The economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. The former is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis, equitable utilization of the means of production, and the fate of the working classes and underprivileged. This appeals to me and seems fair. The major flaw of such regimes is their emphasis on class struggle -- insistence on hatred to the detriment of compassion. Their failure is not that of Marxism, but of totalitarianism. So I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist. --The Dalai Lama
Communism failed because it couldn't tell the economic truth; capitalism will fail because it can't tell the ecological truth. --Lester Brown
Nineteenth-century historian Thomas Carlyle referred to economics as "the dismal science." Today, in the 21st century, despite decades of cheer-leading for it in the media, mainstream economics looks not only dismal but unscientific and even cynical.
That's largely because most economists have been providing mathematical cover for the biggest inside job the world has ever seen: the privatization of profit and socialization of loss by governments in hock to corporate capitalism -- a key feature in our long and continuing recession. The corporate media have convinced us that hundreds of billions of taxpayer money to save reckless banking systems is an economic necessity. But investing something similar to save our planet as a viable habitat for future generations is treated as an economic impossibility.
Fairness
A primary issue in all this is fairness, highlighted in the Dalai Lama's comparison of Marxist and capitalist economics. Our evolutionary relatives among the primates, and even our best friend the dog, can keep track of this fundamental social factor. All feel gratitude for food and other favors shared. All are aggravated by unfairness, a response scientists call "inequity aversion." Unsurprisingly, that's how most of us feel about predatory bankers and their political enablers. Why do dominant 20th-century institutions like corporations and markets lack our hard-wired tendencies toward gratitude and fairness? Is our aversion to their inequity a vital warning signal for 21st century civilization?
Values
Another central concern is values. Oscar Wilde famously defined a cynic as "a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." By that criterion, our great and globalized preoccupation with economic growth is a deeply cynical enterprise.
"Externalities" is how economists define the costs and damages to society or the natural world that slip through the net of pricing. For corporate profits to be maximized, costs must always be minimized. So corporations become highly efficient "externalizing machines." As Ray Anderson has pointed out, the market does not limit the harm corporations cause, because it systemically ignores the costs they are able to foist onto somebody else. But externalizing those costs does not mean they disappear.
What about the harm done to something whose value is incalculable, like the Earth's climate, or the future generations who will be affected by its disruptions? Market economics is blind to those existential damages as well. It's fortunate for us that our ancestors didn't feel that way that about their descendants. Their values evidently included our survival.
Can civilization survive by knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing -- not even the value of its natural life-support systems? In effect, global capitalism asserts that it can. The eminent environmentalist Lester Brown concludes that it will fail, because it cannot adapt to the ecological truth that in the end will undermine it -- and very likely human civilization as well.
Putting A Figure On It
Some well-meaning economists have designed blueprints for a sustainable version of capitalism. Nicholas Stern, for example, wrote an influential British government report that described climate change as the "greatest market failure in history."
What about the "market value" of the human species? Since the market has no interest in anything it can externalize, we can only compute this indirectly. The net worth of the world's top 200 oil, coal and gas companies is about $7.4 trillion -- a figure based on proven reserves that the market expects to burn. The physics of the climate system shows us that only a fraction of that fossil carbon (perhaps a fifth) could be burnt without initiating runaway global warming and placing our survival in grave doubt.
These figures suggest that the free market prices the survival of humanity at less than $7.4 trillion. This places the value of our species at perhaps a tenth of current world GDP (value $65 trillion), or one hundredth of the world derivatives market (nominal value $600 trillion). By acting as if the fate of nature is merely an externality, the market reveals itself to be an inter-generational pyramid (Ponzi) scheme, where current generations indulge themselves lavishly by stealing non-renewable resources and a liveable climate from future ones.
Falling Back In Love With Mother Earth
Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh believes that putting an economic value on nature is not enough. Fundamental change can happen only if we fall back in love with our planet. When we recognize the virtues, talent and beauty of Mother Earth, he says, love is born in us. When we reconnect with it, we naturally want to do anything we can for the benefit of the Earth, and the Earth will do anything for our wellbeing. He continues:
"Many people suffer deeply and they try to cover up the suffering by being busy. The practice of mindfulness helps us to touch Mother Earth inside of the body and this practice can help heal people. The healing of the people should go together with the healing of the Earth ... In Buddhism we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the Earth is in danger and living species are in danger."
Speaking Up For What Is Beyond Price
The linguist George Lakoff uses cognitive neuroscience to understand how meaning is transmitted through language. When we try to communicate something, the way that information is "framed" is especially important, and any linguistic frame in general use will be reinforced by any subsequent discussion that treats the subject in its terms. Today a dominant "economics frame" (the price of everything) governs most discussion about our collective future. We can only break through the domination of this mindset when we insist on a "values frame" as an alternative starting point. Buddhists don't buy the tyranny of the cynical old frame. We stand for what is beyond price. We stand for all life on Earth.
