Buddhist Economics

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Comment by Robert McCarthy on August 25, 2009 at 11:33am

Marx made his analysis back to back and behind many libertarian and anarchist writers and activists. Their analysis went more to the heart of the problem, power elites act in their own interest; loveless, lifeless bureaucracies transmit the power and control ideology through schooling and media. Military force is the usual arbiter.
It is obvious to the enormous majority of western people that our wealth come at the price of extreme and loveless cruelty to billions of animals and to billions of people who choose exploitation over starvation. The benefits are enjoyed by a simple pretence of impotence to act at best, by xenophobic hatred more commonly. This is what capitalism is, I cannot see any other option that will not be coopted other than living a radical alternative outside all such structures.

Comment by Andrew Cooper on August 24, 2009 at 8:48pm

The Dalai Lama recently referred to himself as half Marxist, which made me think of posting this short essay I wrote years ago for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. I posted it on the Tricycle community site, and Dharmavidya invited me to post it here.

Why Buddhists Should Read Marx

By Andrew Cooper
(from Turning Wheel, Summer 1993)


In the Zen Buddhist community in which I once lived, we began our meal chant: “Seventy-two labors brought us this food. We should know how it
comes to us.” “How it comes to us” today is through a production system in which most of those seventy-two labors are performed by impoverished people who are exploited, marginalized, and oppressed. If we are to remember their labors in any meaningful sense, we should also remember the social circumstances of that labor. For our good fortune is bought at their expense.

These are not the best of times to recommend Marx. The failures of his legacy have been grotesque and cruel, and this is particularly true in Buddhist Asia. Nevertheless, it seems to me that for anyone seeking to understand things like poverty, racism, money, militarism, or the daily grind at work, some grasp of Marx is essential. Michael Parenti calls Marx a “social pathologist,” who analyzed the systemic misery of capitalist society, and this is how I think he is best approached. He tells us that this misery is neither natural nor inevitable; rather, it developed through historical processes involving class relations and economic forces. He is concerned with the means and consequences of the accumulation of wealth, but not only that. He also sheds light upon the nature of wealth itself: how it is created, its patterns of distribution, the way it shapes consciousness and culture.

If you think “greed, hatred, and ignorance” is an adequate analysis of social evil, Marx will challenge you to look more deeply. And if you find him wrongheaded and stuck in his viewpoint, so much the better. Like Freud, his errors are legion. But again like Freud, he shows a way of looking at the world , beneath surface appearances, that undermines for good its taken for granted quality. And just as Freud is not just for Freudians, Marx need not be just for Marxists. The liberation theologians of Latin America have long recognized the need for a Christian appropriation of Marx. Engaged Buddhists need to begin the process ourselves.

The literary and social critic Walter Benjamin observed, “There is no cultural document that is not at the same time a record of barbarism.” The fruits of capitalist society can be enjoyed by some because of the labor of others who cannot enjoy them. Perhaps more than any other individual, Marx made explicit that record of barbarism, demystifying the vagueness of good fortune to show the actual exploitative conditions and oppressive relations that produce it. Misery inheres in the production system, and without the recognition of that, even the best intentions in the world will be hampered in changing it. But if one starts with the question, “How, in a democratic society, do wealth and power operate and accumulate in the hands of the few and to the harm of the many?” one can then better look for ways to change the pattern.

Comment by Gerald Beeck on May 12, 2008 at 11:22am

I think so also. Part of the puzzle is to find a relation between real value (pricing and distribution) and the ego factor in this which marketing is using to attract more sales.

Comment by Modgala Duguid on May 12, 2008 at 9:19am

A world with Buddhist economics at its heart would be a very differnt place