The invention of economy destroyed the world. Interview with Gloria Germani

In the dominant view of economics, individuals think primarily of themselves, seeking income to support a hectic lifestyle, and nature exists to be dominated by humans. This Western view of economics, originating with the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm, is the source of all kinds of ecological, climate, environmental, food, and consumer crises, as well as the creator of ongoing social and economic inequalities. It is from this assumption that the invention of economics has destroyed and is destroying the world. We discuss this with Gloria Germani, an ecophilosopher who has always been committed to dialogue between East and West, a student of philosopher Caterina Conio, philosopher Serge Latouche, and Swedish ecologist Helena Norberg Hodge. Active in the ecopacifist and deep ecology movements, she is a member of Navdanya International and the Ecophilosophical Association. She is a practitioner of Avdaita Vedanta (the Path of Nonduality), the most well-known of all the Vedanta schools of Hinduism. Already active in the field of education in Steiner schools, she has dedicated herself to deepening the study of nondual education through Valentino Giacomin’s Alice Project Universal Education. An exponent of degrowth thought, her works are dedicated to the critique of the modern vision based on the colonization of the imagination that underlies the so-called “development” of mass industrial society, “economic growth,” and the reductionism of “Western science.” She has worked for over thirty years in the media and audiovisual sector. She has traveled extensively in Asia and is recognized as the leading expert on the thought of journalist Tiziano Terzani, to whom she has dedicated three monographs. The latest, “Tiziano Terzani Against War. The Truth of “All is One” between East and West,” was published in 2024, the twentieth anniversary of his death.

“Economy” is a word with ancient origins, but one that has undergone a completely different development in modern times. What is its etymological meaning?

The name “economy” already existed among the Greeks and meant the rule – nomos – of the house – oikos. It concerned food, clothing, housing and other resources that were sources of well-being, but were not isolated from the fabric of life. This economy was totally distinct from krematistics, that is, the possibility of making money with money. This practice was condemned both by Aristotle and by Christian circles until the Renaissance, as well as in Islamic and Eastern circles[1]. Aristotle supported natural exchange (commodity-money-commodity) because it corresponds to selling one’s surplus to buy what one needs, but he condemned the mercantile practice (money-commodity-money) which corresponds to buying at the lowest possible price to resell at the highest possible price. For Aristotle, making money with money is an objective irreconcilable with the pursuit of the common good[2].

Indeed, as for Plato, «A world founded on profit is irreconcilable with citizenship and even less with isonomy (equality) and of course with justice[3]. The total condemnation of making money with money (interest on loans), of accumulation, of avarice, pervades all civilizations: from Plato to Aristotle, from Jesus to Buddha. It is taken up by the Fathers of the Christian Church and obviously by St. Thomas Aquinas. The Koran expressly prohibits interest on loans as usury (riba) and this indication is still respected, so much so that among Muslims whoever lends money becomes in some way a partner in the enterprise and therefore participates in the profits but also in the losses. In this way, money avoids becoming an absolute value and the main actor. In addition to the prohibition on interest on loans (riba), Sharia requires that part of one’s earnings be donated to charity (zakāt), and that one must make socially responsible or lawful investments (ḥalāl), which are risk-free (gharār) and non-speculative (maysir).

If you consult any website on Islamic finance, these rules are explained by the fact that Islam and the Sharia follow ethical norms, assuming this is a sign of backwardness. We will see later that this disconnect between ethics and science is one of the great errors of the West. It is also interesting to note that the condemnation of interest on loans in various cultures concerns the same issue: time. Charging interest on lending money means profiting from time, and time is something humans cannot and should not dispose of. As quantum physics confirms, time has no intrinsic existence.

Today, however, this doesn’t seem to be the definition of the “economy” we’re experiencing firsthand. What kind of economy are we talking about?

In fact, everything changed in Europe with the advent of Cartesian-Newtonian science in the mid-1700s. The most famous name linked to the birth of the new “economic science” is that of the Englishman Adam Smith[4]. Professor of jurisprudence and philosophy, «he applied the Newtonian concepts of equilibrium and laws of motion and immortalised them with the metaphor of the “invisible hand” of the market which, according to him, would guide the selfish interest of every entrepreneur, producer and consumer giving rise to what he defined as “the natural harmony of interests”»[5]. Therefore, a system composed of selfish individualisms in the pursuit of their own selfish interest would be transformed into a harmonious complex for all. “Smith and Ricardo supported the “scientific” argument according to which harmony would have been achieved because “the laws of nature” operated in this way[6]. It should be noted that today the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm is still firmly in operation: the “laws of nature” would be objective and would regulate matter, that is, the outside world, while man, the thinking subject, would investigate these laws with the aim of discovering them and modifying them to his own advantage. The first chair of Economics was established in Oxford in 1825. Therefore no more than 200 years ago, which is very few if we look at the history of the world.

