A Lexicon of Social Well-Being

NA NA,Kenneth A. Loparo

• Éditeur: Palgrave Pivot
• Année: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137528889
• Sujet: Economia
• Sous-sujet: Econometria

We must quickly learn how to live well in the world as it is today, including the realm of work. We need to learn a new vocabulary of economics and markets that is more suitable to understand the present world and that is likely to offer us the tools to act, and perhaps improve it as well.

Introduction

“Crisis” is no longer a proper word to describe our times. The reality is that we are living in an extended transitional period and a paradigm shift that started well before 2007, one that is very likely to last for a long time. Therefore we must quickly learn how to live well in the world as it is today, including the realm of work. We need to learn a new vocabulary of economics that is more suitable to understand the present world (not the previous one we knew) and that is likely to offer us the tools to act, and perhaps improve it as well.

There is a new kind of collective indigence: we can no longer understand our own economy, our work, or our nonwork. If we become aware of this new “lexical” indigence and of the mindset behind it, we will start – or perhaps continue – to write a kind of “Vocabulary of a Good Social Life.” This is an expression borrowed from, or given to us by, the Neapolitan economist and historian Ludovico Bianchini, who held the same teaching post as Antonio Genovesi just a hundred years later. He chose the title On the Science of a Good Social Life (Della scienza del ben vivere sociale) for his 1845 study in economics. A new lexicon does not emerge from nothing. A new lexicon always feeds on and develops from previous words and makes way for those of the future. Therefore it is always temporary, partial, and necessarily incomplete; it is a work in progress, a toolkit for reasoning and acting.

There are some fundamental words of social life that need to be rethought, or even rewritten, if we want civil and economic life to be “good,” and possibly also just. Right now we are conducting much bad economics, partly because we are thinking and speaking badly about economic and civil life. There are many words to be rethought and rewritten. Without doubt, the following terms are among them: wealth, poverty, entrepreneur, finance, bank, Common good, work, justice, management, income distribution, profit, corporate property rights, indignation, the Italian model, capitalism, and many more. The new vocabulary is also necessary to understand and re-evaluate the specifics of the Italian and European economic and civil tradition. In fact, the 21st century is (dangerously) becoming the century of a single socioeconomic thought. We are losing too much biodiversity, anthropological richness, and cultural diversity. Not only are thousands of living species disappearing, but some living forms of enterprises, banks, artisanal traditions, visions of the world, entrepreneurial culture, cooperation, professions, practical know-how and reasoning, and labor ethics are dying, too. Many of those words that are now emerging are very much like those aggressive and parasitic species that speed up the decay of ancient and beneficial types of plants. There are fewer and fewer forms of companies, governing styles, banking types, and cultures because they are being crushed by the ideology of “business is business.” Here, business derives solely from the Anglo-Saxon, and particularly from the American usage of the term where even banks are all the same: they all gamble with our savings and they all favor and serve certain territories, families, and companies.

European economy has a long tradition of biodiversity that is a product of its long history, of the many centuries that the type of capitalism that is colonizing us right now does not possess. Anyone who forgets about this long history and this richness will do enormous and often irreversible harm to society and economy. The 20th century, however, was a century of plurality of economic systems and capitalisms. The century that now seems far in the past saw several types or forms of market economy unfold; the German social market economy, the collectivist economy, the Italian mixed economy – a mix that was fuller than the exclusively private/public relationship – the Scandinavian, French, English, American, Japanese, Indian, and South American models, and, in its most recent phases, the Chinese hybrid model as well. All this variety of market economies, whether capitalistic or not, was later accompanied by large, occasionally enormous, sites of traditional economy that endured even in old Europe. All this biodiversity is disappearing in the 21st century. Diversity is what always makes the world beautiful; biodiversity of civil and economic forms make it as splendid and rich as butterflies and plants. The Italian and European landscape are part of the human heritage, not merely because of their hills and forests, which are connected to the great monastic charisms of the medieval ages and thus to spiritual biodiversity. Our plazas and city walls were made beautiful not only by the surrounding vineyards and olive gardens but also by the cooperative companies, the thousands of regional banks and cooperative banks that were in some ways the same yet different among themselves, savings banks, luthier workshops, and mountain stables, the district enterprises, brotherhoods, houses of mercy, schools and hospitals made by religious orders, alongside public and private ones. Every time such an institution fails, whether due to wrong legislation or unprepared consultants, our country becomes poorer and we become less cultured, less profound, and less free, and we burn up centuries of history and biodiversity.

