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Critique of elitist, individualist and extreme-collective economic systems, philosophies and practices

Synergism and sharing paradigm in collective productivity and prosperity.

Promotion of successful enterprises that are broad and popular in ownership, management and operation in the mold of genuine cooperatives

Promotion of bigger roles for cooperatives in major industries and the economy

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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Associative Economics
vs. Globalized Greed

By Nicanor Perlas

President, Center for Alternative Development Initiatives (CADI)

[This is excerpted from Nicky Perlas, “Associative Economics: Responding to the Challenge of Elite Globalization” (CADI Monograph, 1997). The title was supplied by the editor of Earthlite Sparks and Reflections that first carried this excerpt with permission from the author.]

THE TERM “globalization” refers to the process of agricultural modernization, industrialization, urbanization, trade liberalization, and hyper-consumerism resulting in increases of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, but at the cost of increasing social and environment destruction around the world.

Outwardly, the process looks like a march towards modernization and progress. And indeed there are positive aspects to globalization. Viewed closely, however, globalization marks the beginning of an era where a few elite businesspersons and politicians determine the destiny of billions of people around the planet. Filipinos are beginning to realize that global developments are having unprecedented and massive negative impacts on life at the individual, village, town and city levels.

Ultimately, elite globalization is the manifestation of a diseased consciousness. It is, for example, difficult to see how 358 billionaires can live a happy life knowing that their $780 billion of assets is equivalent to the income of 2.5 billion poor people. Only a consciousness that has been hardened, that has lost practically all sense of compassion, only such a consciousness will ignore the unjust gap between the income of the poor and the rich.

A diseased consciousness is too attached to its lower sense of self, to materialism, to meaningless consumption, to vanity, to power, to many of the other lures and illusions in life. As Fritz Schumacher once said, economic growth is being powered by the seven deadly sins including lust, avarice, vanity and so on. Our day-to-day problems with relationships (from family, to work, to society) also reflect an incapability to truly go beyond our own limited egos to truly participate in the reality of the Other. The excessive identification with the non-essential is in turn symptomatic of an estrangement from our true Self, our true I, the Witness, our spiritual core.

The materialistic economics underlying elite globalization can be counteracted by a new approach to economics that has emerged in the post-modern age.

This new approach is called associative economics.

This term refers to a new mode of economic interaction and organization which does not rely on: (a) abstract price signals from a “free market” (dominant practice in neo-liberal economics and the current destructive globalization); or (b) centralized planning and implementation to control the thousands or economic activities (disastrously practiced by most communist countries.

Instead, associative economics relies on face-to-face human interaction of representatives of the major groups in the economic sphere of society: producers, traders, creditors and consumers.

Price is an important part of the discussions in associative economics. But price is not the final or sole arbiter of economic values and activities. Instead, questions of true human needs, poverty eradication, equity and impact on the environment are among the other determining factors in price determination and resource allocation.

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