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ECONOMY

AlterNet / By Christine MacDonald

Goodbye 'Shop Til You Drop' Mentality: Renegade Band of Economists Call for 'Degrowth' Economy

The road to prosperity and happiness doesn't lead to the shopping mall, as most economists would have you believe.

December 23, 2011 |

In this country, shopping is not just a national pastime. Consumer spending, which makes up about 70 percent of the economy, is a sort of patriotic duty -- never more so than in the last four years of economic malaise.

So news from the National Retail Federation that the country is on track for a record-breaking holiday shopping season -- $469.1 billion in sales, up 3.8 percent from last year -- could only be a good thing, right?

But what if all roads to prosperity don't lead to the shopping mall, as most economists would have us believe? What if, in fact, all that shopping -- and the imperative to grow corporate profits quarter after quarter and continuously expand the economy -- was actually the root of many of the problems we face today?

That's the view of a renegade but increasingly influential band of economists, who say the myth of perpetual economic growth and "the iron cage of consumerism" are the chief causes of world economic dysfunction and environmental crisis -- and the biggest obstacle to our very happiness.

"Overwhelmingly, growth is seen as the solution to all problems, but growth is failing," says Herman Daly, a former World Bank economist who is also known as the father of "ecological economics," an offshoot of the same field that spawned Adam Smith three centuries ago but challenges many of the assumptions that classical economists hold dear.

While the term may seem like an oxymoron to some, ecological economics places the economy inside the larger "ecosphere" that supports all life on Earth, rather than seeing the economy and job creation in direct opposition to environmental protection. That's an idea that has gained ground in recent years as businesses have become increasingly compromised by water and raw material scarcity, extreme weather, crop failures and other problems linked to global warming and environmental degradation.

The problem, says Daly, is that the economy, once an inconsequentially small part of the natural world, has become so supersized that -- sort of like an ingrown toenail or an evasive Japanese knotweed bush -- it's now growing into the remaining ecosphere and jeopardizing our ecological life supports: things like drinkable water, fresh air and a stable climate.

Those ideas can be found influencing, among other things, the slow money movement, D.I.Y. culture, modern barter systems, car sharing, and corporate sustainability rhetoric. They are also reflected in the views of ecologists such as Lester Brown and Jeremy Rifkin, the author, pundit and adviser to the European Union, as well as entrepreneurs such as Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, which ran an advertisement this holiday season urging consumers not to buy the pictured jacket and to think twice about making any purchases they don't really need. Even Unilever, the consumer goods conglomerate, has embarked on a corporate social responsibility campaign pledging to "decouple" its growth from its ecological footprint.

Daly's work and the related "degrowth" movement have inspired books, academic conferences and documentaries. Even as such ideas struggle to gain purchase with the world's leading economists, they are blurring the lines between the economic and the environmental and acquiring new political dimensions, as well.

"You can see it in the Occupy Wall Street movement; People are finally starting to say, what has growth done for us? It's simply increased the inequality in the country," Daly says.

While some may see growing income disparity as a political issue and global warming as an environmental problem, Daly sees them both in economic terms.
"What does the economy do when it runs into limits?"

One of Daly's more prominent disciples, U.K. economist Tim Jackson, tends to agree in his report to the British government, later published in book form, titled: Prosperity Without Growth. Even the 2008 world financial meltdown can't be blamed simply on "isolated malpractice or simple failures of vigilance," Jackson writes, but that the market "was undone by growth itself." He goes on to suggest, "There is something odd about the modern refusal to countenance anything but growth at all costs."

And world economic growth has been nothing short of astonishing in recent decades. Jackson notes that the global economy has doubled in size in the last quarter century, at the same time "an estimated 60 percent of the world's ecosystems have been degraded."

Signs of Crisis

Daly's steady state economy, which he first wrote about in the 1970s, isn't alone in calling attention to problems created by unchecked economic growth. Other works that waved red flags include Rachel Carson's 1962 classic, Silent Spring, widely credited with launching the U.S. environmental movement; and Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome-commissioned study by a group of MIT economists, which caused public consternation when it first appeared four decades ago.

Since then, evidence has continued to mount that humanity may be reaching the end of the road built by our Western industrial model with its assumptions that natural resources, and nature itself, are super-abundant. A few of the problems that have garnered headlines include the following:

• Critical minerals are on the decline.
• Experts worry that declining "energy quality" threatens growth, as the world's dwindling fossil fuel stores require more effort to extract.
• Many countries including the world's biggest grain producers -- the U.S., India and China -- are depleting their aquifers to keep bringing in the harvests.
• Carbon emissions are reaching a dangerous level.
• 2011 broke the record for extreme weather with 12 events costing $1 billion or more to clean up.
• Plant and animal species are going extinct at unprecedented rates.
• World population is growing and so is hunger.
• We have already exceeded some important planetary boundaries.

"One reason growth doesn't work is we've underestimated the ecological cost of growth, and overestimated the benefits of growth," Daly says.

New Approaches

Most people probably conjure up Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke or pundits like Mark Zandi, when thinking "economist." Daly started out similarly. He earned a PhD in economics at Vanderbilt University in the late 1960s, before setting off for Brazil, where he had landed a job in the northeast of the country preparing graduate students to follow his footsteps at U.S. universities. He says it was there that the environmental degradation he observed first made him challenge assumptions about resource abundance and capital scarcity that underpin classical economics.

In the 1970s, Daly published books on the steady state economy, which laid out an alternative path for humanity that would substitute year-on-year growth with a system geared toward keeping the economy within the ecological boundaries of the planet.

The books were received "violently," Daly, 73, quips today. But he thrived professionally, rising to the post of senior environmental economist at the World Bank until 1994, when he decamped for a teaching post at the University of Maryland and taught for several years before retiring. At the Bank, he was "a lonely voice of dissent in an organization that frowns on unbelievers," according to a 2003 profile in Grist that compared economics to a religion and Daly to an "arch-heretic, a member of the high priesthood turned renegade."

Ecological economics got off the ground formally in the early 1980s, with an international professional society and an academic journal of the same name that Daly cofounded with Robert Costanza, director of the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University.

Today, U.S., European and Australian societies have also emerged as forums for a wide range of ideas about how best to strike an ecology-economy balance. There's plenty of disagreement within the field about how best to go about getting off the growth trendmill. Daly's steady state economy, which envisions practically no more growth, is perhaps the purist and most cold-turkey approach.

Some ecological economists such as William Rees and Costanza have done groundbreaking work helping to visualize the scope of the environmental-economic conundrum. Rees came up with the concept of the ecological footprint. Costanza was the lead author of a groundbreaking 1997 paper published in the journal, Nature, titled "The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital." It tallied up the value of the planet's ecosystems in dollar terms -- between $16 trillion and $54 trillion a year.

Others like the UK's Tim Jackson, Canadian Peter Victor and Australian Philip Lawn, a professor at Flinders University, Australia, focus on taking the ideas pioneered by Daly and putting them into practical use -- thinking through, for instance, how to "de-grow" the economy, essentially sending it into a planned recession, without throwing large numbers of people out of work.

Daly says he's disappointed that more of the country's leading economists have not embraced his ideas but some experiments in low-growth living are underway around the world.

In South London, the mixed-income BedZED development, and the Findhorn Ecovillage in Moray, Scotland are two developments that slash the carbon emissions of residents nearly in half compared to the U.K. average. They are part of a growing "ecovillage" movement, though critics suggest the promised emissions reductions are sometimes less dramatic than advertised. In the U.S., commercial builders are starting to construct "net zero" homes aimed at middle-class buyers, such as the new neighborhood going up in Fredrick, Md.'s historic downtown that uses a combination of insulation, geothermal heating and solar panels to generate all the energy needed to run the homes.

On the city-scale, more than 1,000 U.S. cities have pledged to reduce their carbon emissions as part of U.S. Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, and other cities around the world have taken even more aggressive measures. Malmö, Sweden, for instance, has pledged to be climate-neutral by 2020 and run the entire municipality on renewable energy by 2030.

On a national scale, Daly says only the country of Bhutan has embraced larger changes with the substitution of its Gross National Happiness index in the place of the standard Gross National Product measurement.

New ideas and shifting demographics, however, suggest the mantra of perpetual growth may not be forever after all. The International Energy Agency has released a report showing that it's possible to provide clean renewable electricity to the 1.3 billion people in the world living without it, with only "a negligible impact on energy security and climate change."

Even Lester Brown, whose thought-provoking work has earned him a reputation as a Cassandra, is upbeat about a wind-powered new economy. He's predicting a 20 percent decline in U.S. carbon emissions by 2020 from the 2007 level. In the last four years, the country's emissions have already fallen by 7 percent, a decline started by the economic recession but accelerating thanks to the phase-in of new lightbulbs and a major shift in the country away from the automobile as baby boomers retire and drive less and young people drive less.

"Young people today are not part of a car culture as my generation was. They socialize with smart phones and over the Internet," Brown says.

Money + Happiness

Another reason to believe degrowing the economy, while not painless, may make us happier in the long run is a growing body of research comparing health and wellbeing across national borders and economic classes. As a billion poor people around the world already know and many Americans have found out as unemployment has spiked in this country in the last four years, money enough to ensure a roof over one's head, a full belly and other basic needs is very important to well-being. Beyond a certain subsistence level, however, some provocative research suggests money won't buy you love.

In their 2009 book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, epidemiologists Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that a society's overall happiness is linked to income equality. Not only do they argue that equality -- not more income or more consumption -- make us healthier and more contented, their research shows that less equal societies like the United States have higher rates of anxiety and illness, violence, teenage pregnancies, obesity, drug abuse and eroding public trust. And they tend to consume excessively, among other negative effects.

"Wilkinson's and Pickett's work is unsettling to a lot of people since it basically says 'we the rich are wrecking the planet for no further gain.' In fact, many rich countries are going backwards," says William Rees, the Canadian economist who pioneered the concept of the ecological footprint.

Public Awakening

The latest report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, released December 7, shows that climate denial is on the decline again in the United States, perhaps propelled by this year's extreme weather.

While the percentage of people who understand global warming is happening has remained essentially unchanged since last May, at 63 percent, belief that human activity is fueling the warming edged up 3 points to 50 percent of those polled. Perhaps even more significantly, "A majority of Americans (57%) now disagree with the statement, 'With the economy in such bad shape, the US can't afford to reduce global warming' -- an 8 point increase in disagreement since May 2011."

Researchers say they were surprised that nearly 4 in 10 people surveyed said they had experienced the effects of global warming firsthand, perhaps signaling a shift toward viewing climate change as a current problem, not one looming off in a vague and distant future. And more than half saw a connection between global warming and growing poverty and said they are worried about running out of natural resources.

A similarly serious public mood was captured in last week's forecast of holiday season sales put out by the National Retailers Federation.

"They're still more cautious than in the past," Ellen Davis, an NRF vice president, told Bloomberg. While the story attributed the concern to continuing uncertainty over the economy and the political landscape in Washington, perhaps the country's continuing austere attitude isn't such a bad thing, though most observers don't expect it to last.

Daly says he's not optimistic about the direction of the country, despite the growing interest in degrowing the economy and moving toward greener growth. "Green growth is better than brown growth," he says, "but the key problem is that you are going to have continued growth in a finite and entropic world."

Christine MacDonald is an environmental journalist and the author of "Green Inc., An Environmental Insider Reveals How a Good Cause Has Gone Bad" (The Lyons Press).

PRIMER ON THE ELEMENTS AND FORMS OF UTILITARIANISM

missouri.edu

PRIMER ON THE ELEMENTS AND FORMS OF UTILITARIANISM Phil. 213 R. N. Johnson

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Utilitarianism consists of two doctrines: A theory of what is good, and a theory of what is right. Utilitarianism's theory of what is right is consequentialism, or the doctrine that the morally right option in any circumstance is that option which brings about the most good, or the best consequences; any other option is wrong. Utilitarians refer to the option that brings about the best consequences, or "maximizes the good", as being the optimistic alternative. Hence, the right option is the optimific option. Hereafter, I will use this locution. Note that an option which produces the most good also, and by definition, produces the least bad consequences. Hence, there can be a right alternative even if the only alternatives produce bad consequences (e.g., other things equal, the right dentist to go to is the one who produces the least pain.)

I. THE THEORY OF RIGHT: Varieties of consequentialism

(AU): Ø-ing is right if and only if Ø-ing is optimific.

(RU1): Ø-ing is right if and only if Ø-ing is in accordance with a set of rules conformity to which is optimific.

(RU2): Ø-ing is right if and only if Ø-ing is in accordance with a set of rules general conformity to which is optimific.

1. Ø is right if and only if Ø treats everyone as equals.
2. Ø treats everyone as equals if and only if Ø takes into account everyone's preferences equally.
3. Ø takes into account everyone's preferences equally if and only if Ø maximizes overall utility.

Therefore,

4. Ø is right if and only if Ø maximizes overall utility.

1'. Ø is right if and only if Ø maximizes utility.
2'. Ø maximizes utility if and only if Ø takes everyone's preferences into account equally.
3'. Ø takes everyone's preferences into account equally if and only if Ø treats people as equals.

Therefore,

4'. Ø is right if and only if Ø treats people as equals.

II. Theory of the Good: Varieties of Utility

1. Y is the good if and only if Y is desirable as an end in itself.
2. Only pleasure is desirable as an end in itself.
3. Therefore, only pleasure is Y.

