I have been promoting the work of Manfred Max-Neef and his Barefoot Economics since the late 1980s. In 1991 when I was visiting tutor at an Institute of Higher Education in South Wales, I was for a while teaching on a social work qualifying course. I held course seminars on the work of Manfred Max-Neef and on the meaning of social exclusion and comparative deprivation.
The students watched a video of Max-Neef and after we discussed how his ideas could be seen in the valleys of the recently devastated communities of post-Thatcher South Wales coalfields where they lived and worked.
The students watched a video of Max-Neef and after we discussed how his ideas could be seen in the valleys of the recently devastated communities of post-Thatcher South Wales coalfields where they lived and worked.
I think the seminar was generally well received by students because it explored the processes of community development and mutual aid.
I won't say anymore about it now myself (I've written about it before anyway) but instead I recommend watching some, or all of the video clip below if you are interested in the concept of barefoot economics and what it's all about.
In reality I don't think there can be any other sort of economics anymore....we have come to the end of the macro-economic road I think.
Capitalism has spectacularly failed as it was destined to do according to Karl Marx.... who as it happens, got quite a few things right.
In reality I don't think there can be any other sort of economics anymore....we have come to the end of the macro-economic road I think.
Capitalism has spectacularly failed as it was destined to do according to Karl Marx.... who as it happens, got quite a few things right.
Manfred Max-Neef is not a Marxist though, he gave up macro-economics as we know it. He is a mega-realist and now that all the chips are down here at the Last Chance Saloon, we as a global society must wake up to his message and that of the wider Transition Movement..... or human society will collapse and die ... in my view it is as simple as that! Enjoy (while you can...hehehe)...ghoulish laughter in the wings!
Thanks for this video AA.
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of a joke supposedly making the rounds in Moscow in the 1990's, AA, that went something like "A lot of what Karl Marx said about communism was wrong, but most everything he said about capitalism was right." Perhaps I would only add that perhaps learned philosophers are most often on firmer ground as analysts and critics than with extrapolations.
I agree the giants of our macroeconomic world are only willing to go to a distressed area to take with the Marxists call surplus value from workers and what I would call condemning people to "sweat shop feudalism". In my own country, young people are put into debt peonage by the high cost of education, often for jobs that need degrees to qualify for but are highly fluid in a recession economy. But that I admit is not barefoot economics---the people can still afford shoes, for now at least.
I also think as the good doctor implied that a lot of the best minds in the world are in countries where people struggle for basic life needs, as if the industrial revolution and the high-tech changes most of us take for granted never happened. Why waste all that mind-power (the one thing the globe has in abundance), some of which could create great innovations to make all lives better. One answer I think lies in micro-economic no-interest loans to small business people in Bangladesh and Haiti and other place like it though groups like Kiva.
Building up human resources on the ground makes a hell of a lot more sense than putting everyone into factories for 12-14 hours a day and redoing the Robber Baron Era over and over again. We need more people in charge of their own lives and connected to their own communities. We don't need anymore uprooted people jammed into cities, beholden to any factory boss for fourteen hours a day, making stuff for shoes or computers and sold at the cheapest level at Tesco or Wal_Mart,
It doesn't take a genius to know people do better when they feel they are part of a community, and have some control over their lives, so I hope Doctor Max-Neef's ideas continue to foster more grass-roots development.
Thanks for that contribution Doug. I agree that there is something in the idea that Marx was primarily a analyst of capitalism rather than a visionary of socialism, or communism. His analysis of trade cycles and the sociological study of class has added a great deal to the stock of human understanding, but he was only one man and could only produce so much in his lifertime. I think he lived what Socrates would have considered a 'life worth living' ......but he had his limitations, obviously like anyone else has. Manfred Max-Neef is ideologically a variety of anarchist, particularly of the Peter Kropotkin type and his study of mutual aid and micro economics has been very important over the past 50 odd years I think. Human scale development is the only viable way forward, capitalism has failed in my view and now we must learn to adapt to a post capitalist world of corporate gangsterism vis-a-vis small scale localised production which of course is what Max-Neef is all about and the very opposite of Marx's proletarian driven unfolding of history as the logical outcome of modernism. We're all post-modernists now!
