Lately I have been delving deep into the arcane art of economics. It is a fascinating world that is more like the religions of old than the sciences of the modern era. Economics has its own language and its own logic to go with it, and woe to thee who seeks to comprehend it without the prerequisite indoctrination. What so captivates my imagination is that in a very real way economics is more important than all other aspects of human activity and consciousness; yet their is a universal ignorance surrounding it. Allow me to do my best to succinctly explain my conclusions that I've derived from the study of this mighty man made monster that is so important to all.
The primary thing about economics is that it is amoral and apolitical. As perhaps the first truly (or at least openly) Capitalist statesman of the modern era put it, "Free trade is not a principle; it is an expedient.". Perhaps the best thing to consider analogous to economics is warfare. Like economics war has many theories about tactics and strategies, but when it comes to generals giving orders pragmatism and cunning are all that matters. Every single successful Capitalist was able to adapt to their situation better than others and did so because they weren't wasting time on childish notions of morality and ideology. This hits at the basis for the preeminence of the Capitalist system; it can adapt to any location because it is not based on anything but material gain. The Chinese Government can be authoritarian and corrupt, but as long as it uses this to facilitate economic growth their so called 'Capitalism with Asian values' will happily fit into the global economic order.
One reason economic matters are so completely dominant in the world is that those who seek to oppose it generally do so on some sort of philosophical or ideological basis. This is something like challenging a charging bull by complaining that the bull is wrong to charge; you will inevitably get the horns with this approach. Those who have sought alternatives to strictly economic thought have sadly been easily annihilated because the majority have never really seemed to understand the nature of the conflict. Even at the height of the labor movement the demand was primarily for better wages and social spending/protection by the government. The so called Communist experiments were inevitably just a country ruled by Communists, who never managed to make the system efficient enough to compete with the tenacious and relentless efficiency of Capitalism in the economic arena in which all modern battles are decided. The anarchist tradition, although stating clearer than any other the importance of economics over all else, was simply too radical for the wage-slaves to risk their families lives on. How do you get people who are so psychologically ensconced in their economic roles to through power of will change an entire system upon which they depend for absolutely everything? As Groucho Marx summed it up, "I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal".
The older I get and the more I learn about economics the easier it is for me to see how it can change from being a esoteric academic pseudo-science to something more practical and useful. Currently people seem very caught up in 19th Century thinking that centers around the notion that political change is meaningful and that democracy as such can solve problems. This is erroneous and simply out of date. The only democracy in this world is dollar-democracy and all political power flows out the barrel of a gun not a ballot box. If war wasn't profitable, we wouldn't be seeing it in our era. When people lament the activities of the great corporations and their allies in government, they are forgetting the primary purpose of both, to produce and posses wealth. The most effective way to make them change is to make it profitable for them to do so and unprofitable not to; in the post-industrial consumer society this is very feasible. The big challenge seems to be that people are so dependent, despondent and so limited in imagination that they can't alter their perceptions and discipline their actions. I would argue that this is the result of the inherent alienation that comes from the modern era in which cause and effect, substance and meaning, are all lost to our collectively convoluted consciousness. We loose connection to both the earth and each other, and thus start to behave more like cogs in a machine than sentient beings.
This economic evolution that is human history is also the development of the human species. We are clever and adaptable creatures, this is beyond doubt. However, if we want to be smart enough to survive our own cleverness we need to start making economic activity the main concern in our lives. How much and what we consume is so much more important than who we vote for or what ideology we agree with. In our goal for a better economic system we would do well to listen that titan of economics, Adam Smith, when he said- "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind" Our world is and has been run by these people, and it will remain so until people can realize that their economic activity is the cause of all things human and that we, and no one else, is completely responsible for it.
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