[p2p-research] Manufacture Goods, Not Needs

[Ryan]

  Sent to you by Ryan via Google Reader: Manufacture Goods, Not Needs
via E. F. Schumacher Society Blog by E. F. Schumacher Society on
10/11/09
As part of his vision for diverse regional economies, E. F. Schumacher
advocated for production and manufacturing from local resources for
local
needs. “It is not a question of choosing between modern growth and
traditional stagnation,” Schumacher advised, but rather “of finding the
right path of development, the Middle Way between materialist
heedlessness
and traditionalist immobility…” More than ever before, the current
economic
crisis implores us to identify contemporary articulations that support
Schumacher’s Buddhist Economics and tools and vehicles for its
advancement.

Distinguished author and senior fellow at Demos (www.demos.org),
Benjamin
Barber provides one such articulation, by first offering an incisive
portrayal of global capitalism at its worst. It’s what he calls ‘push
capitalism’: manufacturing needs for the goods we’re producing – a
disastrously far cry from producing useful goods to meet real human
needs.
Barber explains in his 2007 book, “Consumed: How Markets Corrupt
Children,
Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole,” that capitalism “seems
quite literally to be consuming itself, leaving democracy in peril and
the
fate of citizens uncertain.” In it he offers a vivid critique of the
market’s fabrication of needs and its branding and commercialization of
just
about everything.

Nevertheless, Mr. Barber encourages idealism as the new realism and
points
to possibilities for liberating ourselves from the “civic schizophrenia”
brought about by the modern age of consumerism. He points to various
seeds
of resistance: consumer boycotts, renewed funding for the arts,
micro-lending, and the corporate responsibility movement. He challenges
business to earn profits through creative innovation that serves
instead of
endangers. Most urgently however, Mr. Barber encourages us to take
informed
responsibility for our role in economic exchange, and calls for deep
change
in our cultural and civic lives:

“The struggle for the soul of capitalism is…a struggle between the
nation's
economic body and its civic soul: a struggle to put capitalism in its
proper
place, where it serves our nature and needs rather than manipulating and
fabricating whims and wants. Saving capitalism means bringing it into
harmony with spirit--with prudence, pluralism and those "things of the
public" (res publica) that define our civic souls. A revolution of the
spirit. “ (The Nation, 2009)

Benjamin R. Barber is a Senior Fellow at Demos (www.demos.org), as well
as
president and director of the international NGO CivWorld at Demos, and
its
annual Interdependence Day event. An internationally renowned political
theorist, Dr. Barber brings an abiding concern for democracy and
citizenship
to issues of politics, culture and education in America and abroad. He
consults regularly with political and civic leaders in the United
States and
around the world.

Benjamin Barber's 17 books include the classic Strong Democracy (1984);
the
recent international best-seller Jihad vs. McWorld (1995 with a Post
9/11
Edition in 2001) and Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize
Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in
March,
2007.

Please join us on Saturday, October 17th in welcoming Benjamin Barber
at the
29th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures. He will be joined by speakers
Bill
McKibben and Alisa Gravitz. The location is the First Congregational
Church
of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Tickets are 25 BerkShares/Dollars (15 for
members of the E. F. Schumacher Society, seniors, and students). We
recommend registering in advance.

For more information on the event or to pre-register please visit:
http://www.smallisbeautiful.org

Email: efssociety at smallisbeautiful.org

Or call (413) 528-1737.

Best Wishes,
Susan Witt, Sarah Hearn, Stefan Apse, Kate Poole, and Jasmine Stine

Staff of the E. F. Schumacher Society
140 Jug End Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230
www.smallisbeautiful.org
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to E. F. Schumacher Society Blog using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your
favorite sites
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20091011/67542754/attachment.html>