At the time, it was regarded with considerable suspicion by academics who sensed its enormous capacity to devour other fields of knowledge. In fact, over the course of two centuries, it became the sovereign of the sciences with its one and only law: economic growth, or the constant pursuit of profit. In the meantime, other important concepts were moving together with those of the new modern economy and concerned the idea of ​​the individual, of law, of natural law.[7] The first jurist to teach law at the University of Oxford, William Blackstone, who lived from 1723 to 1780, gave the following definition of private property: “The solitary and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, to the total exclusion of the right of every other individual in the universe.”

Note how this statement is a clear emanation of the separation between the subject or “despotic owner” and the external world, or between Descartes’ res cogitans and res extensa. Furthermore, John Locke’s role in establishing the existence of a “natural right” that served to legitimize the colonization of the New World (South and North America) was crucial. «The idea of ​​legitimate domination over an “empty land” provided a powerful intellectual justification for the exploitation of the New World, inhabited by savages who did not worship any Christian god, devoid of rationality and of any idea of ​​property»[8]. As the physicist Fritjof Capra and the eco-jurist Ugo Mattei have well demonstrated, the scientific revolution and the victorious applications of Newtonian mechanics did not occur in a vacuum. The accumulation of capital necessary to start industrial enterprises occurred at the expense of distant lands.

The adventures in Latin America of Christopher Columbus, Francisco Pizarro and Fernando Cortés were motivated by the need to find gold and pay off the debts contracted by the Castilian sovereigns in the neo-banks of Genoa and Switzerland. A notary travelled with Columbus to testify that the American land was terra nullius – no man’s land – and could therefore be occupied and belong to the Spanish Crown. The gold and silver that were not exploited in those lands were equally res nullius and therefore at the disposal of the Spanish. The idea took hold that land without a private owner belonged to no one, rather than being everyone’s. This legal structure granted the “natural right” to take possession of lands and goods in Africa, the Indies and North America. «The legal creations of modernity played a notable role in these colonial extractions, implemented by denying legal dignity to pre-existing institutions based on common goods»[9].

These conceptions of natural law are at the basis of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), not to mention the United States Declaration of Independence (1776), where the ideal of the individual right to liberty was extolled. Supported by powerful thinkers and intellectuals such as Voltaire and Adam Smith – and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 – the concept of the “pursuit of happiness” was increasingly seen as achievable through a robust system of property rights guaranteed by a state with military and executive authority. The United States Constitution (1784) embodied the idea that the right to life, liberty, and happiness were closely tied to private property and derived from immutable natural laws.

Today we hear about many types of economics: free-market economics, neoclassical economics, Keynesian economics, post-Keynesian economics, Marxist economics, and so on. Many are conniving with capitalism, while others criticize it. What is the problem with all the economic concepts born in the West?

All these economic visions start from a premise taken for granted and indisputable: the vision inherited from the Cartesian-Newtonian Enlightenment, namely, that mind and matter are two separate things (the famous Cartesian dualism). Reality is therefore only material. The human mind studies matter through the scientific method (study of phenomena, formulation of hypotheses, experimentation) and modifies it for its own advantage/usefulness/profit. Each object loses its intrinsic value within the overall interconnection, loses its hierarchical value—hierarchicos, in the sense of sacred order (archè) (ieros)—and becomes mere matter to be manipulated at will. Thus the world becomes flat, devoid of values, and the only generator of value becomes money. The economy rules over everything.

I believe the position of Latouche, Professor Emeritus of Economics and founder of Degrowth, is very important. “It is not a question of substituting a “good economy” for a “bad” one, good growth or good development for bad ones, painting them as green, or social or equitable […]. We believe that the “nice” desire of the Focolare to create a “civil” economy is illusory because the banality of evil is part of the essence of the economy. For example, there is no other capitalism (good), another development (human, sustainable, etc.), another growth (green, sustainable, etc.), in short, another economy. To change the economy, it is a question of changing values ​​and therefore of de-Westernizing. Decolonizing the imagination, that is, deseconomizing the mind to rediscover a sense of proportion, rediscover the common good and reinvent common goods. Leaving the economy means questioning the predominance of the economy over the rest of life, in theory and in practice, but above all in our minds[10].

