This is of course a recurring theme for both the authors and followers of Citizen Renaissance: traditional hierarchies continue to crumble; the power pyramid is increasingly inverted; and authority disperses as quickly as social/ digital penetration allows. Meanwhile, discontent rises and the planet burns, while governments in paralysis do little more than merely fiddle.

Recession or no, Capitalism itself is clearly not in recovery. The clamour for better corporate behaviour understandably continues to rise.

Both Richard Edelman and I have spoken recently on Business’ License to Lead, and the vision of a new paradigm that aligns Business Competence, Societal Competence and Engagement behaviours. We have looked at this through the prism of Trust; used Edelman goodpurpose data to support our arguments; and landed upon the concept of business’ opportunity to shift from its traditional License to Operate to a new – and more important – License to Lead.

While the gauntlet has been thrown down for business, there is no time to waste anyway. The requisite shift from Compliance Culture to Values Based Leadership will be initiated by ‘regular people’ if business fails to recognise the zeitgeist and groundswell. As I have written before, we are all Actionists and Activists now and a Tahrir Square moment is surely imminent for a Business or a Brand, somewhere in the world today.

Later this week, I will join the Reverend Giles Fraser (former Canon at St Paul’s Cathedral) and Occupy Activist Naomi Colvin at St Brides Church, Fleet Street in a discussion on the Future of Capitalism. My sense is that there will be much common ground between us. Giles Fraser’s belief that ‘global capitalism has not been working for the good of us all’ will find no contradiction from me. Indeed, the very notion of Shared Interests and Shared Values has been a central theme of Citizen Renaissance since 2008.

Likewise, Colvin has written of the need to build ‘a new, participatory politics’ and, as recently as last month, on the imperative of seeing consumers as citizens. I am fully aligned. The consumerisation of everything remains a vital flaw in capitalism’s societal role, while the urgent need to construct fairer forms of democratic representation, both nationally and globally, was voiced in the very first edition of Citizen Renaissance.

But tents on the streets and articles in The Guardian are just not enough. The sentiment is right, but the execution is off-beam. Bringing home the citizen revolution needs better organisation; heightened connections through social networks; and sharper and more focussed content. A bit more ‘push’ in a world of ‘pull’. Vitally, it can all start in the workplace – and not necessarily on the streets.

Employees can become the Be Do Activists of the future:

- Positive action from employees can spread wisdom across otherwise stultifying organisational silos, finding others of like minds and shared interests.
- Positive action from employees can take top-down, philanthropic initiatives and turn them into grassroots movements that can scale social success.
- Positive action from employees can demand both greater accountability from, and transparency within, the body corporate – web-based campaigning within organisations can replace the old-fashioned threat of the withdrawal of labour.
- Positive action from employees can find a political voice within a reformed participatory politics and an economic voice within better forms of business organisation.
- Positive action from employees can inform the process of renewal, rather than forever waiting for it to emerge, courtesy of those on top
- Positive action from employees can curb the wilder excesses of either corporate pay or environmental bad practice. In other words, we no longer have to wait on others – but should instead recognise that the power lies within.
- Positive actions from employees can add human values – real values – to the disembodied made-up values of corporate constructs

The smarter business leaders of today not only recognise this, but actively embrace it also.

Too often, people speak and write of ‘consumers’ and ‘protestors’ in the abstract – failing to recognise that they are in fact people, just like you and me. People in jobs; people with votes; people buying things in supermarkets. We, the people, need to find our voices, once again. The digital tools exist to find like-minded citizens with an appetite for action. Symbolic though they may be, we do not need to erect our tents in Wall Street or on the steps of St Paul’s. Instead, we can begin to metaphorically line them up in our workplaces and on the High Street. If we are to truly reform Capitalism, just as there is no time to waste , there is also no point waiting for ‘old normal’ authority figures to act. The threat is ours and the momentum should be now. We should find each other as a matter of urgency – within our networks – and commit to reformation and peaceful revolution. For me, this is our ‘integrity and courage’ – for which Giles Fraser himself has been rightly praised – with Purpose at its core. We can surely find it within us all to make it rightly so.

