Aesthetic Realism Online Library — Aesthetic Realism and the Economy: Justice and Injustice

Justice and Injustice in Economics

Mental Conflict and Jobs, of February 1947, is one in a series of lectures that Eli Siegel gave at Steinway Hall, and, based on notes taken at the time, we publish it here. Various terms in this early Aesthetic Realism talk, like “mental conflict” and “the unconscious,” were much in use then, and the term “nervousness” took in more than it does now. But I think it is clear that the human mind of all time and our time is being understood at last, and greatly.

As to jobs: in 1947 the state of the US economy was very different from now. It seemed to be flourishing. Unions were increasingly powerful and therefore more and more people were making better and better wages. Today a huge 10 percent of our population is unemployed—over 15 million men and women. And that government figure does not include the millions of so-called “discouraged workers”—people who have stopped even looking for work. Yet what Mr. Siegel is explaining in 1947 is not only relevant and true today—it’s blazingly needed; it is, in its kindness and clarity, an emergency. more

We publish here, from notes taken at the time, the 1946 lecture Aesthetic Realism & Economics, by Eli Siegel. It is one in the series he gave at Steinway Hall, describing the new philosophy he had founded. In this lecture on economics we see the central principle of Aesthetic Realism: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.” We meet a way of seeing economics different from any other, and true, great, urgently needed now.

As I looked at the notes a listener took on September 5, 1946, I was struck by the fact that Mr. Siegel then was explaining so much of what would happen in the years to follow. I think, for instance, this lecture gives the underlying reason why the Soviet Union no longer exists.

As you'll see, Mr. Siegel shows that the only economic way that can satisfy people is aesthetics, the oneness of opposites: justice to all people and to every individual person at once; the simultaneity of security and adventurous expression.... more

We are serializing Eli Siegel's great lecture Once More, the World, at a time when crisis is one of the milder words being used in relation to the US economy. Major financial institutions have collapsed. And as I write, Congress is discussing a plan for a massive bailout of Wall Street firms, with 700 billion taxpayer dollars.

What it is all about, and the real answer to it, are in the Goodbye Profit System lectures Mr. Siegel gave in the 1970s. One of these is the lecture we're serializing.

America's fiscal breakdown did not come, as is being said, from the housing bubble and trading in subprime mortgages, though they are part of it. The breakdown has come from something much more fundamental. Click here for more

On October 10, an article on the front page of the Washington Post carried the headline “The End of American Capitalism?” What is happening, as financial institutions collapse and are bailed out, or bought out, by the government?

Eli Siegel explained it in 1970, in his many Goodbye Profit System lectures. And one of these is the lecture we are now serializing, titled Once More, the World.

He explained that history had reached the point at which economics based on contempt no longer worked and would never succeed again. He documented with wide-ranging, scholarly, and vivid detail the profit system's failure; the cause of it; and the historical and human reasons why its terminal illness was taking place at the end of the 20th century. There would be an effort to keep it going and make it appear healthy, but it was a dying thing. And there is only one way, he said, for American and world economics now to succeed: economics—including jobs, finance, buying and selling—must be based on ethics, an honest answer to the question “What does a person deserve by being a person?” Click here for more

In this issue, we print the fourth section of his lecture Once More, the World. As we've been serializing it, I have written about the fact that Mr. Siegel, in the 1970s, explained what has really been happening to the world's economy. And economy takes in the very lives of people—their hopes, worries, resentments about jobs and money, and their feeling about what they deserve. Through what he said then, and through Aesthetic Realism itself, we can know what our current “financial meltdown,” as it's been called, is truly about...

In this journal in 1976, Eli Siegel wrote about Alan Greenspan. It was before Greenspan was seen as the economic Eminence of our land; his name, Mr. Siegel noted then, was one “many people have not even heard of.” Yet under the heading “The Greenspan Failure,” Eli Siegel presented the clever Mr. Greenspan as standing for an approach to economics which has done terrific damage to humanity, and which has failed.

