Valuism: Reinventing the global economy

By María Lladró

Valuism is a critical and creative thinking essay about the necessary transformations of our global economic system, as well as the values and beliefs that sustain it.

The essential idea is that capitalism must be transformed towards valuism. Adding adjectives to capitalism, such as humanist, conscious, inclusive or responsible, is not enough to humanize it. A more determined and disruptive step must be taken to change the axis of the economic system, from capital to value generation.

Valuism finds in private initiative a great ally for the creation of wealth, but when it acts without limits, it destroys environmental value, freedom, collaboration and justice. This is where the necessary transformation of the obsolete and lagging public sphere enters, both nationally and internationally.

The link between economy and society is intense: they are communicating vessels. Reinventing the economic system is reinventing the model of society, hence its importance. Valuism proposes alternatives from a systemic vision. All great changes are first seen as absurd or unfeasible, until a new consciousness makes way for them. Do we see some options?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lid Editorial
• Release date: Jul 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9788417880781

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This book gathers my most personal and thoughtful ideas on the necessary transformations of our global economic system, as well as the values and beliefs that sustain it. I write it from the point of view of our western world, in a democracy, aware that the times and convictions of the different cultures of our planet advance in different ways. I am writing this from my country of birth, Spain, without pretending to impose my truth, because there are many compatible truths. There are many of us who are tired of what does not work in our world; many of us who feel disappointed, invaded by skepticism in the face of promises that are never fulfilled; many of us who are eager to find a possible alternative to the current capitalist system.

The ideas in this essay arise from the contradictions that I perceive and from the verification that problems are not solved; they are born from the nonconformism that turns the problem into a search and the known into a question. We are not being able to solve the problems of our society because the variables we have been handling until now do not fit the new paradigm of our century. And with these extended variables on table, I propose that we stop and think to recognize what we have, what we have not considered and what new combinations we could consider.

The crisis caused by the global coronavirus pandemic offers a good moment for this economic reflection. The need to protect people’s health has trumped the mandate of economic growth; the economy has had to slow down in the face of the health emergency; and, as a result of the slowdown, the environment has recovered handsomely. New future crises may threaten health, but also supply or freedom. Each catastrophe takes its own particular form and arrives unpredictably. Climate change, nuclear or plastic waste that we accumulate can have serious consequences: poverty, migration or war cannot be ruled out. On the other hand, power struggles or the will to control humanity through the management of personal data pose a great threat. And this text deals precisely with the necessary balance that our economy needs, as a variable that articulates society: economic excesses, encouraged by a fiction of progress, must be redirected for the benefit of human beings.

The thoughts that I am going to present have been cooked over a slow fire. The search has been a difficult process for me, with no referents. My non-conformity with this economic and social system, but also with the alternatives proposed by the anti-system, leads me to present an alternative proposal. The shortcomings of the current capitalist system have failed to bring me closer to the existing anti-capitalist approaches, because their proposals seem to me to be a step backward instead of an advance. To change in order to go backwards is a mistake. Promising a utopia without considering the reality of the human being is an even more profound mistake.

Not having all the solutions on the table is not a problem as long as there are guidelines for exploration. The sketches of a creative work, just by being written down, can transmit all their strength. The visionary talent is the one that is able to see in the sketches their possibilities, the one that knows how to discern what are projects to be investigated from sketches that are simply discardable. This is the desire of my search.

The tranquility that in the face of the new we do not have all the answers is essential to advance in the discourse of this essay. Worrying at every moment, wanting to know a priori how it will be done or what concrete approaches each idea will develop is to anticipate what has not yet arrived. Knowing how to coexist with ambiguity is a necessary skill to venture into an unexplored field. Fortunately, I share this idea with some authors I admire, well-known thinkers and entrepreneurs who, without any complex, state in their books that what is disruptive, what has never been explored, what has not yet been tested, lacks a defined road map, with reliable data to back it up. In the face of the new, we are guided by an idea that acts as a lighthouse: quantification comes later.

The economic environment has long spoken of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. The recent pandemic has amply demonstrated that these four substantives define our economic system. We need to review our perspective: obsessed with the last tenths of growth rates, unable to curb pollution, constantly multiplying the number of trips from one side of the planet to the other, undervaluing the value of agriculture in favor of digital applications and practicing fierce competition to the detriment of cooperation, we are heading towards a catastrophic scenario. We need to change our habits in order to face the future in a more solid way.

Ambiguity and uncertainty are a brake for certain profiles of people, who will oppose changes because they lack data to reduce the anxiety involved in any transformation. Fortunately, true leaders are people who work within these parameters: they are capable of not getting lost, even if there are a thousand paths and forks in the road. It is time to work with these leaders, to set a course and move forward, correcting, learning and unlearning. Ideas are the most powerful guide to face the real transformation.

The economic system that governs our world must make a qualitative leap to another level of consciousness. It must ennoble the human being in their greatness instead of making them a slave. It must look higher, wider and also deeper. The economy must be reinvented from its foundations, because the one we have is not capable of generating the physical, emotional and even spiritual wellbeing that human beings desire and need. I am talking about a physical wellbeing that ranges from individual health to the health of the planet, since they are intimately intertwined; about an emotional wellbeing that allows us to achieve happiness, leaving behind anger, disappointment, sadness or violence; about a spiritual wellbeing, often the most forgotten, that allows us to link ourselves to the idea of transcendence and care for future generations.

On the other hand, the link between the economy and society is unquestionable. They are deeply interrelated communicating vessels. Therefore, a society that aims to be free, prosperous, just and supportive requires an economy that favors freedom, prosperity, justice and solidarity. The pretension of achieving these four qualities in our culture is currently trapped in contradictions, failures and distortions. I believe that it is worthwhile to propose certain ideas that will allow us to make a profound reflection on the economic system. And thus, by reinventing the economic system, we will succeed in reinventing the model of society.

Let us go back to the 20th century as a starting point. The 20th century was marked by the struggle between two great economic systems: capitalism and communism. Both systems have competed for decades to prove their superiority in a long battle.

Communism was originally intended to be more dignified and just than capitalism, but it failed in its attempt. It wanted to give power to the people and create an idyllic society, but it failed because it was incapable of generating individual initiative and concentrated power in the hands of a few who planned for everyone. Capitalism, in practice, has been the clear winner of this battle. A resounding winner that leaves no room for doubt. The wealth of products and services created by the entrepreneurial impulse has been colossal. But despite winning this battle, capitalism is highly imperfect and should not be allowed to continue to deepen its shortcomings.

Capitalism has tried to be improved, softened or completed through various approaches that try to counteract its rough edges: the so-called humanist capitalism claims the value of people over pure capital; conscious capitalism defends that beyond the strictly economic profit we must consider the purpose of a company and the welfare of all those who are part of it and of society; responsible capitalism, through corporate social responsibility, gives relevance to the commitment to give back to society part of the profit with actions that contribute to social welfare; the B Corporation movement is oriented to solve social and environmental problems through businesses; inclusive capitalism advocates a more ecological and sustainable economy and progressive capitalism provides a strong alternative to the malaise of the current economic crisis. Each of these contributions attempts to correct or remedy weaknesses or disorders of the capitalist system, but they are still insufficient aspirations. What I propose is a more far-reaching transformation, in which the public and the private, the economic and the social, the local and the global are intertwined in a single system.

Disruptive economic changes are urgently needed to halt the relentless advance of unbridled capitalism. Despite having brought much wealth, the excesses of capitalism are counterproductive and unsustainable; therefore, continuing along the same path, even if we disguise it as something different, would mean the end of individual freedoms as well as the destruction of the planet. Communism is no longer the adversary of capitalism, so the battle of the coming decades must confront it with a new economic system that must emerge, a system capable of being useful to the humanity of this century, in this new paradigm. There is an urgent need for a profound change in society’s values and legislation, based on learning from what has worked historically and identifying what has only generated inequality, abuse and poverty.

Unbridled communism, which is still applied today by the use of power in certain countries, and unbridled capitalism, which is applied globally in many others, share one thing in common: the lust for power to the detriment of freedom and justice.

My proposal is the search for alternatives based on critical, creative and conscious thinking. Without a critical capacity it is impossible to move forward: critical thinking opens our eyes and gives us the impulse to generate changes, breaking with complacency and conformism with the existing situation. Creative thinking is the second essential element for proposing alternatives: it involves investigating new formulas without subjecting them to destructive judgment as soon as they emerge. What is substantially new cannot be approached without disruptive approaches, since it is creativity that brings unexpected ideas, unknown and even contradictory to the existing paradigm, generating a different view to the installed one. Without creativity, we will tend to repeat the same or similar mistakes. Thirdly, conscious thinking is that which sees reality from a broader perspective than that of self-interest, which takes into consideration the human being as an essential value.

Evidence abounds that we are in the final stage of a capitalist economic system that needs to be reinvented: the planet is filling up with waste, power is becoming alarmingly concentrated, the administration of justice is so slow that it ends up becoming pseudo-justice, the idea of privacy is becoming a fantasy... We have a system that creaks like old wood. The citizens, fed up and disappointed, trust less and less in their political representatives, often immersed in their own short-term battles. Democracy is being misused. There are no new ideas.

That is why mankind needs revolutionary ideas, revolutionary for their novelty, for their ability to break the mold. These types of ideas cause skepticism when they are first presented because they sound strange or impossible, but they take hold as we understand them and discover their usefulness. It is not the ideas that have failed in the past and are recovered disguised as new, even if they are accompanied by online campaigns of the 21st century, but those that have not been considered but change paradigms and could drive profound changes in economic and social organization that are revolutionary.

It has been happening in politics that denunciation and criticism, together with the publicly declared desire to change things, end up being only a means to win elections and continue doing practically the same thing. Promises that inspire hope in the campaign end up being sterile, time and time again. Why? In my opinion, the main reason is the lack of thinking without preconceived ideas. The struggle between right and left is fruitless because it has been oscillating for decades on the same issues: some want to raise some items and others to lower them, some pull the blanket to one side and the others to the opposite side… Thought and proposals continue to move in parameters that are familiar to us, with lies that are repeated with small variations. Disappointment and boredom spread, as all the alternatives are disputed within a framework of obsolete beliefs.

In this discouraging panorama, the anti-system arises, whether from the right or the left, to confront what is established. However, opposing something is useless without creatively proposing possible alternatives. A better future is not only achieved with opposition, but with innovative ideas. It is necessary to generate ideas and put them in common, debate them and test them to define the best way forward. If we simply keep going back to what we already know, we will continue to get the same disappointing results every time.

The necessary revolution is to build a new system, a new economic and social order