After Capitalism

In recent years inequalities of wealth distribution have created much concern, especially for those impoverished by the complex economic forces that lead to such inequities. Even a rudimentary awareness of modern economics informs us that the forces that drive the market are complex and unpredictable enough to confound experts and our ability to manage them. Enter Michael Spence and After Capitalism, a contribution to the new Social Science series by Adonis Press. This anthroposophically inspired exposition speaks to how the socio-economic landscape could and should be, in the best of all possible worlds, were we to better understand the dynamics of human affairs. Spence, who helped develop Emerson College in Sussex, presents us with a utopian vision of fair trading futures, although he admits we have a long way to go before they are realised. His arguments are based on Rudolf Steiner's ideas on the threefold nature of human social life in which Cultural, Rights and Economic sectors play out. In the Steinerian tradition of direct observation of reality (not analysis of other people's ideas) Spence presents a citation- and bibliography-free exposition.

The Cultural sector feeds our inner soul life and need for knowledge and creativity. The Rights sector deals with law, equality, fair play and acceptable social behaviour. The Economic sector deals with production, distribution and consumption of the material things we need to function in the physical world. Money is not a component of the productive process, only a means to facilitate it. Spence reviews how these sectors came into being, noting that in former times they were represented by the "Book," Sword" and "Plough," or the "Priest," "Soldier" and "Peasant." We are first walked through the most basic economic concepts – how the blackberry picker obtains a product of nature, and can exchange it for another natural product in a "true price" transaction in which both party's needs are met satisfactorily. The use of money substitutes an "economic price" and means of exchange in which the products themselves may not actually be involved. Thus, one can see how true price and actual product exchanges may be compromised.

When it comes to equality and rights, rooted in individual conscience, we are reminded that almost everyone is guilty of favouring friends, family and fellow citizens ahead of those with whom we have no connection. We also know that in matters of expertise not everyone is equal and that such differences are reflected in law and government, especially when it pertains to access to and use of natural resources. [Only 100 years ago much law supported the brutal excesses of the robber barons. It is against such injustices that individuals like Martin Luther King, and before him Mother Jones, stand up for rights and reform]. But neither our physical needs nor our rights can alone feed our soul needs, which are also all individually very different. Nevertheless, on some level we still perceive human beings to be equal, meaning that we recognise our spiritual or "divine nature." Spence holds that it will not be possible to develop the insights, and imaginative and conceptual faculties, and the moral strength needed for the future of humanity until the cultural sphere of society becomes truly healthy and strong," perhaps when science, art and philosophy (religion or spirituality) all come together. This is beginning to happen conceptually, in some cultural pockets, but economic forces mostly present mighty obstacles. For many, labour is still an employer-owned commodity, restricting the path to true freedom. In comparison with the assembly line worker or dishwasher, it is a rare artist or master craftsman that is truly free to create and distribute a product. Between these poles there are "half free" lives (part creative and part economically constrained).

Spence is an advocate of "economic associations" which constrain the forces that lead from healthy division of labour and the production of useful capital (potential loan capital) to growth of excess capital (which tries to increase its own value) to unequal distribution of wealth. To counterbalance such ego-driven excesses, Spence says "gift capital" is necessary to support the cultural and service sectors (arts, education, health care, law enforcement, health and safety), which produce few consumable material products. However, whether supported by patrons, taxes or gifts these income earners are as integral to the economy as anyone else and support the purchase money > loan money > gift money > purchase money cycle. Spence looks to a future when we must curb our egoism and work out a concept of society as a whole, which if properly managed could provide for the rights and economic and cultural needs of all.

In Part 2 of the book Spence turns to money and its problematic role in distorting value: i.e., it does not represent the labour behind the product (fair trade) but rather has "value in itself" creating concepts of "personal worth" and wealth. He warns that today many transactions involve buying and selling of "rights" not products: e.g., "the right to engage in certain profitable activities." Such changes come about, in part, when money becomes an abstraction no longer backed by a tangible product (e.g., gold) or, likewise, when "new capital" is created from thin air on the promise of future profits, not income from product sales, which remunerates the actual producer. Much land ownership is in this category. It is not hard-earned, yet it generates profit (rent) for its "owners." Why is it, asks Spence, that those who put up capital are owners, and those who do the work of production are not? Should owners benefit from a disproportionate share of labour productivity, [as in the days of robber barons and today's sweat shops]? Spence admits that "it is not easy to get away from" ingrained notions that capital investors "own" the businesses and "buy and sell" the labour. This mindset reflects " a distorted remnant of an old theocratic [and authoritarian] form of society." His remedies include having investors loan to businesses, rather than buy shares, and so become part of the productive process from which they can be repaid on the basis of true value, rather than shareholder value which often artificial involving on "legal counterfeit money" susceptible to fraud.

Our consciences know that extreme wealth disparities are "wrong" especially when they continue to be generated by dubious and dangerous environmental and socioeconomic practices. "Money has taken on the properties of a veil through which we no longer see the economic realities," including the fact that there is enough true value product and wealth to alleviate poverty and egregious disadvantage. The worrying alternative is for the rich to get richer as the system allows those with money to buy access and stack the deck so as to generate more monetary wealth and continue promoting the system, which thrives on a "dogma concerning the sanctity of the markets" as if it were a "religious belief." This insidious system allows for "acquiring land and controlling interests in major businesses and so gaining the power to change the very nature and legal structure of the society which provides the monetary values on which they feed."

The final two chapters ask what is social and antisocial and how these dynamics will affect the future. Spence returns to basic tenets, reminding us that in nature an organism that feeds on another "without providing anything in return" is a parasite. This is an uncomfortable truth about our society. A grim picture perhaps, but Spence takes the long-term and ultimately optimistic view that we can and will collectively remedy the situation. He concludes that the parasitic money-worshipping system is unsustainable and that the present "basis for corporate structure will be undermined" eventually as the human impulse for cultural creativity, equality and fair trade futures plays out.