Friends of Associative Economics Bulletin

June 2009

1) Moral Sovereignty

2) Forthcoming Events

3) Associate! June 2009 - Compete and Cooperate

4) The End of Money and The Future of Civilisation - A Review

1) Moral Sovereignty

The assumption today, untouched or possibly reinforced by the 'credit-crunch', is that because man is an economically selfish animal, his behaviour must be tempered by an external agency of some kind.

With this thought in the background, we create a dual arena for human action: in one realm, namely the market, we are given free-reign to exercise our self-seeking, in the other we attribute to the state and its agents both our social conscience and our consciousness of the whole economy (so called macro-prudential considerations).

But why is this schizophrenia necessary? If there are two parts to human nature, self-centred and other-centred, can we not simply describe the situation thus? While presumably an economist could draw out the consequences of which part he choses to emphasise, how we actually behave will always be an individual matter, albeit influenced by the image we have of ourselves.

How different things would be, for example, if, instead of thinking in terms of the market and the state, one thought of narrow self interest on the one side, and our, equally real, concern for the well-being of the world as a whole on the other? See, for example, a recent article on 'altruism in economics'.

Then we would not be condemned to forever inhabit a divided universe in which we find ourselves estranged from the social part of our nature. The state is not morally better than the single person - indeed, surely it can only make sense to describe an individual human being as conscientious or moral. Why then do we fall for the illusion that the state can claim for itself a higher authority? For in allowing this usurpation to occur we abdicate our moral sovereignty and become dependent on central-banks, for example, to correct situations that we as individuals could just as well take responsibility for.

The June issue of Associate! explores such thoughts.

2) Forthcoming Events

• Inner and Outer Aspects of Associative Economics: 21 June / Rudolf Steiner House, London

3) Associate! June 09 - Compete and Cooperate

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Lead: Of Goods and Gods. Christopher Houghton Budd
A Sign of Our Time: Time for the Fed to go negative.
Feature: Time to rethink economics? Marc Desaule
Archive: Money - the unfair competitor. Rudolf Steiner
21 Policies: Compete against oneself. Cooperate with others
AE Hero: Beyond Profit - Sen revisits Smith
Accounting Corner: Enshrining business aims

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4) The End of Money and The Future of Civilisation

A review of Tom Greco's new book
For anyone who has studied Rudolf Steiner's economic thinking, Tom Greco's monetary analysis will strike a chord. On key questions such as the need for separation of money and state and the logic of a differentiated idea of money, their analyses converge. Steiner's many distinctive observations are seconded in Greco's account, providing independent corroboration thereby of the logic of his thinking. The fact that the overlap is not complete, that the language used and the emphasis differs, suggests that an objective truth may be described from diverse perspectives.

Read the whole review

The Friends of Associative Economics Bulletin provides an overview of what is going on around the world in the associative economics movement. The bulletin is viewable as a webpage at www.cfae.biz/fae-bulletin/09Jun/