Juniper Publishers-The Crisis of our Time and the End of the New “History”
Juniper Publishers- Open Access Journal of Social Sciences & Management studies
Introduction
The time has come to understand that we are facing an
anthropological and not economic crisis as it is reductively defined;
it is the failure of a socio-cultural model that has erased the
fundamental human rights inscribed in 1948. The response to the crisis
[1] as anthropological is in understanding the cultural and historical
path that has brought us to chaos, overthrowing the dominant paradigm,
to place man and society at the centre of our interests as an end and to
bring economics back to its natural role as a means. The technical
culture, master of the world, as defined by Emanuele Severino, has
unnaturally transformed economics as a social science into an exact
science; in the exact sciences we study the relationships between
measurable things to define universal laws, but in the social sciences,
such as economics, we study relationships between men where human
subjectivity does not allow defining universal laws [2-4].
Von Hayek in his Nobel acceptance speech in 1974
denounced the serious mistake that would pave the way for rational
finance and speculative markets distant from the real world; but he
remained unheard. The extreme financialization of the real economy
became deeply rooted since 1971 when Nixon unilaterally declared the end
of the dollar’s convertibility into gold. Let us look at the sequence
of events. In 1945, after the drama of war, rules were defined to
stabilize markets and exchange rates; the printing of paper money that
has no value was tied to a defined quantity of a real good and the “gold
exchange standard” was launched - 36 $ for every ounce of gold. In that
period that lasted until the beginning of the 70s, we had a fixed
exchange rate system that favoured unprecedented economic and social
growth [5-7]. In 1971, the point of maximum social cohesion in the US
coincided exactly with the point of lower inequality in income,
providing evidence that the two aspects are closely related and that
only a cohesive and just society can lead to solid economic development
[8] (Figures 1 & 2).
All the positive curves of the “golden age” have an inflection
and deteriorated between 1971 and 1974 as a result of Nixon’s
decision; from the “gold exchange standard” we would go to
the “petrodollar exchange standard” and to a system of flexible
exchange rates, and we would suffer terrible inflation that
went from 4.4% to 24%, paving the way for today’s drama of
uncontrolled finance, as we see in following graphs (Figures 3-6).
Italy would suffer the influx of petrodollars, which
began to
drain the efforts made in the post-war period to bring the country
among those with the highest growth rate; the price of oil per
barrel went from $ 1.40 to $ 40, and the dollar/lira exchange rate after
25 years of the fixed exchange rate of 624/5 lira for every
dollar to 2450 lira for a dollar in just 9 years: it was to be the first
financial war, but in reality a third World War not fought with
traditional means but with the power of the financial markets [9-
11] (Figures 7 & 8).
The separation of paper money from the real finite created
two incompatible systems: the infinite and non-measurable of
currency that would be totally deregulated, and the finite and
measurable of the real world that became fictitiously subordinate
to the former [12,13]. Everything changes, and the neoliberal
model taken as an end justifies unlimited personal accumulation
and the legitimisation of human aggression. Everything becomes
finance and pure speculation in virtue of a paper currency that,
detached from finite bonds and the real world, becomes infinite
and would turn into “macro-usury” capable of keeping companies
and entire countries in check [14,15]. Infinite finance without
constraints can be studied with exact mathematical models
generating the false idea that financial markets are rational
and never err in the allocation of wealth. The study of financeeconomics
severs the ties with the humanistic sciences, becoming
a pure arithmetic calculation far from reality but assumed as
incontrovertible truth thanks to the many Nobel prizes assigned
to economics, unfounded but serving higher interests [16-18].
The Role of the Humanistic Culture that the Academy has Lost
Since the late 60s, in awarding the prizes for literature,
economics, and peace - the three prizes with the most obvious
contradictions - the anomalies have become more apparent,
favouring a cultural model and its interests that have brought us
to the true crisis of our time, the anthropological crisis that we
still refuse to see. Since 1969, when the first prize for economics
was awarded, American scholars have won the lion’s share [19-
21]. In the 44 years of Nobel prizes in economics, one or more than
one has been awarded the prize 41 times: a monoculture without
inconsistency and change 41 times out of 44. Only in three years
did they not win: 1969, 1974, and 1988.
The trend was accentuated after the fall of the Berlin Wall
when the awards rained down on economics scholars who defined
the financial markets as rational and exact without possibility of
error [22]. Finance has become a sort of hegemonic weapon over
States able to exert pressure on the policies of individual States
and global choices. Wealth is thus created without States and
States without wealth, a model of an individualistic and conflictual
society in which moral sense is subservient to personal interests
and the strongest command. Yet, is the soul of this cultural model
able to inspire feelings such as kindness, altruism, solidarity,
respect for humankind, in short, the ideals that Alfred Nobel
sought?