Where there is no biodiversity, there is only sterility, incest, and dwarfism: these are the illnesses that financial capitalism is experiencing nowadays. In fact, it is unable to produce satisfying work and good wealth, precisely because it is too flattened into a single culture and a single active principle (the maximization of short-term profit). This loss of civil and economic – and therefore, human – biodiversity is a very serious illness that threatens democracy itself, which is and has always been strictly connected to the fortunes, forms, and plurality of the protagonists of the market economy.

This is where new challenges open up that are decisive for the quality of our present and future: how far do we want to extend the pricing mechanism to dominate our common lives? Are we sure that the way we are managing our companies, especially the large ones, has a future? Will workers always be excluded from the management of companies? Do we want to continue to prey on Africa, or can we start a new chapter of reciprocity in our relationship with those distant, yet ever closer, peoples? When are we going to stop stealing our grandchildren’s future by going into debt because of excessive and egoistic consumerism? Is it possible to extend the “trip advisor” system of hotel ranking to all market goods in order to create a true economic democracy? Do we as Europeans have anything to say about markets and business? These and other difficult questions and challenges cannot be successfully confronted if we do not first learn to think and talk about them using the proper terms.

There has been too much damage in recent years – not just economic – caused by those who produce “bads” instead of “goods” in costs and incomes alike, masking vices as virtues. This damage is continuously produced, albeit not always intentionally. We must all equip ourselves – citizens, economy, institutions, media, and politicians alike – to breathe life into a new economic and civil language that can help us give the right name to things in order to love and improve them. Words fade very quickly in every Renaissance, and no other historical age has consumed words and concepts as quickly as ours. If we really want to recreate work, civil harmony, cooperation, and wealth, we first need to know what to call them. When one wants to pass from chaos to order, the first fundamental human act is to name things, to get to know them, to look after them, and nurture them. We urgently need a lexicon for a new economic and social well-being.

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Agape

Reciprocity is the golden rule of human sociality. Only the word reciprocity can explain the basic structure of society, even if that society is characterized by indignation, revenge, and endless court cases. The DNA of the political entity is a twisting helix of giving and receiving. Even human love is essentially a matter of reciprocity from the first moment to the last. Just think how often someone departs from this earth holding the hand of their beloved or, in their absence, clasping it in their thoughts with the last strength of their mind and heart. Reciprocity is the dimension of love where we love those who love us; there have been many ways and many words to express this in different human cultures.

In ancient Greek culture the most famous ways of expressing love were eros and philia. These were two different forms of love, but they have one thing in common: reciprocity, the basic need for a response from the other. Eros is direct reciprocity, which is two-way and exclusive; it is where the other is loved because it fills a need and because love satisfies us. It is revived again and again, a vital desire. In the Greek idea of philia (which is similar to what we now call friendship), reciprocity is more complex: a lack of response from the other is tolerated, giving and receiving are not always kept in balance, and forgiveness is possible or necessary many times. That is why eros is not a virtue, but philia can be because it requires loyalty, even from a friend that temporarily betrays us and does not return our love. But a philia type of love is not unconditional love, as it is cut off when the other – by not returning my feelings – makes me realize that he or she no longer wants to be my friend.

Eros and philia are wonderful and essential for every good life – yet, they are not enough. The human person is great precisely because the current level of reciprocity is not enough for us; we want the infinite. So, at some point in history, when the right time came, the need emerged to find another word for a dimension of love that is not contained in those two words for love, no matter how rich and elevated they both were. This new word, agape, was not entirely new to Greek vocabulary, but its use and meaning were new. It was used to characterize the people that were commonly called “those of the road,” the first and beautiful name for Christians. Agape was not an invention, but it was a revelation of a dimension of power that is present inside every person, even when it remains buried and is waiting for someone to say “come out.” It is not a form of love that begins where the other forms end, nor is it the opposite of either eros or philia, because agape is what makes every love complete and mature. For it is agape that gives love the human dimension of graciousness that is not guaranteed by philia, and even less so by eros. By opening them up, it makes way for the fulfillment of the virtues that without it are subtly selfish. For the same reason, the translators chose charitas when agape was translated into Latin; in earlier times the word was spelled with the “h” in it, a very rarely used letter. Its insertion into the word changed everything because it could mean many things.

The first message was that charitas was neither amor (love) nor amicitia (friendship), but was something else. Furthermore, this charitas was no longer the caritas of Roman merchants, who used it to express the value of goods (those that cost a lot were “caro”). But that letter “h” also served to remind everyone that charitas pointed to another great Greek word: charis, grace, or gracefulness (“Hail Mary, full of charis ”). There is no agape without charis, and there is no charis without agape. While philia can forgive up to seven times, agape will forgive until seventy times seven; philia gives the tunic but agape gives the cloak too, and philia walks a mile with his friend but agape walks two, and not just with friends. Eros endures, hopes, and covers little; philia covers, endures, hopes a lot; agape hopes, covers, and endures all.

