Re-imagining capitalism: The Locust and the Bee

"Capitalism has always comprised both predators and creators (locusts and bees) and if the recent financial crisis taught us anything, it is that crises occur when capitalism’s predators become too powerful – extracting value rather than creating it."

This is the introduction to an event at the RSA later this month, in which Geof Mulgan CEO of Nesta will argue the case for restraining the locusts and empowering the bees.

In the publishers review of his recent book,  The Locust and the Bee:Predators and Creators in Capitalism's Future, he is endorsed by prominent public figures.

"Geoff Mulgan is a brilliant thinker--lucid, deep, and with a set of clear and progressive values. In this book he brings all his qualities to bear on the question of how we make capitalism productive, responsible, and fair. It should be read by anyone who wants to understand how to create a more equal and just world."--Ed Miliband, MP, leader of the UK Labour Party

This however is not his own thinking. It derives from the thinking of those who've pioneered the cause of capitalism for social benefit.  For example, P-CED founder Terry Hallman who called on the Labour goverment to support it with a strategic proposal to tackle poverty in the UK. Warning of the potential of uprisings by those disenfranchised, it said:

"Capitalism is the most powerful economic engine ever devised, yet it came up short with its classical, inherent profit-motive as being presumed to be the driving force. Under that presumption, all is good in the name of profit became the prevailing winds of international economies — thereby giving carte blanche to the notion that greed is good because it is what has driven capitalism. The 1996 paper merely took exception with the assumption that personal profit, greed, and the desire to amass as much money and property on a personal level as possible are inherent and therefore necessary aspects of any capitalist endeavour. While it is in fact very normal for that to be the case, it simply does not follow that it must be the case."

"Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.”

In 2006, it wasn't the first time Hallman had stepped into a swarm of locusts with his efforts to raise awareness of neglect in Ukraine's orphanages. He drew attention to the involvement of racketeering and organised crime, or R.I.C.O as it's referred to in US circles.

Hallman's original paper proposing an altenative to capitalism had been delivered to the White House 10 years earlier and in 2009, funded by the profit-for-purpose business he'd conceived he began his presentations on Economics in Transition for the International Economics for Ecology conferences in Sumy, where he described events leading to the 2008 crisis in a study guide.   

Mulgan meanwhile, was suggesting to the world of TED Talks, that a new kind of capitalism might be possible.  

The cause which eventually cost Hallman his life would some years later, be billed as Ukraine's Secret Shame, by the Daily Mail  He'd been very public about what he'd  seen as the root of the problem, the locusts who'd asset stripped their country for personal gain. Writing 'Death Camps for Children' in 2006 he'd said:

"Excuses won't work, particularly in light of a handful of oligarchs in Ukraine having been allowed to loot Ukraine's economy for tens of billions of dollars. I point specifically to Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Poroshenko, and Kuchma, and this is certainly not an exhaustive list. These people can single-handedly finance 100% of all that will ever be needed to save Ukraine's orphans. None of them evidently bother to think past their bank accounts, and seem to have at least tacit blessings at this point from the new regime to keep their loot while no one wants to consider Ukraine's death camps, and the widespread poverty that produced them"

In Every Child Deserves a Loving Family, I described what was achieved, in spite of the obstacles.

There was another aspect to this work which it wasn't possible to speak about until after Terry's death. This was his assistance in efforts to leverage a scientific education centre in Kharkiv where Russia had once developed their H-Bomb. In 2007 the proposal entered the US political circuit via a then lesser know Senator Obama.   

Later in February 2008. it was the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations where Obama and Biden both sat, that was called on to support "an alternative form of capitalism" focussed on social need.

In the UK meanwhile, where no support could be found for this new way of doing business, it was those who'd formed and supported the previous government, often referred to as Tony's Cronies who'd become part of the problem, when Byers Mandelson and Blair himself became advocates for Ukraine's locusts.

Clearly this cabal were unable to comprehend that you can't swarm with the locusts and pollinate with the bees.  

The experience of sharing ideas with the "third sector" had followed a familiar pattern. You will always be outside their remit, or their focus or in some cases told it's too complex. Sooner or later however, it's not so much a case of re-inventing the wheel as rebranding it. 

What they overlook is this - the new 'bottom line' is the welfare of others, especially those in greatest need.