AMY GOODMAN:
While President Obama is reporting looking
into tapping a former corporate executive to become his next top
economic adviser, many economists question the path the United States is
on. Last week, during our trip to Bonn, Germany, I had a chance to speak
with the acclaimed Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef.
He won the Right Livelihood Award in 1983,
two years after the publication of his book Outside Looking In:
Experiences in Barefoot Economics. I began by asking him to explain
what barefoot economics is.
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
Well, it’s a metaphor, but a metaphor that
originated in a concrete experience. I worked for about ten years of my
life in areas of extreme poverty in the Sierras, in the jungle, in urban
areas in different parts of Latin America.
And at the beginning of that period, I was
one day in an Indian village in the Sierra in Peru.
It was an ugly day. It had been raining all
the time. And I was standing in the slum. And across me, another guy
also standing in the mud - not in the slum, in the mud. And, well, we
looked at each other, and this was a short guy, thin, hungry, jobless,
five kids, a wife and a grandmother. And I was the fine economist from
Berkeley, teaching in Berkeley, having taught in Berkeley and so on.
And we were looking at each other, and then
suddenly I realized that I had nothing coherent to say to that man in
those circumstances, that my whole language as an economist, you know,
was absolutely useless.
Should I tell him that he should be happy
because the GDP had grown five percent or something? Everything was
absurd.
So I discovered that I had no language in that environment and that we
had to invent a new language. And that’s the origin of the metaphor of
barefoot economics, which concretely means that is the economics that an
economist who dares to step into the mud must practice.
The point is, you know, that economists
study and analyze poverty in their nice offices, have all the
statistics, make all the models, and are convinced that they know
everything that you can know about poverty. But they don’t understand
poverty. And that’s the big problem. And that’s why poverty is still
there. And that changed my life as an economist completely.
I invented a language that is coherent with
those situations and conditions.
AMY GOODMAN:
And what is that language? How do you apply
economics or have those situations explain economics changing?
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
No, the thing is much deeper. I mean, it’s
not like a recipe typical of someone in your country, fifteen lessons or
satisfaction guaranteed or your money back. That’s not the point. The
point is much deeper. You know, I would - let me put it this way.
We have reached a point in our evolution in
which we know a lot. We know a hell of a lot. But we understand very
little. Never in human history has there been such an accumulation of
knowledge like in the last 100 years. Look how we are. What was that
knowledge for? What did we do with it?
And the point is that knowledge alone is not
enough, that we lack understanding.
And the difference between knowledge and understanding, I can give it as
an example. Let us assume that you have studied everything that you can
study, from a theological, sociological, anthropological, biological and
even biochemical point of view, of a human phenomenon called love. So
the result is that you will know everything that you can know about
love.
But sooner or later, you will realize that
you will never understand love unless you fall in love. What does that
mean? That you can only attempt to understand that of which you become a
part. If we fall in love, as the Latin song says, we are much more than
two. When you belong, you understand. When you’re separated, you can
accumulate knowledge.
And that is - that’s been the function of
science. Now, science is divided into parts, but understanding is
holistic.
And that happens with poverty. I understood poverty because I was there.
I lived with them. I ate with them. I slept with them, you know, etc.
And then you begin to learn that in that environment there are different
values, different principles from - compared to those from where you are
coming, and that you can learn an enormous amount of fantastic things
among poverty.
What I have learned from the poor is much
more than I learned in the universities. But very few people have that
experience, you see? They look at it from the outside, instead of living
it from the inside.
And you learn extraordinary things. The first thing you learn, that
people who want to work in order to overcome poverty and don’t know, is
that in poverty there is an enormous creativity. You cannot be an idiot
if you want to survive.
Every minute, you have to be thinking, what
next? What do I know? What trick can I do here? What’s this and that,
that, that, that? And so, your creativity is constant.
