A Just Global Economy for A Harmonious Civilization

by Norman G. Kurland

Today’s systems of capitalism and socialism, and their various permutations, share the same fundamental flaw. The laws and financial institutions of these systems all concentrate power and property in the hands of a few, whether in a private elite, or in the State and its bureaucratic elite. Even in so–called “democratic capitalist” systems, access to the ballot has no economic counterpart to empower the individual through equal access to the common good. Underlying this flaw is a moral omission: the current economic paradigms lack a defining principle of justice that is universal and practical for guiding development in the Age of Labor–Displacing Energy Slaves.

Can free markets and trade, private property, and limited government be compatible with economic and social justice? What practical systemic changes could be introduced to transform the globalization process into a blessing, especially for the poorest of the poor in Iraq, Gaza, the West Bank, Afghanistan, and other breeding grounds of human hopelessness, group hatred, and the next rounds of terrorism?

Power will always exist in society. If we accept Lord Action’s insight that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” our best safeguard against the corruptibility of power is to decentralize economic power. Furthermore, if Daniel Webster was also correct that “power naturally and necessarily follows property,” then democratizing ownership is essential for democratizing all forms of power.

In the economic world, property performs the same power–diffusion function that the ballot does in politics. It does more. It makes the ballot–holder economically independent of those who wield political power. Socially, private property defines a comprehensive – and comprehensible – system of relationships that regulate how we as members of society relate to one another with respect to our possessions, rights, and status. Proposals to abolish private property by redefining it undermine the stability of society by attacking the validity of the defined relationships that constitute the social order, potentially throwing society into chaos.

Both socialism and capitalism are excessively materialistic in their basic principles and overall vision. Both, in their own ways, degrade the individual worker. Both engender economic systems that ignore and hinder the intellectual and spiritual development of every member of society.

Amalgams of the two systems, as in America’s so–called “mixed economy” or the Scandinavian Welfare State model, differ only in their degree of social injustice, corruption, inefficiency, human insecurity and alienation which permeate each level of class–divided societies. What then would be a genuinely alternative economic model for moving toward a more free, just and economically classless society?

The Just Third Way would provide every person full access to a legal system and the “social tools” that will encourage all people to create their own new wealth and share in profits broadly and equitably. The Just Third Way offers a just free market system that economically empowers all individuals and families with equality of access to future ownership of capital without violating property rights of existing owners. For a plan for comprehensive economic restructuring that can be adopted by any country for making every citizen an owner, free from dependency on the accumulations of wealthy individuals or traditional support from global financial institutions or wealthier nations, see the proposed Capital Homestead Act at [1].

Where will the money come from to finance accelerated rates of market–based growth that would also democratize access to money power and direct ownership of income–producing growth assets for the poor and the 99% of humanity who cannot afford to buy capital assets? Harold Moulton, the president of Brookings Institution from 1916–1952, described how America monetized its fastest non–inflationary peacetime growth from 1865–1890 by commercial banks issuing bills of exchange backed by future savings from the projected earnings of the assets being financed [2]. The intellectual father of the Just Third Way Louis O. Kelso and the internationally respected philosopher Mortimer J. Adler extended Moulton’s “pure credit” or “procreative financing” concepts to their vision of economic democracy in the 1961 follow–up to their first book [3], the subtitle of which was “A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of Savings.” (See [4] and [5]).

Restoration of the full rights of property and extension of equal access to private property to every individual, serves as the basis for economic democracy, the necessary foundation for political democracy and for a harmonious civilization.

In striving to “make every citizen an owner,” the Just Third Way recognizes that by nature every person is a worker. Under the wage system framework, the concept of “work” has been stripped of much of its dignity, consigned only to that portion of human endeavor dealing with “making a living.” Under the Just Third Way, the highest form of work is not economic labor, but unpaid “leisure work” – working with other “architects of the future” to build a new Global Just Harmonious Civilization.

The content of this article as a whole is expressed in the ABC tetranet thinking model:

Dr. Norman G. Kurland is a lawyer–economist and economic justice activist. He heads the Center for Economic and Social Justice and Equity Expansion International, Inc., an investment banking firm for have–nots. He was deputy chairman of President Reagan’s Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice and co–authored Curing World Poverty: The New Role of Property (1994) and Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen (2004). Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Chicago. Address: 4318 North 31st Street, Arlington, Virginia 22207, USA
Web: http://www.cesj.org, www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=414
E–mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)


[1] Capital Homestead Act. http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm

[2] Harold Moulton. The Formation of Capital (1935) http://www.cesj.org/homestead/reforms/moneycredit/formationofcapital_cesj.pdf

[3] Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler, The Capitalist Manifesto (1958)

http://www.kelsoinstitute.org/pdf/cm-entire.pdf

[4] Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler, The New Capitalists: A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of Savings.
http://www.kelsoinstitute.org/pdf/nc-entire.pdf

[5] Harold Moulton, fn 2.

This article will be included in a book entitled The ABC of Harmony, soon to be published by the Global Harmony Association