So the epithets that are pinned on the economy today—”civil,” circular, “sustainable,” Keynesian, Marxist, green—are a bit like decoys because they sidestep the fundamental issue: we need to move away from the modern economy and its industrialization, which is at the root of climate collapse.

However, I believe that modern economics could not have achieved its current hegemonic role without basing itself on the structure and prestige of modern science. Therefore, the critique of economics must also be a critique of the scientific-technological-economic system.

Every day we hear about economics, and the mass media discuss it based on the assumption that economics dominates the world and must always function and will always function that way. But unfortunately, this applies today to our Western world and its attempt to “Westernize the world” through globalization. What has Western colonialism accomplished throughout history, and what “economies” has it destroyed? What principles were other “economies” based on?

This question is very important. Today’s media narrative presents the modern economy as if it were an absolute, a universal fact valid across all time and continents. But as we have tried to demonstrate, this is not the case at all. Here we return to the discussion on Science just mentioned above. With the Age of Enlightenment, European and Western man truly believed he possessed the only true knowledge: Science. This certainty also reflects the ancient Christian legacy. The certainty of being the only true religion and of having to export it everywhere, for example with the Crusades of the 11th-13th centuries. The entire history and narrative of colonialism are influenced by this approach. It is the “White Man’s Burden,” ordained by God or Darwinian evolution, that spreads civilization and science. The history of colonialism has been shrouded in this triumphal belief, even though many studies are now beginning to emerge attesting to the atrocities committed against indigenous peoples living in harmony with nature. We are talking about the massacre of approximately 100 million indigenous peoples in North America, the extermination of South American cultures, but also the brutal actions of the Dutch, Belgians, French, and English in Africa and Asia. Books such as “Exterminate Those Beasts”, “Christopher Columbus and Other Cannibals”, “The Curse of the Nutmeg”[11] offer numerous historical documents of these massacres carried out by the colonizers first in the name of the superior Christian religion, and then in the name of the free market. A research sector on “racial capitalism” is also developing and it is undoubted that the birth of industrial civilization was possible on the basis of colonialism in the continents and the exploitation of slavery, with the deportation of the black population from Africa to America. However, the history written and taught in universities and schools does not give space to this harsh reality, but exalts the wonderful “civilizing” mission of European Man.

Likewise, the various specializations in which modern science operates—called “reductionist” because it reduces and segments “material reality”—tend to interpret the various subjects by assigning each an ancient or universal value. Economics, for example, traces the origins of its practices, such as supply and demand, resources, money, and the market, back to prehistoric times, even though these practices had a completely different meaning. Similarly, chemistry, advertising (“communication sciences”), and the psychological sciences tend to reread their origins in an authoritative past, when the system of meaning was entirely different.

Obviously, the media system, which is effectively an industry, does this even more, consistently supporting modernity as the pinnacle of evolution. As the great French sociologist and theologian—and advocate and precursor of degrowth—Jacques Ellul understood, information and entertainment play a global role in favor of modern technologies. The entire audiovisual system is built on advertising and is entirely dependent on it. All the more so, the media always favor the modern economy.

Obviously, other economies, or economies preceding the modern one, were fundamentally based on community and mutual support. Marcel Mauss, with his important work “Essay on the Gift,” and later the MAUSS (Anti-Utilitarist Movement in the Social Sciences) demonstrated that the gift was the foundation of the social bond in archaic societies, where essentially relational and symbolic needs and intentions took precedence over exclusively material and economic goals.

“Money has become the sole symbolic generator of values. We no longer know what is beautiful, true, just, or holy,” said philosopher Umberto Galimberti. In a world where politics seems to matter nothing, economics seems to matter everything, and the global economy itself evolves based on technological resources, is ethics still viable?

Certainly not. Galimberti, being fundamentally a student of Martin Heidegger, perfectly understood the alienation of man denounced by the German philosopher and the age of technology into which we were rapidly approaching. I like to refer to Tiziano Terzani, who perfectly grasped 30 years ago that ethics had disappeared and that economics had taken its place. He obviously forcefully denounced this approach, opposing attempts to hide this reality and cloak it in the rhetoric of good intentions, of NGOs, of charity, of development cooperation. I believe his testament is contained in the words: “Man is now a slave to the economy. His entire life is determined by the economy. This, in my opinion, will be the great battle of the future: the battle against the economy that dominates our lives, the battle for the return to a form of spirituality—which you could also call religiosity—to which people can turn. We need new models of development, not just growth, but thrift.”

Politics is now silent and relies solely on GDP growth as the sole factor for managing the common good. But we have lost all foundations of true politics.

