It’s the economy, clever
There must be a better way… Judy Kirby considers new angles on an old problem
The end of money and the future of civilization by Thomas H Greco Jr. Floris Books. ISBN 978-086315-733-2. £12.99. Prosperity without growth by Tim Jackson. Earthscan. ISBN 978-1-84407-894-3. £12.99. Back in the 1970s, an academic called Theodore Roszak roused some of us with fighting talk of a counter-culture. Was capitalism failing the ideals of mankind, was another way possible? We liked to think it was. Alas, nothing much happened, although Roszak kept writing. Capitalism not only prevailed and survived early counter-culturalism, it gathered strength and delivered more knock-out blows to those ideals. Nowadays I notice that the counter-culture is focusing its attention more specifically on money. It’s a good idea to be specific when the foe is awesome. The movement appears to be embracing accountancy, appealing to the current popular disgust with capitalism, particularly banking and private equity.
These books are a hard read but rewarding if you can stay the course. In The End of Money and the Future of Civilisation, Thomas H Greco Jr takes us through the history of financial institutions and the development of central banking, something he has a particular aversion to, as did US presidents Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson spoke plainly: ‘I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies’.
Thomas tells us that we should know more about money and the financial elites that control it. Like all good counter-culturalists, he talks about a needed ‘paradigm shift’. For him, nothing less than the reinvention of money will do to bring about a new world with a sustainable, steady state economy.
His book is full to bursting with examples and ideas of alternative economic structures. Many are not new, but our present society may now be willing to revisit them. I like Greco’s concluding comment: ‘As for the elite rulers, grudges will do us no good and only create new hurdles. Let us thank them for their service and bid them welcome as members of our human family.’
Tim Jackson, who has advised the government on sustainability, is also rethinking money in Prosperity without Growth. He asks what prosperity will look like in a finite world with an increasing population. He has a problem, because the stock response to this question is a call for more growth. At a Friends House event last month he talked of some reactions to his ideas. ‘One man at a meeting I attended said: “now I know what sustainability is – you want us to live in caves again”.’ Please can we make the sustainability message compatible with growth, appears to be the request from business. If it’s not a business opportunity it won’t be heeded.
Working on the same themes as The Spirit Level (by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett), Tim Jackson says ‘a less materialistic society will be a happier one. A more equal society will be a less anxious one.’ Enhanced investment in public goods will provide lasting returns to the nation’s prosperity, he says.
Many of the ideas in these books are known to Quakers and green politicians already. Reading them might be a matter of the converted preached at. What is different, however, is how many books about alternatives to money are being published now. Is this a sign that the paradigm shift is finally in the slipstream and edging ever so gently into the mainstream? Or is it simply just another business opportunity?
