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Rethinking Capitalism: The Black Death and The Peasants Revolt

In a recent broadcast of the BBC production on British History and the Black Death, it was interesting to hear one academic interviewee make a comparison between the challenge made to an elite led by Wat Tyler and the event that marked the dawn of the 21st Century, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre.

The Ordinance of Labourers . as a response to the growing power of those who exchange their labour for income had its 20th Century equivalent in the Soviet rules of propiska which were so effective in starving the Ukrainian peasantry out of existence. In different ways , both bound the peasant labourer to a location from which poverty or starvation could not be escaped.  By such means it was possible to manage the ethnic and political mix in soviet territories. 

Two years after the 9/11 attacks, the man who subsequently became a colleague wrote the following in an economic development proposal for a Muslim community, the repatriated Tatars of Crimea::

Once a nation or government puts people in the position of defending their own lives, or that of family and friends, and they all will die if they do nothing about it, at that point all laws, social contracts and covenants end. Laws, social contracts and covenants define civilization. Without them, there is no civilization at all, there is only the law of the jungle: kill, or be killed. This is where we started, tens of thousands of years ago.

By leaving people in poverty, at risk of their lives due to lack of basic living essentials, we have stepped across the boundary of civilization. We have conceded that these people do not matter, are not important. Allowing them to starve to death, freeze to death, die from deprivation, or simply shooting them, is in the end exactly the same thing. Inflicting or allowing poverty on a group of people or an entire country is a formula for disaster.

These points were made to the President of the United States near the end of 1996. They were heard, appreciated and acted upon, but unfortunately, were not able to be addressed fully and quickly due primarily to political inertia. By way of September 11, 2001 attacks on the US out of Afghanistan – on which the US and the former Soviet Union both inflicted havoc, destruction, and certainly poverty – I rest my case. The tragedy was proof of all I warned about, but, was no more tragedy than that left behind to a people in an far corner of the world whom we thought did not matter and whom we thought were less important than ourselves.

We were wrong.

he goes on to make the case for social enterprise as a strategy to tackle terrorism introducing the concept of a Community Funding Enterprise. Rather than supporting their repatriation with aid funding, help them create their own enterprise to stimulate the local economy. .

"It is not enough to merely give people the things they need to survive. This will work for a short time, but is not a long-term solution. There is an old saying: give a man a fish and he can eat for one day. Teach him to fish and he can eat for a lifetime. Giving people enough to live today may be enough for today, but it is not enough for tomorrow. Helping and teaching people to make a living, sustain themselves and their families, is in fact the only long-term solution to the problem of poverty."

The 1996 paper on People-Centered Economic Development had on the displacement of workers in the new revolution of the dawning information age, saying:    

"We are at the very beginning of a new type of society and civilization, the Information Age. Historically, this is only the third distinct age of civilization. We lived in an agricultural age for thousands of years, which gave way to the Industrial Revolution and Industrial Age during the last three hundred years. The Industrial Age is now giving way to the Information Revolution, which is giving rise to the Information Age. Understanding this, it is appropriate to be concerned with the impact this transition is having and will continue to have on the lives of all of us. In that it is a fundamental predicate of "people-centered" economic development that no person is disposable, it follows that close attention be paid to those in the waning Industrial Age who are not equipped and prepared to take active and productive roles in an Information Age. Many, in fact, are scared, angry, and deeply resentful that they are being left out, ignored, effectively disenfranchised, discarded, thrown away as human flotsam in the name of human and social progress. We have only to ask ourselves individually whether or not this is the sort of progress we want, where we accept consciously and intentionally that human progress allows for disposing of other human beings."

By the end of 2003, it had led to a fast for economic rights, calling on US government to ratify the International Covenant on Economic Social And Cultural Rights which had been resisted for many years due to the lobbying of powerful commercial interest. This covenant enshrines the principle of a living wage which becomes our policy guide:

In 2004 having established in the UK as a business for social purpose, we approach the social enterprise community with a proposal to tackle poverty, which argued:

"Dealing with poverty is nothing new. The question became ‘how does poverty still exist in a world with sufficient resources for a decent quality of life for everyone?’ The answer was that we have yet to develop any economic system capable redistributing finite resources in a way that everyone has at minimum enough for a decent life: food, decent housing, transportation, clothing, health care, and education. The problem has not been lack of resources, but adequate distribution of resources. Capitalism is the most powerful economic engine ever devised, yet it came up short with its classical, inherent profit-motive as being presumed to be the driving force. Under that presumption, all is good in the name of profit became the prevailing winds of international economies — thereby giving carte blanche to the notion that greed is good because it is what has driven capitalism. The 1996 paper merely took exception with the assumption that personal profit, greed, and the desire to amass as much money and property on a personal level as possible are inherent and therefore necessary aspects of any capitalist endeavour. While it is in fact very normal for that to be the case, it simply does not follow that it must be the case."

"Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.”

Related:

Predistrbution and Living Wages