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Monday, March 17th, 2003Synergic scientist Peter Corning emailed me with a copy of his new paper. Some excerpts follow:
“Fair Shares” : Beyond Capitalism and Socialism
Peter A. Corning, Ph.D.
A biological approach to social justice enables us to move beyond the one-sided assumptions of capitalism and socialism – and the ideological standoff between them. The premises of an evolutionary/bioeconomic paradigm — as well as the accumulating evidence about human evolution (the “state of nature”) and the complexities of “human nature” — provide the basis for a new political ideology that accords more closely with the reality of the human condition. I call this new, biologically-grounded ideology “fair shares,” and I propose a normative framework that supports three complementary principles: (1) goods and services should be distributed to each according to his/her basic needs; (2)”surpluses” beyond the provision for our basic needs should be distributed according to merit; (3) in return, each of us is obliged to contribute to the collective survival enterprise in accordance with his/her ability. Needless to say, many issues are raised, and questions begged, by this formulation. Some of these are addressed here. Philosopher John Rawls, in his celebrated - and much debated – theory of justice as fairness, utilized a variation on the hypothetical state of nature from social contract theory to advance a claim for the “least advantaged” in society. While Rawls’s search for an ideological middle-ground was commendable, such artificial constructs are no longer sufficient, or necessary.
Fair shares: A synopsis
Two distinct and frequently competing moral claims arise out of the imperatives of human nature and the nature of human society as a collective survival enterprise: (1) basic needs (or distributive equity) and (2) “merit” (giving every man his/her due). In the fair shares paradigm, our basic survival needs take precedence, but they do not nullify the claim to merit; they impose a constraint. The middle-ground position recognizes the validity of both capitalist and socialist/liberal moral claims. Accordingly, the fair shares framework rests on two major principles:
- Goods and services should be distributed to each according to his/her basic needs
. This may sound like an echo of Karl Marx, but it is at once more specific and more limited. Here the term “basic needs” refers to the 14 primary needs domains mentioned above and elucidated in more detail elsewhere. Our basic needs are not a vague, open-ended abstraction, or a matter of personal preference. They constitute a concrete agenda, albeit subject to further refinement, with measurable indicators for assessing the outcomes. Also, this paradigm fully recognizes the fact that there are individual and contextual differences and vitally important instrumental needs (which are also subject to change throughout the life-cycle) and that reproduction and the needs of dependent offspring must be included as well. It should go without saying that both the market place and a variety of other forms of collective action (inclusive of government actions) have a vital role to play in meeting our basic needs.
- “Surpluses” beyond the provision for our basic needs should be distributed according to “merit”
. Merit has many facets, of course, but the ultimate criterion is rewards that are proportionate to the contributions that are made to the collective survival enterprise, and to our collective needs (the public interest). This would obviously exclude the profits of drug lords, for example, as well as excessive profits due to various market distortions, like monopoly and cartel pricing, insider information, fraud, and so forth. However, there is no formulaic way of determining merit. Both the market place and a representative, mixed, democratic government, not to mention an independent judiciary and many other social mechanisms, can (and do) play a vital role in the imperfect art of determining what is fair compensation. The “merit” principle merely stakes a moral claim and poses the right question.Does this paradigm imply a return to “welfare queens,” or a culture of “free-loading” and an indolent class of economic “defectors” (in game theory terminology)? The answer is emphatically no. Where’s the equity in that? In fact, a crucial corollary of these two principles is that the collective survival enterprise has always been based on “mutualism” and “reciprocity”, with “altruism” being limited to special circumstances under a distinct moral claim (aid for what could be called “no-fault needs”). So a third principle must be added to the fair shares paradigm, namely:
3. In return, each of us is obliged to contribute to the collective survival enterprise in accordance with his/her ability. Needless to say, this principle applies equally to the rich and the poor, to wealthy matrons and welfare mothers. However, it also begs the question. How are “abilities” and “contributions” to be determined? Again, there are no formulaic answers, but societies have developed various ways for permitting such collective judgments to be made, from markets to legislatures, election processes, “random” military drafts, examinations, licenses, performance evaluations and more.
One of the anonymous reviewers for this article characterized it as “fuzzy Marxism.” In fact, the opposite is true. Marxism is grounded in a fuzzy biology, along with a simplistic and one-sided model of human nature. Marxism actually violates the fair shares principles. For one thing, Marx was quite vague about specifying what our basic needs are. He allowed the inference to be made that equality and equity are equivalent. Second, Marx made no provision at all for “merit”, and he was quite hostile to capitalists. Remember? Capitalists were viewed as the villains and were destined, in accordance with the imperatives of Marx’s dialectical materialism, to end up in “the dustbin of history” (to borrow Bolshevik Leon Trotsky’s epitaph for the Mensheviks). But most important, Marx’s directive that everyone should contribute in accordance with their ability, absent the other two fair shares principles articulated above (especially the claim for merit), could be viewed as potentially exploitative and unjust. Despite the similarities in phrasing, the Marxian “contribution principle” does not accord with the fair shares paradigm.
Many other issues and questions are begged by this paradigm, of course, and some very important qualifiers must also be added.
Read the full paper Fair Shares in Adobe PDF (format).
Visit Peter Corning’s Website.Order Peter Corning’s new book Nature’s Magic.
In Nature’s Magic Peter Corning advances a bold new vision of the evolutionary process – from the Big Bang to the 21st century. Corning proposes that synergy is not only a ubiquitous phenomenon in the natural world but it is also a wellspring of creativity and the “driver” of the broad evolutionary trend toward increased complexity, in nature and human societies alike. In contrast with the many theories of emergence or complexity that rely on some underlying force or “law,” the “Synergism Hypothesis,” as Corning calls it, is in essence an economic (or “bioeconomic”) theory of biological complexity; it is fully consistent with mainstream evolutionary biology. Among the many important insights that are provided by this new paradigm is a scenario in which Corning proposes that the human species in effect invented itself; synergistic behavioral and technological innovations were the “pacemakers” of our biological evolution. Synergy has also played a key role in the evolution of complex modern societies, he concludes. The final chapter addresses our current challenges and future prospects.