The form that agape love takes provides great power for action toward economic and social change. Agape is at work every time a person acts for good, finding the resources for it in the action itself and within himself, even without the promise of reciprocity. Agape is the love that is typical of founders who start a movement or a cooperative without being able to count on the reciprocity of others. They are the ones who act with the fortitude and perseverance necessary to endure long periods of loneliness. Agape does not affect the choice to return love to the other, but when unrequited it suffers; agape is only complete with reciprocity (“A new commandment I give you: love one another!”), but it does not hurt so much as to cut off its love if it remains unrequited. The fullness of reciprocity in agape is also expressed in a ternary relationship: A gives herself to B, and B gives himself to C – agape is transitive, unlike philia and eros. Indeed, this dimension of “impartiality” and openness is essential to bring about agape.

Even maternal and paternal love for a child would not be a mature and complete agape if it were spent in the relation A => B, B => A, without the dimension B => C (and also to others), which overcomes every temptation of incestuous or narcissistic love. The need to reciprocate and keep going even when there is no answer is what makes agape a relational experience, which is at once vulnerable and fertile. Agape is a most fertile wound. It is agape that shapes our communities into welcoming and inclusive places with doors wide open that never close. This is what undermines sacred hierarchies, caste systems, and the temptation of power. Furthermore, agape is essential for every Common good because it knows the kind of forgiveness that is able to undo the wrongs done to us. Anyone who has been the victim of evil, of any evil, will know that the evil done and received cannot be fully compensated or repaired by penalties and payments for damages. It lives on like a wound that is still there. This is the case unless one day it meets the forgiveness of agape, which, unlike the forgiveness of eros and philia, is able to heal all wounds, even the mortal ones, making them the dawn of a resurrection.

However, there is a theory that has been present throughout the history of our culture. Agape – it is said – cannot be a civil form of love; to allow such vulnerability would not be prudent. It can only be lived in family life, spiritual life, and perhaps in volunteering. In the streets and businesses, however, we should be content with the different ranges of eros (incentives) and, at most, of philia. This theory is deeply rooted because it is based, at least in part, on the historical evidence of the many experiences born of agape; here we return to consider hierarchical or communitarian groups. It is the story of many communities that began in agape and, upon receiving their first wounds, end up transforming themselves into very hierarchical and formal systems. It is also the story of experiences that were created to be open and inclusive but, after their first failures, closed their doors, expelling all those who were different. History is also a succession of these instances of “stepping back,” but these instances do not reduce the civil value of agape. On the contrary, they should motivate us to invest more agape (and not less) in politics, business, and work. For every time that agape makes an appearance in human history, even if it remains for only a short or even a very short time, it never leaves the world unchanged. We inch ahead and drive a new spike higher into the rock; the starting point of those who begin their climb tomorrow will be a few feet or, at least, a few inches higher.

Not a drop of agape is wasted on earth. Agape broadens the horizon of possibilities for the good of humanity; it is the yeast and salt of every good bread. The world does not die, and life begins anew every morning because there are people capable of agape: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and agape. But the greatest of these is agape.”

Capital

“Bad” poverty is constantly growing, while “good” poverty is diminishing. We are quickly becoming poor in a bad way because the deterioration of our civil, educational, relational, spiritual, and governmental capital has passed a tipping point, triggering a chain reaction. We are living through a capital decline. The types of poverty that we can measure are manifested as the lack of flows (jobs and income), but in reality they are the much deeper and more long-term expressions of “capital account” processes that do not really depend on the financial crisis of 2007–2008 or on German politics. These in fact are our usual – and by now lame – alibis to cover the real reasons why serious things are happening to us.

By now many declare that our decline is caused by a deficit and deterioration of productive, technological, environmental, infrastructural, and institutional capital – by now a sacrosanct truth. At the same time, what is not being said is that the crisis of these crucially important forms of capital for economic growth originates mainly from having used up other more fundamental forms of moral, civil, and spiritual capital that generated economy, industry, and civilization. Industry, and before it the farming, fishing, and artisanal cultures of Europe, were generated by a thoroughgoing humanism over a long process of centuries and millennia.

Our economic and civil revolution does not come from nothing – quite the contrary, it was the flowering of a centuries-old tree with deep reaching and fertile roots. We must not forget that our entrepreneurial classes are the result of the evolution of tens of thousands of sharecroppers, ...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction