Dr. Michael Towsey
Queensland University
and Assoc. Director, Prout Researhc Institute, Australia
December 20092

Continued from Part 2

The Ethics of Cooperation
The essence of the utopian argument (and of its naivety) is that a better society can be created without sustained individual and collective effort. It contrasts starkly with the pessimistic argument currently pervading crisis ridden capitalist societies which asserts that, no matter how humans struggle to create a better society, they will always be brought down by greed and selfishness. Both arguments are dangerous, the former because it does not accord with reality, the latter because it engenders hopelessness. Our vision of a cooperative society must not fall into either trap. Human beings have many potentialities from crude to subtle, from selfish to altruistic. It is of paramount importance to understand the science behind all these potentialities and to encourage the subtle and restrain the crude.

We have seen that a cooperative society must be built on trust and empathy because these are required to sustain cooperative relationships. It is extremely difficult to establish trust and empathy in a culture which actively encourages self-interest and large inequalities of wealth. On the other hand, a cooperative society can be built where there is some rational effort both by individuals to deal with personal selfishness and by society as a whole to promote social equality. To the extent that traditional socialists turn their backs on individual morality and conservatives refuse to acknowledge egalitarian struggle, the more difficult it becomes to establish a cooperative society. In this section, we deal with ethical struggle and in the next, with the egalitarian struggle. Sarkar promotes two complementary ethical systems, cardinal human values and neo-ethics. They are discussed in turn.

Cardinal Human Principles
Sarkar places much importance on a high standard of morality in individual and collective life. Cooperative businesses require not just honest directors and managers but also a state administration that is run by honest public servants and politicians.143 In other words, morality is the sine qua non of a cooperative society. A commonly accepted set of moral principles is required but here we come up against an obstacle. Conservatives are inclined to seek moral guidance from religious scripture and, in the worst case, impose dogmas which repel the rational mind. Traditional socialists, not wishing to submit to religious dogma, tend to reject all moral principles as relative. So what kind of moral code is required to sustain a cooperative society and how can one promote it? Sarkar argues for the concept of cardinal human values, values that go beyond any one culture or religion.

It is interesting to note the emergence of various international courts of law, driven by a gradual recognition that cardinal human values must take priority over local culture and custom. True, only the worst violations, such as crimes against humanity, reach the international courts today and admittedly often for political reasons, but nevertheless the gradual emergence of an internationally accepted set of moral values is of tremendous importance. Acts of violence, deception and theft perpetrated on innocent people cannot be justified in the national interest. By logical extension to individuals, acts of violence,
deception and theft for personal gain are also morally reprehensible. Most cultures around the world accept these as moral principles - indeed it is hard to imagine a sustainable society without them.

Sarkar promotes a set of ten principles that encapsulate cardinal human values.144 The first three are concerned with the avoidance of violence, deceitfulness and theft as described above. To act according to cardinal principles of morality, says Sarkar, is virtue and to act against them is sin. The central idea in virtue is "to serve the collective interest, to accelerate the speed of the collective body..." To retard the speed of the collective body is sin.145 Note that the 'speed of the collective body' to which Sarkar refers is the collective movement from crude to subtle encapsulated in his definition of progress. Virtue and sin, good and bad, are therefore defined by reference to collective social progress and not in terms of prevailing religious ideas. The cardinal human principles have five important characteristics:

1) they are a natural system of morality in the sense that, without them, the natural developmental sequence of expansion and subtlification of mind cannot occur;

2) they are not ends in themselves but the means to individual and collective€ progress;

3) in particular they provide the necessary foundation for spiritual development; 4) their practice builds trust and therefore the quality of cooperation in society; 5) they are egalitarian because they are of benefit to all - their practice, by definition, excludes group or class interest.

Of the ten principles, one is of particular importance because it encapsulates the others: non-objectification.146 Objectification is the use of people (or indeed anything animate and inanimate) as objects for one's own purposes without regard for their well-being. Exploitation is defined in a similar way.147 This principle appears in Neohumanism as the distinction between utility value and existential value. To recognize the existential value of a person is to recognize that their joys and sorrows are as important to them as my joys and sorrows are to me. We may therefore describe non-objectification as the empathic principle. It requires an ability to put oneself into the mind of another - to expand one's consciousness beyond its limited ego boundary.148

Environmentalism infused with the empathic principle becomes deep ecology,149 whose significant feature is to acknowledge the existential value of the natural world in addition to its utility value for humans. Recall also, that social capital is defined in terms of the trust and empathy inherent in social relationships. It is now clear that the building of social capital acquires a moral imperative.150

The practical translation of ethical principles into good social outcomes is performed by a society's legal system.151 The law defines crime and the corresponding punishments. The larger the gap between crime and sin (the latter defined as that which impedes social progress), the more problems a society will face. Put another way, social progress depends on reducing the gap between morality and legality. Of course differences in climate and local circumstances will require minor differences in the application of the law from place to place, but the intention of the law should always be to give expression
to cardinal human principles.

If we try to expand the scope of the few fundamental cardinal human principles and draft the constitution, legal code, administrative and judicial systems in adjustment with the expanded scope of those cardinal principles, that will pave the way for the greater unity of human society. Humanity or Neohumanism will thereby acquire accelerated speed, which is one of the essential factors for the path of proper movement... This should not remain a utopian dream. It should be the first expression of the practical wisdom of humanity.152

Contemporary capitalist society offers many examples of a gap between morality and legality. Consider CEO salaries, concerning which the word 'obscene' appears time and again. It was used to describe the £10.9m payouts received by Scottish Power's former chief executive and colleagues just three months after they warned customers about inflation-busting bill hikes.153 And in Scotland again, Sir Goodwin, former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, had to have police protection after public anger over the announcement that he would receive a £650,000 annual pension entitlement on leaving the bank which collapsed under his stewardship. CEOs defend their astronomical incomes as not breaking any law and as justified by 'market forces'.

