Economy: A Good Life Instead of a Profit Machine

Economy: A good life instead of a profit machine

by Meinhard Creydt

[This article posted on 4/30/2025 is translated from the German on the
Internet, https://www.telepolis.de/features/Wirtschaft-Gutes-Leben-statt-Profitmaschine-10333155.html?seite=all.]


How an alternative to capitalism and state socialism can achieve
greater cost honesty and quality of life. Essay.

Many believe that thoughts about a desirable future for society
distract from the issues of “here and now.”

However, awareness of the institutional and structural outlines of a
fundamental social alternative is interlinked with social debates that
are worthy of support (e.g., on “good work” for workers and on
climate, agricultural, and transport transitions).

These social forces need ideas about the social order that is
necessary for their success.

Why a real utopia?

If such a real utopia is lacking or if the corresponding ideas remain
confused, this weakens those who want more or something different than
what can be achieved in the power struggle between interest groups
within the given society.

Until now, the prevailing view has been that a society fundamentally
different from the capitalist market economy is unthinkable. If the
dominance of this way of thinking cannot be overcome, radical
opposition will remain just opposition and there will be no
fundamental social transformation.

In contrast to a complete model, we identify a few necessary elements.
These are not figments of the imagination. Rather, they can be linked
to regulations and institutions that are already emerging within
bourgeois society and the capitalist economy.

The “new” does not arise autonomously, but from the contradictions of
the “old” and by further developing the positive aspects of these
contradictions. Understanding the desirable economy depends not least
on clarifying how the regulations outlined below support, presuppose,
and interact with each other.


Range of products

Products and services that are superfluous, harmful, and problematic,
but whose production generates capital and added value, are eliminated
in a society of good living. This makes it possible to save a great
deal of expense and work (see Creydt 2021, see Literature at the end
of the text).

Products and services are now geared toward securing, promoting, and
developing the human capabilities (skills and senses) of customers. In
the process, indirect effects are given greater attention. For
example, urban development not only has instrumental functions, but
also shapes the senses of residents in its own way.

This can no longer be considered a side effect. It is not “only”
ecological: if people experience their living space as impoverished
and ugly, this massively reduces their interest in this desolate
environment.

Work processes: reduction of psychologically unproductive working time

It must be organized in such a way that its criterion is not solely to
achieve as much as possible with as little effort as possible. Rather,
a decisive criterion of work is that workers can exercise those human
abilities in their work that they can only develop in the work itself.

The aim is “not to blur the sharp boundary between necessary work
(...) and free activity (that would certainly be too much to hope
for), but at least to make it permeable.” The goal is to “reduce
psychologically unproductive working time within the necessary working
time” (Bahro 1977, 495).

This requires an anthropocentric production technology (cf. Creydt
2021a). The unattractive activities that remain despite all efforts
can be divided among all those capable of working.

It becomes the social norm that everyone has roughly equally
attractive bundles of activities.

Drives for economic activity

In a society of good living, the motivation to work efficiently
through competition and pressure from above is replaced by a
combination of other drivers. These are job-related motives on the
part of workers to do something good for the recipients of the product
or service.

Added to this are motives that arise from social influence on the part
of the public. Economic activities are evaluated according to the
standards of the good life. Current considerations on sustainability
and public welfare balances point in this direction (for details, see
Bender et al. 2012, 73ff., 137ff. and Felber 2012).

Incentives for corresponding economic activities also arise insofar as
they are linked to corresponding benefits (in terms of taxes, contract
awards, credit conditions, etc.) (for more details, see Creydt 2023).

Expansion and further development of the information infrastructure

Product line analyses, environmental assessments, environmental impact
assessments, technology assessment, etc. are already part of an
information infrastructure that highlights the qualitative effects and
prerequisites of economic activities and offerings.

This information infrastructure and the qualitative indicators based
on it form the basis for the public assessment (“evaluation”) of
economic activities.

Trust is good, observation is better

Organizations that monitor the activities of companies and public
authorities already exist today.

Examples include food-watch, lobby-control, and Coordination gegen
Bayer-Gefahren (Coordination against Bayer Dangers), an organization
that has been monitoring and criticizing the global Bayer corporation
since 1978. Independent institutions can take on the evaluation of
companies and organizations (current precursor: audit offices).

Accounting: Multidimensional concepts of success

It is necessary to replace conventional one-dimensional business and
economic accounting methods with multidimensional concepts of success.

In contrast to prices, which are overly simplified concentrations of
information, the various effects of business activities (output,
quality of life at work, ecological effects, etc.) must be taken into
account.

This can be linked to public welfare accounts. These highlight the
various dimensions in which companies have a direct and indirect
impact.

A “material, multidimensional concept of value” differs from the maxim
“value is what money costs or brings” (Jürgen Freimann 1984, 22).
“Multidimensional value accounting” also takes into account qualities
that are difficult to quantify and refers to qualitative indicators.