© Robert N. Johnson, 1996
BACK TO PHIL. 213 SYLLABUS

Utilitarians all agree that what is good is "utility"--human well-being or welfare. However, they disagree about what human well-being or welfare is. Classical utilitarians were hedonistic: They held that human well being consists of pleasure. In holding this view, they did not, of course, deny that human well-being consists of community, self-development, wealth, and so on. What they claimed was that each of these things were either a means to, or associated with, pleasure, and it is this association with pleasure which makes them count as parts of human well-being. However, because of the difficulty of measuring, and so maximizing, amounts of pleasure, few now hold this doctrine, and there are a variety of theories of what is good among contemporary utilitarians. We will discuss this below.

Utilitarians also all agree that what is right is the optimific alternative. They are all consequentialists in this sense. However, they disagree about what things should be evaluated according to the consequentialist criterion -- particular actions, character traits, rules and standards of behavior or large-scale institutions. Again, the classical utilitarian view held that particular actions are what must be evaluated according to the consequentialist criterion. Hence, they held that what makes an action right is that it produced the best consequences. However, many disagree with this, as we will see; there are a variety of forms of consequentialism that utilitarians hold.

The utilitarian view can be applied either to all spheres of practical life, or can be restricted to some particular sphere. Utilitarianism as a comprehensive doctrine expresses an outlook that can be applied to all practical spheres, for instance, both to the private actions of individuals and to the political structures of societies. Hence, comprehensive utilitarianism is the view that what makes actions right or wrong is determined by the utilitarian standard, and this very same standard also tells us which forms of government, societal institutions, laws and policies are just or unjust. But when utilitarianism is expresses a view only about the latter, it is merely a political doctrine, and we will call it political utilitarianism. Rawls and other political philosophers mainly are concerned with political utilitarianism. Rawls refers to the subject of a political theory as the "basic structure" of society--its form of government, institutions and policies--rather than to the actions of the individuals who live in the society.

A. Act consequentialism

An act consequentialist holds the following account of right action:

Act consequentialism tell us that what determines whether a given action is right is that action's consequences. It tells us that the one and only right action to perform in any given situation is that action which produces the best consequences of all those actions that are available to the agent at a given time and place. Any action that produces less than the best consequences is therefore wrong. Hence, lying is wrong in a given situation if and only if telling the truth or remaining quiet produces better consequences. By the same token, lying is right in a given situation if and only if lying produces better overall consequences than either telling the truth or remaining quiet.

One difficulty with act consequentialism is that it seems quite possible for it to conflict dramatically with our conscience and mny of our deeply held convictions. For instance, we believe that in most cases torture is wrong even if it produces the best consequences. In general, it seems quite possible that our deeply held beliefs about what we ought or ought not do could conflict with what the act consequentialist standard tells us to do. In response to this problem, many utilitarians have opted for rule consequentialism instead.

B. Rule consequentialism

A first approximation of rule consequentialism would be:

Notice that whether or not a particular action is right for a rule consequialist does not depend on its consequences. Rather, it depends on whether the action is in accordance with a set of rules of conduct. Which set of rules? That set conformity to which has the best overall consequences. For example, suppose the following rules are members of the set of those rules conformity to which is optimific: "Tell the truth", "Don't steal", "Don't torture" and "Help others in need" and "Develop your talents". Suppose further than in a particular case, lying would have the best consequences overall of all alternative actions that I could perform. On the act consequentialist view, lying would in this case be the right thing for me to do. But on the rule consequentialist view, it would be the wrong thing for me to do. It would be wrong because it is not in accordance with the set of rules conformity to which is optimific.

RU1 does not, however, specify whose conformity is at issue. Is it the agent's conformity that matters for determining the optimific set of rules? Or is it everyone's or general conformity? Most commonly it is taken to be the latter. Hence, we should refine RU1 as:

RU2 embodies the intuition that an action is wrong if it is in accordance with a rule which, if everyone followed it, would have bad consequences. Consider this example (from D. Lyons, Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism) Suppose you and a friend are walking beside an orchard. Your friend says "Let's pick a couple of apples". You well object, "No. That would be wrong, because it would be stealing". However, your friend responds, "Two fewer apples out of this huge orchard won't harm the owner, and we will get great pleasure out of them." The intuition behind RU2 is that violating the rule "Don't steal" is wrong, not because in this case stealing will produce bad consequences. Nor is it wrong because your violating this rule will produce bad consequences (it is not your conformity with the set of rules that matters here as to which set of rules is optimific). Rather, we think "What if everyone did that?" That is, if everyone were to follow the rule "pick apples for yourself in these circumstances", then orchard owners would go broke. Hence, we think it is wrong for us to steal apples in this case because if everyone were to follow this as a rule in such a case, it would have bad consequences.

C. Indirect Consequentialism.

Now one quite obvious objection to consequentialism is that it would be undesirable to always try to calculate which action or rule is optimific. Moreover, many of our ordinary intuitions about what is right and wrong imply that we ought to perform actions that are not optimific. For instance, we often think that we ought to tell the truth or be fair to people, even if doing so would not be optimific, and even if doing so would be in accordance with a rule general conformity to which would be optimific. In order to meet both of these objections, many utilitarians, following Henry Sidgwick, a famous 19th century utilitarian, are indirect consequentialists. Indirect consequentialists argue that consequentialism is only a theory about which actions are right or wrong. It is not a decision procedure for determining which action is right or wrong.

The idea is this: A decision procedure for determining which action is right recommends a kind of action, for deciding is an action. Hence, calculating the consequences of an act or of a rule is itself an action. So whether it is right to calculate must itself be determined by the consequentialist standard. Once we see this, we can see that very often, perhaps always, it will not be optimific to try to determine which action is optimific, and so it will be wrong to do so. This may seem paradoxical at first. Surely, we might think, if the right action maximizes good consequences, then we should try to determine which action maximizes good consequences. But indirect consequentialists deny just this claim. Hence, many utilitarians even go so far as to say that we ought to determine what the right action is by non-utilitarian standards, since using such standards as decisions procedures is itself optimific. And, they add, utilitarianism even explains why we have the non-utilitarian intuitions about particular actions that we do: Because having those intuitions itself is optimific!

D. Arguments for consequentialism.

Kymlicka offers two arguments for utilitarianism, the egalitarian argument and the teleological argument, and rejects them both. Recall that, as Kymlicka sees it, all viable political philosophies have at bottom the value of egalitarianism, or "treating people as equals". What they all differ over is the (very substantial!) issue of what "treating people as equals" entails. Hence, consequentialism can be seen as one way of cashing-out the value of "treating people as equals".