There are at least two moral principles relevant to CEO salaries, contentment154 and non-acquisitiveness.155 To maintain contentment, one must struggle against greed. It requires, says Sarkar, "being contented with the earnings of normal labour". How might we give these two moral principles legal expression? Sarkar's proposal is to provide a guaranteed minimum income (GMI), sufficient to cover the basic requirements of life, and then to set the maximum remuneration as a fixed ratio to the GMI. This policy is already part of cooperative ethics and is practised by cooperative businesses around the world. Another gap between morality and legality in contemporary capitalist society concerns the waste of material resources. The relevant cardinal principle is non-acquisitiveness or the avoidance of superfluous consumption. Material goods should be acquired only to the extent required for a fruitful life. Note that this definition implies a legitimacy to consume something beyond basic needs, in contrast to Marx's 'needs slogan' that limits individual consumption to the basic requirements.

The justification for placing a moral constraint on material consumption is that material resources are finite. One person's inconsiderate use of finite resources disturbs the welfare of others and upsets environmental balance. From a social perspective, therefore, this principle offers the moral justification to pursue economic efficiency. As we have mentioned earlier, those who argue for productive efficiency do have a valid moral argument. But that same argument must also extend to efficiency of consumption, the issue which so worries environmentalists. Profligate consumption of fossil fuels (because capitalism considers Nature to be free for the taking) has brought planet earth to a dire situation. The green slogan, reduce, reuse and recycle has a moral imperative.

Neo-ethics
The Cardinal Human Principles define virtuous conduct for individuals. By contrast, Neo-ethics156 is more concerned with the ethics of groups, that is, social groupings whose dentity is defined by race, language, gender, economic class and so on. Neo-ethics is not an alternative to the Cardinal Human Principles - the two are complementary. As the name implies, Neo-ethics is the ethics associated with Neohumanism.

Recall that the purpose of Neohumanism is to expand the circle of those who are included in the cooperative embrace. The existence of a circle, however, implies two groups, those on the inside and those on the outside. Within the circle there is cooperation and outside the circle is the other, those with whom there is not necessarily felt a willingness to cooperate. Groups are inevitable in society and they cannot simply be wished away. The problem to be addressed by Neo-ethics is the pathological tendency for some groups to coalesce around the desire to exercise power over the 'other'.

Sarkar labels this problem imperialism, a term he uses quite generally to refer to the endeavour of any group to wield power over another. The imperialist urge is a psychic ailment "rooted deep in the human psyche".

Goaded by this psychic ailment, a superpower forces its own selfish national interests on other weaker states to establish its suzerainty politically, militarily, etc. An imperialist power wants to dominate and exploit other socio-politico-economic units as an expansion, perpetration and consolidation of its vested interests; a powerful linguistic group suppresses other minority linguistic groups; the so-called upper castes subjugate the so-called lower castes in society; and opportunistic males curtail the rights of women in various ways. In all these cases, the same inherent psychological malady of imperialism prevails.157

Whether expressed as capitalism, nationalism, caste-imperialism, male chauvinism or lingualism, imperialism is anti-human. "It runs counter to the spirit of Neohumanism and the ethics of human life... it thwarts human progress and creates global wars and all sorts of divisive and destructive forces in society". Imperialists "cultivate a psychology based on slavery, inferiority complex, pseudo-culture and psycho-economic exploitation".

Concerning the problem of imperialism, socialists in the 19th century, both utopian and scientific, were quite naive. They appeared to believe that the imposition of material and social equality would somehow obliterate groups and therefore obliterate the group psychology giving rise to imperialism. But the imperialist impulse runs deep. George Orwell, in Animal Farm, identified it as the source of what went wrong with the socialist revolution but still, as we have previously noted, apparently believed in the healing power of egalitarianism.

We have already noted that psychologists recognize a natural sequence of human development which gives rise to increasing intellectual subtlety, empathy and moral perceptivity. This constitutes the starting point for Prout's concept of progress. Unfortunately, for many different reasons, the developmental sequence is sometimes frustrated, in which case the psychologist's job is to remove the impediment and to encourage healthy growth to resume. Sarkar views the imperialist tendency as a psychic ailment, that is, as a failure to develop to full maturity. It arises when a person or group comes under the grip of materialism and therefore fails to maintain a healthy balance between carbonic and non-carbonic pabula.

When people get detached from non-carbonic pabula and become increasingly engrossed in carbonic pabula, there are two ill-effects as a consequence. First, the arena of one's own carbonic pabula will increase and the mind will gradually and steadily drift towards crude matter. Secondly, one's mind will think in terms of devouring other's carbonic pabula. This is the psychological explanation of imperialism. That is, imperialism has its origin in the psyche and functions in the psychic arena.158

Healthy development requires of individuals and groups a continual effort to push the envelope of progress defined as increasing the significance of the subtle in individual and collective life and reducing the significance of the crude.159 Imperialism can be understood as a problem of frustrated or arrested development. Therefore Sarkar defines two principles of Neo-ethics. The first states that spirituality, being that which ultimately drives all progress and all development, "must be accepted as the supreme desideratum in human life". The second principle concerns maintaining balance in life. "There should be happy adjustment and balanced blending between carbonic and non-carbonic pabula."

In Sarkar's view, human existence, both individual and collective, is inherently dynamic - it cannot stand still - so it will necessarily move either in the direction of subtlety (progress) or in the direction of materialism (regress). All scientific and intellectual discoveries represent progress only to the extent that they encourage the flow of life from crude to subtle. The first principle of Neoethics commits human life to progress so defined. The second principle requires that in order to accommodate progress, the structure of human society (including its economic structure) must be continually djusted. If we understand the economy as producing the many kinds of pabula required for human fulfilment, then progress requires a gradual shift in emphasis from producing arbonic pabula to producing more and more subtle non-carbonic pabula. Sarkar describes that part of the economy producing non-carbonic pabula as the psycho-economy. Its role is to find new and creative solutions to economic problems so as to encourage the maximum utilization of psychic and spiritual potentialities.160

We are passing through an era when human aspirations are becoming more and more subtle, but the most powerful of our political and economic institutions are still mired in the dysfunctional materialism of previous centuries. The choice is rather stark - imperialism or cooperation - but there is a choice.