Examples of this already exist today in the form of MIPS (material
intensity per service unit) and the DGB index for ‘good work.’
Multidimensional value accounting does not lead to a ”clear (or
one-sided) yardstick for economic activity.”

Unlike conventional economic accounting, however, “the degree of
social welfare can only be determined by weighing (...) quantitative
and qualitative factors (standard of living and quality of life) and
must therefore be decided through political dialogue. This is a
disadvantage in terms of model-theoretical practicability, but it
corresponds much more closely to reality than reducing economic
activity to monetized and commercial processes.”

Multidimensional concepts of success destroy “the (apparent)
calculability, clarity, and ‘elegance’ of economic models. This is
uncomfortable and disillusioning” (Ingomar Hauchler 1985, 56), but it
is necessary in view of the undercomplexity of conventional models
(limits of adequate evaluation through prices).

Networking within the country

An integrated economy takes place in inter-company technical
networking, in development cooperation and in producer-supplier
cooperation, as well as in cooperation in the realisation of large
projects (e.g. the moon landing).

In contrast to capitalist competition, the network economy gives rise
to the concept of the economy as cooperation, as working with each
other rather than against each other. However, cooperation between
companies within the capitalist economy always remains limited and
endangered by the conflicting interests between private companies.

The abolition of private ownership of companies and trade secrets
enables the unrestricted transfer of experience and knowledge between
companies.

Relationships between different companies can be established in such a
way that workers learn from each other across company boundaries,
discuss best practices, correct each other, and “copy” each other.

This helps to bring the production methods of companies up to the
level desired by society. In contrast, in a market economy, it is only
indirectly via the market and in retrospect that it becomes apparent
who produces better or worse.

Already today, “Volkswagen has so-called vehicle clinics; they are not
there to repair cars, but to discuss them. Market researchers present
model designs to selected families and note down their wishes and
suggestions for improvement” (Schieritz 2023).

Such institutions need to be emancipated from their narrow focus on
individual sales promotion and opened up to joint consultation between
consumers and producers on meaningful products.

“Idea generators, experts, users, and producers” can come together in
‘public development workshops for product development and innovation’
(Birkhölzer, in research project 1994, 31). This results in a
different kind of contact between consumers and producers than on the
market.

International networking

What is needed is a global spatial order in which the world market
shrinks and loses its power. “Deconnexion” (Samir Amin) and
“deglobalization” (Streeck 2021, 408ff.) differ from protectionism or
the formation of economic blocs that are geared toward competition on
the world market and thus adapt positively to it.

International networks must be massively thinned out. This does not
mean petty statism. Rather, economic areas comprising several
countries can be largely self-sufficient (see Creydt 2021b on this
topic).

Property

The economy in the Soviet Union was characterized by constant
tug-of-war between individual companies and the planning authority.
Individual companies tried to achieve easily fulfillable targets by
fudging information about their performance and inventories.

The central planning authority retaliated by counteracting and
overriding them. And so the vicious circle in the interaction between
the two sides was complete. It shows that the expropriation of capital
and the elimination of capital and labor markets are a necessary but
not a sufficient condition for a society of good life.

These measures do not provide an answer to the question of the
information and competence gap between the client and the agent
(“principal-agent problem”).

This problem can be addressed in a society of good life. Relevant here
are changes in the motives for economic action and a public sphere
that effectively influences corporate activities.

Overcoming the capitalist economy eliminates its regular and necessary
crises. This massively reduces the uncertainty that arises from the
possible devaluation of private property in economic crises.

This reduces the need for isolated individuals to create “security”
for bad times through private property. The expansion of public
services includes, for example, a transport system that makes private
car ownership less necessary, as well as infrastructure that
encourages borrowing (e.g., car sharing).

In addition, there are regulations that counteract individual overuse
of common goods and free-rider behavior.

In the society of the good life, the following no longer applies:
Private owners “owe nothing to anyone, they expect nothing from
anyone, so to speak; they become accustomed to always remaining
separate from others, they like to imagine that their entire destiny
lies in their own hands. (...) The zeal with which they conduct their
small affairs dampens their enthusiasm for the great ones”
(Tocqueville 1987, 149, 274).

A society of good living is structured in such a way that what we care
for, provide, and work on no longer separates us from others. Rather,
it is important to realize how good living or a high quality of life
can be achieved through work and activities as well as through
products and services.

Attention is focused on questions such as how each particular moment
contributes to or weakens the overall state we strive for.

The overarching standard and cost honesty

The ultimate (not immediate) standard for the economy is how it
affects the quality of life as a whole. This criterion reflects a key
experience:

In recent decades, capitalist wealth has grown massively, but the
negative stress associated with working and business life has not
decreased at all.

“Cost honesty” is not only necessary for ecological reasons. It is
true that a modern economic system has its own interactions and
inherent requirements. In a society of good living, however, it is not
a question of first distributing products or profits and then enabling
quality of life beyond the work processes and the product range with
their proceeds.