(i) The egalitarian argument. Some might argue for consequentialism on the basis of the claim that it is entailed by the principle of treating people as equals:

On this view, egalitarianism (premise 1) is supposed to yield consequentialism. But does it? Let us, with Kymlicka, assume that premise 1 is correct--a conceptual truth--though it is completely uninformative. We then ask, What does it mean to treat people as equals? The second premise tells us what this means: It is to take into account everyone's preferences equally. But though this is informative, it is quite controversial indeed. In fact, it is false. Ø may well take into account everyone's preferences equally, yet among those preferences might be preferences that a minority population is discriminated against. So Ø might have to take into account external preferences, or preferences that others' preferences should or should not be satisfied. Moreover, a majority might prefer that a single person's goods be taken away and used as public goods. So in taking into account everyone's preferences equally, Ø might take into account selfish preferences, or preferences for more than one's fair share. These are both counter-examples to 2. Both show that Ø might take into account everyone's preferences equally and yet not treat everyone as equal. So premise 2 is false, and the argument for 4 is no good.

(ii) The teleological argument. The more traditional understanding of consequentialism holds that treating people as equals, our moral ideal, does not entail consequentialism, but rather consequentialism entails treating people as equals. Treating people as equals is one of the best ways, indeed maybe the best way, to maximize utility, on this view.

Although Kymlicka does not discuss it, it is quite clear that the very same objections we had to premise 2 above would apply equally well to premise 3' here. So this is a bad argument for treating people as equals, premise 4', for the very same reasons that the egalitarian argument above is a bad argument for consequentialism. But set that aside. The problem with Kymlicka's presentation is that this is not any kind of argument at all for consequentialism. It is, rather, an argument for treating people as equals, and a bad one at that. This argument quite clearly takes consequentialism (premise 1') as a premise of an argument, not as a conclusion of any argument.

Kymlicka's objections are, in fact, to premise 1'. He claims that (a) maximizing utility cannot be a duty, for if P has a duty, then there is some Q to whom that duty is owed, and no one is owed the duty of maximizing utility. (b) At best, maximizing utility is a non-moral requirement. Perhaps it is an aesthetic requirement. And Kymlicka seems to hold that 1' is not a moral duty because it is not a requirement to treat people specially, but a requirement to the good (whatever it may be) specially. But surely Kymlicka is begging the question against the teleological utilitarian. Kymlicka claims that moral duties are duties to treat people specially ("equally"), and teleological utilitarians deny it, or at least deny that this is a fundamental duty. So Kymlicka's argument relies on (a), that consequentialism cannot define our duties, because maximizing the good is not owed to anyone.

But a teleological theorist will reply that, of course maximizing utility is not owed to anyone. Rather, it is what justifies our owing things to others. That is, it is no argument against 1' to say that no one is owed the duty of maximizing utility. For premise 1' does not aspire to say such a thing. Rather, it aspires to say what justifies our duties. This is not to offer any positive argument for 1'. But it at least shows that Kymlicka is wrong to say that this all amounts to an argument for consequentialism, and he is wrong to object to it on these grounds.

However, Kymlicka does have a better objection against teleological consequentialism: It gives us the right answer (we should treat people as equals) for the wrong reason (it maximizes utility). Why is this the wrong reason? Because we think that we should treat people as equals whether or not it maximizes utility.

(iii) The conceptual argument.

Kymlicka briefly refers Hare's claim that he could not understand what "right" could mean if it did not mean "productive of the best overall consequences". What this suggests is that consequentialists actually rely on a far more simple, and common, philosophical argument for their position, viz., a conceptual argument. Roughly, the claim here would be that what the term "right" means is nothing other than "productive of the best consequences". Actually, this amounts only to a conceptual assertion at this point. What such an argument would have to show is something like this: People use the term "right" in such a way as to show that what they mean to pick out all and only those actions which are productive of the best consequences. Clearly, this is a problematic strategy, as it stands, since as we have already seen, one reason for rejecting act consequentialism is the obvious fact that we do not use the term "right" in this way. We often use it to pick out actions that are not productive of the best overall consequences. There is much more that a consequentialist might say in this regard. It will suffice for the time being to note that often utilitarians have not used any normative arguments for their position, but have relied on a (dubious) conceptual assertion.

A. Hedonism

Hedonism was the classical utilitarians' answer to the question "What is good?" It is pleasure and pleasure alone They had a very simple argument for this position:

Although the argument is simple, there are a number of concepts we need to fully understand it. Premise 1 is fairly uncontroversial: It seems to be a conceptual truth. To say that Y is good is to say that Y is desirable, and to say that Y is desirable is to say that Y is good. But things can be good in two quite different ways: Y can be an instrumental good or good as an end in itself. This distinction is based on why a thing is desirable--the reason it is desirable. And what we will refer to as "the" good will not be what is merely instrumentally good, but what is good as an end in itself. And this is to say that it is desirable simply because of what it is, and there need be no other reason for its goodness.

Instrumental goods are desirable because they bring about or produce (i.e., are instrumental to) something else which is desirable. Money and surgery are examples of instrumental goods; they are desirable because they can get us desirable things such as cars or health. But on their own, they are not desirable. If money could not be exchanged for desirable items such as cars, there would be little reason to regard it as desirable; it would be just so much paper and metal. Likewise, if surgery wasn't instrumental to one's health, one would not find surgery at all desirable. Moreover, whether a given thing is indeed instrumentally good depends on whether what it produces is indeed desirable. If A produces B, but B is not desirable, then A is not instrumentally good because it produces B.

Now in a relation such as that between A and B, we call A the means to B, and B the end of A. Hence, the relationship between A and B is a means/end relationship. So we can say that instrumental goodness is equivalent to goodness as a means. It follows, then, that something is good as a means only if what it is a means to is good. In other words, instrumental goodness is dependent on the goodness of ends, and if nothing is good as an end, then nothing is instrumentally good either.

Notice that A may be good as a means to B, yet B is good because it is in turn a means to C, which is also good as a means to D, and so on. For instance, money is good because it is a means to getting good things such as a car. But getting a car is in turn good because it is a means to easy transportation, which is also good. And easy transportation is good because it is a means to saving time, and so on. Notice that, because instrumental goodness is dependent on goodness as an end, A will be good only if B is good. And B is good only if C is good, and so on.

But at some point there must be something which is just good and not merely good because it produces something else which is good. Not everything can be instrumentally good. For A is instrumentally good only if there is something else that A leads to that is good, and what A leads to is B, yet B is also an instrumental good, and so good only if there is something else that it leads to that is good, and so on. If there were no end to this chain of instrumental goods, then it could not be established that A is good. So there must be an end to it if anything is to be instrumentally good. And whatever that is must be something that is desirable in itself. We will call that which is desirable in itself, or desirable for its own sake, the good, to signify that it is the ultimate good thing, that in virtue of which everything else is good. While money, cars, easy transportation and saving time may well be good as an end, they are not good as ends in themselves, since their goodness as an end depends on their being a good means to something else. And the good will be something that is good as an end in itself.