The neurobiology of ethics
Since the acceptance of ethical principles is essential to sustain a cooperative society, it is clear that training in ethical decision making cannot be left to chance. It is encouraging to find that courses on business ethics are now multiplying in universities around the world but something more than reading books on the subject is required. Soldiers cannot learn to fight from books alone and the same applies to those wishing to acquire ethical muscle. The learning of ethics requires exposure to real moral dilemmas because, as recent research has revealed, much more than the logical brain is involved. Brain scans have opened a huge field of research into what parts of the brain are involved during different kinds of activity. In one recent study,161 neuroscientists wanted to discover what parts of the brain were associated with states of mind such as empathy, compassion, altruism, emotional stability, selfunderstanding and pro-social attitudes. They found that pondering a situation calling for altruism or compassion activated a brain region known as the medial prefrontal cortex. However, moral decision-making involved the joint activity of several distinct parts of the brain - the rational cortex (dorso-lateral prefrontal), which plays a role in sustaining attention and working memory, the social-empathic cortex (medial prefrontal), the conflict detection cortex ("sixth sense" anterior cingulated) and the limbic system (a part of the brain usually associated with primitive emotions such as sex, fear and anger). The authors concluded that the neurobiology of wisdom may involve an optimal balance between the more primitive brain regions and the newest ones. For those teaching ethics in MBA courses, the conclusion is clear. If the goal is to help students acquire ethical muscle, then they will need to be put in situations which exercise all these different parts of the brain at the same time. It turns out that all decision making involves the emotional parts of the brain. Even decisions which are not apparently emotionally or morally charged, still engage parts of the brain associated with emotion. Far from being opposites, emotion and rationality are interdependent. Neuro-physiologist, Antonio Damasio162, has shown that people who lose the ability to perceive or experience emotions as a result of a brain injury, also find it hard or impossible to make decisions.

Egalitarianism
Recall the assertion (possibly the most important made in this essay) that a cooperative society can be built where there is some reasonable effort to do so. That effort involves two parts, the first of which was discussed in the previous section, the personal struggle with selfishness. We now turn to the collective struggle to establish a cooperative society, where the focus is on egalitarianism. We have noted the communist attempt to impose material equality and found it to be a disastrous failure. However, we have also reviewed some of the accumulating evidence that more equal societies perform better on virtually all social indicators than less equal societies. Even the rich are happier. People appear to be deeply sensitive, even subconsciously so, to differences in social status and relationships. The greater the differences, the more tension people experience. The increased trust, cooperation and well-being that accompany greater equality are associated with a reduction in social stress.

The Balance of Equality
So the question arises - if 100% equality is both impossible and undesirable, and yet equal societies are happier, what should be the balance of equality? Those on the left and right of politics take different positions on this question because they attach different values to the achievement of equality over other goals such as productive efficiency. We have suggested that there is a legitimate policy debate here because both equality and efficiency have a moral dimension. The moral requirement for productive efficiency places a legitimate constraint on the virtue of income equality. If talent and hard work are not rewarded, both productivity and cooperation suffer.

The Proutist solution has two parts: first, to set the maximum income as a fixed ratio to the minimum income and second, to divide the Gross Domestic Product into two parts, one part to guarantee the minimum requirements of life to all and the other to reward effort and talent. As a community accumulates more wealth, the quantity and quality of the minimum requirements can be increased.

The commitment to egalitarianism is evident in three respects. First is the commitment to provide the minimum requirements of all humans, animals and plants. This corresponds to Marx's dictum - to each according to need. Second is the commitment to increase purchasing capacity by increasing the quality and availability of the minimum requirements.

... increasing the purchasing capacity of each individual is the controlling factor in a Proutist economy. The purchasing capacity of common people in many undeveloped, developing and developed countries has been neglected; hence the economic systems of these countries are breaking down and creating a worldwide crisis.

The first thing that must be done to increase the purchasing capacity of the common people is to maximize the production of essential commodities, not the production of luxury goods. This will restore parity between production and consumption and ensure that the minimum requirements are supplied to all.163

Third is the commitment to reduce income inequality by progressively reducing the gap between the maximum and the minimum income. After the needs of all have been met, Sarkar proposes to reward those who have demonstrated talent and effort. Fairness and the desirability to maintain productivity justify such an approach.

The concept of equal distribution is a utopian idea. It is merely a clever slogan to deceive simple, unwary people. Prout rejects this concept and advocates the maximum utilization and rational distribution of resources. This will provide incentives to increase production.164

Rewarding talent and effort can be interpreted as the meritocratic component of Prout because, quite obviously, those so rewarded will rise in social position. Many socialists oppose the meritocratic concept because, as the word implies, it can lead to the entrenchment of a class that monopolizes access to merit, thereby perpetuating its own power and privilege. Sarkar is clear that the necessity to reward talent should not be at the expense of needs (however they are defined in any particular age) and he also advocates checks and balances on public power. But the positive outcomes are too obvious to ignore: work satisfaction, work place efficiency, the possibility for self-improvement and so on. The productivity increase so achieved creates more wealth which can be used to increase the standard of 'needs'. However the egalitarian versus meritocratic impulses are always likely to be in political conflict - to hope otherwise is to hope for the discredited socialist utopia. Rather than ignore or suppress political tensions, it is sensible to recognize them and provide a forum in which they can be expressed constructively.

Ultimately the degree of egalitarianism in a particular community and the rate at which egalitarian indicators can be increased is a matter of culture and collective social consciousness. These do not change easily, which is why the sudden imposition of equality will always fail if culture cannot sustain it. The egalitarian principle in Neohumanism is referred to as the Principle of Social Equality. It is a social mentality as much as an economic state. And significantly it is defined in terms of needs:

It is the realization that all the creatures which have come to live in this world, do not want to leave it - they all want to survive. Thus we must grant them their right to remain in this world, their right to survive. We must continue to fulfil all their needs so that they will not have to leave this world prematurely. We must make arrangements for the food, clothes, education, shelter and medical treatment of each and every individual, so that all can live in this world as long as possible, and become assets to the earth.165

In the context of Neohumanism, creatures is a reference to humans, animals and plants. Those who wish to create a better society, says Sarkar, will have to "stage a fight against all crude forces, a pauseless struggle against inequality and cowardliness." He then adds curiously that "complete one hundred percent equality is an impossibility", so for those wishing to create a better society, "Where is the opportunity for them to have rest?"166 This is the way of the world - we must struggle for social equality while recognising that complete equality is impossible due to the relentless dynamism of nature.

Coordinated Cooperation
Sarkar makes a distinction between coordinated cooperation and subordinated cooperation.