“If a man finds one diamond, he’s lucky; if a man finds two diamonds, he’s very lucky; if a man finds three diamonds, it’s witchcraft,” says an African proverb. This could be a good way to define financial capitalism today, which continues to colonize the world by generating money from money through money. Anthropologist  Marco Aime equates “Wall Street tricks” with “witchcraft.” What are your thoughts on this?

The financialization of the economy generates profits disconnected from the real economy, fueling the gap of socioeconomic inequality, to the point of endangering Nature itself. However, I disagree with Aime’s distinction between modern economics and finance, according to which the modern market-based economy was “good,” while finance is not. I truly prefer to follow Latouche’s clear vision, according to which finance is merely the final expression of modern economics, the chrematistic economy—making money with money—already discussed by Aristotle and which we discussed earlier.

The foundation of today’s economy is consumption. The globalized world is founded on producing, selling, and consuming. Without this sequence, the world would not move forward. Just as the superfluous is produced, sold, and consumed, so too are weapons, and with them wars. Isn’t there something perverse and irreversible in this conception and understanding of human activity on Earth?

Thank you for this question which hits on a very important point. I tried to explain that the modern economy was born from a body of thought which for brevity we call mind-matter dualism or the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm. In the 18th century, a rupture occurred, not an evolution, as the current narrative tells us. This was due to the disappearance of the basic taboo that until then had guided the world and also the West: the natural order must not be touched. [12] As various scholars, including Weber, Dumont, Latouche, Toods, affirm, this occurred above all due to an involution of Christianity (both in the Catholic and Protestant variants) which focuses on the individual and on the useful and loses sight of the community and the interconnection that binds men to their places, to relationships, to collective sustenance. In this way, reality, or matter, becomes a flat world, devoid of values. The highest value becomes the money with which individuals attribute value to this or that thing (of the type: I like, I don’t like). There is no longer any sacredness in the world, no intrinsic harmony to respect. Economics becomes the science of objectified value.[13]

“Since every value has a price, and only that which is marketable deserves consideration, there are no values ​​other than those quoted on the stock exchange.”[14] This is the intrinsic law of economics and with this the economy liquidates any ethical consideration. This is the profound reason why producing and selling coats is exactly the same as producing and selling weapons. But also producing and selling any type of pornography, with films and websites, or renting/selling wombs for what is defined as surrogacy (GPA).

These are things that would be absolutely forbidden in a Buddhist, Hindu, or Islamic economy. For example, Buddhist economics clarifies right livelihood (sammā ājīva) from the very beginning. These indications are part of the Eightfold Path taught by the Buddha 2,600 years ago (as the fourth of the Four Noble Truths). Right livelihood must focus on non-harm (ahimsā), that is, avoiding any activity harmful to living beings. Therefore, at that time, hunting, slaughter, and the construction and sale of weapons were prohibited. More or less the same indications are at the heart of Hinduism and are encapsulated in the fundamental concept of Dharma. Derived from the root dhr, “that which sustains,” which can be translated as law, the cosmic order, and also the right path to follow, Dharma requires honest, nonviolent livelihood that respects the cosmic order. Work must avoid harming other living beings, nature, or society.

And it must be clarified once again: these are not moral/religious norms imposed on reality (as our contemporaries persist in believing). No, true reality is interconnectedness and impermanence. The ecosphere is made up of subtle and intertwined relationships, and humans are not its master and lord, but an integral part of the ecosphere. Therefore, respecting and supporting the natural order is of the utmost importance.

The fathers of the Enlightenment are not without fault. It was in fact Immanuel Kant who established that true knowledge – science – is possible only through phenomena, through concrete facts; ethics, however, remained separate and detached from knowledge. Ethical action therefore remained separate from knowledge, which however at the time remained so certain that the philosopher from Konigsberg compared it to the “starry sky above us”[15]. Not for nothing, at the end of the eighteenth century ethics was still very solid and the famous “categorical imperative” commanded: “Act in such a way as to treat humanity, in your own person as in that of others, always as an end, and never as a simple means”; or: “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become, by your will, a universal law of nature”[16].

Quantum physics has long since obscured many of the things Kant took for granted (including absolute time and space, the law of cause and effect). But above all, after four or five generations, the categorical imperative has become increasingly tenuous, and individual profit and the return on investment dictated by “economic knowledge” have taken center stage as the norms of action.

Therefore, if economic norms allow us to produce and sell weapons (as we are also doing in Italy with Israel), it follows that we will use them in war, and wars will only increase. We must therefore abandon the modern economy, as Latouche says, if we truly want to achieve peace. There are no other solutions.

Lorenzo Poli