The Economy: As If It Matters

The Economy: As If It Matters

By Strider Benston

Economics, “the Dismal Science,” is that realm of human activity and concern most knowingly and actively obscured from common understanding even by its practitioners until even those participants themselves are patently incapable of escaping the web of lies they have spun to justify their power and profits. Its hermetically sealed language code: efficiency, competitiveness, the invisible hand, economies of scale, comparative advantage, financial instruments…, has been successful in disguising naked greed as inevitable, natural, and a highest good and sacred duty for the greedy, and in mystifying the manipulated masses from seeing that the emperor is naked.

“ Let no one be deceived. Unless Western man is able
to release himself from the degrading tyranny of his enslavement
to the religion of economics, he is certainly doomed to self-destruction.”

Ashley Montagu, On Being Human, 1950-1966, p. 115

What Is the Economy ?

Economics, from the Greek, means the governing of a household. The basic concept includes the food and energy systems, material structures, input and output, sustainable relations to the natural and social environment, and the harmonious inner relationship among all its members and elements. The modern capitalist definition has reduced this comprehensive domain to the narrow production and sale of goods by any means necessary to achieve a maximum of profit which is extracted from the process for the sole benefit of and control by the owner – irrespective of the quality, benefit, or detriment of that product to its producers, its consumers, the social relations which facilitated its production, or consequent dangers to its natural environment.

The modern corporation is the legal and structural embodiment of this human-created system. It has brought such wonders as mass race slavery, imperialism, mono-crop agriculture, gigantic pollution-spewing factories which have lately been exported
to non-democratic countries to insure the maximal exploitation of labor and the environment, strip-mining, mountaintop removal, the poisoning of our air, land, waterways, cities, and oceans, a mountain of waste threatening to drown the whole planet, and wars of total destruction in the permanent competition for control of resources, rules of engagement, markets, labor, and the targeted destruction of family
and community life – all in the name of free enterprise and growth.

Perhaps this sounds harsh; for haven’t we all benefited from cities and concerts and cheap transportation, and moon walks and I-pods, and the rock-star adulation of celebrities which are provided for our attention and amusement by all these structures ? Well, this totally begs the question of how we might be living had we the option of different choices, or different relations or societal goals. It IS what it IS.

There is no doubt that capitalism has facilitated a mind-boggling, and overwhelming quantity of production – and waste. In fact the GDP is precisely a measure of these quantities of production — and waste. Epidemic diseases, cancers caused by the poisons we eat, breathe, and drink, the production of bombs, collection agencies, telemarketing, reclamation of poisoned drinking water, prisons, and the war industry are ALL counted as pluses in our GDP.

Presently, due to the use of certain “financial instruments,” we face a global crisis of unprecedented magnitude. And all our brilliant pundits who have guided us to this precipice have not a clue about how we might survive the storm.

“Natural economic adjustments will “There’s a risk of falling off a cliff.
return advanced countries to positive growth The global fiscal stimulus is an
by the end of this year.” John Lipsky, insurance policy that may not work.”

Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University

The above were both quoted from the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland,
on the same day: 1/31/2009, Wall Street Journal, a-7

How Has It Worked Historically ?

As Arthur Koestler explained in his classic final work, Janus, 1976, every actual thing in the universe is a holon. It is itself, and is also a part of a larger whole. All living structures are aware of their dual role in the “great chain of Being.” All healthy systems foster a type of active consciousness of this central role. A healthy cell performs its function for the tissue, organ and organism which it serves while absorbing nutrients, nurture and purpose from that organism. A cancerous cell is concerned exclusively with its own metabolism and replication. When the selfish motive overwhelms the mutual motive, the organism dies – as do all its constituent living entities.

Capitalism in its entrepreneurial stage acted spontaneously and organically by pooling collective energies to create something new. When embedded within a functioning social system, perhaps within a community, as it often was, it often tended
to provide a real service to that community, and led to tremendous innovation and growth for that parent system. Adam Smith in the 18^th Century, saw and extolled this vibrant potential, and offered advice on how to strengthen it. He did not foresee that the child would devour its parent.