DeleteThere is no question in my mind that multi-national companies are past their sell-by date at least in providing decent wages to most people. Only the highly-trained in a few industries like medicine seem to have a secure place in them. The collapse of the private union movement in the USA forestalled that for awhile, and the inability of government to effectively regulate Wall Street should have been removed the scales from any mainstream thinkers not paid by a media company to spout half-truths.
DeleteBut the models we need I agree are not to be found in boardrooms or government offices. They are literally those in the field trying to give 2/3rds of the people on the planet a leg up. So, yes, iti s a post-modern world in that are great thinkers from Voltaire and Jefferson to Marx have taken us as far as they take us it seems.
I especially agree with your last point Doug. To me 'postmodern' also means 'post-Enlightenment' .....the age of positivism in social science (and natural sciences too) is now very much a 'dead letter' I think, no matter what political colours it puts on.
DeleteMay Manfred Max-Neef and all of his Agenda 21 cohorts fail miserably in their attempts to reshape the world under the guise of "sustainable development".. To hell with RIO+20, World Future Council, G.W.Bush who signed us up, or Obama who continues to sell us out, and any other smiling globalist fascist scumbag who supports it.
ReplyDeleteYou show your cards AA, when you show support for people associated with organizations whose funding can be directly connected to the WORLD BANK. I think you have a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde complex. Are you with the globalists, or against them and their master bankers?
"Are you with the globalists, or against them and their master bankers?"....I am a globalist Scott and always have been, even when they called it internationalism...it is just what shape global politics will take in the future ....that's the question for me.....but while you love to pigeonhole people to make a fantasy sterotype to spit at, what about you then.....what do you think the answer is Scott?
DeleteIf not sustainability what's the alternative ....unsustainable growth?
I think its you that is the Jeckyll and Hyde around here Scott.
Well, I'm not a globalist. And I don't think you nor anyone else can determine what is and isn't sustainable. You just believe what you want to believe.
DeleteIt's pretty damn clear what shape global politics is taking right now, so to hell with the future. If Agenda 21 is a vision you share, then consider me an obstacle. You people will never take what I have worked for, never take my property and never take my individualism. If you, or your environmentalist cult, or your banker backers think you can, come and do it?
I don't give s shit what you think about me. At least I'm not a walking contradiction.
LOL ok Scott you are 'an obstacle' if it makes you feel better :-)
ReplyDeleteNot really lol.. OK, I'll just post here what I said on my page in case you don't see it. Perhaps this will help you better understand why I get frustrated..
DeleteYou said you've not interest in Agenda 21...
Well AA, I'm glad to hear it. In the interest of fairness to you and myself, I said in the past on your blog that I thought some of your globalist views reflected those of Agenda 21, and I said that I thought some of those views kind of left you playing into their hands. Then you took the time to elaborate a bit for me on what you believe and I conceded that I probably just didn't understand your views enough to make that judgement of you. I never said another word about it until recently. It just seems to me that even if you don't proactively support what's known as agenda 21, you're not willing to say anything about those criminals because they do everything under the cloak of environmentalism. And that is what doesn't sit well with me. I just think you are OK with what they're doing because at least on the surface they sort of sound like they believe as you do. I have said I thought your heart is in the right place, I will not say the same thing about them. I mean, either we're united against the globalist fascists or we're not right?
Don't misunderstand me. I could not care less about borders and things like that. I'm a globalist in much the same way I believe you to be, and I'm very much interested in a better future for the whole planet as well, but not while sacrificing my individualism and voice, because I believe people will gravitate towards great ideas. It's the mandatory ones I have a problem with.
You said you've no interest, I meant..
DeleteEverything you said on my page in regards to sustainability is not something I'm against, and I wish you and those working towards those goals the greatest of success both now and in the future. Beware of deadly snakes in the fresh green grass though - I'm sure you are.
ReplyDeletePeace!
Peace to you Scott
ReplyDeleteThere used to be a big black dark entity who would sit on the end of my bed at night and sometimes hover over me as if to take my breath away (as in smother, not in wow, you took my breath away sex ). I named him Karl and he went away...
ReplyDeleteHmmmm Karl never did have any staying power....
ReplyDelete