Character Survive Globalization? Can Character

¶ … Character Survive Globalization? Can Character Survive in an Age of Globalization? Positive economics relies almost exclusively on quantitative analysis filtered through abstract ideas. It strives to be as scientific as possible by limiting its analysis to the description of the economic facts within a system, as well as economic behavior, and by operating on hypotheses and data collection. The discipline believes it can exclude such things as value judgments or moral advice.

It focuses on the way economic systems operate as they exist, rather than in making any sort of recommendation as to how things ought to be. Positive economics does not stretch beyond the facts to talk about the moral character of a system as a whole. Following the model of the natural sciences, positive economics even attempts to describe economic laws such as profit maximization or fluctuations in Gross Domestic Product. The goal of positive economics is to eliminate assumptions in its studies, and thereby allow greater predictability.

By confining itself to facts, which may be proven or disproven quantitatively, it wants to assert economics as a purely scientific field of study and application. By contrast, normative economics inserts value judgments. It blends the positive facts and statistics derived from positive economic studies with policy recommendations. Notions of well-being and common good fuel these recommendations, often geared away from what is taken to be an inherent individualism and selfishness that exists in capitalism.

Different kinds of moral philosophies underpin normative economics, whose practitioners would likely disagree that economics can ever fundamentally operate without some sort of preconceived value. In this view, nothing is neutral or objective. Economic systems are instituted and arranged on the basis of judgments, which may be more or less wise and subject to criticism. Normative economics is more closely connected, therefore, with issues of social justice and political philosophy.

This distinction between positive and normative economics was clearly made in an important article by Milton Friedman (1953), although the idea was first expressed clearly by Keynes. The question of character is a moral question. As such, positive economics tends to veer away from involvement with it. Normative economics, on the other hand, is willing to engage the issue head on.

Whether or not character can survive in an age of globalization is such an immense topic that it can best be approached through examining a particular and significant effort to grapple with the question in the past -- an effort from the side of normative economics. One of its major proponents is E.F. Schumacher. His book Small Is Beautiful (1973) is part of his important critique of positive economics. In it, he gives a view of the retention of character in global capitalism.

This essay will explore some of his key points and use them to make the case that indeed character can survive in globalization if there are the right social structures and attitudes in place that prevent purely economic aims from eroding all ethical values. Schumacher's view is that economics must be informed by wisdom. This is in contrast to a positivist view that sees the end of economics as profit alone with a clear separation of production from consumption.

It also contrasts with the view that capitalism must be expansionist, and therefore involved in forms of harmful globalism. For one thing, he sees much of the economic arrangement of global capitalism as dehumanizing. Driven by the desire to reduce costs, capitalism wants the replacement of human labor with automation. Schumacher sees the consequence of this as fatal for the character of the worker.

Machines are in essence soul-destroying, in his view, and they take away work from people, or at best leave them doing monotonous, mechanical work in whose meaning they are not invested. He writes, "The worker himself is turned into a perversion of a free being" (Schumacher 34). Work is viewed as a necessary evil for a paycheck. Positive economics organizes this system based on cleverness, not wisdom.

It defines cost by excluding free goods like nature, it focuses on the short-term, it expects everyone to operate with the predominant notion of maximizing return on capital employed, and it places real values (like beauty, cleanliness, and morality) into the category of "uneconomic." So not only in the modes of production, but also in its arrangement of expected consumption, global capitalism supports a system where people are free of responsibility for their actions. "In a sense, the market," he writes, "is the institutionalization of individualism and non-responsibility" (Schumacher 42).

Following positive economics, the market expects people to behave "economically," which means that their highest value will be money and wealth. Economic analysis reinforces this by focusing on strictly quantitative measures of happiness or goodness. These are far easier to acquire, but they do not tell the real story. Another of the harmful effects of globalization is its view of nature. From an economic viewpoint, nature has been seen as something to exploit because it is viewed as a part of income rather than as part of capital.

Companies go all around the world seeking natural resources. The wealthy nations consume this energy far in excess of their populations. The problem is that this economics views itself and its resources as unlimited and it relies on technological success. It is developed technology that has enabled and sped up the process. It functions with the view that expansion and growth will eventually lead to wealth for all. In fact, the ethics of greed and envy cultivate this economic trend, even as they destroy happiness and serenity.

Rather than leading to peace and permanence, a greedy expansionism based on the idea that needs should be expanded leads to war, dependency, and existential fear. He writes, "Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war" (Schluman 31).

If natural resources were viewed as capital or as something sacred (because it is qualitatively different than a man-made object), Schulman believes that there would be great efforts at conservation of nature, and particularly of natural resources such as fossil fuels which are a non-renewable. Part of this ideology is that anything not man-made is valueless. As a result, globalism ruins character by depleting the sacred things that are irreplaceable in nature.

This destructive trend, combined with the dehumanizing forms of labor, has detrimental effects on life and will continue to impact future generations negatively. He shows in a number of other ways the negative effects of globalism. Its drive to speed up communication and transportation for the mobility of labor and products leads to less freedom because there is more vulnerability and insecurity, there are more drop outs, and it leads to mass migration to urban centers.

Further, the deconstruction of agriculture -- treating it like an industry to be automated and trimmed down -- has led to the fragmentation of the rural family life, to unhealthy accumulation in the cities, and to a resulting increased poverty. Fortunately, Schulman proposes a number of helpful alternatives to these devastating effects of globalization on moral character. All of his proposals are based on the idea that the essence of meaningful life is striving to reconcile opposites with the whole personality.

He calls this divergent reasoning, saying "they demand, and thus provoke the supply of, forces from a higher level, thus bringing love, beauty, goodness, and truth into our lives" (Schumacher 90). Positive economics, by contrast, deals as a science only with convergent problems in which the solution is an either/or situation. If things are seen divergently, it allows other values than profit to enter the economic picture. It allows the inclusion of the metaphysical and meta-economic concept of the sacred and of the dignity of life.

It does not view everything as a means to an end. As a result, the ideal of industry, which is "to eliminate the living factor. And to turn the productive process over to machines" for the increase of profit, is critiqued (Schulmacher 103). In returning to traditional moral values upheld by the world's religions, peace and prosperity are attainable in his view, along with the attainment of character. All religions critique greed and envy. All advance the preciousness of nature.

Most important, all view work as essential to the character-building process of human being. The way globalization organizes work or unemployment, character is not formed. However, in free and dignified work, not aimed purely at a materialistic view of life or at the multiplication of needs, work becomes a source of character. It is likewise, if arranged rightly, an essential source of human creativity, whereas the positive view of global economics is limited to seeing work merely as the process of production for consumption.

Instead of globalization, it is possible to have a middle way whose aim is "to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption" (Schmacher 54). Schulmacher's whole view would involve a "new orientation of science and technology toward the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful" (Schumacher 31). It involves a new way of thinking and living "based on attention to people, and not primarily attention to goods" (Schumacher 70).

Such a new system would prioritize the local community, would reinvigorate agriculture through the use of intermediate technology, would re-infuse rural life with dignity, and would stop depleting natural resources. He is fond of quoting the Gandhi dictum of "production by the masses, rather than mass production." Rather than pouring aid into developing nations, which has not be shown by positive economics to have any effect on reducing poverty, he believes there should be an emphasis on real education -- teaching people how to become sustainable with new affordable.