John Stanley & David Loy are part of the Ecobuddhism project.
Marxist economic system is founded on Hegelian dialectic used to explain the tension- relations between various economic phenomena. With a bit of historical determinism thrown in. Not morality.
Even though I agree with the premise of this article, I think this statement is a stretch. Humankind, until recent generations, simply did not have the ability to destroy itself and the planet like we do now.
I also firmly believe that global capitalism will fail ultimately not just because of the ecological devastation, but because of the devastation to human minds in forcing us to live an out of balance way of life in order to be cogs in the machine and to survive. This cannot be how humans were meant to live.
The false dicotomy of communisim and capitalism as economic systems must be transcended. In the end, the economic systems of communism (Marxism) and capitalism must be integrated on a practical level. In other words a pure communism or a pure capitalism cannot exist in the real world, and the necessary hybrid is best called socialism with its very many permutations. At its worst, the hybrid becomes the fascism of corporatocracy (which is short for corporate control of government through sham democracy) and is the most common form of the perversion of the hybrid. Interstingly, the Tea Party uses the slogan of "socialism" as a fear mongering label to support the American Brand of Fascism.
I disagree with certain parts of this statement . Buddhism is not a Religion : Buddism is a proven belief of a sprite with in every hu,am and living creature on this planet . This has been proven by science that all living creatures have a sprite which conects us all to all living creatures. Religion is the belief in a GOD with powers to create all living creatures. This GOD can not be proven by science . In fact science can not prove the existence of GOD.
What is not known to the world is that systems influence human behavior much more than they have come to realize. In an organization the defects in quality it produces are caused 85 to 95% of the time by the systems within that organization.
My point: capitalism as an economic system will create a society that will self-destruct all on its own, no help needed from outsiders. Patriotism and nationalism hides this self-destruction aspect of capitalism in America.
In America with its pride in individualism Americans have it backwards. Americans including business schools think and teach that 85% of the defects/problems are caused by the individual worker. Our pay for performance and management by objectives leadership models reveal this aspect of American culture daily.
Oh it gets worst we even have forced distribution evaluation systems to maintain an average outcome of data. Pure ignorance that every business school in America teaches.
No. They do not.
It could very well be that this socialization of risk might eventually lead to the socialization of profit.
Economic institutions are not sentient beings.
All economies externalize their costs. They eventually run out of room and die to be replaced by other economies that do the same and die. And so it goes. History is unstoppable.
In reference to your quote from Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, the earth is always in a state of healing absorbing all dangers regardless of the survivability of humanity as a whole.
"Today a dominant "economics frame" (the price of everything) governs most discussion about our collective future. We can only break through the domination of this mindset when we insist on a "values frame" as an alternative starting point."
But the price frame is the value frame. Without monetarizing value, how do we make policy? What you are claiming then is the abandonment of economic theory, but in its place what would be the alternative?
The problem with Marxist-Leninism an aberrant deviation from Marxism is that it attempted to override this process through a top down imposition of an agenda formulated by a vanguard (elite) upon the greater population. Also, the problem with the Chinese-Maoist variant is that it imposed an agrarian model on its people. History cannot be forced through this will to power. It is not a conscious imposition of a central will rationalizing and coordinating human endeavor but an unconscious serge towards the birthing of a spirit -- a self-awareness through the inner contradictions of class. But, alas, history has not worked this way. And it recycles one battle field replacing that of another.
It is hard to know the value of things, it is much easier to put a price on them. There is this single scalar value that is used as the index for all things, and then we throw all the numbers into the black top hat of the market and let its invisible hand pull out magical bunnies for as. The objective, quantitative market algorithm will decide how it is best to distribute wealth and misery, and how to best use up the finite resources of the tiny spinning rock we live on. Too bad the extinction of our species is only an externality as far as this algorithm is concerned. We had never any chance of beating the hundred million year longevity of dinosaurs, but it would have been nice to have outlasted some mammalian species, just as a matter of specific bragging rights.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-meyer/urban-gardening-_b_1383665.html?ref=green
What is money? Is it a private commodity, public service or social contract (perhaps earliest social commons not copyrighted)?. The corruptions of money power in the Government (targeted by conservatives) and Corporations (targeted by liberals and progressives) may be symptoms of deeper underlying causes, i.e. man-made and mind-made concept of money, privatized credit and banking systems, the root assumptions they are built on.
This is a domain engaged buddhists, citizens or 99% need to contemplate and take responsibility for our democracy to work with integrity. Buddhist ethics are cosmic life ethics that support Noble living. Google for my blog the Millennium Koan. Peace
Seems that humans have taken more space, and more space away from other creatures, than any species has a right to do. I'd like to see us retract our sprawl and somehow fence ourselves in while allowing major space to the other forms of life we have encroached upon.