Back

Book Review:

1:   GAIAN DEMOCRACIES — Redefining Globalisation & People-Power

Roy Madron and John Jopling 2003

Schumacher Briefing No.9  Green Books £8 ISBN 1 903998 28 X

This book has many resonances with Green Party —and with anarchist — thinking and philosophy. Its message is that a fundamentally new form of democracy is needed, for the sake of the survival of Gaia — taken to include human society, indeed human life into the future, as well as the complex web on nature of which it is a part.

The authors place their hopes in the application of systems science. They write that:

"Systems science identifies three broad types of systems. None is superior to the others; each is equally valid. Their differences stem from the different contexts in which they are found, the different ways in which they have evolved and the different things that they are intended to do.

Engineered, or designed, systems

… Cars, watches, rockets, gas supplies and computers are all engineered systems. They are what they are and they do what they do because they have been designed and built by specialists in those particular systems. Our current societies understand the nature of these systems very well. The trouble is that our world is so swamped by them that they dominate our thinking, and we tend to assume that they are the only kind of system that matters, whereas in truth the next two kinds of system are far more important for our future.

Natural systems

These include every living being, and also stable combinations of living beings. Trees, humans, snakes, bacteria and birds are natural systems. They have all evolved over millions of years to become what they are today. They have not been designed and built by specialists. Forests and coral reefs are collective natural ecosystems: they constantly change and adapt and regenerate themselves, yet they are still a forest or a coral reef.

Unlike engineered systems, living systems are not merely complicated—they are complex. In systems science the term ‘complex’ means that the way in which the system works cannot be explained purely in terms of cause and effect."

and:

"Purposeful human ‘soft’ systems

Purposeful human systems, otherwise known as ‘soft systems’, include all of our institutions and organisations: tribes, schools, banks, armies, governments, corporations, theatre groups, orchestras, non-governmental organisations, police forces and thousands more besides. Even a casual glance will show that purposeful human systems have much in common with natural systems. They evolve, they can replicate themselves, they adapt, they can die, they are complex."

They emphasise that these systems themselves have a purpose, which may not be recognized by their members, though they have mostly "been (more or less) consciously configured by their dominant elites, often over many generations."

They assert that:

"The unjust and unsustainable aspects of globalisation stem from the purposes, principles and ideologies of a purposeful human system we have called the ‘Global Monetocracy’…

"Our description of today’s global system as the Global Monetocracy originates from our identification of its core purpose as a system. Every human system has a purpose that governs the way it works, and this is true of today’s form of globalisation. The systemic purpose of the Global Monetocracy is the continuation of money growth in order to maintain the current debt-based money-system. It is not widely known that almost all the money we use comes into existence, not by governments creating it, but as a result of a bank agreeing to make a loan to a customer at interest. Only about 3%—the notes and coins—is government-made. The other 97% comes into existence as a debt owed by a customer to a bank. We cite authorities such as James Robertson, Richard Douthwaite and Michael Rowbotham to show that the effect of this is that our economies have to grow in order to avoid financial collapse. The debt-money system is thus the driving force behind the Global Monetocracy. The risk of collapse forces governments to give priority to policies that serve the money growth imperative; and in turn, these policies produce the unjust and unsustainable form of globalisation that we have today."

The main components of the Global Monetocracy are seen as: 1. The common purpose of money growth in order to maintain the debt-money system; 2. Shared operational theories — neo-liberal economics, national sovereignty, representative democracy, manufacturing consent, command-and-control leadership; 3. The elite consensus upholding the values and assumptions of the monetocracy; 4. The global leadership cadre covering politics, finance, business, academia and the media; 5. The big business-government partnership (with big business as the lead partner); 6. An armoury of operational instruments — transnational corporate capitalism, financial and legal instruments, national policies and state agencies, international institutions, opinion manipulation.

Summarising, in the introduction, they write:

"… this Briefing argues that, since today’s Global Monetocracy has been devised to serve an unjust and unsustainable set of purposes, we need to replace it with a global network of just and sustainable Gaian democracies." By this term they envisage a form of organization which involves shared purposes and principles, network government, soft-systems concepts, participatory change processes, liberating political leaders, "Gaian systems", and "Paolo Friere’s learning principles" — all of which are explained in more detail!

They note many examples of the effective application of these ideas, in business and in politics, such as the Mondragon collective and the Brazilian Workers’ Party’s Participatory Budget process, introduced first in Porto Alegre in 1989.

In its 141 pages they cover a wide range of issues, illustrating the links between them and arguing for these links to be recognised, to develop the mass-movement toward the global network of ‘Gaian democracies’ they see as needed for a sustainable future.

They identify many groups involved in the maintenance system of the Global Monetocracy, including a new one to me: the BAP — the British-American Project for the Successor Generation, which includes in its elite ranks of ‘24 Americans and Britons aged between 28 and 40’ members of the Blair Cabinet as well as trade unionists and journalists and TV presenters.

My main reservation on their thesis is that I believe that as well as building resistance and an alternative society from below, we need to challenge directly the ‘Global Monetocracy’, because of the power of the accumulating debts created by the system, backed by law, to enslave and destroy the world. Fundamental reform to eliminate all the debts created by the debt-money system must be effected, to allow rapid progress to take place in all the other reforms needed.

To advance their ambitious project, they have set up a ‘forum for dialogue and learning’ at www.wwdemocracy.org and for those wanting to start working on their political project, www.gaiandemocracies.net — or call 0845 458 3919.

I sincerely hope for the success of their project!

— Brian Leslie

Return to Contents

Next page