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