy, knew that, even if the model in practice was faithful to his economic theory, it would not produce a decent society.
The sentiments and values that Adam Smith as a philosopher admired continue to be part of our consciousness and affect much thinking and conduct world-wide, across many cultural and religious groups. Great traditions and cultural heritages maintain the visions of an alternative set of values, of a society based on altruism rather than greed.
From the indigenous American cultural tradition:” Miserable as we seem in thy eyes, we consider ourselves… much happier than thou, in that we are very content with the very little we have.”(Micmac Chief)
From the Buddhist tradition: “Whoever in this world overcomes his selfish cravings, his sorrows fall away from him, like drops of water from a lotus flower.” (Dhammmapada, 336).
[Individual salvation is not enough]: “I shall take a million births, shall be born amongst the lowliest and most miserable, until the last and lowliest has found salvation.” (The Bhoddisatva)
From the Hindu tradition: “That person who lives completely free from desires, without longing… attains peace.” (Bhagavad-Gita, II.71).
From the teaching of Ghandi came Sarvodaya. It is the upraising of all creatures, making life better for the ‘last’. (Asha Aryanayakam). It is to be attained by self-giving, self-renouncing, love and sharing. It is to be achieved by democracy, justice and freedom from exploitation.
From the Christian tradition: [It is] “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.” ( Matthew, 19: 23-24).
The Jubilee: a programme for social revolution instituted by Moses to re-establish just relationships should they be undermined. Every 7 years there had to be a redistribution of wealth to prevent the accumulation of capital by the few. (Leveticus 25; Deuteronomy 15; Jeremiah 34: 13-17; Isaiah 56-66; Ezekiel 45:7-9, 16-18).
From the Confucian tradition: “Excess and deficiency are equally at fault.” (Confucius, XI, 15).
From the Jewish tradition:”Give me neither poverty nor riches.” (Proverbs 30:8).
From the Greek tradition: “Nothing in Excess.” (Oracle at Delphi).
From the Taoist tradition: ”He who knows he has enough is rich.” (Tao Te Ching).
From the Islam tradition: ”Poverty is my pride.” (Mohammad).
“Woe unto all slandering traducers who have garnered wealth and sedulously hoard it, thinking that their riches will render them immortal! By no means! They shall be flung to the Destroying Flame.” (Mohammad, Surah CIV: 1-4).
“[Justice and brotherhood] are essentially two different profiles of the same face. Both in turn cannot be realised without equitable distribution of income and wealth. Hence these goals have been closely integrated into all Islamic teachings so that their realisation becomes a spiritual commitment of the Muslim society.” (Umer Chapra, 1985).
(General sources and elaborations of these philosophical dicta: Alan Thein During; Robin Arnold & Dale Hess.)
Literally hundreds of millions of people, likely billions of people, are imbued with historically cultivated traditions, cultural convictions and beliefs that affect their thinking and acting – consciously or unconsciously. These traditions, cultural convictions and beliefs, have existed for eons and continue to influence thought and sentiments, as well as daily living. They are in stark contrast to the beliefs and convictions that are associated with market capitalism. They deny the validity and value of market capitalism’s ideology.
Why, then, should we allow the dominant class to keep on telling us that we have no alternative but to organize ourselves around the satisfaction of greed, around greater and greater consumption, around the enrichment of the few and the pauperization of the many? Why should we continue to deny ourselves the opportunity to pursue virtues and values that are, in many ways, part and parcel of our (often unconscious, occasionally enunciated) desires? Why should we not try to make non-market capitalist values and virtues central to our decision-making, giving us a real chance to attain our rich potential as human beings who can live in harmony with one another?
We should identify values and virtues that can form the bases for political actions to found a real alternative.
“To live ethically is to think about things beyond one’s own interests. When I think ethically I become just one being, with needs and desires of my own, certainly, but living among others who also have needs and desires. When we are acting ethically, we should be able to justify what we are doing, and this justification must be of a kind that could in principle, convince any reasonable being.” (Source: Peter Singer, How Are We To Live?, The Text Publishing Co., Melbourne, 1993).
Ethical Bases for a Politics to Develop an Alternative
We should begin with thinking of ourselves as ‘living among others who also have desires and needs’. We should start off from the proposition that we live in a community where all are equally precious and valuable. The logic of this beginning point is that the production of material welfare is a communal responsibility. Each of us is to produce to serve the other ’s needs. This is our responsibility as community members. None of us is to be motivated to produce because this will satisfy our own needs. We are not to produce a good or render of service because this means we get something in return. We are to do it to meet the needs of others.
This starting position denies the logic of market capitalism. In market capitalism, the only reason to produce a good or render a service is to accumulate wealth for oneself. As a consequence of satisfying one’s greed it becomes necessary to be competitive, to take advantage of the other whenever possible, by fair means or foul, to be aggressive, to exploit human beings and resources. It is a natural result that, in a scheme that promotes the selfish impulses that we all have, those less well-endowed – with physical, intellectual or material assets – will live in constant fear of being exploited, rather than be the exploiters. In the market capitalist model, the relationships between human beings are necessarily antagonistic. More, because the needs of others are only provided because they are able to pay for them, the relationships between need-providers and purchasers are not personal ones. It does not matter to market actors whom they supply or with whom they deal. The relationships in a market model are impersonal. The relationships are not based on concerns with human beings. The relationships are money relationships, not human ones. They are anti-human.
In a productive regime based on community, where needs are met willingly, that is, on the basis that this is the way in which human beings should behave toward one another, the essence of the scheme is the centrality of the links between human beings. It is a regime where greed and fear are not the motivators for productive activities. It is a scheme that, acknowledges that in each of us there is a measure of selfishness and selflessness and that the habit of caring for one another should be cultivated and the tendency to care only for one self suppressed. This is an ethical starting point for a politics for change that has much to commend it.
It is inevitably based on another assumption that is in complete contradiction to the market capitalist value system. This is that a community-oriented political economy begins with the requirement that all members of society should be materially equal. It makes sense in a system that demands that we all meet others’ needs that we should all start off with roughly the same advantages and burdens and that measures must exist that will ensure such a rough balance to be maintained. In this way, none of us have an incentive to pursue our self-interest at the expense of others. In this way, none of us have to live in fear that we cannot meet our needs.
In this way, too, there is no premium set on having special intellectual or physical attributes. There is no structural push to differentiate between people of different origin, colour or gender. Luck and socially constructed discriminations simply will not affect the way in which material and social goods are obtained or distributed.
In this way, participation in decision-making about what to produce, how to produce it, how to distribute the yields, will more easily lend themselves to be democratic as no one will have more clout than anyone else by dint of their wealth or membership of a privileged group.