Jeffrey Carduner, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:
It’s thrilling that this new issue of TRO relates clearly and powerfully the three important words in its title: “Economics, Ethics, & Beauty.” You’ll see—and it’s the most urgent thing for people to understand right now—what ethics, what beauty, have to do with the history of economics, with buying and selling, with inventions, and the hopes of humanity. There is also Aesthetic Realism’s tremendous understanding of what has interfered with financial justice to people—what has made for so much suffering and cruelty about money. You’ll have great feeling for what should and can be in our nation and world as you read “Economics, Ethics, & Beauty,” this latest issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.
The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:
Dear Unknown Friends:
Here is the second section of Economics Is Diverse, the lecture Eli Siegel gave on November 27, 1970. This talk is part of his ever so careful, powerful, scholarly, exciting series titled Goodbye Profit System, begun in May of that year. Then, and later, Mr. Siegel described something no other historian or economist had understood—something humanity needs mightily to understand now. He said:
In May 1970, the conduct of industry on the basis of ill will has been shown to be inefficient….
There is a feeling all over the world on the part of persons who work that they are not getting their just share of the gross national product, and they feel that their not getting it is caused by ill will….What is being shown today is that without good will, the toughest, most inconsiderate of activities—economics—cannot do so well.
…I wish I could call it something else—good will and ill will are such pale words; but that is what it’s about. I say that the whole purpose of history is to show that the greatest kindness is the greatest power. The other thing has not worked.
In the half century that followed, the anger at being used with ill will as to work and one’s economic needs has not abated. That anger is more intense than it ever was. And so is people’s thirst, their deep demand, to be seen with good will in regard to economics. This demand is not political. It is ethical. And it is aesthetic: that is, the human justice that an economy must now have in order to work well is beauty too.
The Fundamentals: Are They Beautiful?
In the present lecture, Mr. Siegel is speaking about the fundamentals of economics. He quotes from a textbook he respected: Principles and Problems of Economics, by Otho C. Ault and Ernest J. Eberling (1936). And when Mr. Siegel spoke about economics, there was never a whiff of any dryness or dullness or forbiddingness, which people so much associate with economics. He had one feel its aliveness, and, yes, its beauty—in keeping with this Aesthetic Realism principle: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves….” Read more