Children play with bundles of notes during
the period of hyperinflation in Germany, 1923
(Photo: Hulton Deutsch)



THE GREAT MYSTIFICATION



Index

Present Understanding of Economics
Economics and Economic Value
Harmony and Well Being
Paleolithic
Absolute Negativity of the Quantification of Existence
Disorder
Breaking of Balance. The Advent of Agriculture
Neolithic Transition
Mercantile Phase
Industrial Phase
End of the Quantitative Era
The Change

The Great Mystification



Present Understanding of Economics

The dominating culture (every culture where economics exists), that is, everyone: the conservative as well as the progressive economists, the anthropologists, sociologists, consider economics as the set of relationships aimed toward the satisfaction of needs and the realization of well being.

Marina Bianchi

Since the first economists, the problem of satisfaction of needs and the research of the means suitable to render this satisfaction as much as possible, always represented the aim and destination of economics: satisfaction, utility, well-being, constantly represent object and purpose of the economic science.

Adam Smith		Alfred Marshall

For Smith, indeed, economics is the study of the nature and the causes of the wealth of nations; and wealth is the availability of all those things necessary and convenient to life, the useful things that make existence pleasant and satisfying. Economics, says Marshall, is the study of man in the ordinary businesses of life: those aimed to the achievement and the use of material well-being; and since to take care of his own material well-being and physical existence is for man one of the most urgent needs, economics is one of the most important reason of human action.
Between these two definitions of economics there is a lapse of more than a century (Smith, it is known, published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, Marshall his Principles of Economics in 1890), still, for both of them, the economic science has as a natural and undisputed aim the study of wealth, of utility, of things necessary to the satisfaction of needs.
Even long before Smith, with Boisguillebert and Cantillon, wealth is the enjoyment of all that can give satisfaction (plaisir); it represents nothing but comfort and the pleasure (les  et commodities les agréments) of life. To generate and develop wealth -- enjoyment, pleasure -- is the purpose of economics. (Marina Bianchi I Bisogni e la Teoria Economica Loesher p. 9)

This concept, notwithstanding the differences, is shared by the Marxists, who are against capitalism, and the Polanyians, who are against the market economy.

Karl Polanyi

Karl Polanyi talks of:

... human economy as the institutionalized process of interaction which function is to provide the material means for society. (K. Polanyi La Sussistenza dell'Uomo Einaudi p. 60)

The substantial meaning of economics refers to the elementary fact that human beings, as for all the other living beings, cannot survive without a physical environment to support them... It comes, shortly, by the fact that man evidently depends for his sustenance from nature and his fellow men. He survives by virtue of an institutionalized interaction between himself and his natural environment. That process constitutes economics, which gives him the means to satisfy his physical needs. ... To study human subsistence means to study economics in this substantial sense of the term, and it is in this sense that 'economics' is used in all this work. (K. Polanyi La Sussistenza dell'Uomo Einaudi p. 43)

Paul M. Sweezy

Similarly, Paul Sweezy gives the following definition:

The matter of study of economics is taken from the field of production and distribution of the goods and services that the individuals need and wish. This, some will say, is so obvious to be banal. That's what it is, indeed. But it is better to remember that the most obvious things are often the most important ones. Those which neglect the obvious, do that to their own risk. The modern economic science offers, in this regard, an interesting case. (P. Sweezy La Teoria dello Sviluppo Capitalistico Boringhieri p. 3)

Even the anthropologists regard economics in this sense; see for instance the title of Marshall Sahlins' book: Stone-Age Economics.

But the inner inconsistency of that understanding of economics becomes immediately evident when we consider that, if it was correct, we also had to say that non-economic relationships, admitting that they exist and are different from the economic ones, are not aimed to the satisfaction of wants and the realization of well being. But human beings always tend to satisfy needs and wishes, by means of both economic and non-economic relationships, however they should correctly be distinct. Everyone's aim, given the existing external reality and according to their personal taste and convictions, is to live life the best way they can, to realize their own ideals, the positive aspects of existence. All thoughts, actions and efforts, in whatever situation, are aimed toward this objective; even harmful actions are considered as a means for an aim with a greater positive value. The search for well being also persists when well being is mistakenly conceived and/or pursued. Therefore, this concept can not be used to distinguish economic from non-economic relationships.
Economics and well-being, indeed, belong to different conceptual orders, so that if we want to understand the character of the relationship between them, we must firstly identify, on one side, the criterion that tracks the distinction between economic and non-economic relationships, and, on the other side, that which distinguishes well-being from malaise. By imposing a relationship of immediate reciprocal implication between them, the economists don't define anything: not the field of economics, nor the meaning of well-being. No wonder if economics is also called dismay science.



Economics and Economic Value

The field of economics is defined on the quantitative level, i.e., by those relationships where quantity takes over on quality.
To distinguish a commodity from any other common object, indeed, is that, whatever its function or utility, it has a price, or rate of exchange, result of a negotiation, which indicates its exact quantitative relationship with the other commodities. If something that satisfies needs is freely available in nature, that thing doesn't have a price and can not be considered as a commodity.
The same is true for that which, though the result of human activity, is not sold because used by the producer, or because abandoned, or given away, or used with other people according to qualitative (moral or functional) criteria. Labor then is any human activity aimed toward the production of services or commodities, while if pleasant or boring, useful or harmful, does not produce objects exchanged through a negotiation, it is not labor. This is so for any and every activity: speaking, singing or making love, as well as growing food or house building, which are all activities aimed toward the satisfaction of wants and which result may or may not have a price.

Since labor and commodity are an identity in the same physical transformation in relationships with nature, the exchange of commodities, in social trasformations, i.e. in the relationships between people, is nothing but the material aspect of the exchange of labor, and the economic value indicated by the price of all the commodities and services sold in any given period of time within an economic system, however they could be distinguished, grouped and distributed – that is, the price of the gross product – is always and only the quantitative representation of the totality of time of labor which produces them.
This determines the absolute value of the currencies as precise quantities of time of labor of each for the others. The price of a commodity always and immediately represents a fraction of social labor, of undifferentiated human existence, as considered in pure quantitative terms of time.
Therefore, economics is the quantification of existence, and economic value is the representation of quantified human existence.

Since both economic and non economic relationships have the same aim -the satisfaction of wants-, the nature of the relationship between economic and well being must be considered in two distinct ways: particular, or relative, and general, or absolute.
The relative evaluation refers to the fact that, as just said, all relations, activities and objects, economic or not, can be suitable or unfit for a specific task and imply well being or malaise: the material value, the function of an apple, bought at the market or gathered while taking a walk, for instance, is the same.
At the same time, though, between economic and non economic relationships there is a difference caused just by the exchange of position of quality and quantity. If there were no difference, indeed, there would be no reason for some of them to be quantified and not the others. The absolute evaluation regards the nature of the relationship between economic and non economic relationships (activities and things) as such, and social and individual corresponding state of well being or malaise, no matter what the utility of each of them, individually considered, might be. This is the kind of evaluation we especially have in mind when considering the nature of the relationship between economics and well being.


Harmony and Well Being

The term economics is the result of the reduction on the sole quantitative level of the general, qualitative meaning of Economy, of the motion following the path of least resistance, or of the minimum effort for the maximum result, always in the direction of the satisfaction of the positive aspects of existence. In economic relationships much substitute for good and little for bad, because much, afterwards, when relationships are quantified, permits the best. Other conditions being the same, indeed, in every place and time, for whatever aim or wish, it is better to be rich than poor.
This transposition implies the conviction that quantification would not influence quality; that it would only be a rational way to manage it. Quantity, indeed, exists anyway and regards everything, and money can and actually is mostly used for good aims, to buy food, clothes and so on. Moreover, if some relations, commodities and activities are harmful or of poor quality, the same can be said for that which is not quantified. Lastly, everyone, theoretically, always has different choices, both in economic and in the non economic relationships.
Since at present economic relationships are indispensable to satisfy all the needs of practically the totality of the world's population, therefore, the existing formulation seems more meaningful than the one for which it is just the set of quantified relationships.

According to the I Ching, tough, harmony, as the dynamic aspect of order, is the condition where everything assumes the function, position and dimension that suit its own nature, the condition where everything realizes its own essence, that for which it is destined and makes it be what it is and not something else.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony. (I CHING p. 371)

In this way each thing receives the nature appropriate to it, which, from the divine viewpoint, is called its appointed destiny. This explains the concept of furthering. With each thing thus finding its mode, a great and lasting harmony arises in the world: this is expressed in the concept of perseverance (lastingness and integrity). (R. Wilhelm. I CHING p. 271)

The urge to life and the fixed laws of nature, reveal the causality of the Creative in its efficacy. The urge to life -that which furthers and is right for each beings- lays the foundation of its nature, and this nature acts according to fixed laws; this is the way of all beings. (R. Wilhelm. I CHING p. 377)

More precisely, since life presents itself and is described with all the opposite attributes of dualities, the character of a situation is determined by the position that these attributes assume in regards to their own nature and their complementary opposite, and the situation of harmony is that where the positive aspects keep the principal and decisive importance in respect to the negative ones.
The relationship between quality and quantity is the same kind of relationship existing between spirit and matter, or, more generally, between yin and yang, where quality is yang and quantity yin. The unnatural inversion of quality and quantity is the metaphysical reason for the intrinsically negative character of economics.

