Loch Rannoch, Photo: ukbreaksni.com
My Guest Blogger Ian Mason
Ian Mason, Principal, School of Economic Science
Writing this paper brings vividly to mind schooldays spent in Scotland’s central highlands. The school was set in an idyllic location on the shores of Loch Rannoch, surrounded by the Black Wood, a small remnant of the ancient Caledonian forest that established itself across most of central and northern Scotland and much of Northern Europe when the glaciers retreated around ten thousand years ago. Surrounded by ancient, meditative mountains, it was an essential part of a Rannoch education to be exposed to the elements in all weathers; to experience directly the wild beauty of nature, the utter tranquillity of still waters on a windless evening and the limitlessness of vast star-lit skies.
It was there I learnt (although I would not have put it that way at the time) to find“tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything.[1]”
This exposure became an inner as well as an outer experience. The sheer wildness of wind, rain, snow and ice; the variety of Nature’s moods, especially the moods of mountains, forest and trees; the capacity of the loch to be profoundly still one day, full of fun the next and occasionally uncontrollably dangerous; and the pervasive experience of beauty through it all, were a challenge to the range and stature of human experience even to an inexperienced boy.
This is what wilderness does: it reminds us that we live in a universe governed by Nature, not Man, and that human fulfilment depends on discovering a proper balance between wild Nature and the human capacity for order and understanding, not for dominance, but for harmonious living.
It was with this background that I came as an adult to the study of economics in the School of Economic Science. Here, economics is seen and understood as the practical application of philosophy to human affairs. It is a human study about people, the way that they live and the relationships they have in community with each other and the land and environment that sustains them.
Philosophy reminds us that all human beings have mental, emotional and spiritual lives capable of enrichment and development. Fullness and satisfaction in human life cannot be found or defined in purely material terms. Economics that fails to take account of this cannot be complete and cannot offer a foundation for sustainable prosperity and wellbeing. Economics therefore requires the support and guidance of philosophy, considered most simply as the love of wisdom[2]. The sincere pursuit of philosophy soon opens up the spiritual realms of human experience.
In that context wisdom is not merely an accumulation of erudite learning, and nor is philosophy. They are only of real value when they become practical and influence and affect practical daily living. It is not enough to seek the truth as a matter of mere intellectual understanding; it only attains real value when truthfulness becomes a guide and practice for life.
In practical, economic terms truthfulness becomes honesty and fair dealing which in turn are the foundations of trust between people without which economic life becomes the savage, distrustful jungle it so often is today.
Recent events in the world economy demonstrate that economics needs practical guidance based on widely recognised ethical standards. Among them, subordinate only to truth, must be justice, or dharma, righteousness, or right living as it is better known in some parts of the world.
Defining what is meant by justice has defied some of the greatest and profoundest thinkers from Plato to Amartya Sen. But it can probably be safely asserted that, at least for practical purposes in the economic realm, it involves knowledge, happiness, health, freedom and prosperity for everyone. Where economic systems and practices fail to deliver these we can be fairly sure that there is injustice either inherent in them or in their application. This also gives a test, or standard, by which success in economics can be judged.
This sense of justice or dharma involves more than outward forms. It also involves an inner sense of ordered being in which reason, love and restraint can and usually do prevail over passion, enmity and greed. It involves standards of ‘right living’ in which conduct towards others is governed by an individual sense of what is fair and right manifesting through personal action and behaviour.
Justice in this sense is not, and cannot be a product of law courts, judges or government departments. People cannot be forced to be just, or good, or loving, or kind. But society through laws and human systems can expect and encourage all of these.
Any economic system has in-built expectations that have inevitable effects. For example, Dr Vandana Shiva, the Indian scientist and activist described the modern obsession with economic growth as follows:
Limitless growth is the fantasy of economists, businesses and politicians. It is seen as a measure of progress. As a result, gross domestic product which is supposed to measure the wealth of nations, has emerged as the most powerful number and dominant concept in our times. However, economic growth hides the poverty it creates through the destruction of nature, which in turn leads to communities lacking the capacity to provide for themselves[3].
Nonetheless, economic growth is the standard by which modern economies are judged. Increased gross domestic product is success. Decreased gross domestic product is failure.
Economics with Justice offers different tests of success including, in particular, the well-being of all creatures on the one hand and the eradication of injustices on the other.
Wellbeing is not about producing and consuming as much as possible. It is about everyone being able to live as well as possible within renewable and sustainable ecological cycles and without injustice to anyone or anything.
The injustices to be eradicated are well known characteristics of contemporary economies caused by the rigorous application of established economic doctrines. They include:
- Disproportionate accumulations of wealth
- The drive towards ever greater consumption for some creating poverty and deprivation for others
- Dispossession of populations from ancestral homes and livelihoods
- Environmental degradation and destruction.
