World Affairs
Vol 1, Number 4 (Oct - Dec '97)

Human Values And Capitalism

By Henryk Skolimowski

As both capitalism and communism have failed, we have to seek new paths beyond selfishmen and aggression. We have to transcend our present limitations, and we need to liberate our human nature from the constraints of capitalism.

The present hosanna of capitalism is distorting our picture of reality. It is making greed the chief rationale of everything there is, and it is obscuring and falsifying the future of all humanity, as contrasted with the future of Western financial elites. What is cherished as a great victory of human industry is a concealed form of human aggression exercised on an unprecedented scale. In a society, which is so successful and so affluent, there should be no aggression and violence. Alas, structural violence is now part of our daily life. It is not limited to poor countries (according to the precept, poverty breeds violence), but is hugely evident in rich countries. The time has arrived to see with more clarity the whole picture and especially to see that the way in which we bring about our prosperity is steeped in violence and is a carrier of violence. To put it bluntly, Western modes of economic development are not benign scientific models but hidden vehicles of violence.

We in the West do no want to acknowledge this hidden violence of our economic models; or else we justify them by claiming that human nature is aggressive and selfish. It is time we examine this pernicious assumption as well.

Let us look at some facts. While the prosperity of the rich is growing, the poverty of the poor is also growing. This is a strange and disturbing spectacle. In the fault line which separates the prosperous and the miserably poor there lurks a great deal of violence, both overt and covert.

Neither is poverty springing by itself nor are riches growing on their own. Responsible for both, especially in our tightly connected world, are economic institutions and specific technologies - invariably developed in the West. Responsible deeper down for our exploitive technologies is our Western rapacious thinking, which we have skilfully developed under the camouflage of Western democracy; more recently we have re-christened it as Market Democracy.

Yet deeper still, there is something else which is responsible for our rapacious thinking and our exploitive technologies: it is wrong articulation of human nature. Of the many possible ways of developing and articulating human nature, we have chosen one which is aggressive to nature, destructive to other cultures, antithetical to human happiness, and to peace among people. Two main characteristics of the model of human nature which we have inadvertently (and more recently deliberately) developed are aggression and selfishness. Aggression is built into the modes of our economic thinking which means into the dominant modes of our Western thinking. And this aggression spills over to all spheres of our activity. In the final reckoning, we justify this aggression (which deep down we are ashamed of) by insisting that human nature is aggressive.

Now about selfishness. The pursuit of selfishness brings about unprecedented prosperity to some, while creating a sea of misery for others. And while creating huge injustices in the world - for which deep down we are also ashamed - we justify this existential angst to ourselves by saying: 'well, human nature is selfish'. Another consequence of the pursuit of selfishness is a warped social reality: nobody is truly happy, everybody envies everybody else, people are trampling on other people or are being trampled upon. This is surely a cockeyed ideal of happiness. And this miserable ideal of happiness cannot be justified by our muttering that human nature is selfish.

Let us not be simple-minded. There is no denying that there are selfish elements in human nature. This is as a part of our nature. But this is only a part of the story - and not the most significant one, for that matter. Let us remember that the periods of unprecedented selfishness and aggression are not known as glorious periods of human history but as periods of barbarity.

Look at the picture of human cultures historically. Through millennia of human unfolding, we were to throw into the shade the principles of "might is right", "man with the biggest club rules" because traditional human cultures and great religions have emphasised the cooperative, the selfless, the altruistic. Great leaps forward in human welfare were made exactly when we were able to transcend and sublimate our aggression and instead were able to build in peace and cooperation. Such an articulation of human nature is possible. Moreover, it is a cornerstone of what we call our humanity, our dignity.

The consequence of the recent intoxication with selfishness and aggression, which I consider to be a result of the wrong articulation of human nature, are disastrous. They bode ill for the whole of humanity in the future.. We are not only concerned with the plight of so many individuals who have been trapped and crushed by the wheels and mechanisms of present economic models. We are concerned above all with the course of the whole of humanity which is on the wrong track. We all know, at least all perceptive people do, that we are out of kilt, that things do not connect, that the whole picture does not make sense, that our individual lives do not make sense - even among the most prosperous societies. Yet we have allowed ourselves to be duped by the unseeing and the unscrupulous, who have usurped for themselves the mantle of rulers and overseers of this planet.

It is time that thinking people all over the world put an end to this nonsense, put an end to this shameful spectacle which, by distorting the meaning of human nature, distorts our lives and cheapens our destinies.