Strictly speaking there is no real dualism here, because there is a clearly defined hierarchic relationship between the two principles. In itself of course the Receptive is just as important as the Creative, but the attributes of devotion defines the place occupied by this primal power in relation to the Creative. For the Receptive must be activated and led by the Creative; then it is productive of good. Only when it abandons this position and tries to stand as an equal side by side with the Creative, does it become evil. The result then is opposition to and struggle against the Creative, which is productive of evil to both. (R. Whilhelm I Ching p. 11)

Changes and movements are judged according to the furtherance (that they bring). Good fortune and misfortune change according to the conditions. Therefore: Love and hate combat each other, and good fortune and misfortune result therefrom. The true and the false influence each other, and advantage and injury result therefrom. In all the situations of the Book of Changes it is thus: When closely related things do not harmonize, misfortune is the result: this give rise to injury, remorse and humiliation. (I CHING p. 355)

That the qualitative aspect has the intrinsic primary importance is demonstrated by the fact that well being is the aim of both economic and non economic relationships. Also, while it is very possible to pursue well being and the satisfaction of wants without quantification, it is instead impossible to imagine a world without non quantified relationships. Leisure and, especially, the pre-economic actions and relationships, then, are the natural and fundamental ones, those which directly satisfy, or might satisfy, the condition of harmony, and make background for economics.

In reality, therefore, by means of this "reduction" of quality to quantity or "substitution" of places, the term economics is used to indicate something which is exactly the opposite of what the word really means, something that leads to the minimum result with the maximum effort.

René Guenon

The falsification of everything is, as we said, a feature of our age. What best connotes this, is the falsification of language, that is, the abuse of some terms alienated from their real meaning, abuse which, somehow, has been imposed by means of a constant suggestion by all those who, one way or another, influence the public opinion. And this is not only a degeneration by which many words have lost their original qualitative meaning and kept only a completely quantitative one; rather, it is a 'deviation' by which some words are used for things that are completely unfit, and sometimes they are totally opposite from what those words normally mean. This is, first of all, an evident symptom of the intellectual confusion which dominate everywhere in the present world. (R. Guenon Il Regno della Quantità e i Segni dei Tempi p. 205)

Paleolithic

Who cares what they say?
It's a nice way to live,
Just taking what Nature is willing to give,
Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow.
Robert Frost from: Blueberries

The condition of harmony and perfect, spontaneous well being is only possible in a situation of absence of scarcity, namely, in a social and environmental situation where every material and spiritual need can be satisfied without effort.
The absence of scarcity is implicit in the life based upon the enjoyment of what nature spontaneously offers, that is, by gathering and hunting, by which every material and spiritual need is satisfied without producing commodities, without working and negotiating. Since every living being comes into existence as a part and product of its own environment, indeed, the environment furnishes all which is needed to maintain that being in its complete perfection. During the Paleolithic all the time was free time, leisure time. Economics as the set of relationships ruled in quantitative terms, the only considerable if one wants to understand the meaning of economic value, did not exist. For this reason the common expression: hunter and gathering economics, even if one can understand what it means, must be regarded as erroneous and deceptive. But if one thinks of Economy in its universal meaning, as the search of the maximum result with the minimum effort, then women and men always lived in the most Economic way, satisfying every necessity with great pleasure, not only by eating but also by gathering food. The Earth has always been a beautiful place to live a beautiful life. Since human beings came into existence (at list two million years, Homo Habilis, or four-six million, Australopitecus) we always lived in a state of perfect well being, of physical and mental health, following the rhythms of the seasons and climatic changes, in harmony with the Universe, with nature, plants, the other animals, gods and spirits. This is the original condition, that is, the natural, or normal condition.

Luca Cavalli-Sforza

The manufactured goods left by our ancestors, which lived in Europe 15.000-20.000 years ago, suggest a high quality of life. By hunting, fishing and gathering plants, fruit, roots, people provided what was necessary for the sustenance of little communities and lived well: this is testified by sophisticated instruments, ornamental objects and art works that even today raise our admiration. (Luca Cavalli-Sforza Chi Siamo? Mondadori)

Erich Fromm

For the various reasons that depend on the rudimentary conditions of technology and the absence of control upon their environment, most of the hunters gatherers literally are the most comfortable people of the world. (E. R. Service, Englewood Cliffs 1966) (Eric Fromm Anatomia della Distruttività Umana Mondadori p. 182)

All plants were busily involved in the hard race to ensure for themselves the attention of birds and bees; among flowers and fruits, fashion changed at an astonishing pace. Every species did their best to overcome the others by richness and ingenuity of the reproductive mechanisms. The illuminated egoism of the individuals harmonized with the result of the maximum quantity of food for the maximum number of living beings. Oh, sweet Monday morning of the world! (R. Lewis Il Più Grande Uomo Scimmia del Pleistocene Adelphi p. 71)

Absolute Negativity of Economic Relationships

When that which is needed is abundantly available in nature, negotiated exchange can not exist. The very existence of economics, therefore, indicates the presence of a state of scarcity, and then malaise, both in the relationship with nature - in labor activity - and in social relationships - in negotiated exchange -.
At this regard, a little closer to the correct definition of economics are those who, like Paul Samuelson e William Nordhaus in Economics, say that "economics is the study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people". Scarcity indeed is the material condition for economics to exist. Still, even in a condition of scarcity it is possible and better to decide production and distribution according to qualitative criteria.

Regarding relationships with the environment, by saying that labor is human activity producing commodities, one does not express any qualitative evaluation, so that not only pleasant labor activities may exist, but also some labor activities may be more pleasant than many free time activities.
For the absolute point of view, though, since commodities are commodities because they are sold, labor activity is that from which result one alienates himself. By means of economic activities one produces something in order to obtain something else, which means that in order to satisfy needs one must first of all deny their satisfaction. Labor is time of existence subtracted from the direct enjoyment of life and, for this reason, a synonym for physical and/or emotive effort.

For Smith and the classical economists, labor as such is a negative activity, it is sacrifice (the disturbance that one can avoid by giving it to somebody else), it is the cost, the burden required to satisfy one's own needs. Humanity, happiness and the realization of man are found not in labor, but only out of it, in resting and enjoying life, in contemplating and thinking. (Marina Bianchi I Bisogni e la Teoria Economica Loesher p. 25)

Within this concept, the satisfaction of needs is substantially in consumption. Satisfaction and enjoyment are in consumption, not in labor. Labor, on the contrary, is the disturbance, the sorrow, the sacrifice which must be borne to achieve some well-being. Consumption therefore is the reason for economic activity... If indeed production, distribution, exchange and consumption are the chapters of economics, only consumption constitutes the principal purpose and the natural end of all the other activities. (M. Bianchi I Bisogni... p. 10)

Smith considers labor as a malediction, as the punishment for having tasted the divine fruit, and finds the conditions of happiness in resting and in the freedom from work. (M Bianchi I Bisogni... p. 160)

Labor is a burden, is constriction, pain. Richness is the result of no-freedom, no-happiness. Progress is the fruit of pain. (M. Bianchi I Bisogni... p. 58)

(Smith doesn't realize that, according to this concept of labor, by economic relationships one should intend those of the leisure time, that is, the properly non economic ones)

Considering social relationships, the relatively positive and absolutely negative character of economics is evident in the very definition of price as the meeting point of demand and supply.
On one side, that economics is aimed towards the satisfaction of needs is demonstrated by the fact that those who buy commodities are ready to give in exchange - renouncing other possibilities - something useful that requires commitment and effort to be made. Also, one is free to buy or not to buy, to sell or not to sell, therefore, at the point of equilibrium of demand and supply, where the exchange takes place, both parts show their satisfaction with the quality and the price of the exchanged commodities.
From the absolute point of view, though, we see that negotiated exchange is a conflict relationship for which the declared intention of both parts is to obtain the maximum amount in exchange for the least of whatever object is dealt; to sell at the highest and buy at the lowest possible price. If it were not so, indeed, prices, and therefore economics, could not exist.
In economic relationships, not only one does not try to understand - given the needs and the availability of materials - what would be best for the well being of both parts: one, instead, hopes that the need of the other is great, so that he can obtain a higher price for his commodity.
Also, indeed, since economic value is the representation of a definite quantity of human existence, the enrichment of someone means the immediate essential impoverishment of all the others.

Money therefore represents, and its use objectively maintains, the unity of a society in which a competitive spirit substitutes for the awareness of that social unity. This lack of awareness is formally demonstrated by the incapacity of the economic theory to define the meaning of economic value, which indeed represents the whole labor of each for the others (see Absolute Prices).
In other words, money implies the coexistence of two antagonistic forces: an unaware cohesive one, which materially and objectively establishes the unity and the common front toward the external world of those who use the same currency, and an interior, disintegrating one, conscious and systematic. Economic relationships are essentially conflict relationships which manifest themselves in the form of agreement relationships where supply and demand meet.
As Marx says in the Economic-Philosophic Notebooks, money is the alienated power of humanity.

In the modern, capitalist society, everyone, really, as the economists say, doesn't have any other aim than his own private, egoistic interest, but the result, according to Marx, is not harmony, but competition, antagonism. The social recomposition, when present, is independent from their will; the reality of their relationships is, instead, the contrast and conflict of interest and needs. The new force that keeps together these disiecta membra is the market, the exchange, and a new power: money. (M. Bianchi I Bisogni... p. 19)

Colin Turnbull

In our modern societies, we are used to different believes, we even congratulate ourselves for our tolerance, unable to recognize that a society which is not kept together by a single powerful believe is not a society at all, but a political association kept together only by the presence of law and force, which its very existence is violence. (C. Turnbull The Mountain People Touchstone p. 209)

The direct awareness of social unity, indeed, denies the need to represent it and use that representation.

To say that economics is the set of relationships aimed toward the satisfaction of wants and the realization of well being, therefore, is relatively true, but also and first of all absolutely false. This double truth, together with the incapacity to determine their rank, is the root of the fatal mystification.



