Putting the Pot on the Table

Carlos Jaime Loch

Associative economics is often emphasized in terms of joint operation between producers, traders, and consumers. More recently, it has also been connected to critiques of the negative effects of international speculative capital flows. But these examples present only the external aspect and are often to one side of our personal daily lives and work places. Opportunities can thereby be lost to develop associative economics from a more immediate, organizationally internal perspective.

Firstly, it is important to recover the concept of the economic process, the noun for which associative is the adjective. Taken as a whole, the economic process consists of production, distribution, and consumption, but in the last three hundred years economics has failed to grasp this properly. For example, to begin with liberalism predominated. Its advocacy of free initiative, democracy and private property allowed the expansion of production to levels then unpredictable, but at the expense of the basic needs of many people.

Promising to correct this, socialism tried to substitute the advancements of liberalism with the state as the leader of all economic processes, but in fact threw the baby out with the bath water. More recently, consumer emancipation has caused increasing destruction of the physical environment because consumption has become identified with self-promotion and social competition, rather than with meeting real needs. In this way, the economic process has been hi-jacked by the successive unilateral interests of capitalists, unions and even ecologists.

Similar is true of finance: profit is also produced (generated) and distributed and consumed (in the form of dividends, for example). But here, too, the financial flow often turns out to be more important than its physical counterpart. We do not always give thought to the ‘real economy’ effects of new investments or their consequences for the cultural and rights spheres of society.

And yet, once completed every process renews its cycle. The economic process is no exception. There are many examples of ‘external intervention’ to re-start the economic process: in business, by changing management teams and motivation programs; in countries, by issuing new governmental plans to stimulate one or other economic sector; and in world economy with its cycles of boom and recession. In short, whenever one part privileges itself at the expense of the other, the economic process happens to break down.

Against such a background, the significance of associative economics lies in its recognition of the ‘whole economic process’ in all situations. By ‘putting the pot on the table’ it is able, for example, to bring to our consciousness the difference between profit generation and the consequences of different uses of this profit. The criteria by which profits are shared are not always those of its generation. We learn to take the context into account; to connect causes and effects; to see from the peripheral perspective. Above all, we realize we are the authors not the victims of our economic situation.

Given that businesses are leading institutions in our society, it is difficult to imagine any progress in social questions without their involvement. British culture developed the best word to express the meaning of enterprise, company, deeper observation of which reveals three elements - the entrepreneur, the workers and the investors. They can also ‘put the pot on the table’ when considering their participation in the generation and distribution of its profit. One way of understanding associative economics, therefore, is by having mutual regard for all those involved in the running of a business. For example, the workforce contributes to the creation of profits, but is often excluded from decisions about their destination or use, yet to take part in profit-use decisions is one of the strongest ways of motivating stakeholders generally and of encouraging concern for the economic process as such. Not to do this engenders de-motivation, something that not even huge amounts of money can really overcome, and an internal mercenary mood.

When we understand associative economics as a matter of recognising the deeper purpose of the company, it becomes possible to understand economic problems at not only personal and business levels but also at the international level. ‘Putting the pot on the table’ is the only way, for example, to understand that mere economic growth is insufficient to deal with social questions. It makes them even worse. But for this we need to make the company more alive and associative economics more internal. An associative company can then, indeed, serve as a microcosmic version of the entire world economy.