Say I am walking down a street in a large city and come across a homeless person on the sidewalk, and I ask myself if that could have been my fate. If I think that I could have been that person—except for different circumstances—then we share a common humanity. Our differences are basically social. If I say that I would never become such a person, then I take our social differences—class, race, religion, and so on—as essential. We have nothing in common.
I know, many people think of three spheres: market, government, and civil society. Well, most of these people are on automatic pilot. Like unmanned drones, they attack anything that proposes a different framework. OK, this is one way of sorting things out, but it now prevents us from directing the market to make provisions for all, from controlling our government, and from protecting the commons. Actually, I suspect the idea behind this triad is that if we give a place for the good guys (civil society), they will leave the bad guys (business and government) alone. Well, we need a different framework.
For some time now, I have been asking my students to write a list of 10 things we have in common. Try it and see what you write. As you can imagine, there is a lot of diversity; from we all strive to improve ourselves to we all want love. Here is my list, or current list:
When the European countries agreed to move from national currencies to a “common currency,” one can assume that they thought of money primarily as a means of exchange, as a currency. If we want to talk (trade) with each other, why not use the same language (money)? Not a bad idea. Today it appears that they have failed to protect the “common” nature of money.
It would make a world of difference if we stopped treating land and labor as commodities and began to recognize them as providers of wealth. It might make an even greater difference if we discarded our childhood view of money as something to put in a piggy bank and took a more adult view of money as something we share in common.
Marvin T. Brown, Ph.D teaches business and organizational ethics at the University of San Francisco and Saybrook University in San Francisco.
This book is the culmination of 30 years of teaching and writing on business and society from a communicative perspective. Visit workingethics.com for more information.
Adam Smith American Dream Atlantic trade banks biosphere citizen Citizens United civic civic conversations civic economy Civicism civic membership civilizing the economy Commons corporate citizen corporations democracy disagreement economics of property economics of provision Egypt health care reform human dignity invisible hand John Locke libertarianism Libya living wage membership money moral equality property property relations protection Scotland slavery slaves Smith and slavery Smithian economics sports sustainability system of provision the civic tobacco trade Wall Street