Disorder

Disorder, obviously, is described by the negative attributes of the dualities, and it is the situations where there is not correspondence between the essence of a thing and the position that that thing takes. When yin and yang exchange position without possibly exchange their nature, the negative aspects of existence prevail; there is a yin relationship between yin and yang which, in as much as it ranges from the normal state, is described as an increase of separation, opposition, contrast, conflict, antagonism, repulsion, fission and misfortune, pain.

The firm and the yielding displace each other, and change is contained therein. The judgments, together with their counsels, are appended, and movement is contained therein. Good fortune and misfortune, remorse and humiliation, come about through movement.  The firm and the yielding stand firm when they are in their original place. Their changes and continuities should correspond with the time. (I CHING p. 325)

Life becomes a strain when it is difficult or impossible to satisfy one's own material and spiritual natural needs, when one is prevented of doing of himself what he wants to, when people are separated from each other and unable to understand and help each other on the common problems, and a handful of greedy people can impose their will upon billions of people. On the level of awareness, disorder is the situation were one ascribes or imposes upon a force characteristics or position which are proper of the other: malaise is called well-being; the race to destruction is called progress; people wonders how to stop destruction while continuing to destroy. The triumph of false upon true is that which determines and of which the situation of disorder consists.

Since existence is always described by the opposite attributes of dualities, malaise is present even during the qualitative period, but in a situation of harmony the negative aspects, by taking the place fit to their nature, strike that which threatens the stability of the system, thus preserving harmony and also limiting relative malaise itself. This is the function of natural selection, for which the subjects belonging to a species are constantly the fittest, in accordance and dependence with the transformations of the environment. In a situation of disorder, instead, the polar attributes are antagonist: the intrinsically positive qualities have negative effects, and malaise is just the result of the efforts of everyone for the satisfaction of wants.

It may seem impossible that a situation of perfect harmony could degenerate into chaos, or that a highly destructive situation change into order, but if it was not just this way, there would be no changes, and this is impossible.

The Creative and the Receptive are the real secret of the Changes. Inasmuch as the Creative and the Receptive present themselves as complete, the changes between them are also posited. If the Creative and the Receptive were destroyed, there would be nothing by which the changes could be perceived. If there were no more changes to be seen, the effects of the Creative and the Receptive would also gradually cease. (I CHING p. 322)

The changes are thought of here as natural processes, practically identical with life. Life depends on the polarity between activity and receptivity. This maintains tension, every adjustment of which manifests itself as a change, a process in life. If this state of tension, this potential, were to cease, there would no longer be a criterion of life; life could no longer express itself. On the other hand, these polar oppositions, these tensions, are constantly being generated anew by the changes inherent in life. If life should cease to express itself, these oppositions would be obliterated by progressive entropy, and the death of the world would ensue. (Richard Wilhelm. I CHING p. 323)

In the various changes, just because they are changes, sometimes the dark and sometimes the light aspects prevail, and when something reaches its top, it can only decrease. That is the reason why chaos comes from order and order from chaos. It is therefore unavoidable that, even during the millennia, situations of general well being alternate with situations of malaise, even though the latter, because of their nature, as an illness, are abnormal and exceptional.
The engine of the social and cultural change lies on the fact that malaise may be very strong and spread even if felt in a generally positive situation, while relative well being can be great even if the entire situation is miserable, and as the satisfaction of wants is the constant aim, pain, absolute or relative, is always undesirable. The variation of position and of the weight of a term upon the other explains the sense of evolution.



Breaking of Balance. Advent of Agriculture

The breaking of balance begun about 10.000 years ago, with the Neolithic Age, when the first shepherds, farmers and villages appeared. The production of food, the taming of vegetables and animals (and cultures), for the attitude that requires and effects that yields, has been the fateful event which marked the beginning of the obscure period of humanity. From then on, for more and more people's life became a strain, and the well being that one obtains is to the detriment of all: Nature, the others, oneself, and even to one's own descendants; until the day of reckoning.
The production of food, indeed, imposes an inferior quality of life, since it is necessary to spend time to deforest, to plough, to sow, to harvest, to treat and store the crop, to built tools and structures for these activities, when living by hunting and gathering it is possible to obtain a better result by simply stretching out a hand. Since those activities are unnatural, they require hard work and are tiring and boring, they impoverish the environment, the quality and variety of food decrease, wild animals tend to stay away from human settlements in proportion of the quantity of the inhabitants, and one must protect the fields and the tamed animals (the private propriety) from the other men, animals and vegetables.

A cultivated field is not a natural habitat, and in order to maintain that environment it is necessary the activity of man, to cultivate, to sow and so on; someone said that with such an effort of time and energy for the prosperity of the plants man has, in a way, tamed himself. (Ammerman Cavalli-Sforza La Transizione Neolitica... p. 30)

The production of food, therefore, can only be explained as an answer to a state of natural scarcity, consequence of climatic changes and of the demographic pressure of the Mesolithic Age, which in some zones made hunting and gathering insufficient for the necessities an the habits of that period.

The invention of agriculture has probably been a matter of pure necessity: in the areas where it was originated, hunting and gathering were no longer sufficient, because of the impoverishment of the environment and the climatic changes of that period. (L. Cavalli-Sforza Chi Siamo? p. 213)

Marvin Harris

Reproductive pressures predisposed our stone age ancestors to resort to intensification as a response to declining number of big-game animals caused by climatic changes at the end of the last ice age. Intensification of the hunting and collecting mode of production in turn set the stage for the adoption of agriculture, which led in turn to heightened competition among groups, an increase in warfare, and the evolution of the State - but I'm getting ahead of the story. (M. Harris Cannibals and Kings p. 7 Landmark Book)

The advent of agriculture seems therefore justified by the change of the external conditions, and since it implies a series of new activities, the improvement of ancient tools and the invention of new ones, one is bent to think of agriculture as an intelligent answer to a bad situation. Agriculture seems natural to us, or better still, the fundament of civilization, a beautiful thing that only humans can conceive and carry out, the dominion of man over nature, always vaster and deeper. Sure.

The accepted explanation for the transition from band life to farming villages used to go like this: Hunter-collectors had to spend all their time getting enough to eat. They could not produce a "surplus above subsistence", and so they lived on the edge of extinction in chronic sickness and hunger. Therefore, it was natural for them to want to settle down and live in permanent villages, but the idea of planting seeds never occurred to them. One day an unknown genius decided do drop some seeds in a hole, and soon planting was done on a regular basis. People no longer had to move about constantly in search of game, and the new leisure gave them time to think. This led to further and more rapid advances in technology and thus more food - a "surplus above subsistence" - which eventually made it possible for some people to turn away from farming and become artisans, priest and rulers. (M. Harris Cannibals and Kings p. 11 Landmark Book)

Carlo Cipolla, meaningfully author also of The Fundamental Laws of Human Stupidity, furnishes a good example of this way of thinking:

For many thousands of years, man lived as a predatory animal. Hunting, fishing, gathering of wild fruit and cannibalism were for long time his only means of sustenance.... In the course of time, man discovered particular techniques and developed certain abilities, like working the stones, the fabrication of weapons, the construction of rudimental means of transport. But all this remained in the general framework of a predatory kind of economics. The new techniques only served him to increase his efficiency in hunting, fishing and killing people. Man lived in a brutally primitive way, hunting and gathering fruit and wild herbs, for the good 99% of his whole presumable existence. (Carlo Cipolla Uomini, Tecniche, Economie Feltrinelli p. 10)

Man spent all his time and energy looking for food, relying on his good luck and his ability in killing ferocious animals or other men. Hunger was a constant threat and compelled men to infanticide and cannibalism. (C. Cipolla Uomini... p. 37)

Matgioi (Guenon's Teacher)

The YIKING, our Master, said: walking on the hoarfrost of the bad habit, the ice of evil and disgrace arrives. Now, it has been centuries that those of the west walk on the hoarfrost, and they built such a wall of ice that the warmth of truth will never be able to melt.
You burned down the temples, ruined the children, scattered the bones of the ancestors. That's what the Mongols on the north of the Empire did once... But here is your worst crime: while we have preserved, you forgot your origin and your destiny: you don't even know who you are, and your learned teachers, with your applause, tell you that you are sons of monkeys; when by chance you remember the name of the Absolute, it is for dragging it in the mud of your ignorant contempt. You have extinguished, for the advantage of your imbecile body, every clarity of the spirit; for the perfection of the gears of your clocks and machinery, you lost the knowledge of the movement of the Universe. And you proudly wander about in the pitch-black darkness, to a point that you - that I believe to be a mandarin of your race - are blinded by the flickering flame I've put in your hand, as if it was a sun. (Matgioi La Via del Taoismo Melita Ed. p. 237)

It is true that the production of food implies a radical cultural change, of the attitude toward the existence, but in the opposite direction. To produce food implies the belief that Nature does not offer what men need, that she is a hostile entity, so that one feels the right, or even "natural", to compel her to produce, other than what she is willing to produce, larger quantities of what is considered useful, to detriment of those vegetal, animal and cultural species considered as harmful or useless. This violence against nature, which eventually becomes lethal for those who practice it, becomes violence among people, with wars, colonialism, slavery and in the daily injustice of labor, of the arrogance of the powerfools.
The production of food, implying alienation from nature, is the material foundation of the materialistic, or dualistic, or relative thought, with the subsequent religions and ideologies.