... for the maintenance of any organism, there must be a close cooperation between each of its component parts. Humanity is not inert, and the relationships between human beings depend on more than mere cooperation. This cooperation instead of being based on a master-servant relationship, must be constructed in a warmly cordial atmosphere of free human beings. It should be a coordinated cooperation and not a
subordinated one.167

Although the distinction is quite general, he uses it most often in relation to the position of women in society:

In the annals of human history we do find women whose memory glorifies not only womanhood, but the entire human world. In philosophy and spirituality, social reform and educational pursuits, science and technology, they stand second to none. Women are found discussing the riddles of philosophy, solving problems of social and educational reform, and are inspiring men in times of struggle. They have their potentiality no less than men. The difference in natural and biological characteristics between men and women speaks only of coordinated cooperation, not of subordinated cooperation.168

The progress of society is impossible when women are in a subjugated or subordinated position. Sarkar cites his own country as an example.

Take the case of India. We are not as developed as we should be. Why? One of the reasons is that we have kept women confined within the walls of their homes, resulting in the progress of only fifty percent of the population - the males. And as only the men are progressing, they will have to carry the load of fifty percent of the population. Thus the speed of progress is reduced. Ideally, women should also move with their own strength and with the same speed as their male counterparts. In the process of movement, if they feel pain in their legs, if they fall on their faces, they should be physically lifted up. But not only women may need assistance: the males may also fall down, and then it will be the duty of women to extend their helping hand to carry the load of their male counterparts. We cannot expect that, in relation to men, the position of women will remain one of subordinated cooperation: it may also be one of coordinated cooperation. The position of males may even be one of subordinated cooperation. Nothing can be said emphatically in this world. The fact is that we must move together in unison with all.169

There are two points to note from this passage. First is the clear hint that, while the preferred future is coordinated cooperation, men could well find themselves in the subordinated position. There are surely enough clues in the changing dynamics of contemporary society to suggest this possibility. According to UK trend forecaster Future Laboratory, "the future of business is feminine". In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, even in the high powered world of global finance, women are now more sought after because they are more inclined to be team players and less inclined to take testosterone-fuelled risks.170

A second observation is that Sarkar never advocates the obliteration of "natural" differences between groups as the solution to antagonisms between them. In order to bring an end to patriarchy, one might advocate three possibilities, matriarchy, coordinated cooperation or androgyny. The first of these is highly possible; the second is preferred but what about the third?

Androgyny could be understood as the attempt to stop gender exploitation by diminishing the physical and psychological differences between men and women. Sarkar never appears to favour this strategy. His approach to class antagonisms, for example, is not to impose material equality (communist states tried this and failed) but to allow class dynamics to unfold progressively while remaining vigilant against the tendency for one class to exploit the others.171

More generally, the dynamics that arise from the interaction of the many different groups in society should be allowed to play out naturally. Differences naturally endowed can be used to help one another. Service psychology underpins Sarkar's approach to coordinated cooperation.

Political leanings
Those who believe that the left-right polarization of traditional politics will find no place to draw energy in a cooperative society presumably believe that policy debates with egalitarian implications, for example, concerning income ratios and minimum requirements, will be resolved by rational argument. However, the evidence suggests that the psychological factors which incline a person to favour a more conservative versus a more egalitarian position on such issues are not going to disappear even in a more cooperative society. Recent research has shown that where persons position themselves on the political spectrum has physiological and genetic correlates. According to a U.S. study published in Science,172 political views are an integral part of ones physiology. Forty-six volunteers were asked about their views on a range of political issues before measuring their physiological responses (interpreted as levels of fear) to a range of non-political stimuli, for example, sudden loud noises and frightening images (including pictures of a man with a large spider on his face and an open wound with maggots). "Those individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism, and gun control, whereas individuals displaying measurably higher physiological reactions to those same stimuli were more likely to favor defence spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War." The researchers concluded that "the degree to which individuals are physiologically responsive to threat appears to indicate the degree to which they advocate policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats."

A number of studies173 suggest that political orientation has a genetic component. A study of 30,000 twins from Virginia, USA, found that identical twins are more likely than non-identical twins to give the same answers to political questions. The explanation appears to lie in other independent studies which show that some personality traits are highly heritable and that political leaning depends on those traits. For example, conscientiousness, openness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism are believed to be basic components of personality and they are known to be highly heritable. The first three are correlated with political persuasion. Republican voters in the USA score more highly on conscientiousness but Democrat voters score more highly on openness and extroversion.

There is much irony here for socialists, for they strongly support policies that stress the importance of nurture and yet their policy preferences (so the evidence suggests) reflect the influence of nature.

From a Darwinian perspective, the health of a species depends on the existence of 'hidden' genetic variability within its populations. A genetically-determined trait may be advantageous in one environment but not in another. The success of any species depends on maintaining diverse genetic resources. We may assume that the diversity of human personalities (and the consequent diversity of political views) serves an important purpose for human society as a whole but it also means that debates about egalitarianism run deep and will be with us for a long time to come.

The Future of Cooperation - Psycho-economics
Contemporary economics is divided into two disciplines: microeconomics and macroeconomics. Sarkar proposes dividing economics into four disciplines: people's economics, general economics, commercial economics and psychoeconomics.

Contemporary economics is primarily devoted to commercial interests. People's economics, by contrast, is concerned with the provision of the minimum requirements of life using local resources, and psycho-economics is concerned with satisfying subtler human aspirations.

People's economy will be the main concern of undeveloped and developing countries, but psycho-economy will gain increasing importance in the future once the problems of subsistence are gradually solved. Psycho-economy will be of major importance in a highly developed and mechanized economy where people may only work a few hours a week and have much spare time.174

Sarkar divides psycho-economy into two branches. The first investigates the psychology, behaviours and institutional arrangements which make people more susceptible to economic exploitation. "The first and foremost duty of psycho-economics is to wage a tireless fight against all degenerating and dehumanizing economic trends in society." The second branch of psychoeconomy hints at the subsequent development of neuro-economics and beyond.