 

Destinies Guided By Lesser Beings

Americans are resourceful and enterprising people. But they seem to have too much of one kind of energy - for pushing and imposing their will on others; and too little of other qualities - for understanding, compassion and respecting tradition. Americans simply are not culturally mature to be the leader of nations. Not having developed their own culture (there never was a ministry of Culture in America and recently the Endowment for the Arts was eliminated), they cannot appreciate other cultures in depth. They can only appreciate civilisations which they have frantically pushed and pushed forward. The frantic rush was probably in response to the feeling of inferiority which the Americans have felt towards traditional cultures.

Let us be quite clear about it. Our business is not to criticise America and especially Americans, many of whom are admirable people. Many Americans have deep human qualities. What is at stake is the mentality of the whole civilisation, which is run by the ideology of profit and greed, with disregard for truth, human dignity, future generations and the well being of nature. It is this mentality which is a menace. As one American writer, Peter Eng has put it: "Americans worship their own points of view, and they aim to get them across in the plainest, fastest and most forceful way" (International Herald Tribune). All true. Except that this worship of their point of view is a bit too much for others and these plainest and most forceful ways do seem as ignoble arrogance at best and exploitation at worst.

It is known that the American Ambassador in Poland called the Polish Prime Minister to his office, shouted at him and stamped his feet in displeasure when the Poles were slow in purchasing American helicopters. This did not go very well with the Poles who remember only too vividly the Soviet Ambassadors in Communist days doing similar things. There are many examples of bullying and coercion by the US officials occupying high power offices, including the President, while the rhetoric of freedom and democracy are being constantly evoked. Thus Democracy so often appears to be the fig-leaf hiding the bulldozer of American economic expansion.

The intimidation and exploitation goes on not only outside the USA. The unseeing greed of American political/business elites has no mercy for their own people. As a result, the gap between the poor and the rich has widened dramatically during the last 20 years. For many years economists, politicians and columnists sheepishly admitted that, yes, the fortunes of the rich were growing by leaps and bounds, while the salaries of working people and middle class people were stagnating. "Stagnant" was the term that was used for 15 years, as if these salaries were holding at about the same level. Finally, recent statistics revealed the real story. The salaries of lower classes and lower middle classes have been markedly decreasing. To keep up on the level of their previous existence, and to avoid admitting their own plight, people have been working longer hours, with more people in the family having to work.

This impoverishment of the working and the middle class (which involved hundreds of thousands below the poverty level) produced a social malaise and existential anguish unknown in American society.

So the empire is devouring not only distant lands but its own children. America is still the richest country in the world. Yet its vision is so narrow, its goals so limited that it is impoverishing the core of its working population, reversing the historical process of slow amelioration of the under-privileged and in the process causing social and psychic traumas of huge proportions. Can such a country be a leader of nations? Is this the right example for the world? Is this what the future well-being of the world requires?

It is quite apparent that the American example of greedy rapaciousness of some, at the expense of so many others, has been followed by many other industrial nations. This is a sure recipe for future strife and violent upheaval, for societies and nations will spontaneously seek a re-adjustment of these glaring injustices, inequalities and exploitation.

In the triumphant hosanna of American business classes, it is unashamedly declared that, human nature is 'spontaneously capitalistic'; and it is sometimes whispered that it is 'American'. This is dangerous nonsense. It is dangerous because it allows Americans to push their gospel of greed with impunity as if it were a law of nature, if not a law of god.

We need to examine all the assumptions and myths of present thinking in order not to be duped and manipulated into situations and destinies which are clearly undesirable and often anti-human, and which are forced upon us by people of a lesser human substance who want to persuade us that their path of greed and our existential misery are inevitable.

 

The Erosion Of Truth And The Corruption Of Intellectuals

Since the great debate over the nature of science in the 1970s, between Karl Popper and Thomas Khun, and their respective followers, science has lost its status as an unshakeable rock of truth and a reliable criterion for all human knowledge. In this debate, it was revealed that the foundations of science are far more shaky than we had believed. It was also shown that we don't quite know what science is. The various attributes which we took for granted, as being part of the nature of science, were shown to be a mosaic of question begging notions and assumptions. Moreover, the very notion of truth, this cornerstone of science, could no longer be defended as an objective category. Thus during the last quarter of the century, truth has become an entity in retreat. Scientists and philosophers are unwilling to use it as the criterion of knowledge. They prefer not to talk about it.

