in japanese, when saying "i am going to work," one says "i am going to serve at the place of the group"...the word place has a very profound meaning, as well.

Good points.

I think a better life for all will be based on more decentralization of the culture and economics so that communities and individuals have space and feedback to develop while the Government of empire falls.

Let us grow our own pot and travel freely to Cuba, and things may turn around.... for freedom.

All the government talks about is freedom while they take it away.

Peace is an attitude more than anything else.

How can our people acquire a peaceful attitude and the power to make peace?

I wonder.

Comment withdrawn by author.

Hey fast eddie,can you imagine a profoundly human approach to economics that could be recognized as an alternative to our dehumanizing and increasingly unsustainable economic system?
If not try becoming part of the solution,and join with the thousands and thousands of people across this country and around the world who are not only seeking solutions,but are testing them out in so many different ways.
We stand on the shoulders of those who came befor us.
All respect to the ancestors.

Don't just read the chapter on Buddhist economics. Read the entire Small is Beautiful.

Its been hard, but I have followed my moment of satori years ago and now have assembled a working model of the product I call the =EconoWidget=. It had, as inspiration, an 8-ball and some e-toys for small children learning language.

It comes programmed with a list of English nouns, and small qwerty keyboard to make them appear in a text window, or to enter a unique noun. Lets say that you get the word =trumpet= to appear in the text window. What you do is press a round button labeleld ECONOMIST.

From the EconoWidget speaker comes a loud, nasal, superior voice: THE DAYS OF CHEAP TRUMPETS ARE OVER. FOR YEARS WE GOT AWAY WITH PAYING LESS FOR TRUMPETS THAN THEY WERE REALLY WORTH BUT, HA HA, THOSE DAYS ARE GONE NOW. ASK ME ABOUT ANOTHER OBJECT.

When you get bored with playing this you can use the part that answers economic questions. This part is a hollow ball filled with 30 weight oil in which floats a solid dodecahedron. In a firm voice you bellow: "Does Guatemala have a fair world market share of four-slice toasters?" You then you shake the EconoWidget 4 or 5 seconds and look for the economic answer or opinion to float up and dock with a trapezoidal window. Eventually the economic answer is visible in the window: IT DEPENDS.

Your suspicion is correct. I am automating the job and work products of economists. Eventually wax models of them will populate museums of science and industry. When you put on earphones and press a large button over a railing a voice says: "Economists were a bunch of goofy folks who told others every thing on earth was worth more than the currency needed to purchase it."

When workers and communities OWN their companies and run them co-operatively, then we will be able to talk about Buddhist and human work.

Capitalist (and state capitalist) bosses want the most work from us for the least pay, so that they can get filthy rich. And as long as they own the companies, they will make us sweat for their benefit. It is not a matter of attitude, it is a question of power.

Or rather, the attitude working people need now is one of solidarity and of strength, so that we, the great majority, can eventually take over the economy. THEN we will have economics as if people mattered, when we are no longer wage slaves.

As much as I appreciate the underlying meaning and motivation of such concepts, I just can't bring myself to go from a consciousness of current reality to the comfort of the beautiful vision presented by the writer. My mind is jarred from this transition by the undeniable obstacles which we must overcome (I know, in violation of all rules of positive thinking, The Secret, and New Age fantasy-land, reality-denying, warm and fuzzy abundance philosophy). Know this- I share these values espoused by the Author. I do believe such a world is both possible and necessary- I am working toward these same ends as best I can in what little time left to me after satisfying the financial demands of the imperial overlords, but I'll be damned if I can sort out how we get from where we are now to this wonderful place that seems inevitable to Grace Lee Boggs and others without a MASSIVE upheaval that shakes our current way of life to it's very foundations.

I encourage everyone to continue to work toward manifesting this kind of world in whatever way seems most appropriate, but I also encourage everyone to explore deeply where we are now as a species, the complexity and intransigence of the kind of world we have collectively created, and how we realistically get from here to there. Failing to consider this, we are little better than the religious folk who willingly tolerate suffering, injustice and despair in this life because our faith in some particular sky-god guarantees us eternity in paradise in the hereafter.

Perhaps immersion in illusion is a more comforting way to live, but it ignores, and even in some ways justifies the suffering and death of our fellow humans (and today the ecosystem as well).

Hi Grace,
It's good to see you still doing what you do.

Your comments should be as common sense as the apochrophal
story of Walter Reuther asking Henry Ford who was going to buy all the cars Ford was planning to make, if he didn't pay a living wage.

But unfortunately this common sense seems to elude the great minds of economics and does just as much damage as the the other big set of blinders in economic theory: recognizing that pollution is actully the theft of the "commons" - our common heritage, which polluters do not own, and which turns real economics upside down, and belittles us all.

If it were not for these two "blinders" of economic theory:
a) work would occur in a marketplace where management and labor would be working together on a common goal, so their business or plant would work to be the best it could be.

And b) we would have long ago determined the real costs of products such as oil, coal, plastics, "cheap" power, factory farms and so many other mechanized "labor saving devices" - which are sold far too cheaply, because their cost for environmental damage is so very high, but goes unpaid.