That was 32 years ago. For so many years since, it could seem that the man had hardly failed—with all the adulation he received, with all the power his advice carried. Then suddenly, in autumn 2008, he is accused of bringing financial disaster to America... Click here for more

At this time, when America has had an election that is historic, we publish the 5th section of the lecture we've been serializing—a lecture that explains the economy of now and what Americans are looking for, as a nation and as individuals. It is Once More, the World, by Eli Siegel. We also print part of a paper by Aesthetic Realism consultant and actor Bennett Cooperman, from a public seminar of last month titled “How Can We Like Ourselves in a Tough World?”...

In order for our President-elect to be a good President, in order for him to succeed, he must want, passionately, to answer this question, articulated by Eli Siegel: “What does a person deserve by being a person?” And he must make sure the economy of America is based on a true answer to that question.

That is not what the present economy is based on. And the coming President, and Congress, and the American people need to see that tinkering around with an unethically based economy will not work. We now have to have economics based, not on profit, but on ethics, justice, usefulness. Click here for more

We are serializing Eli Siegel's great lecture Once More, the World—one of his Goodbye Profit System lectures of the 1970s. In them is the explanation of what America is experiencing now: our economic crash, with all its human agony and billion-dollar false, ineffectual remedies. In them also is the true answer, the one solution that will work....

In the section of Once More, the World printed here, Mr. Siegel explains why, after thousands of years, it is in recent decades that the death throes of profit economics have been taking place. He says that the cause of the profit system's failure is the accumulation of happenings, choices, knowledge, feelings that have taken place over time. This accumulation-as-power is part of what he described in his lectures as the force of ethics.

To see what that means, we can look at the industry so much in the news: the once roaring, mighty U.S. auto industry, now in financial ruin. Click here for more

In this issue we publish the conclusion of the great 1970 lecture Once More, the World, by Eli Siegel. As we've been serializing it, I have been relating the economic happenings of today, with all their pain and fearfulness, to what Mr. Siegel explained in his Goodbye Profit System lectures of the 1970s:

There will be no economic recovery in the world until economics itself, the making of money, the having of jobs, becomes ethical; is based on good will rather than on the ill will which has been predominant for centuries.

...The failure of the profit system, Mr. Siegel made clear, is an ethical matter, as economics itself is. That is, everything in economic history has concerned ethics fundamentally—has been a phase of what Aesthetic Realism shows to be the biggest fight in every person: between the desire to have contempt for the world and the desire to see meaning in it, to respect it. For the US economy now to succeed, what's necessary is not the futile patchwork of bailouts, and not some “rival system.” What's necessary is that our economy be based on respect for every man, woman, and child—that the drive behind it be an honest answer to the question Mr. Siegel said was the most important for the world: “What does a person deserve by being a person?” more

With this issue we begin to serialize the great lecture Always with PDC, which Eli Siegel gave in 1974. PDC stands for the three aspects of economics: production, distribution, consumption. And Mr. Siegel is showing that what is always with them is Ethics. He wrote, defining that term, “To be ethical is to give oneself what is coming to one by giving what is coming to other things” (Self and World, p. 243).

He is the philosopher, historian, critic, economist to explain that economics is centrally a matter of ethics. And in 1970, in his Goodbye Profit System lectures, he showed that by the last third of the 20th century, economics based on seeing human beings in terms of how much profit one can get out of them had failed. The underlying reason for the profit system's failure is the contempt, the shoddy ethics, at its basis.more

Aesthetic Realism explains that there are essentially two ways we can have of seeing another person, an object, in fact the world itself: with good will or with ill will. Good will, Eli Siegel writes, is “the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.” Ill will, or contempt, is “the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it.”

In the great 1974 lecture we're serializing, Always with PDC, he is showing that central in all production, distribution, and consumptionin—every moment of economics—is the seeing of people with either good will or ill will.more

Here is the third section of the 1974 lecture Always with PDC, by Eli Siegel. In an informal way, with vividness and grace, he is showing that what is always with those three aspects of economics—production, distribution, consumption—is Ethics.

Ethics is the state of justice or injustice with which we see what's not ourselves. And Aesthetic Realism explains that it is the largest matter in the life of everyone. How fair do we want to be to a person—a person we're close to or one in another neighborhood or continent?...more

In the lecture we're serializing, Always with PDC, Eli Siegel is showing that ethics is central in economics—is always with Production, Distribution, and Consumption. Ethics is the justice or injustice, the good will or ill will, with which we see anything outside of ourselves. It is the biggest matter not only in economics but in every aspect of our lives....