In these circumstances truth has lost a great deal of its authority. This fact, among others, led to the proliferation of all kinds of relativisms.. Finally post-modernism emerged codifying the death of objective truth. In the final analysis, it turns out that we are living in a society where the bottom line is the most important truth. When the bottom line is the only truth, the foundation of our understanding is undermined. And we are paralysed with cognitive confusion. In this confusion, those who shout the loudest and who have the media at their disposal prevail. Bewildered by this whole spectacle, ordinary people are pushed to the margin. Some try to rescue their sanity and dignity by escaping into their individual gardens of indulgence and subjectivity. This subjectivity and escapism have led many to addictive substances which is a sinister consequence of a confused society in turmoil, led by the blind and the greedy.

Religious leaders, philosophers and intellectuals are of little help, as they themselves are confused and paralysed with inaction. In the late 1960s and early 19070s intellectuals and thinking people showed a great deal of courage in challenging the status quo and in proposing new alternatives.. This came to an end in the late 1970s and the 1980s; and especially in the 1990s. I was there at the time and saw it happening. In a subtle and gradual way, nearly all powerful minds were bought. The process was so subtle that it was almost imperceptible. It was approached in a subtle way by a prominent right wing foundation. But I saw the game through and declined their 'interesting' offer. Others were simply sucked in. It was lucrative. In ten years the whole ethos of thinking changed in the USA. And then in Western Europe, and the world over.

The result has been the muzzling of the minds of thinking people in servitude to the status quo and the ideology of Big Business. It shows nowhere more clearly than among economists. Their inability to distinguish facts and reality from economic fictions and pseudo-scientific theories, is glaring. When we turn our attention to the universities at large, we realise that they have become corporations, ruled by corporate mentality and corporate interests. So without much exaggeration one can say that high-paid intellectuals and a huge army of experts now form a new class of prostitutes. I do not wish to insult anybody. But let us look at the picture. Where is integrity? Where is responsibility? Where is dignity and honesty characteristic of traditional intellectuals who had moral conscience? They are not there. Intellectuals are pieces of commodities to be bought in the market place. They sell their minds and knowledge with little regard for the moral consequences of their services.

It is extremely difficult to hear the voices of sanity and truth nowadays. For the media is monopolised by those who are prepared to serve the interests of financial elites, and actually protect these interests. Intellectuals have aligned themselves to the interests of the mainstream. Younger thinking scholars are intimidated by the status quo and the power of money.

Voices of dissent especially proposing radical alternatives are viewed as representing a mild form of insanity. How can you not know what it is all about? It is about money, money, money. The whole thing is in fact, so one-sided and bizarre that it offends human intelligence and prompts us to ask: are we living in some kind of an insane asylum? In brief, a buy out of intellectuals has occurred and there is nobody to protect the common man, society and future generations.

 

The Great Betrayal Of The Middle Class

Since the Middle Ages, the middle classes have been the foundation of rising prosperity of Western Society. This has been particularly so in modern times. During the last century, a myth was created, which the middle classes have wholeheartedly accepted, that if you work hard and contribute to the mainstream of society, your lot will steadily improve, and your own future and that of your children will be secure. A hazy utopia has been continually lingering on the horizon, reassuring Western people that all was well on the Western front.

Suddenly, the rug has been pulled out of the cozy existence of the middle classes. The myth has collapsed and the middle class finds itself shattered and bewildered. There is no longer job security, no longer an assurance of job continuity, and no longer assured protection in old age. The welfare state says, with embarrassment and frankness, that it cannot afford the services it had promised, and on which the very existence of the middle class is based.

The middle class is frustrated and feels betrayed. It cannot understand what has happened. Its leaders have no explanation either; nor are they promising any brighter future. The very myth of a brighter and brighter future forever is shattered. The whole social fabric of liberal society is in pieces. Nobody within the established classes has any satisfactory answer, while the ruthless knights of triumphant capitalism are robbing the estate of the middle class with impunity and jeer.

The ex-champions of liberal ideology, which is the foundation of liberal society, are now curiously mute and appear confused. What strikes one while reading the ex-luminaries of Western liberal philosophy, such as Lord Ralf Dahrendorf of the UK or Lester Carl Thurow of the USA is a complete vacuity of their arguments and the complete impotency of their vision. The self-brainwashing of supposedly great minds is truly pathetic. These men behave as if they knew nothing about the spiritual and cultural history of human kinds; as if the only thing worth knowing, were material progress and capitalist ideology.