Our present international, social and economical institutions are based, in large parte, upon an organized absence of love. We start by lacking charity towards nature, so that instead of cooperating with Tao or the Logos towards the inanimate world or the inferiour beings, we try instead to dominate and exploit, we vaste the mineral resources of the Earth, we ruin its soil, destry its forests, we throw dirt in its rivers and poisonos fumes in its air. The lack of love towards nature become lack of love towards art, ... and obviously this lack of love towards art is, at the same time, lack of love for the human beings... And the culminating superstructure of non-charity is the organized lack of love which characterizes the relationships between a sovereign State and another, a lack of love which express itself in the assiomatic presumption that it is right and natural for the national organization to behave as thieves and murderers, at the first occasion... Why? Because, by definition, a national State is an organization that has the right and duty to compel its members to kill and steal on the larger possible scale. (Aldous Huxley La Filosofia Perenne pp. 136-138)

The production of food, contrasting the universal law of Economy, is the cause of the quantification of existence, of the coming into existence of economics. Economics is the expression of a culture which has lost the spiritual aspects of existence, that doesn't recognize the unity of the human species, the unity of nature and everything, and that becomes in turn the main instrument for the expansion of that culture. Self destruction, indeed, can only be the consequence of a seriously wrong understanding of the Sense of existence.

Richard Wilhelm

The misfortune has its inner cause in a wrong attitude toward the world. (R. Wilhelm I CHING p. 100)

Together with the fact that it implies an inferior quality life, the problem is that agriculture, once started, not only is hard to dismiss, but it also becomes impossible to avoid its expansion.
Indeed, the knowledge necessary for the hunting-gathering life is quickly lost, but also, thanks to nature's generosity, the result of a little effort is a remarkable food surplus which permits the satisfaction of the vital needs of a much higher number of people in the same area, and the Village -sometimes of thousands of people- came into existence.
The sedentary life doesn't require the demographic control, which is instead imposed by the frequent movement of the semi-nomadic hunting and gathering life; at the opposite, in a vicious circle, the collaboration of many people alleviates the effort required by agricultural activities.

The determinig reason to explain the increase of population that took place in the Neolithic Age seems to be an increase of the rates of fertility caused by a stable way of life, perhaps united with the positive economic value represented by a larger number of sons. As it can be inferred by the study of hunters gatherers our contemporary, a low fertility and a relatively long interval between successive births are characteristic features of the pre-agricultural populations. (Ammerman Cavalli-Sforza La Transizione Neolitica... p. 169)

The first effect of agriculture has been the possibility to feed many more people in the same region and allow an increase of population. The habits and customs of a people, which determine the birth rate, are always strongly rooted. Before agriculture these habits permitted a very slow increase of population. Agriculture has made possible and useful an increase of birth rate. Once it has started to grow, it is hard to stop it. The farmer doesn't have any reason to limit the number of his sons, as the hunter gatherer had to. He has settled down, he doesn't have the problem of little children when moving, nor that of having too many of them to be feed; at the opposite, he needs to have many to help him and cultivate the land. If they become too many to stay on the same place, they always could move somewhere else and occupy new land. At the beginning of the agricultural revolution, when the farmer were a few, there was no limit for the possibility of emigration. There was the whole world to be conquered. (L. Cavalli-Sforza Chi Siamo? p. 199)

Thus escaping the natural laws which regulate the demographic balance, the only limit to population growth becomes that established by the possibility to increase the quantity of food produced, namely, by the possibility to increase the extension of cultivated land and to intensify its exploitation. With a virgin land, apparently unlimited, the Village expand and reply itself.

Our whole Age can be considered as an unique impressive demographic explosion by which, in only 10.000 years, in a 1/200^th of its existence, the human population has increased from 5-10 million (Coale, 1974; Hassan, 1981) to the present 6 billion and two hundred and fifty thousand (300 million year zero, 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 in 1975).

If you want to know the dimension of the world's population in this moment, see the POPclock:

Before agriculture the inhabitants of the Earth hardly exceeded 5-10 million. It has been calculated that in England, for instance, there were probably 5.000, maybe 10.000 inhabitants. The passage to agriculture has determined a demographic explosion. The world population has increased of thousand times in the last 10.000 years. (L. Cavalli Sforza Chi Siamo? p. 31)

Once men did not cultivate the field, but the fruits of the threes and plants were enough to feed everyone. Without working, there was enough to live, there were a few people and an abundance of provisions, and therefore people did not fight. In this way, there was no need of great rewards nor of severe punishment, and people governed itself. Today, instead, people doesn't consider large a family with five kids, and since every son will have five sons, before the dead of the grand father there will be 25 grandchildren. The result is that there is a lot of people and the provisions are few, and it is necessary to work hard for a small remuneration. So people begin to fight and, even if rewards and punishment are doubled, it is impossible to escape disorder. (Han Fei-tzu, 3-400 a.C. da Il Libro del Signore di Shang p. 116)

Agriculture therefore implies a process of increasing disproportion between the number of people and the natural capacity of the environment to sustain them, that is, the increase of absolute scarcity, which is made possible, hidden, by the control of the relative scarcity, by the immediate satisfaction of the fundamental needs plus a surplus. The increase of the essential general malaise is constantly mystified by a temporary increase of the relative well being.
Since the beginning of the production of food, human interventions always appear as solutions for the existing problems or as an improvement of the previous situation. However, without ever considering and acting upon the causes, in turn they become cause of the constant worsening of the whole social and ecological situation, and the production of food has been the first and greatest of all.

In the past, irresistible reproductive pressures arising from the lack of safe and effective means of contraception led recurrently to the intensification of production. Such intensification has always led to environmental depletion, which in general results in new systems of production - each with a characteristic form of institutionalized violence, drudgery, exploitation, or cruelty. Those reproductive pressure, intensification, and environmental depletion would appear to provide the key for understanding the evolution of family organization, property relations, political economy, and religious beliefs, including dietary preferences and food taboos. (M. Harris Cannibals and Kings p. xii)

Neolithic Transition

Agriculture can not be considered as an invention: the deep knowledge of nature and of the processes of life is a fundamental characteristic of the gathering-hunting life, and it is unthinkable that before agriculture people did not know that by sowing seeds plants would grow. Agriculture spread all over the planet not as  an idea accepted for its goodness and utility and communicated by means of example, words or signs, as it may have been for the discovery of fire.

His ability as a hunter and his knowledge of the environment developed extraordinarily during million of years. The hunter prefers to remain hunter-gatherer because it is a very pleasant way of living. (L. Cavalli-Sforza Chi Siamo? p. 213)

Hunting was fun! I thought of the contrasts between hunting and agriculture. Who in his right mind would want to trade such an invigorating day's work for the drudgery of life in the fields? And for what? Manioc? Bananas? Hunting gave you meat. And as for gathering - it was sheer delight. The women strolled through the forest as though they were in a vast grocery store - only here everything was free. And each day's hunt was ful of little adventures, excitement, moments of idyllic contemplation or laughter. No two days were the same. (Louis Sarno Song from the forest p. 70 Penguin)

The research of Albert J. Ammerman and Luca Cavalli-Sforza on the genetic pool of populations (The Neolithic Transition and the Genetics of Populations in Europe), together with the confrontation of the languages and carbon 14 dating of archeological findings, demonstrates that agriculture started only in a specific limited area of the world (considering only Europe and Asia) for then to expand, slowly if compared to the modern times, but very quickly in respect to the natural rhythms, all over the planet. The globalization of the production of food is the result of a choice made by only a few, and imposed with perseverating violence upon everything and everyone.

In Europe this transformation did not take place as a sudden event, but through processes that took many generations. It is this the reason why we prefer to talk of Neolithic Transition instead of referring to this phenomenon in terms of Neolithic revolution. (Ammerman Cavalli-Sforza La Transizione Neolitica... p. 13)

The Neolithic transition is the span of time employed by agriculture to supplant the previous hunting and gathering cultures in all the areas easily convertible to the production of food. Such an expansion, which can be represented by the so called wave of advance, is demic, namely, it is a process of migratory activity of the farmers, their sons and grandchildren. In Europe, the migratory activity has employed about 2.500 years to get from the Middle East, where the firsts variety of cereals were initially tamed, to England, advancing at a medium radial speed of about one kilometer per year.

See:          How Was Agriculture disseminated? The Case of Europe
and also:   The Neolithic Mosaic on the North European Plain

The expansion of agriculture has been a process of colonization which progressively reduced the extension of the environment and of the conditions of life for the hunters, for whom the problem of scarcity, already severe, become even more serious. With civilization, there also come into existence the uncivilized savages who, in smaller number and materially weaker, are relegated to the marginal environments or absorbed by the new culture.
As an explosion, the demographic explosion takes place in a violent way, with the destruction of thousands of animal and vegetal species and cultures closer to the state of nature. The production of food gave birth to a period of constant increase of scarcity, exploitation, wars, devastation, extintion and confusion.

" ... There were no alders, no deer, no bunch grass, no pairie chickens. Civilization in any country meant shifting the balance in favor of people. That was its business. Where people had to live, other things had to die. Someday all other forms would be exterminated, and there would be nothing left anywhere but people. Then humanity could settle down with a happy sigh to revel in its triumph. There wouldn't be much of anything else to do." (H.L.Davis "Winds of Morning" 1952)

Mercantile Phase

Even though the scarcity that the production of food implies is the material fundament of economics, during the Neolithic transition division of labor was still based upon sex and individual attitudes; there were no social classes, and village life was communal. There was abundance of food and a strong solidarity among its members. Negotiated exchange did not exist within the village: the first barter relationships were between the villages, or with hunters and shepherds, and the antagonistic relationships were with the world outside the village (see: Lewis Mumford The City in History). Economics had a little importance for them, and the life of the first farmers (but, as for that, even in the Middle Age, or even only a 100 years ago, when all the rivers were clean with fishes and it was possible to take a bath, and cars barely existed) was surely much more pleasant than ours.