Rather, in the economy we strive for, quality of life becomes an
“integral function of prosperity” (Claus Offe). This includes
measuring work processes and the way companies are organized not only
by their immediate output, but also by the quality of life at work.

This makes it possible to reduce expenditure on eliminating the direct
and, above all, indirect negative consequences of economic activity
(“defensive spending”) and to overcome the reversal whereby an economy
earns money by not addressing the causes of the damage it causes and
then earns more by marketing the problem.

Vicious circle

If frustrations in working and business life decrease, the demand for
compensation and overcompensation also decreases. This in turn removes
the basis for a vicious circle: the high proportion of unattractive
work has so far been the reason for a lot of (over)compensation, which
in turn often requires additional unattractive work.

In a society of good living, there will still be a difference between
jobs that make it possible to cross-finance activities that are
necessary but cannot support themselves financially from their surplus
product.

Under the rule of the value-added and profit economy, the requirement
for education, healthcare, and private care activities is that they
should remain subordinate to the necessities of wealth production and
accumulation and cost as little as possible.

In a society of good life, work and activities are valued according to
their direct and indirect contribution to securing, exercising, and
developing human potential.


Regulation and control of economic activities

Companies can be influenced (depending on their scores in the
comprehensive balance sheet) through the awarding of contracts and
loans (linked to qualitative requirements), taxation, and subsidies.

Society decides on proportions that are relevant for the whole
country. These exist, for example, between work and consumption,
between public services or public goods and private consumption, and
between the requirements for efficiency at work and the development of
human skills in the workplace.

There is also a conflict of objectives between the requirements for
the quantity of available products and services and the demands of
workers for a good quality of life at work.

An institution “for the regulation of public enterprises” does not set
production targets and distribute production materials like the
authorities in the former Eastern Bloc countries, “but (enforces)
certain democratically established norms for the use of public
facilities.”

Such an institution would, on behalf of society, “exercise ownership
rights over enterprises, while enterprise employees would be
restricted to user rights” (Diane Elson 1990, 89f.).

Investments are the subject of public consultation and democratic
decision-making.

Even today, state research funds, project funds from foundations, and
loans from ethical banks (such as GLS Bank) are allocated on the basis
of content criteria (i.e., not only profit prospects) by a pluralistic
commission.

Raul Zelik 2020, 219

There is certainly a danger here that applicants will try to influence
those who make the decisions informally. Democratic control of the
decision-making bodies and the anonymization of applications help to
counteract this. If the public funds to be allocated come from
different sources or foundations, the risk of becoming dependent on a
single source of funding is reduced (ibid., 222).

The profit

In a society of good life, the profit of an individual business has a
completely different function than in a capitalist economy. In a
capitalist economy, the accumulation of capital is ultimately the
decisive criterion that determines the organization of work in the
business and the selection of products to be produced.

In a society of good living, the decisive definition of new
wealth—securing and promoting human assets—leads to standards for
products and services as well as requirements for the organization of
work.

At the same time, there is a social interest in the surpluses
generated by companies in order to cross-finance areas such as
education and health care, which cannot and should not be organized in
a way that covers their costs. Society must decide on the composition
of these two different requirements for the organizational structure
of work in companies.

In a society of good living, profit is not the decisive factor in
determining the orientation of a business (choice of products and
production processes). Profit is not automatically used to expand the
resources of the individual business or the wealth of investors.

In a society of good living, the wealth invested in a particular
business is not capital. It is a means of realizing immediate and
indirect goals in the service of securing and promoting human assets,
not a means of accumulating capital.

In the post-capitalist economy, workers in the enterprise are no
longer of interest as labor power for generating surplus value.
Rather, work itself is regarded as an area in which human assets
develop, and this development becomes a decisive criterion for the
organization of work.

Certainly, even in a non-capitalist economy, it is important to
compare how and where scarce resources can be used more efficiently to
generate surpluses. However, this criterion will not have absolute
priority. The proportions between the necessary surplus product and
the safeguarding, activation, and development of human assets must be
publicly considered, discussed, and decided upon. They are formed
within the work processes through which products or services are
produced and through care activities.

Regulation by markets

In the society of the good life, there is no capital market in which
sums of money are valued solely on the basis of where they can be used
most profitably. Nor is there a labor market. Labor is no longer a
commodity.

The question of how social regulation and markets relate to each other
in a post-capitalist society is one of the unresolved issues in the
debate (see Creydt 2020, pp. 5-9). At least there are already
tendencies in the current economy that point beyond market regulation.
And, as mentioned above, it is possible to identify forms of
regulation that are not market-based.

Conclusion

In contrast to the perspective outlined here, which is composed of
various elements, compact solutions for a post-capitalist economic
order are often propagated, such as the “socialist market economy,”
cybersocialism or digital socialism (planned economy with modern
information and communication technology), “commonism,” and council
democracy.

Supporters of such supposedly simple and “all-in-one” models have
advantages in an attention economy that is receptive to slogans.
However, many do not take responsibility for the unresolved problems
inherent in these concepts (cf. Creydt 2020, 2022).






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