The economic system under which we live not only forces the great majority of humankind to live their lives in indignity and poverty but also threatens all forms of life on Earth. Economics Unmasked presents a cogent critique of the dominant economic system, showing that the theoretical constructions of mainstream economics work mainly to bring about injustice.
The merciless onslaught on the global ecosystem of recent decades, brought about by the massive increase in the production of goods and the consequent depletion of nature's reserves, is not a chance property of the economic system. It is a direct result of neoliberal economic thinking, which recognizes value only in material things. The growth obsession is not a mistaken conception that mainstream economists can unlearn, it is inherent in their view of life. But a socio-economic system based on the growth obsession can never be sustainable.
This book outlines the foundations of a new economics - where justice, human dignity, compassion and reverence for life are the guiding values. Contrary to the absurd assumption of mainstream economists that economics is a value-free science, a new economics must make its values explicit.
Economics Unmasked : From Power and Greed to Compassion and the Common Good
Description
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction: the case for a new economics
1 From knowledge to understanding
2 The function of economics in society
3 Keynesianism: its rise and fall
4 Honesty and value premises
5 Imitation of the exact sciences: reductionism, mathematical models and Pareto
6 Economic growth
7 Globalization
8 Compassion
9 The world on a collision course and the need for a new economics
10 A humane economics for the twenty-first century
11 The United States: an underdeveloping nation
12 A non-toxic teaching of economics
13 Implementation: from the village to a global order
References and notes
Author Description
Philip Bartlett Smith was a American-Dutch experimental physicist. He taught for eight years in Brazil as a McCarthy-era exile, and later joined the University of Groningen as a Professor of Physics, where he remained until his retirement in 1988. He was a member of the Board of Pugwash Netherlands until 2003. He had a tense relationship with his native US, which he labelled "The Holy American Empire" and whose power policy he abhorred. After his retirement he concentrated on the subjects of deep concern to him: disarmament, environment and energy, poverty and world economics. He was co-editor with S. E. Okoye, J. de Wilde and P. Deshingkar of The World at the Crossroads: Towards a sustainable, equitable and livable world and the editor of Dimensions of Sustainability, proceedings of the INES Congress 'Challenges of Sustainable Development', Amsterdam, August 1996. Philip passed away on December 15, 2005.
Manfred Max-Neef is a Chilean-German economist in the field of international development. His key works are From the Outside Looking in: Experiences in 'Barefoot Economics' and Human Scale Development, the latter declared by the University of Cambridge as one of the 50 most important books on sustainability. He taught in Berkeley in the early 1960s and was visiting professor in several US, Latin American and European Universities. He also worked for several UN agencies, and between 1994 and 2002 was Vice-Chancellor of the Universidad Austral de Chile in Valdivia. In 1983 he received the Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize). He holds honorary doctorates from Jordan, Colombia, Argentina and the US, and has been the recipient of the University Award of Highest Honour from Japan. He is the Director of the Economics Institute of the Universidad Austral de Chile.