In addition, I mean, that it’s combined, you
know, with networks of cooperation, mutual aid, you know, and all sort
of extraordinary things which you’ll no longer find in our dominant
society, which is individualistic, greedy, egoistical, etc. It’s just
the opposite of what you find there.
And it’s sometimes so shocking that you may
find people much happier in poverty than what you would find, you know,
in your own environment, which also means, you know, that poverty is not
just a question of money.
It’s a much more complex thing.
AMY GOODMAN:
What do you think we need to change?
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
Oh, almost everything. We are simply,
dramatically stupid. We act systematically against the evidences we
have. We know everything that should not be done. There’s nobody that
doesn’t know that. Particularly the big politicians know exactly what
should not be done. Yet they do it.
After
what happened since October 2008, I mean, elementally, you
would think what? That now they’re going to change. I mean, they see
that the model is not working. The model is even poisonous, you know?
Dramatically poisonous. And what is the result, and what happened in the
last meeting of the European Union? They are more fundamentalist now
than before.
So, the only thing you know that you can be
sure of, that the next crisis is coming, and it will be twice as much as
this one. And for that one, there won’t be enough money anymore. So that
will be it.
And that is the consequence of systematical
human stupidity.
AMY GOODMAN:
So, to avoid another catastrophe, collision,
if you were in charge, what would you say has to happen?
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
First of all, we need cultured economists
again, who know the history, where they come from, how the ideas
originated, who did what, and so on and so on; second, an economics now
that understands itself very clearly as a subsystem of a larger system
that is finite, the biosphere, hence economic growth as an
impossibility; and third, a system that understands that it cannot
function without the seriousness of ecosystems. And economists know
nothing about ecosystems.
They don’t know nothing about
thermodynamics, you know, nothing about biodiversity or anything. I
mean, they are totally ignorant in that respect. And I don’t see what
harm it would do, you know, to an economist to know that if the beasts
would disappear, he would disappear as well, because there wouldn’t be
food anymore.
But he doesn’t know that, you know, that we
depend absolutely from nature. But for these economists we have, nature
is a subsystem of the economy. I mean, it’s absolutely crazy.
And then, in addition, you know, bring consumption closer to production.
I live in the south of Chile, in the deep south. And that area is a
fantastic area, you know, in milk products and what have you. Top.
Technologically, like the maximum, you know? I was, a few months ago, in
a hotel, and there in the south, for breakfast, and there are these
little butter things, you know? I get one, and it’s butter from New
Zealand. I mean, if that isn’t crazy, you know?
And why? Because economists don’t know how
to calculate really costs, you know? To bring butter from 20,000
kilometers to a place where you make the best butter, under the argument
that it was cheaper, is a colossal stupidity, because they don’t take
into consideration what is the impact of 20,000 kilometers of transport?
What is the impact on the environment of
that transportation, you know, and all those things? And in addition, I
mean, it’s cheaper because it’s subsidized. So it’s clearly a case in
which the prices never tell the truth. It’s all tricks, you know? And
those tricks do colossal harms. And if you bring consumption closer to
production, you will eat better, you will have better food, you know,
and everything. You will know where it comes from. You may even know the
person who produces it.
You humanize this thing, you know? But the
way the economists practice today is totally dehumanized.
AMY GOODMAN:
You don’t think the earth will force this
different way of thinking, that we’re reaching the end?
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
Oh, well, yes. Yes. I believe, you know,
that - well, there are some important scientists that already are
saying, I believe. I have not reached that point yet. But some believe,
you know, and state that it’s definite: we are finished. We are
finished. In a few more decades, I mean, there will be no humanity
anymore. I don’t think we have reached that point of it, but I believe
that we are pretty close to it. I’ll say that we already crossed one of
the three rivers.
And if you look at it and what is happening
everywhere, I mean, it’s quite frightening how the amount of
catastrophes are increasing all over the place, you know, in all
manifestations - storms, earthquakes, you know, volcanoes erupting. I
mean, the amount of events is growing dramatically. I mean, it’s really
frightening. And we continue with the same.