I'll comment, and give some background, on some of the matters he speaks about in the present section of Always with PDC.... Click here for more

With this issue we conclude our serialization of the great lecture Eli Siegel gave on August 23, 1974, Always with PDC. Those initials stand for the three divisions of any economy: production, distribution, consumption. And, he is showing, what is always with these—and not as a mere accompaniment but as fundamental—is ethics: the justice or injustice with which one sees what is other than oneself...

Right now, a large economic agony—which means a human agony—is the matter of sub-prime mortgages. Families across America have lost their homes because they couldn't make the payments on their mortgages. Much is being written about this mortgage crisis, and its effect on banks and markets. But what I think important to point out here is that it is a matter of ethics all the way. Click here for more

With this issue we begin to serialize There Are Two Freedoms, the lecture Eli Siegel gave on June 5, 1970. It is about one of the most beautiful and important words in the world: freedom. And yet, as Mr. Siegel shows, people have used the word freedom as a cover for some of the ugliest and most vicious activities.

...Beginning about a hundred years ago, there were increasingly those "checks" on the profit system-to make it more humane, add a little ethics to it, temper its injustice. Most of these checks arose from the courageous battling done by unions. There came to be laws against child labor, laws mandating workplace safety, minimum wage, worker's compensation. Men and women in, or trying to form, unions fought and sometimes bled and died so wages could be higher and people need not be hungry. Then unions fought so workers and their families could live with more and more dignity and pleasure, get more and more of the good things of this world. Click here for more

In the lecture Good Will Is in Poetry, serialized here, Eli Siegel discusses the economist Adam Smith, whom he shows to be warm and ever so likable. He looks at two works of Smith that have been seen as very different—The Wealth of Nations of 1776 and The Theory of Moral Sentiments of 1759. And not only does Mr. Siegel show their fundamental likeness of purpose—he shows that the intent of Smith, who is seen as the classical theorist for capitalism, was like that of the poet Shelley! In these works Smith is really saying something larger than, and quite different from, what is put forth by those who picture themselves his ideological heirs.

• Adam Smith & the Need for Good Will / April 19, 2006

With this issue we begin to serialize the 1972 lecture Good Will Is in Poetry, by Eli Siegel. It contains a very important, very surprising discussion of Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations. Smith has been presented so often as the champion of capitalism. Yet Mr. Siegel shows that his renowned book has in it something very different from, and in fact opposed to, the way of mind of, say, Donald Trump, or William Buckley, or a boss today trying to rid his workplace of a union. more

• Money and Good Will / May 3, 2006

Here is the second part of Good Will Is in Poetry, a 1972 lecture in which Eli Siegel speaks about Adam Smith and, later, about Percy Bysshe Shelley....It is a lecture important for both economics and literature, and in the understanding of what people are hoping for. Various persons of the right have turned Adam Smith into a kind of mascot for their views. Yet...Smith,...[Mr. Siegel] makes clear, shows that at the very basis of economics as such is good will, "unarticulated," structural good will. more

• Economic Good Will — & What Interferes / May 31, 2006

At the point we have reached, Eli Siegel is discussing Smith's The Wealth of Nations. And he shows that this person, so often presented as the classical theorist for capitalism, is really saying something much larger than, and quite different from, what is put forth by those who picture themselves Smith's ideological heirs....as Smith describes how economics works, he is describing, with vividness and in great prose, an elemental structure of good will.... more

• Adam Smith—& Humanity's Kindness & Cruelty / June 14, 2006

Here is the 4th part of Good Will Is in Poetry, by Eli Siegel....In the section of the lecture printed here, Mr. Siegel comments on passages by Smith about the drive in the human self to identify with other people, to feel what another person may feel... more

• How Much Can We Know a Person, & Be Known? / June 28, 2006

This lecture is important in the fields of philosophy, economics, and literature. But it also has to do with the confusion people feel about each other—for instance, with the fact that right now two persons who saw themselves as close find they resent each other, and don't know why....In the part of the lecture we've reached, Mr. Siegel is quoting Smith about the human longing to have someone else see what we feel. more

• Adam Smith, America, & the Failure of Contempt / July 12, 2006

Mr. Siegel shows the relation, unseen before, among three things: Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations of 1776; Smith’s earlier, so different, work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments; and the writings of the poet Shelley.

