Global social movement proposing an alternative economic model benefiting people, the planet, and future generations, and aiming to move away from the capitalist financial model, also suggesting an assessment and certification tool for other forms of economic value
Context
Conventional economic theory and practice ignore planetary boundaries, neglect social needs, and are confined to retrograde ideas of financial growth and privatised profiteering. Such conventions focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the most important measure of a nation’s wealth. The problem with GDP, as numerous economic and political theorists have noted, is that it does not take into account the social or environmental impact of financialised events. For example, an earthquake may generate considerable GDP for a nation’s economy due to the rescue services, financial insurance payments, reconstruction, and emergency healthcare provision required. But surely no nation would wish for an earthquake. Meanwhile, a nation with a seemingly low turnover of financial events might be criticised for its low GDP, under conventional economic metrics, when in fact that nation might abound in systems that maintain social and ecological wellbeing. Until GDP is abandoned as the dominant measure of a nation’s wealth, systems such as community volunteering will remain invisible and count for nothing.
Practice
The Economy of the Common Good (ECG) emerged in 2010 as a social movement presenting an assessment and certification tool that intervenes in the dominant GDP-centred economic model by valuing social relations as essential economic activities. In so doing, ECG places social and environmental concerns at the centre of economic theory and practice.
ECG was developed by the economist Christian Felber and a group of Austrian entrepreneurs through a document named “The Economy for the Common Good” advocating that “Economy is just a tool – but it has become an end in itself”. Together, they produced a report outlining new values for the economy, such as human dignity, cooperation and solidarity, ecological sustainability, social justice, democratic co-determination, and transparency.
Companies, municipal governments, educational institutions, and individuals can become members of the ECG, which is organised into regional hubs. Membership requires submitting evidence of the applicant company or institution’s organisational structure, and details of how suppliers, customers, employees, and environmental concerns are addressed. This evidence is peer reviewed by the ECG, which then issues an ECG rating and feedback. The ECG model measures values derived from national constitutions like human dignity, cooperation and solidarity, ecological sustainability, social justice, democratic co-determination, and transparency and then evaluates what these values mean for different stakeholders. In other words, this is an economy that “rewards economic stakeholders for behaving and organising themselves in a humane, cooperative, ecological, and democratic way”.
There is a broad-range of more-than-capitalistic economies which make it possible to imagine and enact other ways of living. Through ECG, the imperative model of expanding and growing is no longer valid. It presents a reform of the economy‘s incentive framework conditions with respect to the well-being of the individuals and the environment by establishing other values and parameters of measurement. In the making of other worlds, what constitutes the economy is crucial and debated terrain because it can enable or constrain life. Especially in the context of spatial practices, ECG can define the way of how to live together with others – a community understanding based on mutual support, which goes beyond the individualistic approach that the standard economic theory supports and maintains. Ultimately, it establishes a model of radical connectedness and interdisciplinary that is central to any project of societal transformation.