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Message 429
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| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] "monetary reform" v. "social credit" | | Date: | Saturday, January 1, 2005 08:10:50 (-0500) | | From: | Bill Ellis <tranet @........net>
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On Dec 31, 2004, at 7:50 PM, John Hermann wrote:
>
> A: Not necessarily - that's a rather extreme version
> of "monetary reform". Why does there need to be a
> monopoly at all?
BE:
Why indeed. Most cultures used "reciprocity economics."
Self-interest, competition, and materialism are recent invention.
Many other groups are discussion how we might start local
"gifting" systems. Why not here.
The below review gives some additional information.
Bill Ellis
THE FABLE OF L’HOMO ECONOMICUS is destroyed by Dominique Temple and
Mireille Chabal in La Réciprocité et La Naissance des Valeurs Humaines
(Éditions L’Harmattan, 5-7 rue de L’école Polytechnique, F-75005 Paris
FRANCE, 1995, in French). Modern Economics and the EuroAmerican
culture are based on the assumed reality of homo economicus. That is,
that the only motivation of humans is material self-interest. This
book examines all cultures throughout history, including our own modern
culture, and demonstrates that human motivations and human values have
been distorted only in the last couple of hundred years, and more
vehemently in the last few decades, to become based on values which are
destroying the humanity and life on Earth. Reciprocity is more
fundamental and more friendly to both humans and nature.
Reciprocity is the antithesis of exchange or selling. Reciprocity, or
“gifting,” has taken on many forms in different cultures. In some it
is imbedded in religion. People produce and distribute goods and
services in celebration of their spiritual beliefs. Their work is a
gift to the gods, to the Earth, and to humanity, without thought of
material return. In other cultures production is for the common good.
That is, people see themselves imbedded in their families and
communities. They exist only because of their relationships to other
people and their bioregion. And these relationships depend on the
productive role they play -- how much they can support and give to
society. In still others, material welfare is paramount; but one
gains insurance of her or his material well-being by giving to others.
“To him who gives shall be given.” Each person gains prestige in
society by how much s/he gives. That prestige demands reciprocity to
the giver and to the family of the giver. The more one impoverishes
himself in betterment of the community the more the community is
beholden to the giver.
This reciprocity on which almost all cultures are based is uniquely
vilified by neoliberal economic theory which refuses to recognize that
production and distribution can be based on anything but greed and
exchange -- giving up something only to gain something else. This
distorted economic theory of exchange goes well beyond just “the
market.” Economic reasoning has invaded sociology, education,
politics, ethics and the law. Homo Economicus is believed to base all
values and judgments on economic exchange values, what one can gain
materially. It is only in this distorted Western society that
reciprocity has been subjugated to the concept of exchange.
Bronislaw Malinowski, Claude Levi-Straus, Marcel Mauss, Marshall
Sahlins and other anthropologists have shown the deep roots of
reciprocity; Aristotle, Homer, Hobbes, and other political
philosophers trace reciprocity from the Greeks as the base of our
Western society; and Hegel, Adam Smith, Durkheim and Polanyi and
other economists, describe reciprocity’s relevance to the age we are
in. But it’s the future which really concerns Temple and Chabal.
Money, exchange, and globalism have replaced the human values inherent
in reciprocity with motivations which are leading to social,
ecological, economic and political destruction. Reciprocity exists
deep in ourselves, our families, and our communities; but it is
suppressed by our belief system and its resulting social institutions.
We see reciprocity in President Bush’s “thousand points of light”, in
the burgeoning NGOs around the world, in volunteerism, in our familles,
in our communities, and in many grassroots social innovations. Our
future can be assured only if we release this constructive force of
reciprocity. Or as the authors end this book, “Si l’esclave veut etre
libre, il ne lui faut pas seulement différer la mort, mais dominer sa
propre vie par le souce de celle d’autrui, maitriser la vie avant
qu’elle ne le condamne a mort.”
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