Lewis Mumford

The village appears everywhere as a small group of families, from six to sixty, each of them with its own hearth, its own familiar divinities, relics and sepulchral places. All the families speak the same language, meet under the same three or in the shade of the same rock, walk on the same trail of their herds: any one, in short, follows the same system of life and participates to the same works. If a division of labor exists, it is of the most rudimental kind, determined more by age and strength than by professional attitudes: normally, whoever watch at the face of his neighbor sees in it his own image. Those villages were able to multiply and reply themselves without feeling the necessity to change their life style. Until nutrition and reproduction, that is, the pleasure of the belly and the genitals, were the principal aims of life, the culture of the Neolithic village satisfied every need. (Lewis Mumford La Città nella Storia Bompiani p. 30)

In this erotically exuberant life, a new order, a new regularity and a new safety came about: the availability of provisions was more abundant than ever, the children were born and survived in a quantity that was superior than that that any previous culture was able to maintain if not in exceptionally favorable circumstances. The soil and the polished tools, once considered as the principal characters of Neolithic culture, require a systematic and patient effort very different from that needed to break flinstones or hunting. (L. Mumford La Città nella Storia pp. 25)

Even during the first phase of pure expansion of the cultivated land, in some places the increasing demographic pressure caused large scale collaboration for the intensification of the soil exploitation (land reclamation works, canalization, irrigation, roads, etc.).

No project seemed unrealizable anymore. The dreams conceived, with the help of the gods, by a single man extraordinarely self assured, could be realized by a whole city obeying his command. Not only the animal were subjugated, but, with a signal of the king, rivers, mountains, swamps, masses of men were collectively assaulted. Wearing efforts that no small community would ever self impose, until nature met its habitual wants, were now frequently made. (L. Mumford La Città nella Storia p. 50)

The three centuries preceding the fundation of the Empire (V-III century b.C.) are an age of swift and complete transformation of China landscape and its natural conditions: huge forests are tilled, drained, cultivated and often irrigated, so that the cultivated lands extend to the limits of the kingdom. The population of China, until the Yang-tse basin, quickly increases. By the end of the first Han period, in a country where economics did not record a notable economic growth after the III century, the population will reach 57 million inhabitants (census of the year 2 a.C.). More precisely:  12.366.470 familyes and 57.671.400 individuals. Cfr. H. Bielenstein, The Census of China, in Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities n. 19, Stockholm 1947, p. 135). The cities broaden their walls, increase their population and often build a second fortified surrounding wall. (J. Gernet La Cina Antica Il Saggiatore p. 93)

The variety of activities and instruments connected to those activities increased, implying a process of division and specialization of labor. Because of the conflict with the outside world, villages became walled cities, or Cities-State, in which class division occurs: farmers, artisans, warriors and priests, whose relationships started to be negotiated on a quantitative base.

The positive aspect was a friendly living together, a spiritual unity, ample possibility of communication and a complex system of professional collaboration; the negative one was that the City introduced class segregation, secrecy, authoritarian control and, lastly, violence. (Lewis Mumford La Città nella Storia p. 69)

From the ancient Neolithic complex rose a different kind of social organization, no longer scattered in many little units, but unified in a single bigger unit, no longer based upon an intimate neighborhood relationship, upon the traditional customs and the consent, but authoritarian, centralized and controlled by a hegemonic minority, no longer confined in a limited territory, but determined to overflow in order to seize raw materials, to reduce in slavery defenseless people, to establish its own domination, to impose tributes. The aim of the new culture was not only to improve life, but also to expand collective power. By improving new instrument of coercion, the rulers of this society, in the third millennium b.C., organized their industrial and military strength on dimensions that were never surpassed until our time. (L. Mumford, New York 1967) . (E. Fromm Anatomia... p. 206)

Our cities are born dead, they look like the skeletons of the young threes killed by the worms during their growth. Because if the objective of the so called progress, of the so called civilizations, is to obtain men happiness, without doubt is a failure. The Ashannca, the Campa, instead, are happy, they live in harmony with nature, with the nature of the real-real and with the nature of the dreamed-real, they do not contend anyone the space for living, therefore they are, and not us, the civilized, the holder of progress, the alive. They are living cities, forests full of unexpected doors, open only for those who are able to see them, for those who are able to make, to cross and deserve them, invisible doors among the thick vegetation and the constant danger, risks that dignify, harms that strengthen! (César Calvo Le tre metà di Ino Moxo e altri maghi verdi Feltrinelli p. 172)

After various stages (shells, cacao seeds, animals, salt, silver, gold, etc., according to time and places), money -the manmade representation of human existence abstracted by whatever specific material value- began to circulate.
With the circulation of money, conflict became generalized: beside the wars with the other cities, class struggle, struggle within the classes, criminality, etc., came along. The State (the City-State and then the Empires), guaranties the functioning of this new situation, thus crystallizing the division between those who govern and those who are governed, those who give the orders and those who obey, those who give regards and punishments and those who take them.
Money was born as an instrument of simplification and generalization of negotiated exchanges, as a logical development and technical improvement of barter, but in turn it became the means which made the process of destruction initiated with the production of food, much more vast and intense.
Money is a mental filter that deforms the vision of reality and of the way of thinking, implying a behavior and an objective, specific development of society, independent from will, that favors the minority of the worst people and, implying disorder and malaise, leads to destruction.

Socrate

Money! What invention more noxious than this, for men? Money knocks Nations down, it chase away men from home. It tames, it takes the souls of the more honest mortal to fall into infamy. Money teaches human minds how to carry out evil, and the shrewdness to do it, and the impiety that everything dares. (Sofocle Antigone)

One fact should be clear to you by now. Money-making is aggression. That's the whole thing. The functionalistic explanation is the only one. People come to the market to kill. They say, "I'm going to make a killing". It's not accidntal. Only they haven't got the genuine courage to kill, and they erect a symbol of it. The money. (Saul Bellow Seize the day p. 76 Fawcett)

John Locke, who considered the shears (the forgers of that time) as criminals worst than the murderers, writes:

John Locke

In the beginning the whole world was like America, and maybe better than how it is now, for nowhere anyone knew anything like money. (J. Locke Two Treatises 1680- 1690 p. 276 from George Constantine Caffentzis Parole Abusate... p. 51)

George Constantine Caffentzis

Before the circulation of money:

... right and comfort went together, because as a man had the right on the result of his labor, as well he didn't have the temptation to work for more than what he could use. This didn't leave any room for controversies about the title, nor for violations of the others' rights: it was easy to see what portion a man cut for himself, and it was useless as well as dishonest to cut too much or take more than what he needed...
If the state of nature - the only society that comprehend the whole humanity - was a state of equality, freedom, relative peace and abundance, a state where right and comfort went together, what "sin" chased away the human species from this edenic state to the exile of political society? Locke quotes two interconnected causes: crime and money. ... The efficient cause of politic society was the corruption and perversity of degenerated people, who infringed the rules of natural laws, but the cause of crime is money. Locke's concept of crime and money is therefore essential for the comprehension of the civil government's function. It is the existence of crime that calls for the creation of the State; but crime, in turn, presuppose the existence of the monetary exchange, because otherwise, so to say, it wouldn't pay. (J. L. Two Treatises p. 227 da G. Caffentzis Parole Abusate... p. 41)

Impulsive, Immediate, Irrational: the criminal chooses his crime; but what determines the conditions of his choice? What, first of all, leads him in temptation? In the original state of nature the incentives to steal were very few, because there was abundance of non cultivated land and a level of richness that, even though not very high, was distribute in an egalitarian way. A little work on the common land was enough to satisfy one's own needs, while the penned richness of the neighbors did not stimulate envy nor moved to a useless risk. For Locke, scarcity is not a natural phenomena. It was only with the advent of money that richness was no longer defined and limited by the use. After the invention of money, it became possible to own and produce more than what was necessary for one's needs, and became possible to accumulate richness, in an almost eternal form, not to be divided with others, even though remaining within the limits of the natural law. In such circumstances the temporal vectors of crime and money coincide. (G. Caffentzis Parole Abusate... p. 48)

Money implies the freedom to buy and sell commodities for the quality and quantity one wishes, otherwise prices (economics itself) could not exist. Whoever have the necessary amount of money can buy commodities not only for the satisfaction of its personal needs, but also to more or less transform them, or have them to be transformed, and subsequently sell them at a future time for a higher price, thus reintegrating capital and making a profit out of this operation.
Profit is the right upon a precise quantity of social existence which is not proportional to the quantity of time one gives to society, but to the volume of the exchanged commodities, to the fact that one already has a quantity of money which is superior than what his personal necessities require, and can be almost without limit larger than the quantity of "labor" he gives to society.

Although the material function of the means of production is to produce consumer goods for anyone, their value, that is, the magnitude of capital, expresses the command upon a given quantity of labor, which, together with profit, is the measure of the objective power of its owner: the recognized right, as long as society recognize the legality of money as a means of exchange, to decide according to personal convictions and aims how the existence of the others -and the corresponding produced reality- should be employed.
The desire of power is an unnatural desire, originally non-existent and inconceivable, but it becomes “humanly” comprehensible when relationships are ruled in quantitative terms, when the choice is between to be rich or poor. The law of the maximum result with the minimum effort become the law of the maximization of profit. Then, a kind of “un-natural” selection come in existence, which gives the power to decide about the general direction followed by society, to those who, whatever their merits (such as intelligence, talent, strength, beauty, sympathy and so on), are anyway able to take more than what they give and therefore, be they conscious or not, to impoverish the others.