Today—with people working longer hours for less pay, with pensions being lost, with American jobs now being done in Guatemala or Indonesia or India—life is replete with instances of the profit system’s failure. But I’ll comment a little on a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine, because in itself it is enough to show that Mr. Siegel was right: though a lot has happened since 1970, and the stock market has risen and fallen many times, and we have wonderful technology and cyberspace, the profit system has not recovered. The New York Times Magazine of June 11 is given entirely to articles on the subject of debt—the debt of Americans and America herself.... more

• Shelley—& What Nations & People Want / July 26, 2006

Here is the conclusion of Good Will Is in Poetry, the 1972 lecture in which Eli Siegel-amazingly, logically, and very importantly-shows the relation between the economist Adam Smith and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley....Mr. Siegel speaks about Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind." It is seemingly a nature poem; and of course, it's partly that. But Mr. Siegel explains that from beginning to end, the poem represents Shelley's passionate feeling that England has to be owned differently, the earth has to be owned in a way that is just.... more

The Self, Shelley, & What People Deserve / July 27, 2005

We are serializing the 1966 lecture Psychiatric Terms and Shelley, Byron, Keats, by Eli Siegel.... Th[is] stanza [from the poem "Song to the Men of England"(1818)] by Shelley is about the biggest social and economic question today. That question is: To whom should the world and its wealth belong? Shelley was passionate on the subject: the earth, he felt, should belong to everyone living on it. The idea that some few people owned the land of England, and that other people who should rightly own it too had to work for those few persons and provide wealth for them, Shelley despised. That idea is, in fact, contempt, and has the disproportion which, in another field, is insanity....more

Are We Proud of How We're For & Against? / May 5, 2004

Read how "people had a feeling of deep objection about their working lives, their economic lives, the cost of healthcare and goods, but were not clear about the objection, or its cause" — and what is happening today....more

Poetry & Honesty about America / June 27, 2001

About Vachel Lindsay's great poem "Santa-Fé Trail;" America's beautiful land; and the reason for the huge credit card debt in America. ... more

Logic, Poetry, and California / April 11, 2001

On March 27, California’s Utilities Commission approved a further rate hike for SCE and PG&E to impose on consumers: as much as 46% over the 10% that has already caused such suffering. It is amid these circumstances, with Californians pained, indignant, furious, that a certain logic is emerging for people — or at least a large phase of that logic....

Mr. Siegel, at the age of 20, presented the logic in its wholeness, and he did so with passion, beautiful prose, and even humor. He wrote in the Modern Quarterly, March 1923:

The people should own industry because the land (the land here is used to mean things like air, water, animals and so on belonging to nature) from which it comes was made by nobody and so should be owned ... by all. From the land come violets, automobiles, books, watches, silk, and foods of all kinds .... Now if nobody made the land, it is evident, to a really normal human, that everybody living has a right to own it and should own it.
Closely joined with that logic is the following, which I heard him express years later in Aesthetic Realism classes: that which all people need in order to live should not be owned by a few people for profit! ... more

Unions and Beauty / February 3, 1999

I comment a little here, however, on one of the most beautiful instances of unity in human history: unions. There are millions of people in America grateful to unions, and many more should be. And there are persons, including in government, who have been trying to destroy unions. But Aesthetic Realism is that which shows that a union, a true union, is aesthetic: like a concerto, a novel, a painting, it is a oneness of opposites. And its aesthetics is its power.