This branch is virtually unknown today, but it will become an extremely important branch of economics in the future. It will ensure equilibrium and equipoise in all levels of the economy. It will find new and creative solutions to economic problems to nurture the maximum utilization of psychic and spiritual potentialities. Psycho-economics will add to the glaring glamour of economics.175

Psycho-economics will surely develop in directions that we cannot yet imagine, but it nevertheless has practical relevance in today's world. In developed economies (by definition, those which can provide the minimum requirements of life to all), its most obvious expression will be cultivation of the fine arts176 - not just to provide entertainment but to engage the individual and collective minds with more subtle feelings and thoughts. If building a cooperative society requires a constant struggle against individual selfishness and narrow social dogmas, then the fine arts provide us with the inspiration to make that struggle because they can take one beyond limited ego and personal concerns. The fine arts have the potential to engender feelings of love, awe and respect for all the different peoples and living things in this world. They overcome barriers and build bridges of affection.

The entire aesthetics is the only charming entity in human life. Had there been no aesthetics, human life would have been just like a desert. A slight touch of aesthetics in this anxiety-ridden life of human beings is just like an oasis in a desert. Art, architecture, literature, music, - everything had its origin, had its starting point - where? Just at the common point of aesthetics and mystics.177

Earlier it was noted that the struggle to create an egalitarian society can succeed only as fast as culture and collective social consciousness are prepared to accommodate it. We now go a step further and argue that education and the fine arts provide the keys to changing culture and in combination they are the most powerful force for social improvement. As an example we can turn to the success of El Sistema, Venezuela's 32-year-old program of social action through music. This program has been so successful that it is now being emulated around the world. It is estimated that a million Venezuelan children have participated in El Sistema and currently one quarter million Venezuelan teenagers and children, most from impoverished backgrounds, are being filled with an "affluence of the spirit"178 through the intensive study of music and participation in orchestras, choirs and ensembles. The goal of the program is to help disadvantaged children become fully participating members of society. The rationale is that the many skills required to play in an orchestra or sing in a choir can be translated to the wider social setting.

When you work in the kind of ensemble musical activity that El Sistema fosters, you are essentially developing into a social being, a cooperative being, a non-violent being, someone who has the empathy to want to reach out and help others...179

Jose Antonio Abreu, founder of El Sistema, was asked why he made the unlikely choice of music for disadvantaged children rather than the more obvious choice of sports, especially soccer. Abreu acknowledged that sport has the virtue of being invigorating, motivating and promoting physical health. But disadvantaged youths have had the message drummed into them throughout their lives, 'You are a loser'. The problem with competitive sports is that 50 percent or more of them will continue to get the message reinforced, 'you are a loser'.

This is one problem that we do not encounter with playing in a symphony orchestra because a symphony orchestra is a rare and unique organization, whose only purpose and only reason for being is to be in agreement with itself. We are a community and we all win simply by participating in it.180

A note of caution is probably in order here. The fine arts are essential for human wellbeing but they do not promise utopia. Hitler and Stalin attempted to co-opt artists and musicians in the service of their tyranny. Those who did not succumb were killed or sent to prison camps. The American music critic, Alex Ross, has described "the awful warping effect that happened, in classical music in particular" as a result of the engagement of Nazi Germany with the fine arts. "You can see the danger of artists becoming too involved with politics and being too impressed with politicians who take an interest in art."181 The message is clear. Politicians must not be allowed to use the arts for their own ends and yet it is their duty to create a social and economic environment in which the arts can flourish. The vindication of this approach can be seen in the El Sistema project.

I would love to be able to say that the problems of gang violence and poverty [in Venezuela] have gone away completely but what I can say [about Abreu's system] is that over the years, with a million children having gone through this system, those who have experienced it are among the most brilliant, poised, self-assured, curious, engaged young leaders of the future that I have ever met. I think that is about as good a sign of a system that works and frees people from the shackles that they were... born into and might have been fettered with for the rest of their lives, as any could possibly be.182

Conclusion
A healthy human society can only be founded on a social theory that recognises humans as multidimensional beings, that is, as having metaphysical and spiritual aspirations in addition to their physical aspirations. Given the history of utopian visions gone wrong, it is important to guard against naivety - a cooperative society will not be established without struggle and without a commitment to cardinal human values and Neo-ethics. Human beings are both selfish and cooperative - our struggle is to encourage the latter in as many ways as possible and to control the former in as many ways as possible. Cooperation must not be allowed to become another dogma. Coordinated cooperation will require a good scientific understanding of the physiological, psychological and environmental factors which encourage cooperation and those which do not. The research to date offers good grounds for optimism. Human beings have a strong genetic and physiological foundation on which to build a better society and there is every reason to suppose that a cooperative society can be built given any reasonable effort in that direction.

We conclude with Sarkar's definition of society because it encapsulates many of the ideas developed in this article.

The concerted effort to bridge the gap between the first expression of morality and establishment in universal humanism is called "social progress". And the collective body of those who are engaged in the concerted effort to conquer this gap, I call "society".183

The phrase "first expression of morality" clearly implies the emergence of a natural system of morality, certainly not one that was imposed from the outside. We might speculate that this occurred sometime in the Neolithic (Stone Age) when there is clear evidence for aesthetic expression and burial of the dead with artefacts. Aesthetics and ethics are closely linked in the Eastern understanding of developmental psychology.

The term universal humanism is clearly an anticipation of Neohumanism (the above definition dates to 1957). A society established in Neohumanism would accept Neo-ethics as its moral compass and would have achieved a degree of egalitarianism such that remaining class and group differences did not provoke social antagonisms. We cannot reasonably expect such a society to be achieved anytime in the near future, but without the vision, the goal will never be attained.

Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge Jake Karlyle, Firdaus Ghista and Dada Maheshvarananda for helpful feedback during early drafts of this article.

Bibliography and endnotes
Davies, Geoff (2004) Economia: New economic systems to empower people and support the living world. ABC Books, first edition, ISBN 0 7333 1298 5.
Russell, Bertrand (1961) History of Western Philosophy, Unwin University Books, new edition.
Sarkar, P. R. (2006) The Electronic Edition of the Works of P.R. Sarkar. Ananda Marga Publications, Version 7.0.
Sarkar, P. R. (1992) Proutist Economics - Discourses on Economic Liberation, Ananda Marga Publications. ISBN 81-7252-002-6
Stretton, Hugh. (1999) Economics - A New Introduction. Pluto Press: London.