Because of scarcity and accumulation, poor and rich come about. This state of money, our state, is transitory. Differently from the state of nature, where the rapport of equality between effort and use creates a certain balance, a situations where there is much inequality in the distribution of land and richness, and to which people arrive by consent, but without a contract, is fragile. Who a day has consented (or tacitly agreed) to accept money as an universal equivalent, would renounce this accord when he is hungry or excluded from the common land. Then he would appeal to his natural rights. Another, moved by envy or desire, wished a part of supply of the rich farmer or merchant, for he keeps for himself more than what he needs. And who can discuss with hunger? Or who can disarm envy? For sure not the memory of a tacit agreement, drew up in completely different circumstances. At this point the social conditions of mass crime are already present: scarcity, the absence of justification of the rapport between labor and propriety, the unlimited accumulation, which further increases the distance between rich and poor... Ambition and Luxury clash with Despair, Anger and Envy, in a war and permanent tension. A vicious circle develops in the state of money, so that the very conditions of accumulation deny the results.
Something must give up: or the state of money dissolves again in the state of nature, or a new state, which safeguards money, controls crime and guaranties accumulation, must be originated. This is how the impulse to the social contract arises. (G. Caffentzis Parole Abusate... p. 50)

If in a country there are the following ten evils: rituals, music, Odes, Documents, virtue, moral culture, filial piety, fraternal duty, integrity and sophism, the sovereign is not able to make the people fighting, the splitting apart is unavoidable, and this leads to extinction. A country where the virtuous governs upon the wicked will be afflicted by disorder and so it will be dismembered; but a country where the wicked governs upon the virtuous will be ordered and so il will become strong. (J. J. L. Duyvendak, comment to Il Libro del Signore di Shang p. 167)  

Profit can be invested to increase capital and, therefore, profit itself. Not everyone wants to increase his capital, but some certainly do, was it only as for a game, and the use of money allows to do that. This is enough for the process of expansion of capital to take place.

Notwithstanding biblical restrictions, once a monetary economy has developed, there also come into existence a completely new way of accumulating property, which doesn't depend any longer on the title that originally labor gave to it, but that is as well legitimate, because of the 'silent consent' of all those who use money. By means of profit, the relationship between land and money undergo an ironical inversion. Even though inherently fruitful, land is under many aspects limited; money instead give off into society a creative, self-generating force, with the unlimited, purely quantitative and serial character of numbers, also called Market, or Commerce or Appropriation. (G. Caffentzis Parole Abusate... )

Profit, for Smith, but also for all the political classical economy, is, in relation to the other incomes, a very particular income; its natural destination, for who receives it, is not consumption, but the productive investment, to make people work, productive workers who, with their work, increase the value of the product (they produce the net product). Therefore, through the investment, through the increase of production, richness develop as never before. Continuous and renewed division of labor and exchange spring up, well being and comfort for all increase. (M. Bianchi I Bisogni p. 15)

The aim of economics is not consumption, but the systematic enlargement of the productive process; the only destination of production is the accumulation of richness independent from the material form it takes: cannons or buildings are totally indifferent for he who produces them, as long as they transform themselves in an amount of money greater than that spent to produce them. Production is only production of money, of abstract richness, separated and opposite from the world of needs ad use values. The only need becomes the need of money. (M. Bianchi I Bisogni... p. 19)

Since the absolute value of the gross product represents the quantity of time of labor used to produce it independently from the volume and the function of the commodities which compose it, and since that value is divided in capital - the price of the means of productions - and income - the price of the final consumers goods -, in a closed economic system the increase of capital directly implies a correspondent diminution of the income, of wages and profits, even if consumer goods are produced in great quantity. But without a corresponding salary no one would sell his own existence, and without profit the buying and selling of commodities in quantities superior to personal needs  wouldn't make sense, so that this structure of production and exchange would collapse: the essential conflict between people would no longer be covered by the superficial agreement, and the degree of absolute scarcity we have reached would show up in all its gravity. A constantly positive rate of profit is therefore vital for the economic system, and this is possible only if the expansion of capital is accompanied by a corresponding increase of the absolute value of the gross product, namely, by increasing the quantity of time of human existence submitted to the dominion and the logic of quantity, controlled and restored in time by the reintegration of capital.
The expansion of the absolute value of the gross product can be obtained only by means of an increase of population and, therefore, by increasing the extension of cultivated lands, the intensification of their exploitation, the cultivation of more and more unfavorable environments, and by means of conquest and the reduction to slavery of populations with more pacific cultures and traditions because of qualitative type or because more behind in the process of quantification.
As an expression of the culture implicit in the production of food, economics is also the instrument of expansion that culture and of the demographic explosion that it involves.
At the same time, even productivity, the per capita capacity to affect the environment, and hence to destroy it, also increases. The increase of population, together with the development of the division of labor, makes the process of expansion increasingly necessary and easy at the same time, while to live outside economic relationships becomes more and more difficult. Economic relationships, previously nonexistent, start to affect a growing number of people, until no one can live out of them, and at the end not even by them. Our era, being a process of progressive quantification of quality, can be understood as Quantitative Era.

Among the characteristic features of the modern Age, and as the central argument of our study, we will examine the tendency to reduce everything to the sole quantitative point of view, tendency so rooted into the scientific conceptions of the last centuries, that also can be clearly seen in other fields, as for instance that of the social organization, that permits us to define our Age firstly and essentially as the Reign of Quantity. If we adopt this category instead of any other one, is not because it is more visible and less confutable, but because it appears to be the real fundamental one, since such reduction to quantity rigorously translates the conditions of the cyclical phase reached by humanity in modern times, and because this tendency logically leads to the final point of that descent occurring at accelerated speed, from the beginning to the end of a Manvantara, that is, in the course of the manifestation of our humanity. Such descent is nothing but the gradual separation from the principle, necessarily inherent in any process of manifestation; because of the special conditions to which our world must submit, the lowest aspect is the pure quantity whitout any qualitative distinctions; obviously, this is only a limit, and therefore one can only speak of "tendency", because in the development of the cycle such limit can not be reached, being some how out and under any realized or realizable existence. (René Guenon Il Regno della Quantità e i Segni dei Tempi Adelphi pp. 12, 13)

Since the descending development of manifestation, and therefore of the cycle that expresses it, moves from the positive or essential pole of existence toward its negative or substantial one, follows that everything must assume an ever lesser qualitative aspect and a more quantitative one; and it is for this reason that the last period of the cycle must tend, in a very particular way, to affirm itself as the reign of quantity. (R. Guenon Il Regno della Quantità... p. 47)

The heart of this process is the tendency to intensify production. Intensification - the investment of more soil, water, minerals or energy per unit of time or area - is in turn a recurrent response to threats against living standards. In earliest times such threats arose mainly from changes in climate and migrations of people and animals. In later times competition between states became the major stimulus. Regardless of its immediate cause, intensification is always counterproductive. In the absence of technological change, it leads inevitably to the depletion of the environment and the lowering of the efficiency of production since the increased effort sooner or later must be applied to more remote, less reliable, and less bountiful animals, plants, soils, minerals, and sources of energy. Declining efficiency in turn leads to low living standards - precisely the opposite of the desired result. (M. Harris Cannibals e Re p. 5)

In the consequent planetary depletion of environment and the worsening of relationships between people, even the well being of the expanding societies, though relatively great, even hundreds of times greater in quantitative terms, becomes a miserable well being.

As for amenities such as good food, entertainment, and aesthetic pleasures, early hunters and plant collectors enjoyed luxuries that only the richest of today's Americans can afford. For two  days' worth of trees, lakes, and clear air, the modern day executive works five. Nowadays, whole families toil and save for thirty years to gain the privilege of seeing a few square feet of grass outside their windows. And they are the privileged few. (M. Harris Cannibals e Re p. xi)

Industrial Phase

The tendency of this process is to level not only human beings, but also things; if the men of present times are proud of changing the world in an always larger measure, and if effectively everything in it becomes always more artificial, it is first of all in this sense that they intend to change it, focusing all their activities on a most quantitative sphere as possible. Since a totally quantitative science has been built, it is inevitable that the practical applications derived from such a science are of the same character; these are the applications that are generally called "industry", and therefore we can say that modern industry, under all aspects, represents the triumph of quantity, not only because its processes exclusively call for quantitative knowledge and because of the instruments used, i.e., machinery, are made in such a way that qualitative considerations are reduced to a minimum, but also because those who put them in action are themselves reduced to a completely mechanical activity. (R. Guenon Il Regno della Quantità... p. 56)

The present final phase of the process of quantification begins with the industrial revolution, also called, by Polanyi, the revolution of the rich against the poor, coinciding with the fencing of the commons in England.

During the mercantile phase, in the times of old and in the middle age, and also for a good part of the industrial phase, the larger part of population was directly employed in agriculture, and everyone could produce by himself most of what was needed to satisfy his own fundamental wants. With the fencing of the commons, for many people, and more and more since, the possibility to live outside economy was annihilated. From then on, in order to obtain the necessary to survive, one must pay with money, which, if one doesn't have properties nor inclination for business, can only be obtained by selling a part of one's own existence (the exceeding part, as the marginalists say), one's own availability to the will and for the aim of those who want and can buy it. This determines the triumph of quantity: the radical monopoly of economics, as Ivan Illich puts it in For a History of Needs. The social cohesion mechanically maintained by money for the augmented dependence of the single to the whole, together with the implicit generalized conflict, increase.

Ivan Illich

I have mostly concentrated on the processes by which a growing dependence on goods and services produced in series eliminates little by little the necessary conditions for a convivial life. Every essay examines a different sector of the economic growth and proves a general rule: the use values are inevitably destroyed when the industrial mode of production reaches the supremacy that I called radical monopoly. All together, the essays describe the way in which industrial growth produces the modern version of poverty. This kind of poverty appears when the intensity of the dependence from the market reaches a certain stage. On the subjective level, this is that kind of frustrating opulence that is of those who are disabled by a subjecting oppression from the riches of industrial production. It causes its victims to be deprived of the freedom to act independently and to live in a creative way; they are reduced to survive by being inserted in market relationships. (Ivan Illich Introduzione a Per una storia dei bisogni Mondadori p. 7)

The industrial phase is characterized by an expansion of capital that, even though maintaining its extensive character, has also a strong intensive connotation in the increase of productivity, by means of the increased division of labor and the use of more and more complex machinery moved by combustion energy. Consequently, the quantity of labor indicated by the price of the means of production increases in relation to that indicated by the price of the consumption goods.
As said above, the diminution of the consumer goods’ value directly means a diminution of social income. Both, wages, the quantity of social labor distributed to the workers, and the rate of profit of the system around which the rates of profit of the single firms oscillate, decrease. The single entrepreneurs are therefore compelled to increase productivity not much as to increase profit, even though this is the always present original impulse, but to resist the concurrence and be able to maintain, at least, a decreasing average rate of profit.