The oneness of opposites, the aesthetics, of a union is told of in a swift, playful, yet important poem by Eli Siegel, "Lines on an I.W.W. Person." The I.W.W., Industrial Workers of the World, was founded in 1905 by, among others, Eugene V. Debs and "Big Bill" Haywood. It aimed to be "one big union," in which workers of all industries would fight together in behalf of decent wages and working conditions, and the just ownership of America. Some of the true courage in American history was shown by I.W.W. persons, also called Wobblies — for instance, at the Lawrence strike of textile workers in Massachusetts in 1912. ... more

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National Ethics: What honest criteria can we use to be good critics of ethics on the national and international levels? Aesthetic Realism looks at ethics as to loyalty, international affairs, & more.

Literature / Poetry: Discussing many great works of poetry and prose. Criticism, wrote Eli Siegel compactly, is showing "a good thing as good, a bad thing as bad, and a middling thing as middling."

Love: How Aesthetic Realism describes the purpose of love—"to like the world honestly through another person." Discussion of what interferes with having real love—today and in history.

Racism—the Cause & Solution: The Aesthetic Realism understanding of contempt as the cause of racism, and the place of aesthetics in respecting, pleasurably, people different from oneself.

The Economy: Why our economic system has failed to meet the needs of the American people, and the Aesthetic Realism understanding of good will as the basis for successful and fair economics

Education: The success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method in having students learn to read and write—learn science, social studies, art, every subject—and be kinder, less angry, less prejudiced.

Eli Siegel Day in Baltimore: Talks given on August 16, 2002, Eli Siegel's Centenary, placing Mr. Siegel and Aesthetic Realism, his work, in terms of world culture and history.

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The most comprehensive source of information about Aesthetic Realism is the website of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation—and the sites connected to it, including this one. You can start, for instance, at the Foundation's home page. Then, go on to biographical information about Eli Siegel, who founded Aesthetic Realism in 1941. You will see how the education he began teaching in those years continues now in Aesthetic Realism consultations and in public dramatic presentations and seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation—as well as in the Foundation's Outreach Programs for seniors, young people, libraries, teachers. Meanwhile in the schools of New York, the dramatically effective Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method has enabled students to learn, to love learning, and to pass standardized examinations for three decades. And artists since 1955 have exhibited at the Terrain Gallery for which many have written commentaries (including on their own works), based on the philosophic principles of Aesthetic Realism.

You can read about Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism online, as well as about every person on the faculty of the Foundation. As editor of TRO her commentaries are in every issue (see, e.g., "Nature, Romanticism, & Harry Potter"; "Clothing and Emotion"; and "Jobs, Discontent, and Beauty"). In the Aesthetic Realism Online Library, you'll find the largest single repositary of reviews, articles in the press, lectures, poetry; and The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

In 2002, Eli Siegel' s centenary, the Governor of Maryland and the Mayor of Baltimore, the city where he grew up, wrote on the meaning to America of Aesthetic Realism and its founder. So did the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, in the U.S. Congressional Record.

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People in America's diverse professions—the humanities, the arts, education, the social sciences, medicine, labor—have written on the value of Aesthetic Realism. They describe the way Aesthetic Realism teaches people how to understand themselves more accurately; how the ability to be just to other people is enhanced; how one's professional attainments are augmented. Language arts teacher Leila Rosen, for example, writes on the Aesthetic Realism teaching method. Anthropologist Arnold Perey writes on the way Aesthetic Realism opposes prejudice and improves international understanding. And there are many others.

Historically, new knowledge has often been met unjustly. This was true about the new, innovative thought of Louis Pasteur and John Keats, Beethoven and William Lloyd Garrison, Jonas Salk and Isaac Newton. And it has been true about Aesthetic Realism. Documenting and opposing this, the website "Friends of Aesthetic Realism — Countering the Lies," written by more than 60 individuals, refutes the falsehoods of the few persons who have attacked Aesthetic Realism and lets the facts speak for themselves.

People who want to express their opinion of Aesthetic Realism, and have the knowledge to back it up, have created blogs and websites and have written numerous articles. See, for example, composer and educator Edward Green; essayist Lynette Abel; photographer Len Bernstein; teachers Ann Richards, Christopher Balchin, and Alan Shapiro. Others are listed in "What People Are Saying.".

The education of Aesthetic Realism enables a person to understand oneself more exactly than has been possible before, and to like the world honestly, authentically.

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Justice and Injustice in Economics

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