Some Fundamentals of Integral Economics

Abstract

There has been a growing interest in the integration of knowledge but few broad theoretical attempts in the field of economics. If integration is to be taken seriously, combining economic questions with the social and the natural sciences will not suffice. Psychology and the humanities will have to be incorporated, too. Inspired by the works of K. W. Kapp, C. G. Jung, and others, we develop a preliminary framework combining three key “integrative concepts”—(a) social metabolism, (b) the institutional structure, and (c) the inner world—within a perspective characterized by the interior/exterior distinction, evolution, openness, and the dialectics of potentials and actualizations. We argue that these three concepts help to integrate economics with the environment, the collective, and the self and spirituality. For each one of these integrated areas, we highlight some fundamental economic principles, namely (a) the implications of the differentiation of “natural resources,” (b) the signification of the distinction between property and possession, and (c) the need to take into account the unconscious and the individuation process in order to reach a realistic picture of the “economic actor” in search of existential fulfilment. Finally, we suggest sixteen economic propositions that could form a preliminary basis for an integral economics.

KEYWORDS:

• Consciousness
• culture
• economic theory
• institutions
• integration
• social metabolism

Notes

¹The human impact on the global environment has now become so important that some scientists have started to talk of the “Anthropocene” as a new geological era in Earth history (Grinevald 2008). This era is characterized, among other things, by peak oil and by a drastic increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentration (for the past 800,000 years, the CO₂ concentration has oscillated between 180 and 280 ppm; it reaches 400 ppm today). The challenge for an integral economics is therefore to become the economics of the Anthropocene (while neoclassical economics has perhaps always been the economics of the Holocene).

²These are, broadly speaking, our value premises made explicit. Similar value premises—sustainability, self-reliance and the satisfaction of basic needs (including a whole range of non-material needs)—served as the foundation of the approach of “eco-development” that started in the 1970s in the aftermaths of the Stockholm conference on Human Environment (Sachs 1979).

³Many different spiritual stages have been proposed. Psycho-spiritual therapist Katherine Tetlow, for instance, has developed a rich evolutionary theory of consciousness that is impossible to summarize here and that has generated many fruitful discoveries and discussions between us. We simply would like to thank her here.

⁴We have expressed criticism toward the neoclassical paradigm elsewhere (Steppacher 1984, 1995; Gerber and Steppacher 2012).

⁵In this sense, governments, the school, the army, and so on are not institutions but organizations.

⁶For decades, anyone interested in the integration of psychology and spirituality would find some acquaintance with Jung's project, although Jung's spiritual guidelines are relatively rudimentary compared to other traditions. Wilber (1995) therefore noted that in order to grasp the full potential of consciousness development the integration of Freud and Buddha is needed. Freud represents for him the unsurpassed enquiry of Western depth psychology into earlier development stages, and Buddha symbolizes the quest and methods for attaining higher levels of consciousness, particularly developed in Eastern traditions.

⁷This also applies at the societal level. As Marglin (2006, 22) argued, “Just as the development of individuals should be seen as the flowering of that which is special and unique within each of us—a process by which an acorn becomes an oak rather than being obliged to become a maple—so the development of peoples should be conceived as the flowering of what is special and unique within each culture. This is not to argue for a cultural relativism in which all beliefs and practices sanctioned by some culture are equally valid on a moral, aesthetic or practical plane. But it is to reject the universality claimed by Western beliefs and practices.”

⁸Contrary to some of his colleagues who suggested the term “spiritual intelligence,” Gardner has always been reluctant to include the term “spiritual” and preferred instead “existential intelligence.”

⁹The divide between atheistic and spiritual worldviews is perfectly exemplified by the clash between Freud and Jung: “for Freud religion is a symptom of psychological disease, [whereas] for Jung the absence of religion is at the root of all adult psychological disease” (White 1953, 47, emphasis in original).

¹⁰Individual borders are blurred, time is inexistent, and experiences are still undifferentiated (laughs and tears are very close). This can literally be heaven—or hell when basic needs are not satisfied.

¹¹The lost paradise of mythologies can be interpreted as the infant(ile) economy, namely as a very early development stage that had to be transformed.

¹²Every economic system (as characterized by the different categories of possession and property within foraging, horticultural, agrarian or industrial systems) needs its own economic theoretical framework. Emphasizing the need to understand non-capitalist economies, Georgescu-Roegen (1976, 199) wrote that “like all understandings, this one requires more than a mere recital of facts; it calls for discovering a rationale behind the facts, which in the case of institutions means to discover their internal logic” (our emphasis).

¹³Love, emotions, instincts are present in all of these categories of activity.

¹⁴Worker cooperatives are run along the principles of collective possession and are more democratic and equitable than capitalist firms (Schweickart 2011). They continue to receive too little attention from economists.