1 Dada Maheshvarananda. After Capitalism - Prout's Vision for a New World, Proutist Universal Publications, ISBN: 1-877762-06-7, 1st edition 2003.
2 Sarkar, P.R. Human Society Part 2, Chapter: Shúdra Revolution and Sadvipra Society, 1st edition 1967. Electronic Edition version 7, 2006
3 Towsey, Michael. The Three Tier Enterprise System, Understanding Prout, volume 1, 2009.
4 Bihari, Pranav What factors led to the emergence and early growth of the British co-operative movement in the 19th century? Unpublished master's thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom, 2009. http://pranavbihari.wordpress.com/
5 Engels, Fredrick. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume 3, p. 95 -151, Progress Publishers, 1970. First published 1880. Download Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/index.htm.
6 Russell, p747.
7 The International Co-operative Alliance. ICA Membership Statistics. 2007, retrieved August 5, 2008 from http://www.ica.coop/members/member-stats.html. The ICA defines cooperatives as "collectively owned and democratically controlled economic enterprises".
8 Many of Australia's most successful cooperatives in the agricultural sector have fallen prey to capitalists seeking to privatise capital that was accumulated cooperatively. The push to demutualise cooperatives has succeeded for at least two reasons: (1) large cooperatives were finding it difficult to obtain finance from private financial institutions to expand their operations and (2) the coop shareholder/owners, many of them farmers, had forgotten why the cooperatives had been formed in the first place and the advantages of them.
9 Savings and Loans societies were the equivalent in the USA, introduced as part of the New Deal.
10 The word communism can be used in two senses. As used by Marxist socialists, it refers to the ideal classless society expected to be formed after the overthrow of capitalism and an intermediate period of socialism. Its second more common use refers to those states, such as the USSR and China, which attempted to implement the Marxist social agenda. This essay uses the term in the second sense. We use the phrase classless society to refer to the more formal notion of a communist society.
11 The difference between a social enterprise and a cooperative is partly one of definition. Yet the difference may be important. A cooperative has a distinct legal structure that defines the shared ownership of assets and a more democratic management structure. Social enterprises, on the other hand, according to the Wikipedia entry under that heading, are "social mission driven organizations which trade in goods or services for a social purpose... It could be that the profit (or surplus) from the business is used to support social aims (whether or not related to the activity of the business, as in a charity shop), or that the business itself accomplishes the social aim through its operation, for instance by employing disadvantaged people (social firms) or lending to businesses that have difficulty in securing investment from mainstream lenders." What is missing from this definition is an explicit statement concerning the ownership of capital and a return of the surplus to the workers
12 Pearce, John. Social Enterprise in Anytown. Pub Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2003.
13 The English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) argued in a famous treatise, Leviathan, that all 'men' are equal in nature, but by nature they desire their own liberty and to acquire dominion over others. From these impulses arises a war of all against all, which makes life "nasty, brutish and short". Unlike bees and ants, human beings cannot cooperate because their nature is to compete. Strong centralized government alone can prevent the brutishness of life from overwhelming society.
14 Cole, George D. H. A Century of Cooperation, published by George Allen & Unwin Ltd. for The Co-operative Union Ltd. First published 1944. Downloadable from:
http://www.archive.org/stream/centuryofcoopera035522mbp/centuryofcoopera035522mbp_djvu.txt. Cole is a noted historian of the cooperative and socialist movements in Britain from the 18th century through to the early 20th century. See also Cole, A History of Socialist Thought, 7 Volumes. The Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._D._H._Cole offers a complete list of Cole's works.
15 The opening paragraph of A Century of Cooperation [Cole, ibid] offers a deeply-felt
introduction to the times: "The decade in which the Pioneers of Rochdale founded their Cooperative Store is known to historians as 'The Hungry Forties'. It deserves the name, not only on account of the devastating famines which swept Ireland when the potato harvests failed, but hardly less for the sufferings experienced by the working classes in Great Britain. The great enlargement of the powers of production which followed upon the new inventions in the textile industries and on the application of steam-power to manufacture and transport ought, had it been rightly used, to have added largely to the wealth and prosperity of the entire people: in fact, it inflicted upon them monstrous hardships which still arouse bitter indignation when one looks back upon them from the vantage point of today. One sees a hard generation of employers grinding the faces of the poor, and even making a merit of so doing, with the support of the orthodox economics of the day and of an other-worldly religion which taught that the 'deserving poor' would be richly compensated for their sufferings in this world by their blessings in the next."
16 The first consumer cooperative may have been founded on March 14, 1761, in a cottage in Fenwick, East Ayrshire, when local weavers manhandled a sack of oatmeal into John Walker's front room and began selling the contents at a discount, forming the Fenwick Weavers' Society. George Cole (ibid) claims that the originators of the cooperative business were "workmen employed by the Government in the dockyards of Woolwich and Chatham, who, as early as 1760, had founded corn mills on a Cooperative basis as a move against the high prices charged by the corn-millers who held the local monopoly. These early Societies speedily found themselves in conflict with the private bakers as well as with the millers; and when, in 1760, the Woolwich Mill was burnt down, the local bakers were accused of arson, a charge which they rebutted in a statement sworn before the Mayor. To this burning we owe our knowledge of this early Cooperative mill, and also of the mill at Chatham..."
17 For example, Lockhurst Lane Industrial Co-operative Society (founded in 1832 and now Heart of England Co-operative Society), and Galashiels and Hawick Co-operative Societies (1839 or earlier, now Lothian, Borders & Angus Co-operative Society).
18 Cole, George. The British Co-operative Movement in a Socialist Society, pub. Allen and Unwin, London, 1951.
19 Bihari, Op. Cit.
20 The Benthamites were an extremely influential group of British philosophers, jurists and social reformers in the first half of the 19th century. They were named after Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832) and also included James Mill, John Stuart Mill and (for a time) Robert Owen. The Benthamites are best remembered for their advocacy of utilitarianism as a social ethic because they believed it to promote individual and economic freedom. To this end they also advocated free trade. Their social agenda included animal rights, the separation of church and state, equal rights for women, the abolition of slavery and the death penalty, the right to divorce and the decriminalization of homosexual acts.
