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Preface
This Work is neither against Money, as value in exchange, nor against the Accumulation of Capital -- real, tangible, or intellectual. It is against Money as value in subjugation and coercion -- Money as primal instrument for indenturing whole populations unawares. It is against the radical evil1 indwelling Capitalism, in the form of perverted and corrupted maxims, rules, and legislation -- in the so-called "free" marketplace. It is against Capitalism* as technology for dominating Man as servitude pure and simple. The marketplace is being deified by the priesthood of Capitalism. But Money cannot be the center of life. Capitalism is a stupid Ptolemaic monstrosity. Its doctrine is due for a major overhaul. Its foundations are not secure. Its supporters, like the Dominican friars of the 16th century, have difficulties accepting that Capitalism, like the Ptolemaic system, is a defective world order. Better systems are not only possible, they are inevitable. The work is organized around three Books:
While the focus is on modern Capitalism, as experienced by citizens in liberal
democracies, the Books deal with the broader issue that has troubled Man since the ancient
Babylonians and Egyptians: the way "out of the house of bondage."3 The investigative methods are those of modern science; they
also include philosophical inquiry techniques from Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Galileo,
Hobbes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Clausewitz, Schopenhauer,
Jefferson, de Tocqueville, Nietzsche, Freud, Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Heidegger,
Schumpeter, Rawls, Bohm, Ricoeur, and others. Most important, the Books set new grounds
for broadening the horizons of Man and for moving Capitalism from Eternally Recurrent Dark
Servitude to Perpetual Enlightened Progress (from a
to b).
Capitalists believe that the force of progress requires a polarization of society: a differenciation8 between rich usurers (lords) and poor borrowers (bondsmen).9 The difference between the usurer and the borrower is servitude. For the borrower, the difference is nothing but the value of his servitude or slavery -- allotted, in advance, by the usurer. For the usurer, the difference is the usurious "interest bred by money."10 Aristotle called this difference "currency the son of currency."11 The usurious interest is justified as the Natural Darwinian advantage of the usurer. The usurious compounding of this advantage is what creates the increasing divergence between the rich and the poor. It is what gives rise to the increasing heterogeneity of the marketplace. Polarity as a manufactured advantage is, of course, an unnatural phantasm. The Darwinistic seed, encoded in Legislation, cannot unfold except as a genetic process, a repetition:
This repetition is what perpetuates Capitalism as a Nietzschian Eternal Return of the Same.13 The animalistic PREDATOR-PREY darkness or superstition of Capitalism will endure so long as Legislation remains centered in the IRRATIONAL-EVIL quadrant of the Philosophical Compass.
Capitalism fails when whole populations are indentured with debts, as is the case now in the United States, in Canada, and elsewhere. It succeeds when whole populations are both free and wealthy. The perpetuation of servitude will remain the real actual goal of Capitalism so long as the electorate continue to believe the propaganda -- the "representational poetry"16 -- of the champions of Capitalism. Friedrich A. Hayek, a co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, and a champion of "the commercial ideal of individual freedom and of English comfort,"17 wrote: "Man is not and never will be the master of his fate . . ."18 If Man cannot master his destiny, who will? A few rapacious Capitalists? Man can and will alter his destiny. Enlightenment -- Man's only Darwinian Advantage -- is his Selective tool. Net advantages that perpetuate servitude must not be the hidden goal of Legislation. The goal of Legislation must be to promote the Life Instincts19 of people. Enlightenment must be encoded in our Laws, and Laws must favor Enlightenment: the freedom of the will to choose intelligently good over evil. Of course the change will not come without a fight -- perhaps even a World War (a Clausewitzian Plan of War is discussed in Book I). The overwhelming evidence from the marketplace unconceals it as a rigged, coercive, and dehumanizing "game of catallaxy"20 -- the locus of much wickedness, malevolence, deceit, usurpation, violence, greed, envy, fraud, stupidity, sadism, and falsehood. The high priests of the marketplace will resist the transition to a new world order based on zero tolerance for unmerited advantages. If so, I am afraid they will be exorcised. The Holy Office destroyed Galileo; but it could not destroy the Truth. The empirical evidence from Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo was more enduring than the Ptolemaic doctrines of the Holiest of Offices. Even Newtonian mechanics had to give way to Quantum Theory and to Relativity. Capitalism, too, will have to give way to a sounder doctrine. The whole philosophical foundation, the whole legislative and economic configuration, the whole