Let us go a bit deeper with our analysis. It would be just too simplistic to say that a rapacious lot inspired by the American ideology of greed and conquest is steamrolling through all lands, while impoverishing other people in the process. The dice was cast much earlier. The pursuit of the superficial American ideology, which has produced a one-dimensional mentality, is not the only culprit to blame. The post-Renaissance European culture created the foundations for this whole process. It was exactly the myth of progress, elevated and perpetuated by the most eminent philosophers of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment eras, that prepared the ground for the belief that all will be well in the future, that through material amelioration we shall solve all problems, and, as the last consequence we shall assure happiness for all; at least for the industrious West.

It takes a momentary reflection to realise that present academic wisdom is but a perpetuation of the legacy of the Enlightenment with its belief in the primacy of material progress, and its conviction that scientific knowledge is the highest form of knowledge and the surest way to salvation. The myths of enlightenment have stayed unexamined for far too long. Unexamined myths finally decay and their putrefied fallout poisons us all.

From this analysis it clearly follows that our problem is neither unemployment nor creating a social safety net nor still a seasaw strategy of vacillating between the two but something else and much deeper. The policy of reducing unemployment at all costs, like in the United States, produces a new class of serfs who fearfully tremble in their boots for fear of losing their jobs. So much of new employment in the USA is temporary, part-time and without any security. In fact it is full of insecurities. The policy of creating a safety net at all costs finally leads to the bankruptcy of the welfare state. There is another twist to the story. Fed by the fables of material progress, workers always expect more and more. This is part of their belief system, perpetuated by Western secular ideology. The ideal of leisure as the highest form of existence has been a poisonous chalice. The advent of the leisure society announces the death of civil society.

For quite a while it has been obvious at least to some that we have been following a wrong route. It has been obvious that as technology presses more and more, jobs will necessarily be eliminated. Instead of endlessly discussing employment and unemployment - while we have been continuously whetting the appetites and increasing the needs of the middle classes - we should have been discussing the foundations of the creative society.

What is most important is not jobs, not safety nets but providing meaningful work to all people, work with dignity, in the pursuit of a fulfilling life. This requires increasing the creative elan of the whole society so that we continually re-educate ourselves to create new forms of employment and we joyously anticipate change in which we participate creatively. This elan is just the opposite to the one cultivated presently. In the name of a spurious entity called the leisure society we have been killing the brains of humans who endlessly watch senseless TV programmes. The future society will require resilient and creative people, not couch potatoes.

Here we come to our original point again. A superficial articulation of human nature has led us to the creation of a superficial and unsustainable world, in which we are suffocated and, at the same time, slowly drawn into a sea of problems.

Let us notice parenthetically that the betrayal of the Western middle class is also a betrayal of all people in the world who waited patiently and hoped quietly that their lot will also improve. Instead the poor are further pushed in the abyss of poverty, while savage knights of capitalism are riding high.

 

Alternative Visions And Values

The Chinese culture has existed for some 5000 years. The Indian culture has existed for some 4000 years. The European culture has existed for 3000 years. The American civilisation is merely 200 years old. As we prepare ourselves to enter the third millennium, which we have hoped and trusted will be more harmonious and peaceful and less bloody and violent than the passing one, let us remind ourselves what a tremendous wealth of traditions and cultural values we have inherited from the past. What a store of supporting structures and symbols for a dignified and spiritually fulfilling life! Let us remind ourselves that past cultures have articulated human nature in quite a different and much deeper way than technological culture has done. We must also remember that these traditional articulations proved sustainable for centuries and millennia, while the recent articulation guided by the techno-paradigm does not promise to be sustainable in the long run. Indeed, for how long can you maintain that homo homini lupus est (man is wolf to man)? Until all the wolves cut each other's throats?

The Chinese culture has left behind such towering figures as Confucius and Lou Tzu. Their legacy has been lasting and sustaining. And it is being rediscovered again. We need to bow to greatness wherever we see it. For it is only through greatness of others, who have shown us the way, that we ourselves can become great.

The depth and strength of the Indian tradition has been undiminished in spite of the centuries of conquests. We don't need to invent an alternative to the shallowness of Western materialist civilisation. India has always been that. Its philosophy has never relinquished its ambition to be a path of Moksha (liberation), in addition to being a set of explanations of the world. Nor should we forget about cultures, traditions and values of African, of Australian Aborigines, of Native Americans which are proving curiously resilient and sustaining to deeper quests of human life, while Western rational precepts lead us to blind alleys of confusion, anxiety, and existential anaemia.