Now we can fully understand the hedonist's position. She thinks that the only thing that is desirable in itself is pleasure. Pleasure is the only thing that we desire for its own sake alone, and not because it leads to something else that is desirable. It is important to notice that hedonists do not claim that it is one's own pleasure that is the good. That theory of the good would be a form of egoism. Rather, hedonists claim that anyone's or, indeed, anything's pleasure is good. It doesn't matter who or what has the pleasure, since what is desirable as an end is not some particular person's or thing's pleasure. What is desirable as an end is simply pleasure itself. Hedonism is a perfectly impartial view about what is good. No one's (or thing's) pleasure is more important than anyone else's, and each person's (or thing's) pleasure counts equally.

B. Preference satisfaction.

The problem with hedonism, as Robert Nozick has argued (Anarchy, State and Utopia), and Kymlicka nicely shows, is quite simple: If pleasure alone is desirable as an end, then we will be indifferent to whether we get it through real activities, such as writing novels, having families or skiing, or whether we get it through an "experience machine" that is capable of producing any pleasure directly by electrical stimulation or injection of drugs. But we are not indifferent to this choice. We want to write novels and ski; we don't just want the pleasure of writing novels and skiing. Most people would prefer to do things such as write novels or succeed in their careers, not simply have the pleasure of writing a novel or succeeding in a career. Moreover, most people prefer many things that will be painful. Hence, to make such people better off would be to promote novel-writing and success in careers, even if doing so would produce less pleasure. So not all things which are desirable as ends are equivalent to pleasure or even pleasurable.

It is for such reasons that most utilitarians nowadays have abandoned hedonism as a theory of the good. Human well-being should be determined in accordance with maximizing, not pleasure, but preferences. Some people might prefer pleasure, others may not. So making someone better off may well not involve creating more pleasure for them.

C. Informed preference satisfaction.

But even the view that the good is preference satisfaction is problematic. The objection to simple "preference-satisfaction" theories of the good is that sometimes what we prefer is obviously not beneficial to us. Sometimes we are better off not having a preference satisfied. Suppose I prefer to drink the glass of liquid in front of me because I prefer a gin and tonic and believe that the glass contains a gin and tonic. But, unbeknownst to me, the glass is filled with gasoline, not gin and tonic. If my preference is satisfied, I will drink what is in the glass. But in so doing, my welfare will quite obviously not be enhanced, but decreased. Clearly, my preferences are at best a prediction of my welfare, not my welfare itself. What I prefer is what I believe will be desirable or good, and I may well be wrong about this. So my welfare consists, not in the satisfaction of my preferences, but in the satisfaction of those preferences I would have were I to have all the relevant information about what I prefer. In believing that the glass of liquid in front of me contains a gin and tonic, I do not have all the relevant information. So my preference for it is not to be counted as something the satisfaction of which would enhance my welfare.

Moreover, I may prefer something because I fail to imagine fully what getting it will be like. For instance, I may prefer to go to law school, even though I have all the relevant true beliefs about what being a lawyer is like. I know that it will be boring, for instance. But since I fail to imagine fully this boredom, I still prefer to go to law school. And once finished, I may well find that it is boring in a way that I had not fully imagined. I hadn't imagined that it would be so boring! Hence, going to law school fulfilled a preference I had, and it was moreover an informed preference, but it fails to enhance my welfare because the preference was formed without full imaginative engagement on my part.

Many utilitarians take these considerations to favor a "fully informed" preference view of the good. Hence, a person's welfare consists, not in pleasures nor mental-states of various kinds, nor in preference satisfaction, but in the satisfaction of fully informed preferences, or those preference we would have were we to have all and only true beliefs about the objects of our preferences, formed with full imagination and with no other irrationalities. For short, we will say that a person's welfare consists in the satisfaction of those preferences she would have were she fully rational.

D. Incommensurability problems.

One persistent problem for a utilitarian who claims that the good consists in satisfaction of preferences is that of aggregating these preferences. If our goal is to maximize overall preferences, then our goal is to try to amass the largest package of overall preferences. But consider this simple example: Is writing a novel plus skiing a more valuable package of preferences than having a nice car plus hang-gliding? The hedonist has at least an answer to this: It is if and only if the former consists of more pleasure than the latter. That is, a hedonist has a common denominator of all preferences, viz., pleasure. But there is no common denominator for someone who simply holds that the preferences themselves are the measure of utility. So there seems to be no answer to the question whether one set of preferences is preferable to another set of preferences. They seem to be incommensurable.

Although utilitarians admit that there is a problem with aggregating preferences, they do not admit that it undermines utilitarianism. Indeed, it does not. For even if we cannot tell whether writing a novel plus skiing is a more valuable package of preferences than having a nice car plus hang-gliding, we can tell that writing a novel plus skiing is a more valuable package of preferences than working all the time at a dead end job plus having no leisure time. That is, as Kymlicka puts it, the latter is a less fine-grained distinction among sets of preferences, one we can indeed make, even if we cannot make the former, more fine grained distinction.

Utilitarianism

utilitarian.org

Welcome to utilitarian.org!

Introduction... a few questions

This web site is home to the internet based organisation called utilitarian.org - the aims and objectives of which will be made clear later. But first, a few questions.

Newcomers, or those who need reminding, might like to know: what is utility?, or what makes someone a utilitarian?, or what is utilitarianism? These are easy questions, and they are answered here, in many standard philosophical texts, and elsewhere. But, even knowing these things, we may not know - what is more important - how does a utilitarian live? What lifestyles are compatible with maximal utility? What does a utilitarian actually do? (And, perhaps, how does this differ from what he ought do?)

Altruistic action

One of the key ideas being promoted here is the large degree of altruism implied by utilitarianism - altruism not only in an abstract philosophical sense, but real and concrete altruism: actually going out and doing things to help others. (I have attempted to describe why utilitarianism - when properly applied - is practically indistinguishable from complete altruism in two papers: Altruism and Altruism Revisited.) To that end, though this site will contain both theoretical and practical components, it is the essentially practical questions that will form the focus of our efforts.

Rationale

The people who shape the world - the politicians, the business leaders, and others - often have little idea of what they ought to do. We philosophers, who claim to know what ought to be done, often actually do nothing! Those who do, do not know; those who know, do not do!

This ought to change! There should be a new group of people, who are willing to do all types of work: to wade through a lengthy and difficult philosophical text, and then to get their hands dirty mucking out the animals in the local sanctuary! (Or whichever practical projects they decide to support.)

To this end, utilitarian.org will host a series of practical project proposals. Projects will be analysed in terms of their expected utility value, difficulty, effort and resources required etc, by discussion amongst utilitarians. (An email list is provided for this purpose.) And, when we feel reasonably confident of the best of our options, as a group or individually, we will carry them out.

Initial project ideas include:

• creation of a nature reserve
• overseas development work
• education of the public (in ethical issues).