character, direction, and logic of Capitalism must change. Conventional Theories of Economics are for the most part a sham. Their calculus does not account explicitly for what every one knows to be the case: freedom to choose true evil cannot be divorced from economic transactions. The propensity to evil of the human will, which precedes acts,21 can infect each and every economic transaction. Not only can individual acts in the marketplace be evil, the ground of many rules and maxims can be insidiously corrupted.22 Ironically, radical evil in the marketplace often masquerades as meritorious virtue.23 Radical evil is not just contagious, it acts over long distances. In time, it can corrupt the moral predispositions of whole populations.24 With globalization it can corrupt the moral predispositions of the whole world. The explicit treatment of freedom to choose good or evil is missing from current economic thinking. Economic outcomes are not just profit or loss, or surplus or deficit. When whole populations are indentured, the tragic loss of freedom cannot be dismissed as mere illusion. Surely, a positive Net Present Value for a few quasi monopolies and corporate para-governments must not just mean fear, destruction, suffering, misery, and loss of freedom for the multitude. Such dangerous and blatant disregard in quantitative economics and finance of the human propensity for good and evil must be remedied. My aim is to remedy this state of affairs. I therefore seek out and establish new foundations for economics dealing explicitly with the central issues of our economic Being. In Book III, I issue the groundwork for the Quantum Theory of Economics and Ethics. Henceforth, the FREE and SLAVE dimensions of our Being -- the GOOD and EVIL dimensions of our acts -- will be explicate and intelligible to all. The quantum jump -- from Capitalist Darkness to Capitalist Enlightenment -- should now be around the corner. EDWARD E. AYOUB TORONTO, ONTARIOJUNE 20, 1998 |
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* Important Note: In this volume, all negative characterizations of
Capitalism refer to DEBT-BASED CAPITALISM, and not to
pure Capitalism -- defined
as the freedom to create, own, and trade assets.
Top 1 See Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, with an essay by John R. Silber, 1934, 1960, at 15-39 (The Radical Evil in Human Nature). 2 See David Ricardo, On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Vol. 1, 1951, at 352-372 (On Currency and Banks), especially 359. 3 The ten commandments follow the message "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage"; see Exodus 20:2. 4 Plato, The Laws, translated with an Introduction by Trevor J. Saunders, 1970, at 196 (Selfishness).5 Aristotle, Politics, translated by Ernest Barker, revised with an Introduction and Notes by R.F. Stalley, at 278-279 (1331a19).6 Plato, The Laws, at 211-214 (The Possession of Money), especially 211.7 Aristotle, Politics, at 29-30 (1258a35).8 My inspiration here is Deleuze's philosophy of difference. See Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton, 1968 and 1994, at 248-254.9 For Hegel's philosophy of Lordship and Bondage, see G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), translated by A.V. Miller, with Analysis of the Text and Foreword by J.N. Findlay, 1977, at 111-119.10 Aristotle, Politics, at 29-30 (1258a35).11 Ibid., at 30.12 The characterization of the Capitalist process as "Creative Destruction" is due to Schumpeter. See Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), with a new Introduction by Tom Bottomore, 1976, at 81-86, especially 83.13 See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, edited with Commentary by Walter Kaufmann, 1967, at 544-550 (The Eternal Recurrence).14 The concept of "Enframing" [Ge-stell] is Heidegger's invention. See Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated and with an Introduction by William Lovitt, 1977, at 19.15 See Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 15-39 (The Radical Evil in Human Nature).16 Expression borrowed from Plato. See Plato, Republic, translated by Robin Waterfield, 1993, at 354-362 (Poetry and Unreality), especially 359.17 See Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944, 1972, and 1994, at 186-187.18 See Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3: The Political Order of A Free People, 1979, at 176.19 For a theory of life and death instincts, see Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 11, translated under the general editorship of James Strachey, compiled and edited by Angela Richards, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1984.20 Hayek's expression; see Friedrich A. Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty, Vol. II: The Mirage of Social Justice, 1976, at 115-120 (The Game of Catallaxy).21 See Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, 1934 and 1960, at 23-27, especially 26. Note: Kant's discussion of radical evil is general.22 Ibid., at 27-34 (Man is Evil by Nature), especially 32 and 33.23 Ibid., at 33.24 Ibid., at 34-39 (Concerning the Origin of Evil in Human Nature), especially 35, and 88-89 (Man Ought to Leave his Ethical State of Nature in Order to Become a Member of an Ethical COMMONWEALTH). |