Nature {Life} functions as a whole. Our breathing, blue planet, within the matrix of sunlight, gravitational and rotational energies, is a closed system. All waste from one process becomes nutrient for other processes. Here is where capitalism departs, tragically, from its parent model. For its operational principle is the extraction of wealth from the social system which produced it, and the dumping of poisonous waste back onto the natural environment beyond its capacity to absorb and re-incorporate those concentrated toxins.

From the intrinsic dialectic of nature playing upon society we have seen the rebellion of the excluded from that capitalist system. The opposition classes and ideology tragically incorporated the basic premise of that system itself, the rampant exploitation of Nature and permanent expansion of industrial productivity, while posing itself as the extreme counter to how it functioned socially. Thus Communism: and the great ideological war of the past two centuries. The social dynamics were inverted and rigidified under central control which, ironically, glorified and intensified the basic premise, and in its drive to compete against its parent, led often to even more intense exploitation of its own working class. In the process the fatal flaw of permanent expansion on a finite planet was overlooked by both systems. The basic genius of the greedy parent, that spontaneous, creative, incipient activity from below was stifled and destroyed.

This War of these competing mega-systems for supremacy in the domination of Nature, and expropriation of the energies, relations, and dreams of their subject populations constitutes the history of the 20^th Century.

What Have They Done To Us Lately ?

Within the capitalist matrix a system of finance developed, at first rather benevolently,
as profits often morphed into investments in newer, or larger enterprises. Yet, now, the primary wealth has been removed from the productive process, and is self-governing, and self-motivated. The addiction of the industrial system to finance capital has left it enslaved to it, and starving. For its supplier found itself a new junkie, ITSELF.

The banking system has often crippled the industrial system which it rules by its channeling of the flow of capital into and out of the realm of goods and services. The Glass-Steagle Act of 1933, and other initiatives under the FDR Administration served to corral the cannibalistic tendencies of finance, and render the larger society viable. Yet ever since the bank merger acts of the 70’s and subsequently, and especially the repeal of Glass-Steagle in 1997, the narcissism of finance has overtaken our society. The encroachments of finance over industry have served to hollow-out the manufacturing system of America with mergers, leveraged buy-outs, and the massive export of industrial capital. This decimated the stable base of the American working class, especially in the big cities.
It undercut and reversed the past century of democratic and labor rights hard-won
through protracted struggle by the American people, and fueled the frenzy of corporate Globalization. Those of us who were active in the Civil Rights, Labor, and other such movements remember well how hard and long we fought to win those rights, and how tragic to our society is their being ripped away. The resulting social despair is perhaps
the primary factor which fueled the hard-drug and violent gang culture raging ever since.

In recent decades our financial rulers have fashioned a debt economy where the claims of the ultra wealthy rulers serve now to enslave the present generation and starve our children. The creation of debt by the banks has always mortgaged our future which was to be satisfied by permanent expansion of production and the roll-back of the share allocated to those who actually work to create it. This increasing theft has been disguised by the importation of cheap shoddy goods, hypnotic advertising and the worship of star personalities, a massive prison system which profits from the destruction of millions of lives of Americans who are removed from the labor force, credit cards, and now the greatest housing bubble ever foisted on a culpable & unsuspecting public.

The mania of deregulation removed any structural and independent oversight from the positive feedback loop of mutual investment shuffling. Gigantic hedge funds appeared on the scene whose sole purpose was to invest in the expanding bubble of investments. Our entire social system became enslaved to a giant Ponzi scheme. Every major player in the casino knew well that they were doing this, betting that they would “get theirs” before the entire structure collapsed. They just didn’t know quite when. The Federal Reserve & the Bush Regime merely stoked the bubble to the max by feeding the frenzy with massive tax cuts for the ultra rich, especially the capital gains tax and inheritance tax. The unwary lower-middle class were sucked into the game by artificially low interest rates and the inane mortgage deals without scrutiny. The swaps and derivatives were created precisely to expand and hide the bubble from any accountability. Corrupt accounting and rating and insurance agencies collected their fees at every level. These fees and bonuses have already been stolen from the world economy, leaving all of us now saddled with trying to rescue -What ? the very system and people who have so robbed us that we might never recover ?

The $3 Trillion War in Iraq, mere debt-financed icing on the cake for oil companies, the military industry and private contractors, was never even listed on the books.