I put these two things together "labor and environment" because unrealistically cheap power and products also replace the need for labor and undermine its value, by replacing it with things that are ultmately unsustainable.

This whole discussion might seem too esoteric, but it's far from that, becuase, as you say, the current views of those making economic policy - and the likes of Wall St. - are oblivious to their blinders, in a time where their era of wide-scale waste is coming to a necessary end.

So someone has to start propounding sustainable theories.

Beside Bhuddist Economics, there are two other much, much older references that can still make us think about economics in a totally different light, and make 'theory" so much more meaninmgful to everyday life at the same time.

One, for us aging hippies, is the first very long chapter of Thoreau's "Walden", which of course is called "Economics", and is still - for my money - the very best decription of "personal economy", its incredible power, and its realationship to to "society".

The other is surprising, because it's the other major book by the man who all of Big Bad Ugly Capitalism is supposedly based on. Before Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations", he wrote "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", which he presupposed would be looked at as the underpinnings of the great economic theories in "Wealth" - and which ultimately greatly limit the "free market" from doing whatever it wants - which most proponants of Smith hold as sacred.

If one reads 'Wealth", understanding the moral and ethical underrpinnings Smith assumed would have to be part of what became Capitalism, you'd see that what he really expected was an economics much the same as you describe in your article here.

And if this "other book" of Smith's was more widely known, it would give those economists with the blinders on, one less piller to holdup their pantheon of economic ignorance.

Once again, it's great to see you still given all the rest of us that little kick in the consience that we all need from time to time, and which you (and James) have provided for so many years.
Jim Moran

Thank you Grace.

Work is not labor,it is worship.Work can be an inspired physical expression of thought into action.A means to participate as a conscious coworker in the "divine plan". Any creative endeavor, artistic or scientific exploratory work ,music,farming ,wine-making ,cheese making,baking,brewing distilling ,breeding plants, animals, to work with the creation is it not its' own reward?
If I dig a ditch or fell a dead tree and buck and process it into cord wood,is it less a ballet than the Ballerina does?Is her dance that inspires and captivates less valuable than the firewood or drainage ditch?
I cut my teeth on E.F.Schumacker, and thanks to Grace Lee for this reminder to me to practice right livelihood.
peace

Beautiful Article, Grace Lee Boggs. People in our society call work the "rat race." The constant competition and anxiety and cyclic boom and bust make it that way. But it doesn't have to be that way. We are going at almost the speed of light with the rapid changes that are taking place. We need to be connected with our local community and work together to make the change what we want it to be and do it non violently with each other.

Work is a concept that was distorted some time back. As most people use it it means to do something for pay and the amount paid measures the utility of the work. Try doing something useful without it being done for pay and most people will not be able to understand why you are doing it. Sometimes when people ask why I am doing what I do I tell them that I do it because it is useful. Most of them then look at me as strange and do not seem to understand why anyone would devote so much energy to something that will not bring one some income, either monetary or as some future accumulation of assets. I have been told that it is not work if there is no pay but rather a hobby.

Perhaps it is because I have had long periods of unemployment in the past that I understand and at times savour the pleasure to be had from doing something useful. Many times my jobs have given me some of that feeling but not always and seldom with much intensity. To me it is difficult to understand how someone could not want to feel and be useful. I cannot understand why the need to feel useful and contribute to society is not described as a basic human want that should encouraged and not frustrated. Nor can I understand why this society is not more often chastised for the evils that leave so many of us feeling rather useless and disposable and unwanted while so much that needs to be done cannot be done because there is no money do do it. So often the need exists, the needed materials are available but the manpower with the skills needed to do it sits idle and unwanted and useless.

It has been 25 years since I read E.F. Schumacher's book. He was right. People matter.

'it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence'

This is the classic Neoconservative definition of Capitalism.

For them, goods measure human worth, compassion is for pansies, and this 'most primitive side of this worldly existence' is a holy thing to be celebrated, the Ayn Randian reality of 'enlightened self-interest' with all the dross of Utopian self-delusion stripped away. Under their mindset, if your soul is getting destroyed, it's because you deserve it. For not being born as one of the 'productive' entrepreneurial class.

All this Buddhist economic analysis with this garbage about employees wanting to get rid of jobs is just BS. Please let's try some real analysis, Marxist analysis. Take it from someone with a working class and farming background, it's the real deal! This is pure hot air. Give me a break. Unemployment isn't inevitable except with capitalism. The East bloc always had jobs guaranteed for all. We ought to be able to do as well or switch to at least a managed socialist economy which even Great Britain, a country with the closest of ties to the USA once had as recently actually as about 1975. It can be done, if it's got to be. OK the British economy even then didn't get rid of all unemployment, but for those who couldn't find jobs, it had a safety net, something we need to get in a big way. That's part of traditional values of not throwing people to the wolves just because they can't take care of themselves whether because of age or anything else. It's part of being a real human being rather than another species such as seems all too prominent in the USA today and especially among the power elites.

I wouldn't want to call the analysis above Buddhist, as that would seem to slander all Buddhists.

AD