There is therefore a vibrant store of values and spiritual energies for our renewal as we enter the new millennium, and as we are determined to recover sanity, peace of mind, and peace with all creations. We are not simplistically maintaining that we can effortlessly return to old values and cultural patterns. We are arguing that there is ample evidence in human history that human nature is deep and glorious. We don't need to accept the present emaciated skeleton of greed as our true nature. While we look with hope towards the new millennium, let us be clear about who is leading whom into the third millennium? For what good reasons? And with what consequence for future generations?

The problem of values is of great importance. Western thinkers and ideologists are becoming aware of it. They are actually becoming nervous when Asian values are evoked. This is for two reasons. They don't know what these values are. Yet deep down, they feel that is much more to these values than can be dismissed off-handedly. Secondly, they are at least half aware that any acceptance of the validity of Asian values casts a shadow on the universality of Western economics and on its supposedly universal values; it also undermines the universality of the Western paradigm of material progress. So often the Westerner's response to Asian values is to suggest that they are like Western ones or are increasingly becoming so. Which is a far cry from the truth.

Confucian values emphasis: respect for tradition and old age - as a repository of wisdom; respect for communal values and social ties - in contrast to rampart individualism; respect for the sense of solidarity among the people who are meant to help each other in the pursuit of larger common goals. The consequences of these values are quite clear and not welcome by the present Western economic paradigm.

Taoist values spell out (among other things): respect for truth which is always deeper and never merely linear; respect for complementarity and for the vision of things and their interconnectedness as based on complementary harmony. Traditional Indian values are pervaded by: respect for Ahimsa (non-violence) which found recent embodiment in Mahatma Gandhi; respect for the human as an embodiment of God, which lifts human life so extraordinarily and so beautifully. All these values (and they are just a sample) are antithetical to present crassness, materialism and unseeing narrowness.

Our times will be known as one of the crassest in recorded human history.. Our grandchildren will not be proud of their boorish grandfathers. Those of us who can see and empathize with future generations and with higher requirements of human spirit must do whatever is possible to make younger generations aware that there is much more to life than the pursuit of selfishness. We have an evolutionary agenda on our shoulders - the agenda of self-realisation which is a part of the destiny of the cosmos.

The time has arrived for non-Western people, especially for Asian people, to take the keel of human destiny into their hands and direct the ship of humanity to lands and shores which are peaceful, non-violent, equitable and based on justice and love. For such surely is our common human destiny in the long run. It is time to give tired Westerners a break, send them to some kind of fishing holiday, perhaps in North Alaska, so that they don't mess up the future of all humanity.

Each civilisation has its span and usefulness. Beyond that, it is destructive. At this point new life must take over and build forms of life which are life-enchancing and which are conductive to higher goals of evolution and of human kind. The plastic civilisation which is smothering the spiritual ends of human life cannot be regarded as the apogee of human genius.

 

The Next Transformation

Communism has failed. And capitalism has also failed. The two are not the only alternatives we have had. Actually each one of them represents a distorted idea of human nature, therefore of human life. Life based on the ideal of material satisfaction is fatuous and ultimately unsatisfactory. It rings hollow and it is hollow. Thus, we need to see new paths, beyond selfishness and aggression which destroy us in the process.

Selfish is stupid. The term 'idiot' comes from the Greek word 'idio' - the self. Harmonious is wise because it means weaving ourselves into right balances and patterns which are life - enhancing. Inner peace is worth any money and it is beyond all money - as it is the source of true happiness. We were born to live in harmony and dignity. Without them we are crippled as human beings. We are spiritual beings and spiritual nourishment is as necessary for us as oxygen is for our lungs.

The next transformation is our new journey. We need to transcend all the messes we have created. Evolution is transcendence. And it wants us to transcend our present limitations. We need to liberate our human nature from the tethers of capitalist ideology. We need to create together - all of us - patterns of cooperative behaviour, whereby spiritual nature of the human will flourish, unconstrained by religious divisions and dogmas, unhampered by greed and divisive nationalism, freed of hunger and destitution.

We can do it. And we shall do it. Because it is in our evolutionary destiny, because it is a desire of our burning heart, because it is a yearning of our soul, because this is essentially what we were created for.