Our industrial economy was always but supplemental to the real economy of human and community relations, healthy children, and a vibrant Nature to live, love, play, and create, upon and within. Until it went crazy with growth-imperatives it served a valid and rational purpose, although we might well dispute many aspects of how it functioned, as the Marxists, workers, peasants, women & children, the trees and soil and rivers and oceans, the exterminated and surviving species with whom we share this lovely planet have done. The Reagan Revolution of the past 30 years has actively destroyed all the mitigating rationalities we had forced into an otherwise terminally-corrupt system. The profit-manic media monopoly serves to prevent the public from learning of our plight, and of our responsibility to rectify the tragedy. The rulers merely removed our healing invisible hand.

The phantom economy has fatally exacerbated all the already terminal contradictions which already laced the industrial economy, the depletion of oil, soil,
clean water and air, teeming cities of multiple millions of desperate souls, poisoned food,
a permanent war and prison economy, planetary overheating, the list goes on. Yet, with democratic structures we used to have some tools to mitigate the disasters and pose the possibility of thinking about an alternative way to live.

The pressures on the Obama Administration are beyond imagining, even were he and his team able to look at the picture which is infinitely larger than mere rescue of the System. It is our Earth which “hangs in the balance.” It remains imperative for us, the living, to take up this challenge, to support and encourage all honest efforts to mitigate the crisis, even as we learn to articulate the Big Picture; for not merely our economy and our society are threatened by the rampant greed under which we presently suffer, but all society and all Life on our planet tremble under that same threat.

Referring to the Seattle WTO protest of 1999, and thousands of other efforts,
the Pulitzer Prize winning biologist E. O. Wilson wrote in The Future of Life, 2003

“Protest groups. They gather like angry bees at such meetings…. They are people
who feel excluded from the conference table by faceless power…. They have a point.
The CEOs and governing boards, supported by government leaders committed
to an expanding economy, are the commanders of the industrialized world.
Like princes of old…they rule by fiat. The protesters say: Include us at the table,
and while you’re at it, the rest of life.

The protest groups are the early warning system for the natural economy. They are
the living world’s immunological response. They ask us to listen…. I say bless them all.
Their wisdom is deeper than their chants and tramping feet suggest, deeper than
that of many of the power brokers they oppose. They keep open public dialogue….
And if they are uniformly left-wing in ideology, So be it.” P. 188-189

And, while we’re at it, let’s remember what Voltaire advised us 250 years ago:

“Cultivate your garden.”

Strider Benston

I will include a bibliography on the web site

of the sources I used in preparing this article

Strider “Arkansas” Benston was a volunteer organizer for SNCC and SCLC in the voting rights movement in Alabama in 1965 and 1966. He loaded trucks and was steward in Teamsters and Mailhandlers unions in Chicago from 1968-87. He was founding president of Concerned Truckers for a Democratic Union in Chicago, 1975.
He earned a BA in Political Science, and Master of Humanities in Philosophy & History
at Univ. of Colorado @Denver in 1998.
He teaches, commits poetry, does construction work, bikes, & gardens.
He is presently a member of the Longmont Elections Committee  2009-2012

Bibliography for The Economy: As If It Matters

Agenda for a New Economy David C. Korten 2009

the Roaring Nineties Joseph Stiglitz 2003

Globalization & its Discontents “ 2003

Deep Economy Bill McKibben 2007

the Return of Depression Economics Paul Krugman 2009

Neoconomy Daniel Altman 2004

the Green Collar Economy Van Jones 2008

Dilemmas of Domination Walden Bello 2005

the Crisis of Global Capitalism George Soros 1998

the Future of Life Edward O. Wilson 2002

On Being Human Ashley Montagu 1950, 1966

Unequal Protection Thom Hartmann 2002

the Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight “ 1998

the Ecology of Commerce Paul Hawken 1993

the Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein 2007

the Judas Economy Wm. Wolman, Anne Colamosca 1997

False Dawn John Gray 1998

the Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith 1759

Reinventing Collapse Dimitri Orlov 2008

Janus Arthur Koestler 1976

Paradigms in Progress Hazel Henderson 1991

Building a Win Win Economy “ 1998

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