The answer can be found with disarming evidence in the
prizes awarded for literature. In fact, since the end of the 60s, the
United States that seemed omnipotent has only won one real prize
in literature. Morrison, in 94, expressed the racial pain of coloured
minorities, now majorities; Bellow in 76 and Singer in 78, were
the expression of the European culture where they had lived
for a long time before moving to the United States [23-25]. The
other awards over the years have been divided among different
countries where the type of wellbeing expressed by the economy
was absent or irrelevant - for example, Ireland, Peru, Chile, Saint
Lucia, Poland, Romania, Greece... The two cultural models are
opposed, without the possibility of dialogue and sharing because
the interests of economics and finance put the maximization of
self-interest in first place and not the “common good”, exactly
what Alfred Nobel wanted to avoid. The legitimacy of the single
thought has suffocated the imagination and the universal values
of freedom, equality and solidarity. In the words of Pascal, “l’esprit
de finesse” was finally separated from the “esprit de geometrie”,
but rational man arrived last in the race. Everyone is responsible,
albeit in different ways, because everyone contributed, even in
silence, to ascribing the value of incontrovertible truth to these
positions [26].
The technical-rational culture of the post-modern era
prepared by the field of speculation since the Enlightenment with
Kant, Hegel, and then Marx transformed economics into an exact
science by studying only what is measurable. The materialistic
objectives promoted by capitalism and liberalism assumed as
an end and not a means contributed to the creation of a society
aimed at achieving self-interest at the expense of the common
good and the normalization of unlawful behavior [27]. This has
increasingly forced dominant interests to legitimize such studies
with the Nobel Prizes that elevated their achievement to ultimate
truth but not the real sciences, eventually disrupting the system of
social relations, because the dogma has become ‘live to earn’ and
not vice versa. This year once again, in rewarding the disrupting
sociocultural model of human society, the Academy has deeply
betrayed the noble intentions of Alfred Nobel.
Understanding the deviations of economic studies transformed
from a social and moral science into a merely quantitative, exact,
and positive science requires understanding the causes that favour
the interests of the few at the expense of everyone else. At the end
of World War II, the global dramas led to defining the universal
and “inalienable” rights of man and the technical operational rules
of economics in such a way as to guide global policymakers to
restore the dignity of man as a person and not as he is in fact today.
Literature Review
Everything becomes finance and everything is justified as
“strictly scientific” by the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences; the
pursuit of maximum personal gains justifies the normalization
of illicit behaviours, everything is played in a short or very short
term logic in an infinite exchange at high speed where computers
decide according to algorithms based on the nothingness of
infinite finance, without anything underlying it. Stock exchanges
become infinite casinos without rules or maximum profit in
an amoral logic because those deciding in finance never pose
themselves the problem of the consequences of their actions,
and since it is always man who engages in illicit behaviours they
become a practice of life that extends to young people who lose
their identity in the confusion of value, becoming plankton at
the mercy of the waves. Society without values and a humanistic
culture become territories in which it is difficult to live and the
individualism pursued as an end eradicates the first impulse that
dictates the human spirit, that of aggression and lack of attention
to others; “societas” understood as an alliance is transformed into
the monster of the “bellum contra omnes”, the war of all against all,
and everything becomes lawful [28].
The search for “maximum shareholder value” to reduce
costs leads to the savage delocalisation that separates capital
from labour by making it subordinate to the former, but also by
countries, because the tax system allows leaving the taxes of blacklist
countries by the wayside (Figures 9 & 10). We passively forget
our history and become victims of this finance by transforming
ourselves from the best creative artisans in the world into losing
and checkmated financiers; the social system disintegrates and
fragments, social ills explode, and the old solidarity of our people
becomes a war of all against all with growing moral degradation
because it justifies living to earn and not vice versa. Locust
finance must be brought under strict control, eliminating the
speculative derivatives that have emptied the reserves, redefining
the boundary between business and commercial banks, but
also with a return to the convertibility of currency into gold, as
China, Russia, and other emerging countries close to creating an
alternative financial system to the dollar are doing, because the
new balances of power allow it [29].
The challenge of our time is to rebuild a cohesive social
system, recovering the solidarity of our familial roots and the
small and medium-sized businesses that constitute the backbone
of our nation over time, and recover the pride of our history and
autonomy that allows us to decide without having a gun pointed
at our heads. History, forgotten by a society that lives only in
the present, teaches over the millennia that a society can live
only on solid family roots and maintain a trade-off between the agricultural world that generates solidarity and the urban world
that creates individualism. Will we be able to understand the
lessons of history? This is the enigma we have before us [30-31]
(Figure 11).
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