John Papworth
(e-mail exchange dated 10th June 2002)
see also
Why The London School of Economics Should be Shut Down
Stephen Hay's Remark
Despite the rhetoric, not everything is subject to market forces and thus, not everything can be construed as a business.
The underlying assumption is that
only businesses produce for the
market
they are there because of the
profit motive
they seek to maximise profit.
Profit is what permits a business to expand, try new things and still provide the products or services that are its raison d'etre. If it is only breaking even, ie. non-profit, expansion is not possible. Think of it as, from necessity to freedom.
So, what then is Minciu Sodas, in economic terms? I'd venture to say that it's an organisation of some sort, undefined up 'til now. I'm not certain that anyone would pay for any services that it provides, partly (mostly) because it not clear what it provides that's worth paying for. That doesn't mean that it's not possible for someone or some group of people to support it financially. But that financial support would, I expect, be of the type that meets costs regardless of the output and for that the model is a royal grant, grants from government or from private foundations.
Hope this helps to clear up some issues. These days it's critical to know what part of the economy you're playing in. In many ways, the clearest thinking is economic...
John Papworth's Response
Stephen Hay's comment about business enables one to understand why we are on the verge of a global economic meltdown.
One has to see that any attempt to label economics as a 'science' can do nothing but harm. Economics is imperatively an aspect of moral philosophy, if only because it involves key aspects of human behaviour in relation to the social order. It was Alfred Marshall at the turn of the 20th century who engineered the momentuous change in the Cambridge tripos involving the renaming of the subject 'moral philosophy' by replacing it with two others, 'philosophy' and 'economics'.
What then happened to 'morals' as a subject for study? It went out of the window! Which is where we are today with the mess we are in and economic activity being pursued to excess, environmental, climatic, social, resource wastage and a general unconcern for the widening gap between rich and poor which will duly have its own political spinoff in nazi, stalinist, Lepenn terms.
The fundamental fallacy of seeking to study economic phenomena as though it is confined to a laboratory is evident in one of its basic 'scientific' formulations. 'The factors of production', it intones otiosely to generation after generation of unsuspecting students, are 'land, labour and capital'. Are they? 'Labour' is not a machine, it is us, human beings, made in the image of God, and to seek to equate our creative moral identity with that of a share certificate or a cabbage patch is to throw a spanner in the whole works of civilisation. Which of course is what it has done.
This bleak failure to realise that far from being a 'factor of production' labour is the object of it has set every kind of mischief in train in every direction; which is why we are in the death throes of the entire social order. If we want to avoid what is clearly looming up we simply must start to regulate economic activity in terms of moral priorities.
On a mass basis, for complex reasons I have sought to spell
out in my book Small
is Powerful, this is impossible and can only be conducted
on a human scale where moral priorities can order and control
economic activity. It was Gandhi who declared, 'You cannot have
morality without community'.
Amen.Kind regards.
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