These are good ideas. The only valid reason we could have for not implementing these projects is that we are already too busy on even more worthwhile tasks. Complacency and laziness are not conformable to utility!

So the main purpose of this site is not to discuss what utilitarianism is, but to suggest (something which is often covered less well) what the results of applying it are. It will hopefully be a call to action! - an invitation to all "armchair-philosophers" to leave their comfortable seating, to get up, out, and to make the world a better place.

Links

• a site map (coming soon)
• the full utilitarian.org project index
• the main resources and links page
• a paper on felicific calculus, which I have called Mathematics For Ethics
• a list of common criticisms of utilitarianism
• a FAQ

A selection of short papers:

• Some thoughts on negative utilitarianism
• an unfinished piece on vegetarianism
• a comparison of definitions of utilitarianism
• a critique of desire-fulfilment
• Relativism by analogy
• The convergence and divergence of rationality and morality
• "Is" and "Ought"
• The ineffect of "many worlds" on the felicific calculus
• Preliminary thoughts on the value of wireheading
• Abortion
• Why act morally?
• A quick note on akrasia (weak will)
• Why being "rational" may not be so hot
• If Psychological Hedonism Is True...

Contact Us!

If you wish to get involved, submit an article, question, opinion, advice, clip-art, or whatever, please send us mail.

Site created September 1999.
Last update 22nd August 2000.

utilitarian.org is affiliated to utilitarianism.org - with thanks to Dave Pearce for technical, financial, and moral support!

Rep. Mike Honda and Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva

The Only Real Democratic Budget: Why Progressives Have the Answer to What the American Public Wants

Budgets are more than collections of numbers. They are a statement of our values. The Congressional Progressive Caucus Budget is a reflection of the values and priorities of America's working families. The "People's Budget" charts a path that keeps America exceptional in the 21st century, while addressing the most pressing problems facing the nation today. Our Budget eliminates the deficit, stabilizes the debt, puts Americans back to work, and restores our economic competiveness.

The CPC Budget does this by listening to the American people. In poll after poll, the public is telling us that they want to preserve Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, make higher education more affordable, expand job-training programs, cut taxes burdening the middle class, subsidize affordable housing and assist those struggling to prevent foreclosures. The majority of America, furthermore, thinks cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, K-12 education, heating assistance to low-income families, student loans, unemployment insurance, scientific and medical research, are completely unacceptable.

In contrast, Americans find a progressive tax policy very acceptable. The overwhelming majority of America supports additional taxes on millionaires and billionaires, eliminating unnecessary weapons systems, eliminating tax credits for the oil and gas industries, phasing out Bush tax cuts, and eliminating subsidies for new nuclear power plants. Poll after poll gives voice to what Americans are asking of us.

Our Budget listens to what the American people are telling us. It does all of the above in a fiscally responsible way that dramatically reduces our borrowing from banks and foreign governments and ensures our long-term economic competitiveness. It does all of the above recognizing that in order to compete we need every American to be productive, and in order to be productive, we need to raise the skill level of every American while making sure that basic needs of every working family are met. It does all of the above, while remaining rooted in fairness, recognizing that America works only when everyone has an opportunity to make it in America.

Our Budget Eliminates the Deficit by 2021: The CPC budget eliminates the deficit in a way that does not devastate what Americans want preserved, specifically, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Instead of eroding America's hard-earned retirement plan and social safety net, our budget targets the true drivers of deficits in the next decade: the Bush Tax Cuts, the wars overseas, and the causes and effects of the recent recession. By implementing a fair tax code, by building a resilient American economy, and by bringing our troops home, we achieve a budget surplus of over $30 billion by 2021 and we end up with a debt that is less than 65% of our GDP. This is what sustainability looks like.

Our Budget Puts America Back to Work & Restores America's Competitiveness: The CPC budget rebuilds America and makes it competitive again. We put America back to work. We rebuild our roads and bridges, ensuring that those who use it help pay for it. We rebuild our dams and waterways with seed money for shipping systems that can compete with the rest of the world. We rebuild our education system by training more and better teachers, restoring schools, helping each student graduate, and supporting community colleges. This is what competitiveness looks like.

Our Budget's Fair Tax System: The CPC budget implements a fair tax system, based on the American notion that fairness and equality are integral to our society. Our budget restores fairness to a system that unfairly benefitted the richest few while hurting the majority of America. Our budget heeds America's call to end the Bush Tax Cuts and the estate tax and create fair tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires -while maintaining credits for the middle class and for students. It ensures that the banks which wrecked our economy pay a modest financial responsibility fee and that exotic trading, by Wall Street traders who gambled away America's savings, is levied a tax. It guarantees that hedge fund managers (and those who use them) do not get special treatment, by taxing capital gains and dividends as ordinary income. It eliminates charity to oil companies making record profits from prices paid at the pump by the American people, given that it is unfair that the American people must also give these oil companies billions of dollars in handouts. Finally, our budget taxes US corporate income as it is earned, in much the same way Americans are taxed. This is what fairness looks like.

Our Budget Brings Our Troops Home: The CPC budget responsibly ends our wars, currently paid for by American taxpayer dollars we do not have. We end these wars, not simply to save massive amounts of money or because this is what the majority of America is polling in favor of, but because these wars are making America less safe, are reducing America's standing in the world, and are doing nothing to reduce America's burgeoning energy security crisis. The CPC budget offers a real solution to these fiscal, diplomatic and energy crises - leaving America more secure, both here and abroad. The CPC budget also ensures that our country's defense spending does not continue to contribute significantly to our current fiscal burden - a trend we reverse by ending the wars and realigning conventional and strategic forces, resulting in $2.3 trillion worth of savings. This is what security looks like.

Our Budget's Bottom Line (Over 10 year Window)

• Deficit reduction of $5.6 trillion
• Primary spending cuts of $869 billion
• Net interest savings of $856 billion
• Total spending cuts: $1.7 trillion
• Revenue increase of $3.9 trillion
• Public investment of $1.7 trillion
• Budget surplus of $30.7 billion in 2021, debt at 64.1% of GDP.

US Representative Michael Honda is a member of the House Budget Committee and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Follow Rep Honda on Facebook and Twitter. US Representative Raul Grijalva is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Follow Rep Grijalva on Facebook and Twitter.

Follow Rep. Mike Honda on Twitter: www.twitter.com/repmikehonda

The People’s Budget

Congressional Progressive Caucus



The People’s Budget
Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus
Fiscal Year 2012

Read the People's Budget

Read The Technical Analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (External Link)

Read And Share The One-Page Handout

Presupuesto del Pueblo (Español)

The People’s Budget eliminates the deficit in 10 years, puts Americans back to work and restores our economic competitiveness. The People’s Budget recognizes that in order to compete, our nation needs every American to be productive, and in order to be productive we need to raise our skills to meet modern needs.

Our Budget Eliminates the Deficit and Raises a $31 Billion Surplus In Ten Years
Our budget protects Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and responsibly eliminates the deficit by targeting its main drivers: the Bush Tax Cuts, the wars overseas, and the causes and effects of the recent recession.

Our Budget Puts America Back to Work & Restores America’s Competitiveness
• Trains teachers and restores schools; rebuilds roads and bridges and ensures that users help pay for them
• Invests in job creation, clean energy and broadband infrastructure, housing and R&D programs

Our Budget Creates a Fairer Tax System
• Ends the recently passed upper-income tax cuts and lets Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of 2012
• Extends tax credits for the middle class, families, and students
• Creates new tax brackets that range from 45% starting at $1 million to 49% for $1 billion or more
• Implements a progressive estate tax
• Eliminates corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies; closes loopholes for multinational corporations
• Enacts a financial crisis responsibility fee and a financial speculation tax on derivatives and foreign exchange

Our Budget Protects Health
• Enacts a health care public option and negotiates prescription payments with pharmaceutical companies
• Prevents any cuts to Medicare physician payments for a decade

Our Budget Safeguards Social Security for the Next 75 Years
• Eliminates the individual Social Security payroll cap to make sure upper income earners pay their fair share
• Increases benefits based on higher contributions on the employee side

Our Budget Brings Our Troops Home
• Responsibly ends our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to leave America more secure both home and abroad
• Cuts defense spending by reducing conventional forces, procurement, and costly R&D programs

Our Budget’s Bottom Line
• Deficit reduction of $5.6 trillion
• Spending cuts of $1.7 trillion
• Revenue increase of $3.9 trillion
• Public investment $1.7 trillion

Support for the People's Budget

President Bill Clinton

"The most comprehensive alternative to the budgets passed by the House Republicans and recommended by the Simpson-Bowles Commission"

"Does two things far better than the antigovernment budget passed by the House: it takes care of older Americans and others who need help; and much more than the House plan, or the Simpson-Bowles plan, it invests a lot our tax money to get America back in the future business"

Paul Krugman

“genuinely courageous”

“achieves this without dismantling the legacy of the New Deal”

Dean Baker

"if you want a serious effort to balance the budget, here it is."

Jeffrey Sachs

“A bolt of hope…humane, responsible, and most of all sensible”

The Economist

“Courageous”

“Mr Ryan's plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus's plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people.”

The New Republic

“...something that's gotten far too little attention in this debate. The most fiscally responsible plan seems to be neither the Republicans' nor the president's. It's the Congressional Progressive Caucus plan…”

The Washington Post

"It’s much more courageous to propose taxes on the rich and powerful than spending cuts on the poor and disabled."

Rachel Maddow

“Balances the budget 20 years earlier than Paul Ryan even tries to”

The Guardian

“the most fiscally responsible in town… would balance the books by 2021“

The Nation

"the strongest rebuke...to the unconscionable 'Ryan Budget' for FY 2012."

Center for American Progress

"once again put[s] requiring more sacrifice from the luckiest among us back on the table"

Economic Policy Institute

"National budget policy should adequately fund up-front job creation, invest in long-term economic growth, reform the tax code, and put the debt on a sustainable path while protecting the economic security of low-income Americans and growing the middle class. The proposal by the Congressional Progressive caucus achieves all of these goals."

The Washington Post

“The Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far."

Rolling Stone

"This is more than a fantasy document. It's sound policy."

Forbes

"instead of gutting programs for the poor like Medicaid and Medicare, food stamps, and the new healthcare law, the People’s Budget focuses on cuts in defense. It also doesn’t scrap new financial regulations designed to at least partly stave off another massive financial collapse like the one that put us in this mess in the first place."

yes!

7 Ways to Support the Real Job Creator: Main Street

Turns out most job creation comes from the 99 percent, not the one percent.

by John Cavanagh, David Korten

posted Nov 29, 2011

Photo by Sasha Kimel

If you’ve been following GOP debates lately, you’ve heard that Wall Street businesses are the real “job creators” of our economy, and that the best way to put Americans back to work is to remove all the troublesome fetters—like environmental and safety regulations, or taxes, or unionization rights for workers—that hold them back.

But Wall Street’s goal is to make money, not create jobs. Wall Street institutions view wages and worker benefits as costs to be minimized. Wall Street executives know that the most certain way to boost the share price of their company, and thereby pump up the value of their personal stock options, is to announce that thousands of people are to be laid off, their jobs eliminated or moved abroad.

Between 2000 and 2009, for example, U.S. transnational corporations, which employ roughly 20 percent of all U.S. workers, slashed their U.S. employment by 2.9 million even as they increased their overseas workforce by 2.4 million. The result was a significant loss of jobs nationally, as well as a net loss globally.

So who are America’s real job creators?

Main Street Job Creators

Most jobs come from the 99 percent—and that the best way to support job creation is to support rights and protections for the 99 percent.

It turns out that most job creation in the United States is the result of Main Street entrepreneurs, not Wall Street financial wizards. In our new report, Jobs: A Main Street Fix for Wall Street’s Failure, we show that most jobs come from the 99 percent—and that the best way to support job creation is to support rights and protections for the 99 percent.

A series of Kauffman Foundation studies find that nearly all job growth in the United States comes from entrepreneurial startups, which by their nature are products of Main Street. It is equally significant that more than 90 percent of the entrepreneurs responsible for job growth come from middle-class or the top end of lower-class backgrounds. Less than 1 percent of America’s job-creating entrepreneurs come from extremely rich or extremely poor backgrounds.

Just as the Wall Street economy is about making money for the 1 percent, the Main Street economy is about middle class people self-organizing to make a living by creating businesses that serve community needs for goods, services, and livelihoods within a market framework. This is the market economy Adam Smith envisioned when he wrote The Wealth of Nations.

This is a critical insight. To unleash America’s job-creating entrepreneurial energies, we must advance policies that expand the middle class and build strong Main Street economies. We have seen this demonstrated by our own national experience.

After Wall Street financiers precipitated the Great Depression of the 1930s, America put in place corrective structures, including a highly progressive tax system, a strong social safety net, and effective regulation of Wall Street banks and corporations. These structures shifted the locus of economic power from Wall Street financiers to ordinary Americans who worked hard and invested their savings in job-creating businesses that served community needs and built community wealth.

Less than 1 percent of America’s job-creating entrepreneurs come from extremely rich or extremely poor backgrounds.

From this strong economic foundation, the United States emerged from victory in World War II with a large middle class and an industrial and technological base that made us the world’s most powerful nation. A major portion of the society achieved the American Dream of a secure and comfortable life in return for hard work and playing by the rules. For a brief moment, the civil rights movement created hope that all Americans might eventually share in the dream regardless of their color.