21 Owen never embraced Marxist communism. Rather it seems Engels is attempting to co-opt those parts of Owen's program that he finds amenable to his own.
22 Engels, Fredrick. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Marx/Engels Selected Works, Volume 3, p. 95 -151, Progress Publishers, 1970, Download Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/index.htm
23 Henri de Saint-Simon (1760 - 1825): a French utopian philosopher and founder of French socialism. Like all the utopian socialists, he was opposed to class revolt and instead attempted to implement his ideals by moral appeal to those in power.
24 The four principles presented here are modified from Roger Scruton, A Dictionary of
Political Thought Pub. Pan, 1982.
25 Owen, Robert, A New View of Society, 1813, p9.
26 Owen, ibid, p12, emphasis in original
27 James was father of the more famous John Stuart Mill, who helped to develop the ethical and theoretical foundations of neoclassical economics.
28 As quoted by Russell, p747.
29 Ibid.
30 New Harmony survives today as a town in Indiana. See
, link valid 12 December 2009.
31 See the Wikipedia entry on Robert Owen under the heading Community Experiment in
America (1825)
32 Warren, Josiah. Periodical Letter II, 1856, as quoted in the Wikipedia entry, ibid.
33 Contemporary neoliberalism can be understood as the 20th century manifestation of laissezfaire capitalism.
34 Stretton, p101
35 Gunnell, Barbara. A bend in the river, Griffith Review 25, September 2009. Also an
interview with B. Gunnell by Geraldine Doogue on ABC Radio National, Saturday Extra, 22 Aug 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/saturdayextra/stories/2009/2662879.htm
36 Just as today, most 19th century academic economists were out of touch with the realities of poverty. They published essays on the six kinds of poverty, four of which were culpable because they were the outcome of a failure of will. To help the poor was morally wrong. To give shoes to a poor person, for example, would weaken their will to purchase their own pair of shoes. See Gunnell, ibid.
37 It is worth remembering that bankruptcies do not diminish the ardour of capitalists for
private enterprise.
38 Marx, Karl and Engels, Communist Manifesto, Source: Marx/Engels Selected Works,
Volume One, Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR, 1969, pp. 98-137; first published 1848. Translated: Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888. Download Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/index.htm
39 Engels, Op. Cit
40 Cole, A Century of Cooperation, chapter 10, Op. Cit.
41 Ibid
42 Cole, A Century of Cooperation, chapter 11, Op. Cit.
43 In Critique of the Gotha Program, (Section 3) Marx makes it clear that the cooperative mode of production had no worth in itself and was of interest only to the extent that it represented the struggle of workers "to revolutionize the present conditions of production". Here is the entire passage: "That the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to revolutionize the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid. But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not protégés either of the governments or of the bourgeois."
44 George Cole [Op. Cit.], possibly the best historian of 19th century cooperation and socialism, was himself a member of the Fabian society for a short period.
45 Harold Lydall (1984) Yugoslav Socialism: Theory and Practice, pub Oxford: Clarendon
Press. See also a review of this book by André Sapir in The Economic Journal, September 1985, pp820, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2233060?seq=2, link valid 23 December 2009.
46 As quoted by Sapir, ibid.
47 Russell, Op. Cit., p696.
48 The following exposition on Nietzsche is due entirely to Bertrand Russell, (1961) Op. Cit.,Chapter XXV.
49 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, as quoted by Russell, Op, Cit. p731. The italics are in Nietzsche's original text.
50 Russell, Op. Cit., p736.
51 Actually Russell refers to the "absence of sympathy" which he defines as "being made
unhappy by the suffering of others". Empathy is a broader concept than sympathy (see for example, the distinction at http://www.toddlertime.com/mh/terms/empathy.htm). I have
chosen to use the word empathy (the word Russell might have used if writing today) in
order to be consistent with what is to come.
52 Ernest Partridge. Evil as the Absence of Empathy, Atlantic Free Press, 14 August 2008,
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/4519-evil-as-the-absence-of-empathy.html
53 At this point it is helpful to clarify the differences in nuance between morality and ethics. Here are the Oxford American Dictionary definitions. Morality: "principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior" and "a particular system of values and principles of conduct, esp. one held by a specified person or society" e.g. bourgeois morality. Ethics: "moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior" and "the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles". Clearly these definitions overlap. Over the 200 years which this essay spans, usage of these words has changed somewhat. Today, use depends on context. Morality is used in a normative context and ethics in a professional or philosophical context. In this essay, the words tend to be used interchangeably, depending on context and the word used by the author under consideration.
54 Blackledge, Paul. Marxism and ethics, International Socialism - A Quarterly Journal of
Socialist Theory, Issue: 120, Pub. International Socialism, London, 2008. Web:
www.isj.org.uk. Blackledge is citing Terry Eagleton.
55 Blackledge, ibid.
56 Blackledge, ibid.
57 Blackledge, ibid.
58 For a brief description of the classless society see the Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classless_society
59 Engels, Op. Cit
60 Ibid
61 This famous slogan appears in Part I of Critique of the Gotha Program by Karl Marx (1875). However Marx did not invent it. It was common to the socialists of the 19th century and can be traced to the utopian socialist Henri de Saint Simon. See http://en.wikipedia.org/ under the heading "From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need".
62 It should be remembered that the principles of genetic inheritance were only gradually
elucidated in the second half of 19th century and first half of 20th century, and of course
their basis in DNA did not come till the 1950s.
63 Lysenko came to prominence in the 1930's during the crisis brought about by forced
collectivisation of Soviet agriculture. He denounced the geneticists of his day as "fly-lovers and people haters" - fly-lovers because, at the time, the principles of genetics were being elucidated by breeding experiments with fruit flies, a research preoccupation which appeared to have little relevance to the plight of Soviet agriculture. In 1948, genetics was denounced as a bourgeois pseudoscience and prominent geneticists were executed or sent to labour camps. A ban on genetics research was not lifted until the mid 1960's by which time immense damage had been done. Lysenkoism also spread to other communist countries and was not eradicated from China until long after it was denounced in the Soviet Union.
64 See for example the Wikipedia entry on Lysenko. But note also the caution expressed
concerning the extent to which Lysenko's rise can be attributed to ideological as opposed to political reasons.
65 James Wood in an interview on the ABC, Radio National, The Book Show, 11-05-2009, 10am,
concerning his essay A Fine Rage, published in The New Yorker, April 13, 2009, p. 54,