The increase of productivity implies an increase in the availability of the kind of commodities that exist in a given moment until the possibility of consumption is saturated. But the ensuing decrease of time of labor doesn't imply, as one would spontaneously believe, a general increase of the quantity of time directly addressed to the enjoyment of life. During the industrial phase, when in order to obtain what is necessary to satisfy even the most simple needs one must pay with money, this would mean “unemployment” and, for the capitalists, decrease of the absolute value of capital and profit. Since the economic system can not admit this possibility, the quantity of labor liberated by the increase of productivity is (must be) employed for the production of new commodities and services, thereby increasing the needs and the commercialization of the most different aspects of human existence. The satisfaction of these new needs appear as an increase of well-being, but in reality, created essentially for this reason, they are induced needs, functional to the system and antagonistic to natural needs, and, for an individual living in a deformed society, as necessary as hard to satisfy.

The more quantity will dominate over quality, the more people will be reduced and considered as simple individuals and, for this reason, the more they will be isolated from each other, which doesn't mean more differentiation, because there is also a qualitative differentiation that is just the opposite of the quantitative one. Under different forms, whatever comes from "matter" produces nothing but antagonism between those fragmentary units that are at the extreme opposite of true unity....
The deductible conclusion of the above is that uniformity, in order to exist, would suppose human beings deprived of whatever quality and reduced to simple "numeric units"; for this reason such an uniformity will never be achieved, and all the efforts made to attain it, especially in the human sphere, can only deprive them of their personal qualities and reduce them to resemble simple machines, since machines, typical product of the modern world, is in fact that which represents, at the highest degree, the predominance of quantity over quality. It is exactly toward this that, from the social point of view, the "democratic" and "egalitarian" concepts, according to which all individuals are equal, which is an absurd concept because it induces to believe that everyone must equally adapt to no matter what... (R. Guenon Il Regno della Quantità... pp. 51-55)

 Although the intensive expansion of capital tends to quickly annihilate income, the material power implicit to the great productive capacity and the availability of the labor-force, permits the capitalistic system to realize the indispensable condition for its own existence (an always positive rate of profit) by means of an even faster international expansion of capital. In the international relationships, indeed, because of the difference in productivity, the exchange value of the currencies is such that a quantity of labor of a capitalist system is worth tens and hundreds time the labor of a technologically backward country. During the 2-300 years of the industrial phase, the expansion of cultivated land (America, Australia, Africa and islands) has been greater than that which, in Asia and Europe, required 2-3000 years to the Neolithic transition period. A similar consideration applies for the intensification of its exploitation.

The modern West isn't satisfied to impose this kind of education on its home grounds; it wants to impose it even on others, together with the whole complex of its physical and psychological ways, so that it can uniform the entire world, while it uniforms the outer aspects by means of the distribution of the products of its own industry. The consequence, only in appearance paradoxical, is that the more the world is uniformed, the less is unified. (R. Guenon Il Regno della Quantità... p. 55)

The means by which the West has arrived to impose its domination are based exclusively on material strength, which means that western domination is nothing but an expression of the "reign of quantity". (R. Guenon Il Regno della Quantità... p. 16)

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. (Marx - Engels Manifesto of the Communist Party)

As in the previous phases, the whole expanding system enjoy a relative advantage for the consequent increase of material richness. As long as the economic system expands, wages and profits remain high, there is less egoism and criminality and, therefore, hope in a better future. Hence, the quantitative evolution maintains its momentum and could not be stopped from within or from without the system by any moral, religious or political opposition... until it is possible to increase the absolute value of the gross product.



End of the Quantitative Era

 Evil is not destructive to the good alone but inevitably destroys itself as well. For evil, which lives solely by negation, cannot continue to exist on its own strength alone. (R. Wilhelm I CHING p. 96)

The drastic reduction of population and the end of economics are the two coinciding aspects which characterize the end of the quantitative Era.

Since the Neolithic Age, though with ups and downs, the constant demographic increase was matched by the increase of food produced, permitting to maintain a constant rate of relative scarcity. Now, instead, we are in a situation where the whole quantity of food produced, which for the last ten years was insufficient for all, has started to decrease, yet the world population, notwithstanding famine, wars, illness and natural disasters, is still growing at the pace of about 100 million per year, a 100 million of new hungry people every year (24,000 people will die from hunger today. See: The Hunger Site).

One of the most explicit reports of the World Health Organization (WHO) affirms that more than one fifth of the total 5.6 billion human beings lives in extreme poverty, almost one third of all children are undernourished, and half of the total world population has no access to essential drugs... While life expectancy grows in the more developed countries is diminishing in the poorer ones. For millions of people whose daily life is a constant  struggle, a high life expectancy is seen more as a punishment than as a reward. (Chris Mihill Poverty is World's Greatest Killer The Guardian. May 7 1995)

If all the remaining plowing land were cultivated and exploited to the bones, the production of food could increase, maybe, for a few more years, after which it would decline steadily because of the demographic pressure itself, with the consequent pollution, soil erosion, deforestation and desertification. In the saturation point, the increase of absolute scarcity directly coincides with the increase of relative scarcity

Now that the saturation point has been reached, we are in the fibrillation phase. In the critical, breaking point, toward which we are quickly running, human population not only will quit to grow, but one way or another will start to dramatically reduce, to return swiftly to the dimension fit to its nature, the original one... if still possible.
The graphic of human population, as in the past, will behave more or less as that of the blowflies in the A. J. Nicholson experiment.

There was once a man who kept a jar full of flies. Some days, there would be close on 10,000 blowflies in Nicholson's container. At other times, the population would drop to a few hundred.

The fly population would outgrow the space in the container, and then the number would crash steeply; but then, with plenty of space available, the flies would breed anew. After 38 days or so the cycle would repeat; never quite the same, but fluctuating around a periodic rhythm. (Ian Stewart Does God Play Dice? The New Mathematics of Chaos Penguin p. 263)

As the production of food is the cause for the existence of economics, so the impossibility to increase the produced quantity of food determines the end of economics.
If the biologic limit to the number of people that can be sufficiently fed to be able to work determines the limit for the expansion of the absolute value of the gross product, the intensive expansion of capital, instead, can not be halted, because of the inevitable competition intrinsic to  quantification, which at the opposite increases, stimulated by the general decreasing of incomes. Therefore the rate of profit tends to zero.
When the reign of quantity has reached its maximum in extension and intensity, even the conditions and the forces which sustain its development are exhausted, and money, even though indispensable for all, can not keep its own function even if one tries by all means to prevent this from happening. That's why even the richest nations, now, have huge economic problems.

Economics as a content of existence constitute a deadly disease, because an infinite growth is not fit for a finite world. That economics doesn't have to be the content of existence, has been said to humanity by all of its greater teachers, and today it is evident that it can't be. To describe more precisely the deadly illness, one can say that it is something similar to an intoxication, like alcoholism or the habit of drugs, and it doesn't really matter if this habit manifests itself in egoistic or altruistic forms, if it brings its own satisfaction only by crude materialist ways, or by refined, artistic, cultural and scientific modes. (E. Fromm Avere o Essere? Mondadori p. 179)

In this paper we show, after evaluating Polanyi's arguments in the light of developments in the last fifty years, that the land market has led to the environmental crisis. In addition, we indicate that the imposition of a labor market on the populations of the world, as has been done by the G-7 powers in the last thirty to forty years, makes it impossible for the affected populations to solve the crisis. Looked at in the broadest possible sense, it comes down to this: the drive towards monetarization of all values has spawned an international institutional structure that is incompatible with a sustainable world. (Philip Smith The Great Transformation - fifty years later -)

The Change

Times change, and with them their demands. Thus the seasons change in the course of the year. In the world cycle also there are spring and autumn in the life of people and nations, and these call for social transformations. (R. Wilhelm I CHING from "Revolution", "Molting" p. 190)

The reduction of population, in agreement with the process that imposes it, could take place even before the collapse of economics, by means of ecological or social disaster, of wars or unbearable climate changes.
Or, since at present social unity is only represented and maintained by money, if its function should suddenly finish there wouldn't be any common reference, only conflict would remain, further sharpened by the degree of scarcity we have reached; there would be no more rules and, unable to understand each other, there would be chaos. Those who live in the cities, but not only them, will have a lot of problems to feed themselves.

Naom Chomski

The consequence of this choice are not obscure. By denying the instinct to freedom, we would only prove that man is a lethal mutation, a terminus of evolution. By feeding this choice we could have to deal with frightful human tragedies and frightful big problems. (Noam Chomski Deterring Democracy p. 401)

We have reached the point of historical crisis. The strengths generated by the technical scientific economy are now sufficiently big to destroy the environment, the material foundation of human life. The structures of human society, even some of the capitalistic economy, are about to be destroyed by the erosion of what we have inherited from the past. Our world risks both explosion and the implosion. It must change. (E. Hobsbawm The Age of Extremes Michael Joseph The Guardian 10/15/1994)

The names employed are manifold but not superfluous. When we examine their kinds, thoughts about the decline of an era come to mind. (I CHING p. 344)

This is why the judgments of the book so frequently warn against danger. He who is conscious of danger creates peace for himself; he who takes things lightly creates his own downfall. The tao of this book is great. It omits none of the hundred things. It is concerned about beginning and end, and it is encompassed in the words "without blame". This is the tao of the Changes. (I CHING p. 352)

But it is also possible that humanity wakes up, that the human species recognize itself as an organic unit, and that as such does what is necessary to satisfy the fundamental needs of everyone (to solve the problem of relative scarcity) and restore the original conditions of harmony (to eliminate absolute scarcity), in the fastest and more pleasant possible way.

