Harmonious economics will resort to both differentiation and cooperation of labour, and complete both individual and social functions of production to integrate both the strong and the weak into society. Money will become obedient servant of humans, instead of capricious master that it is now. Taxes will no more function as a mechanism for income alienation, but as a tool for income increase.
Such economics will benefit entrepreneurs as much as wage workers. The rules of conduct will encourage the exchange of labour products, as well as fairness and harmony of human relationships, and will not destroy them any more. All types of property will exist and prove useful through fair competition. This means that none of the useful factors will be abandoned but all of them will be combined harmoniously. Such organisation will be very natural, as in Nature all things rationally coexist.
If the purpose of economics is well-being of the few at any expense, then capitalism is the best model to apply. If it is needed to reinforce the state at any expense, then the socialist model is the best choice. But if the country seeks prosperity of the entire nation and of every single individual in it, then neither of the model is sufficient. Such a purpose requires a fundamentally different type of economic ideology. And it is obvious that different economic doctrine cannot be created following the same standards or share common rules or ideology.
1.2.2. Fundamental purpose of harmonious economics
From now on we shall hold that the mission of economics is encouraging harmonious integration of humans in the Natural ecosystem, abiding by its laws, increasing the productivity of human labour and assuring smooth development of society. In this event, the model to emulate is not the economic organisation of the US, of Japan or any other state, as we have been trying to do, but the natural order of things. Obviously, none of the countries mentioned is ideal. It is better to use nature as the perfect standard rather than resort to any surrogate models. This does not mean that the experience of others should not be taken into account; however, it should be applied selectively, as part of the coordinated system of natural patterns.
How can the purpose of economics be formulated so as to reflect this principle?
When studying the harmonious laws of economic organisation, we shall from now on consider that the purpose of economy as any other productive activity is satisfying the needs of individuals and of the entire human community. Indeed, “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production…” (Adam Smith
[31]
Consumption – to repeat the obvious – is the sole end and object of all economic activity[33]
So, it is not the generation of profit, income or money at any expense, as it might be concluded from the present-day economic theories, but working out the ways to assure best life of the individuals. Without any doubt, this assumption does not exclude the existence of income, however, it is not dominant, and is not achieved at the cost of others. The source of income is in increasing the productivity of common labour, not in the redistribution of its results.
Here, besides the everyday needs, prospective future needs also should be taken into account, not for one current generation, but for the subsequent generations, as well. Achieving this is the main mission of economics. All other purposes should be subordinated to this one, as otherwise they are pointless. Economics is meant to serve all people, not only some of them.
Thus, economics does not function for the sake of production process, for generation of structures, values, profit, or money, for serving ideology or idols, but for satisfying the needs of people. This includes all people: rich and poor; white, yellow and black; young and old; clever and stupid; strong and weak; healthy and ill. If God has created them all, it is because they are all needed, and it is not human business to rectify God’s plans. Economics should work for people, and people should not serve economics. Therefore, it is doubtless that the sole criterion of economics perfection is the completion of its function.
Despite this idea being evident, history has known many variations in the way economic policies of countries have been interpreted. For instance, socialist system presented the purpose of economics as reinforcement of the state and construction of the material and technical basis of communism: “Our goal is communism!” was the most popular motto in the USSR. Nevertheless, a significant part of communist construction projects did not return the expenses; excessive emphasis on social needs led to underestimation of private needs of individuals, and excessive centralisation caused communism to degrade. All these factors eventually conditioned the insufficient productivity of socialist economics.
The main purpose of capitalist economics is generation of profit and increase of income, whatever the consequences for Nature and the society. At the same time “workers themselves appear as that which they are in capitalist production – mere means of production, not an end in themselves and not the aim of production’40 (K. Marx
[34]
Indeed, economics is being used mostly for making money, and not for providing people with means of existence. Today economics is dominated by business – a legal way of generating personal profit – and not by entrepreneurship, which allows achieving personal well-being by means of useful activities, not at the expense of others.
If focus is made on profit and income at any expense, notwithstanding the actual economic structure, money and money alone gets to the rudder of economics. This gives privilege to materialized labour over human labour. Consequently, the prestige and the cost of wage labour drops, and the population is exploited by the ruling elite. As the result, social inequality emerges, the crime rate soars, and the society suffers respective losses. This is why states with such structure inevitably turn out to be unproductive.
In authoritarian communities, the purpose of functioning of the government institutes is glorifying the leaders’ personalities. Suffice it to remember the famous saying of the French King Louis XIV, “I am the state’. Countries that live by nationalist ideology prioritize the prosperity of certain peoples at the expense of the other. States with a huge social gap see the poorest social strata die out, only to have them substituted with those recently deemed relatively well-off. At the same time, the said deviations from the above-mentioned ideas do not benefit anybody, but contribute to the overall degradation.
Summing up, it may be declared that none of the evident purposes of modern economic systems conforms with the principles of harmony either in ideology or in practice. Besides, substitution of the true purpose with preliminary results is indeed dangerously misleading.
Economic ideology is supposed to encourage fair labour over dishonesty. Only then will the moral and ethical environment undergo significant changes to let order and usefulness govern the society, replacing chaos and money-grabbing at its rudder. Economics should stimulate people to improve the productive and moral principles of the society, instead of taking advantage of social ills for selfish purposes.
1.2.3. Human needs, commodities and production means
I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.