AMY GOODMAN:
What have you learned that gives you hope in
the poor communities that you’ve worked in and lived in?
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
Solidarity of people. You know, respect for
the others. Mutual aid. No greed. I mean, that is a value that is absent
in poverty. And you would be inclined to think that there should be more
there than elsewhere, you know, that greed should be of people who have
nothing. No, quite the contrary.
The more you have, the more greedy you
become, you know. And all this crisis is the product of greed. Greed is
the dominant value today in the world. And as long as that persists,
well, we are done.
AMY GOODMAN:
And if you’re teaching young economists, the
principles you would teach them, what they’d be?
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
The principles, you know, of an economics
which should be are based in five postulates and one fundamental value
principle.
-
One, the economy is to serve the
people and not the people to serve the economy.
-
Two, development is about people and
not about objects.
-
Three, growth is not the same as
development, and development does not necessarily require
growth.
-
Four, no economy is possible in the
absence of ecosystem services.
-
Five, the economy is a subsystem of
a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is
impossible.
And the fundamental value to sustain a new
economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can
be above the reverence of life.
AMY GOODMAN:
Explain that further.
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
Nothing can be more important than life. And
I say life, not human beings, because, for me, the center is the miracle
of life in all its manifestations. But if there is an economic interest,
I mean, you forget about life, not only of other living beings, but even
of human beings.
If you go through that list, one after the
other, what we have today is exactly the opposite.
AMY GOODMAN:
Go back to three: growth and development.
Explain that further.
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
Growth is a quantitative accumulation.
Development is the liberation of creative possibilities. Every living
system in nature grows up to a certain point and stops growing.
You are not growing anymore, nor he nor me.
But we continue developing ourselves. Otherwise we wouldn’t be
dialoguing here now. So development has no limits. Growth has limits.
And that is a very big thing, you know, that economists and politicians
don’t understand. They are obsessed with the fetish of economic growth.
And I am working, several decades. Many studies have been done. I’m the
author of a famous hypothesis, the threshold hypothesis, which says that
in every society there is a period in which economic growth,
conventionally understood or no, brings about an improvement of the
quality of life. But only up to a point, the threshold point, beyond
which, if there is more growth, quality of life begins to decline. And
that is the situation in which we are now.
I mean, your country is the most dramatic example that you can find. I
have gone as far as saying - and this is a chapter of a book of mine
that is published next month in England, the title of which is Economics
Unmasked.
There is a chapter called "The United States, an Underdeveloping Nation," which is a new category.
We have developed, underdeveloped and
developing. Now you have underdeveloping. And your country is an
example, in which the one percent of the Americans, you know, are doing
better and better and better, and the 99 percent is going down, in all
sorts of manifestations. People living in their cars now and sleeping in
their cars, you know, parked in front of the house that used to be their
house - thousands of people.
Millions of people, you know, have lost
everything. But the speculators that brought about the whole mess, oh,
they are fantastically well off. No problem. No problem.
AMY GOODMAN:
So how would you turn that around?
MANFRED MAX-NEEF:
Well, I don’t know how to turn it around. I
mean, it will turn around itself, you know, in catastrophic manners. I
mean, I don’t understand how there isn’t - millions of people can all of
a sudden go out in the streets in the United States and begin destroying
things, I don’t know. That may perfectly happen.
You know, the situation is absolutely
dramatic. Absolutely dramatic. And it is supposed to be the most
powerful country in the world, you know, and so on. And even in those
conditions, they continue with those stupid wars, you know, and spend
more, more, more millions and trillions.
Thirteen trillion dollars for
the speculators; not one cent for the people who lost their homes!
I mean, what kind of logic is that?
AMY GOODMAN:
Acclaimed Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef,
a Right Livelihood laureate. I spoke to him in Bonn, Germany, last week.
Among his books, Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics.
