by Martin Whitlock and Joshua Malkin
Five Socio Economic Principles towards Human Politics and A Regenerative Economy
A few years ago we wrote about a group of 5 socio-economic principles that can support wealth-creation – valued in more than money – in terms of human and environmental wellbeing – rather than the mere accumulation of money assets. We called this Human Politics
Why is a more Human Politics needed?
Most proposals for reform based on human and natural wellbeing are systematically rejected by the mainstream, extractive neoliberal economy or are co-opted in ways that nullify their effect.
For example, neoliberal economics favours high house prices, because it treats housing as a financial asset rather than a sovereign asset necessary for heath and life. So any proposal that could lower the cost of housing is automatically resisted. The only response the neoliberal system has to the housing crisis is to make it easier for people to borrow even bigger sums of money and become more in debt, whilst the juggernaut of the property industry drives up prices higher and higher.
Our neoliberal economy only measures extrinsic financial value not intrinsic sovereign value that supports life. Another example is in the privatised water industry. Neoliberal economics demotes purpose in favour of money. The purpose of the privatised water companies became maximising returns to shareholders not providing clean water. In the same way the purpose of private house builders became maximising returns not providing affordable housing. If you have got this far you. might be interested in how we can change this in my latest blog How Labour Could Deliver Affordable Housing.
It is difficult to promote wellbeing or environmental sustainability in a system designed to maximise financial transactions. The neoliberal system is adept at co-opting these concepts, treating them as by-products of the money wealth that it prioritises, rather than as the true purpose of economic activity.
The only solution to this problem is to go beyond neoliberalism
There are plenty of alternative policy options that would work much better, if only governments had the foresight to adopt them. The more easily we can identify those options as part of a coherent strategy, the more chance there is that they will gain traction and start feeding in to political thinking. Having a shared identity for such policy directions would help. Whatever we call it, prioritising human and environmental wellbeing over financial accumulation requires not only different political decisions but a new approach to how our politics is organised, too.
What are the core components of a human politics?
- Land Reform (including affordable housing);
- Corporate Governance (controlling the way big business behaves and promoting social enterprise);
- Money Creation and Banking Reform (sovereign money and regional / community banking);
- Public Services (treating them as benefits to be maximised, not costs to be reduced);
- Beyond GDP: (changing the way the economy is measured by prioritising productive activity over resource depletion, environmental destruction, asset price increases and unproductive work).
Please look at the principles page for more information about each of these.
Why these principles in particular?
These principles combine to address the central failing of neoliberalism, which is to prioritise money transactions and accumulation over the real productive activity that improves directly the quality of people’s lives. They are among the key levers that can shift the points on the track, changing the direction in which the train of the economy is travelling away from exploitation and rising inequality towards human and environmental wellbeing.
What about the environment and climate change?
Climate change and environmental degradation (air pollution, rain forest destruction, mineral extraction, etc.) are all a consequence of economic activity. The only way to fix these problems is to do the economy differently. This means removing the incentives that the neo-liberal free market system creates to extract, exploit and destroy.
That system places no value on clean air, good health, sustainable communities and productive relationships, but is only interested in money profit. A healthy environment requires a different system of politico-economic values which the term human politics is designed to encapsulate.
What about the policy detail?
Human politics is about the direction of travel, away from the failures of neoliberalism towards a new approach that values production in terms of the human and environmental wellbeing it creates, not the accumulation of money assets and the conservation and stewardship of value in the widest sense.
There are many academics, researchers and think-tanks working on specifics of policy, and the most effective solutions will emerge and can be debated once there is a wider understanding that a fundamental change in direction is both necessary and possible. The key task at present for campaigning organisations is to build that wider understanding, and this is where human politics can help by giving that change of direction a distinctive identity.
Is Human Politics party political?
No. Human politics should resonate right across the political spectrum, engaging anyone who seeks better outcomes for people, society and the environment.
Human politics is intended to be illustrative, not prescriptive, containing sufficient material to provide food for thought but not force-feeding a specific ideology.
Adopting the term human politics as a generic point of reference and can help locate campaigns within a shared movement for change.
This blog is an edited extract from the website humanpolitics.org where you can find more detail about the core principles outlined above. Martin Whitlocks latest thoughts on economics can be found at bonkerseconomics.org