monopoly management will give sight to the blind and free the captives of poverty. It has its own heresies of isolation and protectionism. It has its Holy scriptures such as Trade Related International Property Rights (TRIPs) and Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs.) The parallels can be extended as much as one wishes. (16)

However, a truly transcendent economics would not carry this fundamentalism but would respect and value difference in culture, history and need, would prioritise life values rather than economic ones and relate closely to ecological resilience.

The Challenge for New Economics

Much new economics literature reasonably tends to take as a given the continuation of a form of trade and exchange based on a financial transaction of some type, whether that be through traditional financial structures that are reformed through alternative taxation, LETS type trading, community banking, co-operative ownership etc.

What new economics often seems less clear about is its political stance, in particular its relation to power structures and dynamics. Shann Turnball in his matrix headed �History and vision of a transforming society� (17) creates a concise transformative attempt to show how a future society would look through a process of systems functioning in the past, present and future. Strangely, when he comes to feature 17, the creation of money, his future ideal is identical to the past interpretation, in contrast to all his other 22 features where a progression is shown. In fact his present and past interpretations are wrongly transposed anyway in this instance. While the creation of the means of exchanged is left in private hands as it continues to be envisioned by Turnball and competitively managed by the private sector, there is little hope for a shift in power or equality.

This lack of awareness of political reality is the blind spot for some new economists who presumably are generally the winners in the present system and thus reluctant to give up power. New economists have to be careful not to dangle the carrot of trickle-down theory in the same way that capitalists and free marketers have done. It must not become the sop that supports an underclass while the already-rich continue to own and consume ever more of the Earth and its� resources.

.Conclusion

With issues such as climate change, ecological refugees, bio-technology and wars of global resource domination paramount in the world politic today, the paradigm shift needed to transform economic and social relations needs addressing on many levels. While new economics is offering countless excellent micro and macro ideas it seems that the battle for reform is being lost as those with power posture for a third world war, a war for total world domination.

World debt is still being portrayed as an issue of debt forgiveness rather than a return with interest of what we have in effect stolen from the poorer countries. Climate change levies and carbon trading are still likely to support our immense resource consumption into the foreseeable future and we are nowhere near creating a pre-distributive rather than re-distributive economy such as a Citizens Income would provide. Ecological industries and energy-efficient technologies are growing but often at a total cost of more energy use. Most of these issues could be greatly improved by a change of political will and determination.

Hazel Henderson and others suggest that what is actually needed is a paradigm inversion from the concept of scarcity underlying economic theory to one of sustainable abundance. This inversion must apply both at a consciousness level as well as an accounting level and must arrest the present systems whereby the fundamental components of the economic system create a constant transfer of financial wealth from the poor to the rich, low entropy energy to high entropy, long life goods to short life.

Love, creativity, renewable energy and knowledge do not degrade but expand. The solar, ecological knowledge economy may be just over the horizon. Wealth and value can only really come from within, the satisfaction that comes from a task well done, a love given, received or reciprocated. Monetary value can only really help to provide the environment for that inner value to arise. Viva the transformative revolution!!

References and notes:

1 Daly, Herman (1996), Beyond Growth. Beacon books.

2 Ekins, Paul (1992) Wealth Beyond Measure. Gaia Books

3 Max-Neef, Manfred (1991) Human Scale Development. Apex Press

4 From a summary of A Telelogical View of Wealth: A Historical Perspective, by Gerald Alonzo Smith in Krishnan, R. Harris, J. and Goodwin, Neva. (Eds) (1995) A Survey of Ecological Economics. Island Press.

5 As above

6 Karl Marx quoted in Capri, F (1983) The Turning Point, Society and the Rising Culture. Flamingo

7 From a summary of Energy and Energetics in Economic Theory: A Review Essay by Philip Mirowski in 4 above

8 From Adam Smith, �An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,� quoted in Yesterday�s Predictions, Zweig. K (1979) Futures. IPC Business Press

9 Riccardo quoted by Zweig. K as 8 above