66 Muravchik, Joshua. Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, Encounter Books, ISBN 1-893554-45-7, 2002.
67 Russell, Op. Cit., p508.
68 Sarkar, P.R. The Liberation of Intellect. Ananda Marga Publications, 1982.
69 Stretton, p36.
70 The author believes it was John Kenneth Galbraith who observed that conservatism
represents the age old endeavour to find the moral high ground for selfishness!
71 Sarkar, P.R. Suppression, Repression and Oppression, published Ananda Marga
Publications, Calcutta, 1989.
72 See the Wikipedia entry on the Fabian Society, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society, for a picture of its logo. The emblem is inspired by Aesop's fable, The Tortoise and the Hare. Oblique references to 19th century debates are common in Sarkar's writing on Prout and recognition of them helps understanding.
73 Sarkar, P.R. Human Society Part 2, Last chapter: Shúdra Revolution and Sadvipra Society, 1st edition 1967, Electronic Edition version 7, 2006
74 ibid
75 ibid
76 Sarkar, P.R. Art and Science. Published in Ánanda Vacanámrtam XIV, 11 (1st Edition), originally published in "A Few Problems Solved Part 4", 1979.
77 Sarkar, 1989, Op. Cit.
78 Sarkar, P.R. The Excellence of God-Centred Philosophy, 15 January 1990, Calcutta.
Published in: Prout in a Nutshell Part 18 [a compilation]
79 At the time of writing in July 2009, the Global Financial Crisis is still unfolding and its
impact on the future of capitalism is not yet fully understood.
80 Fox, Justin. Blame Them: Who got the U.S. into this financial mess? Time Magazine, 12th January 2009, p31.
81 Ibid, pp39.
82 Richardson, Susan. Why do Women make Hopeless Economists? (Or fail to succeed playing man-made economics by men's rules. Economic Papers, vol 17, 1st March, 1998. As quoted in Stretton, p236.
83 Richardson, ibid.
84 Richardson, ibid.
85 Hazeldine, Tim. Taking New Zealand Seriously - the economics of decency. Auckland:
Harper Collins Publishers, 1998, Chapter 8.
86 As reported in the Brisbane evening paper, mX, 3rd April, 2009, under the heading Coke must correct false health claims.
87 See the Wikipedia entry on Placebo for further information
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo). According to another study, the response to a
placebo increased from 44% to 62% when the doctor gave them with "warmth, attention,
and confidence".
88 Pine, Karen (2009) http://www.timesoftheinternet.com/60522.html. A study done at
Hertfordshire University, England.
89 Powell, Kendall. Economy of the Mind, PLoS Biology, 2003, v1(3) p312.
90 Sarkar, P. R. Idea and Ideology. Ananda Marga Publications, 1959, p133
91 Hazeldine, 1998, Op. Cit.
92 Jesson, Bruce. Only Their Purpose is Mad - The money men take over New Zealand, The Dunmore Press, ISBN 0 86469 343 5, 1999.
93 Jesson 1999, Ibid.
94 The author has read various versions of this famous remark. Davies (2004, Op Cit) cites B. Toohey, Tumbling Dice, pub. William Heinemann Australian, Melbourne, 1994, p52.
95 Russell, Op. Cit., p 745. Ethical systems that determine the virtue of an action by its
consequences are known as consequentialist. Utilitarianism is just one example of
consequentialism. Consequentialism is to be contrasted with systems of ethics that find virtue in duty, or intention or the law of God.
96 Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Accessible through chapter headings at http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-index.htm
97 Davies, 2004, p47.
98 Chomsky, Noam. Notes of NAFTA: "The Masters of Man", 1993.
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199303--.htm
99 Altman, Daniel, Managing Globalization. In: Q & A with Joseph E. Stiglitz, Columbia
University and The International Herald Tribune, October 11, 2006.
http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/?p=177. The quoted passage is part of an answer to the following question: Q. What I find difficult to imagine is why a "superior
authority," such as the government or an international organization, would be able to
regulate/decide what is the best trading strategy for any given country/region/community.
Why shouldn't we let the free market forces determine what is the best for the world? What is your opinion on the issue on free worldwide market forces vs. regulation?
100 The author became aware of this research as a result of a letter from Murray Cree to
Geraldine Doogue, the presenter of Saturday Extra, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Saturday 04 April 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/saturdayextra/default.htm. The figures cited are those supplied in Cree's letter. Cree states that the research was published in the Certified Practicing Accountants Journal 1993. It is also cited in Murray Cree and Geoffrey Baring, (1991) Desperately Seeking Ethics. Australian Accountant (July):25-26.
101 Billen, Andrew. Goodbye to glib gurus and their gobbledygook. The Times Online, 9 March 2009
102 Daniel Gross. Why Harvard Is Bad for Wall Street - Obscure Economic Indicators:
Harvard Business School graduates on Wall Street. SLATE: Posted Fri, 19 Nov 2004
103 Leslie Wayne. A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality, The New York Times,
Times Reader 2.0, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html
104 Ibid.
105 The invisibility of power in the contemporary teaching of university economics would
appear to be an example of what the Portuguese philosopher and co-founder of the World Social Forum, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, calls abyssal thinking. Abyssal thinking creates systems of visible distinctions in order to render other more fundamental distinctions invisible. In the case of mainstream western economics, the visible distinction is the tension between distributive rationality and distributive justice and the invisible distinction is between the economically powerful and those colonised. According to de Sousa Santos, "the struggle for global social justice must be a struggle for global cognitive justice as well. In order to succeed, this struggle requires a new kind of thinking, a post-abyssal thinking." See Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2007) Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledges. http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-29-santos-en.html
106 This is a reference to a statement of Margaret Thatcher (cited by Davies, 2004, p38) that monetarism (the monetary policy of neoliberalism) is not just a theory but is as "essential as the law of gravity".
107 Davies, Op. Cit., Is neoclassical theory scientific? Part 6, p62
108 This is the title of an editorial in The Australian, Thursday, 2nd April 2009, p. 13. For the benefit of non-Australian readers, The Australian is a leading conservative daily newspaper in Australia.