How Wall Street Took Over

Beginning in the 1970s, Wall Street interests quietly mobilized to free themselves from regulation, unions, and taxes and to dismantle the nation’s economic and social safety nets. Their initiatives, which gained traction under the Reagan administration, reduced taxes on the rich, undermined unions, pushed down wages and benefits, eliminated and outsourced jobs, eliminated limits on usury and speculation, and redirected financial markets from long-term investment in real wealth creation to profiting from securities fraud, usury, market manipulation, corporate asset stripping, and the inflation of financial bubbles.

This Changes Everything: How the 99% Woke Up
Introducing the movement that’s shifting our vision of what kind of world is possible.

It may seem that America’s prosperity now depends on Wall Street. That perception is largely an illusion created by Wall Street success in rewriting the rules to gain control of the nation’s money, productive resources, and politicians. Wall Street’s relationship to the United States is akin to that of a colonial occupier loyal solely to itself and devoted exclusively to expropriating wealth it has no hand in creating. Its institutions profit from eliminating jobs and worker benefits, depressing wages, evading taxes, denying health insurance claims, and pillaging the retirement accounts of the elderly.
Every need that Wall Street institutions fill is better served by Main Street institutions with strong community roots.

How To Restore the Job Creating Power of Main Street

Occupy Wall Street has focused a spotlight on the concentration and abuse of Wall Street power and opened a much needed conversation about how to restore the American Dream of a secure and comfortable life in return for hard work and playing by the rules.

The New Economy Working Group, which we co-chair, has just issued a report on Jobs: A Main Street Fix for Wall Street’s Failure. It examines the systemic cause of the current economic failure and outlines a seven-part program to restore the middle class, advance a power shift from Wall Street to Main Street, and get America working again.

1. Redefine our economic priorities by replacing financial indicators with real-wealth indicators as the basis for evaluating economic performance.
2. Restructure the money system to root the power to create and allocate money in Main Street financial institutions that support Main Street job creation.
3. Restore the middle class by restoring progressive tax and employment policies and a strong and secure social safety net.
4. Create a framework of economic incentives that favor human-scale enterprises that are locally owned by people who have a natural interest in the health and well-being of their community and its natural environment.
5. Protect markets and democracy from corruption by concentrations of unaccountable corporate power.
6. Organize the global economy into substantially self-reliant regional economies that align and partner with the structure and dynamics of Earth’s biosphere.
7. Put in place global rules and institutions that secure the universal rights of people and support democratic self-governance and economic self-reliance at all system levels.

A serious jobs program will necessarily include short-term stimulus measures. Its primary focus, however, will be on structural interventions to shift the balance of economic and political power from Wall Street to Main Street and rebuild the American middle class.

---

John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, and David Korten, board chair of YES! Magazine, are the principal authors of the New Economy Working Group’s report: Jobs: A Main Street Fix for Wall Street’s Failure. The full report is available on the web to be freely read and shared.

Interested?

• YES! Magazine's ongoing coverage of the Occupy movement.
  
• How to Liberate America
  How is it that our nation is awash in money, but too broke to provide jobs and services? David Korten introduces a landmark new report, “How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule.”
• Main Street Businesses Take on Corporate Tax Havens
  Small businesses have decided they’re done picking up the slack when Wall Street dodges taxes.
• Every Great Social Movement
  The biggest shifts of our time have been sparked by ordinary people rejecting the cultural stories that dominated them.

YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Alumni

Catholic Socialist

by Lee Hudson Teslik
January-February 2004

Socialism, it seems, has some serious PR problems. “Real, genuine, old-fashioned craziness,” says John C. Cort ’35, complaining of the socialist literature he gets in the mail, “without even asking,” at his Nahant, Massachusetts, home. In America, this reaction isn’t particularly surprising—except that Cort, 90, is hardly a curmudgeonly conservative.

Rather, he’s quite the opposite, as his recent memoir, Dreadful Conversions, testifies. Never straying far from the philosophical underpinnings of his Catholic faith, he recounts nearly a century of American radicalism: writing for the Catholic Worker and learning from its socialist publisher, Dorothy Day, and her anarchist colleague Peter Maurin; organizing workers at the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists during the Depression; running a Model Cities program, a newspaper guild, and a homeless shelter; crossing paths with Jimmy Hoffa and John and Robert Kennedy.

	John Cort today (inset) and in the 1930s with Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin (front row) of the Catholic Worker
Courtesy of John Cort

Why is this seasoned leftist now criticizing his own troops? Not for want of sympathy. Cort sounds paternally pained as he describes what he’s up against—a young man at an MIT People for Self-Management conference almost 30 years ago whom Cort overheard saying cheerfully, “What a great day to smash the state!” At the time, Cort found the quip amusing. But today, he says, with modern socialist theory so widely misunderstood, such remarks only “confirm many Americans’ reaction to the word ‘socialist’ as hopelessly wedded to a kind of crazy radicalism.”

Modern socialism is far more moderate, Cort says. He cites the Socialist Party’s Stockholm Declaration of 1989, which established that “what is important is social justice, whether it be in public ownership or private ownership.” But “we are abysmally ignorant in this country,” he gripes. “You find accredited, prestigious pundits, George Will types, who are still using ‘socialism’ in the old ‘communist’ sense.”

So how does one counter this?

“Well, you start by publishing books like [mine]!” he rejoins enthusiastically. He crafted Dreadful Conversions to be as much philosophical primer as autobiography, as much intellectual journey as recollection of days past. The journey began at Harvard with his first conversion: to Catholicism. One contemporary deemed Harvard a “positively bizarre” setting for such an event, but Cort, a student of French history and literature, was particularly inspired by his Catholic professors Louis Mercier, C.H. McIlwain, and Alfred North Whitehead.

Cort always eyed a life of political activism through the lens of his Catholic faith, but not until the mid 1970s did this focus prompt a second conversion: to socialism. He sees this shift as a necessary consequence of the convergence of socialist and Catholic thought. Looking to pinpoint the “soul of the Socialist movement,” he quotes the Marxian “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”—which, he quickly points out, borrows from Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, and Saint Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians.

Cort’s broad theory of socialism encompasses virtually anyone concerned about the basic “satisfaction of human needs” and committed, even rhetorically, to a full-employment policy. “They accuse me of stretching socialism so thin,” he says. “Well, that’s true! I talk about closet-socialist Republicans.”

Dreadful Conversions chronicles a lifetime of uphill battles, but Cort shows little sign of letting up. He is now coeditor of Religious Socialism, a quarterly he hopes to revive after 26 dormant years. His struggle to counter the "general tendency of discouragement in the U.S. socialist movement" in the face of smash-the-state "crazies" and right-wing naysayers alike promises to be arduous. But, as his brother David used to say of their family—and as Cort writes in his book’s final paragraph—"Corts are all optimists in an insane kind of way."

~Lee Hudson Teslik