To bring this about it is necessary to re-examine some of the most fundamental elements of contemporary economic analysis namely land, labour and capital. Economics with justice starts with the view that material wealth is the product of ‘labour’, in the sense of human effort applied to land; and that capital is wealth used to produce more wealth. The role of capital is to facilitate a mutually enhancing relationship between labour and land understood more accurately as a relationship between people and planet. For this new understanding of both is necessary.
The term ‘labour’ denotes a deeply impoverished view of what it is to be human. A revitalised economics will have to transcend this, viewing human beings not merely as ‘labour’ or ‘consumer’, but primarily as free, spiritual beings living in families having ancestors and descendants, occupying households and needing livelihoods rather than ‘jobs’.
The term ‘land’ in contemporary economic analysis refers to an abstract ‘factor of production’ or ‘resource’ and is treated as a commodity to be bought, sold and exploited according to human demand. In fact it is the living source and sustainer of all material life. It is the whole natural environment, without which there is no prospect of enjoying any form of life at all, let alone any cultural or spiritual life.
The modern view of land as a commodity and a resource is very recent. An older perception recognises earth as mother, the universal origin of birth, nourishment, sustenance, comfort and repose for all living beings. Mother Earth is a concept as old as humanity that expresses the reality of the human relationship with land even in the present day and even though not, apparently, widely recognised.
It also has to be recognised that human beings have at least two relevant qualities: creative power and freedom of choice. The combination without discrimination can also be immensely destructive. But we also have powers of reason and discrimination and the possibility of foresight. These enable us to discriminate and adapt when we see that our conduct is having adverse consequences.
Economics with Justice aims to harness these human faculties to create and maintain a mutually enhancing relationship between Mother Earth and her human children. This is not just some sentimental dream. It carries real implications for the way human beings conduct themselves in most aspects of economic life. In particular it requires replacing the present expectations of economic systems with new ones based on respect, responsibility and a duty of care for land and environment.
This also involves legal systems and law. It is a universal principle of the rule of law in ordinary constitutional affairs that the exercise of power has to be subject to law and that there is a clear separation between the exercise of power and the power to make and enforce the laws that limit the powers of governments. One way that this is achieved is by recognising human rights and creating means by which courts can protect the rights of citizens against arbitrary and inappropriate exercise of power through the legal system. Effective human rights regimes enable private citizens to challenge the exercise of executive power before independent courts and tribunals.
But in relation to Nature, or Mother Earth, human beings, especially when they act collectively through governments and corporations, are also capable arbitrary and inappropriate exercise of power, sometimes with devastating effects[4]. One way to counter that and establish and enforce the human duty of care for Nature would be to develop an analogous system of rights for Nature based on the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature being advanced on the international stage by the Republic of Bolivia and others. As already observed, laws cannot force people to care about Nature or anything else; but they can prevent abuses though legal process.
Laws can also help to create expectations by recognising that certain acts and omissions are criminal offences and providing the means for prosecuting offenders even on the international stage. This has been done, for example, by international recognition of crimes against humanity such as genocide prosecuted at the International Criminal Court at the Hague.
Similarly, there is a rapidly growing campaign for the establishment of an international crime of ecocide – deliberately or negligently causing serious environmental harm – and for that too to be able to be prosecuted in an international tribunal. The establishment of such a criminal regime for environmental offences would create the expectation of proper care for Nature and make breach of the duty of care a punishable offence which few would contemplate with equanimity.
In the light of all this, Economics-with-Justice therefore proposes:
(a) New measures of economic success, including in particular:
- Human wellbeing
- Stable and secure households
- Eradication of injustice
(b) Recognising the duty of care for Nature through:
- Effective legal rights for Nature
- New law of ecocide
(c) Recognising responsibilities of ownership of Nature as a privilege with corresponding duties and ensuring that the benefit from unearned revenues of ownership are properly applied for the common good.
The suggestion is that by implementing policies such as these significant steps can be taken towards redressing the current imbalance in relations between the Earth and its human presence so as to promote the mutually enhancing relationship which is becoming ever more vital to human survival. There is no reason why human life on Earth should not be prosperous and full for everyone and there is no reason why the human presence should be anything other than a boon and a benefit to the rest of creation. As it was put by E F Schumacher:
Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and the beautiful.
The same applies to economics. All that is needed is that the human race conducts itself in full consideration of its own powers and possibilities and of all aspects of the world that is affected by them with the intention of developing and maintaining mutually enhancing relations.
[1] Shakespeare: As you like it
[2] From the Greek ‘philo’, love, and ‘sophos’, wisdom.
[3] Manchester Guardian 2 November 2013
[4] Witness, for example, the rapid disappearance of rain forests from many parts of the globe, or the Canadian tar sands being laid waste to meet an insatiable demand for oil.
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