Corinthians 3:2
The definition of the main purpose of economic activities provided above is, in fact, incomplete, for it does not specify what human needs are, nor gives a list of them, nor explains the conditions of their existence and satisfaction.
Needs shall be understood from here on as an inner state of psychological or functional feeling of insufficiency of certain factors becoming evident depending on the situation. These are typical both of individuals, and communities, social groups or even the society in general. Needs act as inner incentives for human activity.
Indeed, needs are the main driving force for a human being. Depending on their nature, needs can be divided into vital, spiritual and, social needs. The first category is related to the body’s need for food, dress, dwelling place, motion, rest, health, etc.
The spiritual human needs include the aspiration for personal freedom, for knowledge, for satisfaction of intellectual requirements, aesthetic tastes and harmony, for beauty, culture, morality, and for kindness and empathy. Among spiritual needs we find love and hatred, passion, and level of satisfaction. An important role in every man’s life is played by procreation, communication with other people, friendship and competitiveness. Moreover, factors of psychological comfort are classified among spiritual needs of human beings: self-confidence, prestige, self-realisation, self-respect, authority, etc.
Among social human needs there are security, equality, personal safety and the safety of one’s children, and confidence regarding one’s future. We all want to live surrounded by healthy, happy, kind-hearted, beautiful, and confident people. Besides, we demand from others a high level of mass culture and morality. There also exist specific social needs, such as need for labour, for mental and physical activity, for creativity and creation of new values.
These series are, undoubtedly, conditional and do not cover the entire range of human needs, nor delineate exact borders between different needs.
The needs depend on individual features of people, their living conditions, their gender and age, culture and education, their health, experience, traditions, religion, and national preferences. Besides, the needs are not immutable. With time, they develop, change, and evolve. They are influenced by the social environment of a person, by weather and nature, by the season and the place of residence, by the level of production development, and by the level of personal satisfaction. Moreover, the more one has, the more one needs.
Every individual, as a member of the human species, has certain needs similar to those of other people, human communities, or the society in general. For instance, all reasonable people wish to live in a clean and orderly place, in a country with a low crime rate, with a fair and experienced government, with a strong state structure, with a sound legislation and public order. At the same time, it would be hard to find two people with identical needs.
In fact, the individual perception of each need by different people varies; what some consider the sense of life, other discard as insignificant. Take music away from a melomaniac, there is nothing you could substitute it with. “The stifling of the individual may well be the stifling of the god in man’ (Sri Aurobindo,
[16]
On the other hand, human needs cannot be studied just as a random set of factors. In fact, they constitute a harmonious complex that reflects the person. Besides, some needs only exist together with other. For instance, the desire for luxury cannot emerge unless the hunger is satisfied. A trendy hat demands a fashionable dress to be worn with. Nevertheless, the level of correlation and interchangeability of various needs is different and does not impact their importance. The failure to satisfy some needs for a long time might disrupt the inner harmony of a person, and even disfigure them.
However, not all needs may be easily welcomed. For example, thirst for power and selfish ambitions of certain individuals often mean loss of freedom and poverty of others. From the social point of view, only the needs that can be satisfied without violating moral and ethical norms, trampling the rights of other people, of the society, or descendants, are worthy of respect. And it is such needs that we are going to address in this monograph. Other needs should be managed with the help of educational or psychiatric institutions, or law enforcement agencies. Furthermore, the impossibility of their satisfaction should be enshrined in the basic principles of economics and state organisation.
It should be mentioned that when the interests of an individual, a community, and the society match each other and combine harmoniously, this condition is observed without failure. And the fuller the implementation of this principle, the higher the level of society civilisation, and the more grounds to class it as a human society.
On the other hand, human needs are not abstract, they are made evident through certain conditions, things, and services that a human being requires. Therefore, everything that satisfies human needs, everything required for a decent living, that supports and restores human health, increases life tonus, encourages and assures procreation, etc. is classified in the group of commodities. Among these we find food and water; clothes and housing; medical assistance and sport facilities; spiritual wealth and clean nature. Besides, this group includes the goods and services that are provided to people by service sector actors, as well as by spheres that satisfy social needs (such as governance, science, education, healthcare, and defence).
Human labour is also classified among commodities, because, on the one hand, it satisfies human needs related to self-realisation; on the other hand, it is the driving force of production. Though, in fact, all other commodities can be described in this way, too. That is why the more they satisfy human needs, the more productive human labour is. Many things can be obtained by humans directly from nature without additional effort, the rest are produced by the people themselves. In the remaining part of this monograph this latter category will mostly be considered.
As a rule, needs exceed the total amount of commodities available, which stimulates people to act and develop, becoming an instrument capable of managing them. There exists an optimal correlation between the needs and the number of commodities to satisfy them. If the correlation exceeds the optimal value, that is, almost all needs are satisfied, this decreases the desire to work, and slows down development. However, if this correlation is below the optimal, then the needs become extinct, and the individuals live through degradation. Countries with huge property inequalities witness both these tendencies, which can lead to catastrophic results.
At the same time, if within a state there exists a tendency to satisfy one’s needs not through labour and productive talent, that is, by way of contributing to the productive efforts of the society, but through appropriation of goods generated by others, this inevitably entails destruction of both the production and the moral systems. Whether it comes from the top or from the bottom, such destruction contributes to the degradation of the state and the society. This has already been the case numerous times and history; similar situation can be witnessed across the world today.