True fellowship among men must be based upon a concern that is universal. It is not the private interests of the individual that create lasting fellowship among men, but rather the goals of humanity. That is why it is said that fellowship with men in the open succeeds. If unity of this kind prevails, even difficult and dangerous tasks, such as crossing the great water, can be accomplished. (R. Wilhelm I CHING p. 56)

In this case, Change would be the passage to a new qualitative Era, that is, a period where quality return to its principal position and quantity to the dependent one. The global, conscious abolition of economics would be, therefore, the event which mark the date of its realization, the only possible sure evidence of the inner change.
If this awareness would exist, the population could be reduced by means of birth control. It would be possible to get very close to the ideal number, in a few centuries, and doubling every generation the per capita resources, if women would decide to generate only one child.

The easiest way to achieve a high quality diet, a vigorous long life free of toil and drudgery, is not to increase production but to reduce population. If for some reasons beyond human control - an unfavorable shift of climate, say - the supply of natural resources per capita is cut in half, people need not try to compensate by working twice as hard. Instead, they could cut their population in half. (M. Harris Cannibals and Kings p. 6)

Centuries passed since they (the aborigines) discovered the curious properties of the wild apple called kangaroo. The modern medicine uses it to obtain solasodine, a steroid employed for the oral contraception. The Elderly told me that for them was very important that every new life brought in the world would be desired and welcomed with happiness. Since the dawn of times, for the tribe of the True People, the procreation has always been a conscious act. The birth of a baby means to warranty a soul to a terrestrial body. (Marlo Morgan ...E venne chiamata due cuori Sonzogno p. 103)

See:  Alternative Energy Institute


Change is possible because most people would be very happy if it would take place, because, for the meaning of the words, is universally desirable, and because the necessity of a great change is every day more pressing. Also, it is possible because, even though it could be considered as a huge undertaking in relation to the present situation, it would essentially be only a return to normality, and therefore very easy.
It would be enough to eliminate the presently plenty harmful activities, the robbery of natural resources, the polluting, stupid, servile, parasitic and repressive activities, and maintain, opportunely changed, and create, the useful ones, those that permit to satisfy the fundamental immediate needs of everyone, in the direction of the self sufficiency of the individuals and of the groups of individuals, and to amend as much as possible the damages humans did until now, to fight desertification and reforest the planet, and support the restoration of the natural balance between the living species.
It must be society as a unit to decide what is useful and what harmful and, on this base, everyone should be free to dedicate himself to those activities that he pleases most, that he's better at, for his own and the others well, which is in fact the condition where anyone wishes to give his best.
With the elimination of all the negative activities, such as the production of cars, roads, refineries, nuclear plants, of the accounting activities, banks, bureaucracy, police, army, advertising, and so on, the journey toward the restoration of the material conditions of harmony, if still possible, would be all downhill.

The Master said: What need has nature of thought and care? In nature all things return to their common source and are distributed along different paths; through one action, the fruits of a hundred thoughts are realized. What need has nature of thought, of care? (I CHING p. 338)

Nature knows no intentions; this is why everything in nature is so great. It is owing to the underlying unity of nature that all its thousand ways lead to a goal so perfect that it seems to have been planned beforehand down to the last detail. (R. Wilhelm I CHING p. 339)

Since the Change would be first of all a transformation of the collective awareness, a spiritual fact, it wouldn't require any external precondition, but only the knowledge of its nature, the awareness of its necessity and the determination to do it, and therefore it can take place instantaneously, as a collective illumination, that is, as a revolution, to which follows in time the corresponding transformation of the external reality (impulse and inertia).

If the social structure is too antagonistic with the needs of man, ... the elements of character until then removed will come to light in the most advanced individuals and groups, and these new character tracts will contribute to transform society in more satisfying forms for man. When during the periods of socioeconomic stability social character is the cement of society, even more it transforms itself in dynamite in the moments of drastic upheavals. (E. Fromm L'Inconscio Sociale p. 22)

What Wittfogel's theory suggests to me is that when certain kinds of state-level systems of production undergo intensification, despotic forms of government may arise which can neutralize human will and intelligence for thousands of years. This implies further that the effective moment for conscious choice may exist only during the transition from one mode of production to another. (M. Harris Cannibals and Kings p. 246)

Evolution and revolution are forms of change. Revolutions seem impossible until they come about, but, at times, they come about, and they do just in situations, like the present one, full of contradictions and dissatisfaction, and therefore very unstable, where anything can happen.

If we speak of evolution, we intend the gradual unfolding in time of that which is potentially present but hasn't yet appeared into the visible tangible reality. Every phase is an aspect of the whole under the given conditions of time and circumstances. If the process occurs spontaneously, we speak of mutation. The first is a process that takes place peripherally, namely, in the medium of time; the other takes place radially, directly from the timeless center, cutting vertically, so to say, through the movements of time and causality. (A. Govinda The Inner Structure of the Book of Changes Wheelwright p. 9)

The spontaneous end of economics could be anticipated if those who are now fighting against capitalism would recognize that capitalism is the unavoidable outcome of the quantification of existence. If relationships are regulated in quantitative terms, it is human to make a profit on the mediation of the exchanges, so capital come into existence, and if capital exists, it expands, and it is therefore losing to fight against capitalism without fighting the quantification of existence.
Prices can only exist as meeting point of demand and supply, as the result of a negotiated relationship, and where conflict is the base of the relationships aimed to the satisfaction of needs, there can not be peace and harmony. The idea of a socialistic society, of an economy where money is used as a purely neutral instrument for relationships animated by a spirit of collaboration, waiting for the "maturation" of the conditions for communism, when people will be so wise that finally money could be abolished, is superficial, wrong, moralistic and misleading. Money will never, not even temporarily, not even for a joke, function as a neutral instrument; its very existence is a declaration of generalized hostility.

The existence of economics and the social knowledge of its nature, in fact, deny each other: when economics exists, society is unable to say what it really is and implies, is unable to define economic value, while if society knew, it is unthinkable that relationships can continue to be regulated that way. For this reason, to say what the Change is, is the same than to do it, and it is probably harder to say it than to do it. When society will be able to say what nature and condition of Change is, everything will find its own place by itself.
The problem indeed is that we live in the darkest period of the history of humanity, and never the negative forces have been so powerful. The present external conditions are opposite than those required for spontaneous harmony, and the destruction of the environment is nothing but the external aspect, the result of the present state of social awareness.
The present understanding of economics is the expression of something deeper, psychological, able to inhibit the rational faculties, owing to the fact that it is 10.000 years that the production of food goes on, that the whole life of the individuals is conditioned by money, that everyone's thought is directed or strictly conditioned by the necessity to obtain and use it, and that therefore for most people it is almost impossible to imagine a world without economics. So the process of destruction, contrarily to the real desire of the great majority of people, not only can not be halted, but not even slowed down; in a vicious circle, it seems impossible to create the conditions of harmony because we are in a situation of chaos.

It is therefore necessary to contemplate the possibility that the spontaneous end of economics could not be prevented, that the Change would not take place with a nice inaugural ceremony, but with the crash of economics, the closing down of the Stock Exchanges, the unaware lost of value and meaning of money.
At that point it would be desirable that, as an alternative to money, there would be a spiritual, qualitative reference, that is, an organization of people, to which anyone could address for indication and information on how to solve the expectable problems that will arise with the crash of economics, in order to satisfy the immediate needs of food and houses and the other basic essentials, and restore harmony; to make society as a real organic unity.
The task of this organization would be to gather, process, organize and make easily available to anyone, knowledge and the ideas useful for that aim, in the hypothesis that the great majority of people would enthusiastically participate to the whole undertaking. Everywhere and in every field there is people who already have thought of these problems and hypothesized possible solutions; knowledge, ideas and means necessary to solve any particular problem already exist. It can be foreseen that some problems will be of difficult solution even if directly faced, but it would be much more so if economics, that has created them, will continue to exist.
If there were an alternative reference ready to be used, the spontaneous end of economics could be the final cause for the awaking of awareness of social unity, and the two aspects would coincide.

The idea of a reference alternative to economics comes down directly by the awareness that economics is intrinsically negative and its end unavoidable, but it should be noticed that as the field of economics is defined by abstracting from its relationship with well being, as well that which is useful for well being can and must be defined without referring to economics. This means that even those who believe that harmony could be realized even with the existence of economics could positively collaborate to this project, to define, in every field, what is right and what harmful, and what should be done and what avoided.

This hexagram indicates a time when the transition from disorder to order is not yet completed. The change is indeed prepared for, since all the lines in the upper trigram are in relation to those in the lower. However, they are not yet in their places. While the preceding hexagram offers an analogy to autumn, which forms the transition from summer to winter, this hexagram present a parallel to spring, which leads out of winter's stagnation into the fruitful time of summer. With this hopeful outlook the Book of Changes comes to its close. (Richard Wilhelm I CHING p. 248)

The hexagram Before Completion represents a transition from chaos to order. This hexagram comes to the end of the Book of Changes. It points to the fact that every end contains a new beginning. Thus it gives hope to men. The Book of Changes is a book of the future. (Richard Wilhelm I CHING p. 252)

R.A.M. S.F. September 1 2002