There seems to be consensus on these pages that last month’s budget was both socially and ecologically regressive.

However, in calling aggressive tax avoidance “morally repugnant” in the budget, is George Osborne joining other Tories who have lately voiced concerns about capitalism and indeed is he, perhaps inadvertently, suggesting capitalism itself is “morally repugnant”?

We live in interesting times. Whilst it has been the left who have traditionally been critical of capitalism, now parts of the right are coming out as closet capitalism-sceptics.

Red-Tory Phillip Blond has long called for a new mutualist economics; an ex-Quality of Life Review colleague of mine, Zac Goldsmith MP, has just backed Ed Milliband’s views on capitalism; and another of Osborne’s colleagues, Charlie Elphicke MP, has now attacked Google for paying no tax in the UK.

So what should we make of this new found political scepticism of capitalism and what of the wider debate in society of which this is a quiet, but perhaps rising echo?

And as the debate on reform or replacement of capitalism increases how might we see left and right respond?

What is capitalism?

Firstly what do we mean when we say ‘capitalism’? Well there are many perspectives on this but most cohere around certain key constructs which themselves drive capitalism’s core growth requirement.

It is an economic system in which specialised producers produce commodities for markets but not for their own subsistence. Capitalists have a monopoly of ownership of the means to production and must sell this production onto the market to receive their own means to subsistence and to purchase new means for production.

Along with these means for production they buy the labour of workers who own no means of production or too little to produce commodities on their own and so have to sell their labour to these producers.

Capital requires a return and competition between seekers of capital drives for maximisation of these returns. Where these producer/capitalists and workers interact is the market.

The motor of this market is competition as producers compete for market share and thus have to reinvest profits into increased productivity-enhancing technologies or to force down input costs of labour or means for production and grow to find economies of scale.

As workers’ wages have to be lower than the total value of goods, collectively the workers can never buy all their production and so new customers and markets are continually sought by the system. Grow or die is the rule of this market.

This, it would seem, is capitalism in its essence and at its heart is a requirement to grow. You can have market economics without capitalism, you can have various forms of capitalism from neo-liberalised Anglo-US ‘free-market’ forms to European and Scandinavian mixed market social-capitalism and Chinese state-capitalism. But they all seem to require growth.

Capitalism red in tooth and claw

Google’s response to Charlie Elphicke MP’s outrage that the company pays no UK tax is that:

“We have an obligation to our shareholders to set up a tax efficient structure and our present structure is compliant with the tax rules in all the countries where we operate.”

Bizarrely, somehow Google actually makes a loss in the UK. So, naughty Google for just doing its job for the shareholders? Some in the business community feel it’s mostly a case of the latter.

As Bill Dodwell of Deloitte said in response to Osborne’s tax avoidance attacks:

“These are not abusive reliefs. These are real reliefs, that people should legitimately be able to claim for running a business.”

In other words this is just ever-efficient capitalism red in tooth and claw. It is just the system doing its job. When Osborne bemoans this side of capitalism he is accused of being anti-business. He might respond that he is not anti-business nor is he anti-capitalist but just against certain aspects of business practice.

But is this naïve? Some suggest that just as it would be naïve to bemoan a shark its feeding habits, it is naïve to bemoan capitalism its own. Just like a shark, capitalism just does what it is designed to do. And it does it very well.

Critics will say that, though an enlightened law maker might seek to shore up such tax avoidance ‘loopholes’, capitalism, if it is going to do its job, will find new ways to play the system for the sake of short-term profit-maximisation. And evidence suggests it will use its power of influence over policy-making to ensure reforms do not hinder this key role of short term profit maximisation.

As an example of this, Robert Watson, chief scientist at DEFRA and former head of the IPCC, says:

“A group of companies have opposed the climate change deal and made the two degree target much more difficult, if not impossible. They have put the whole world at risk.”

One does not have to be of a socialist bent to believe capitalism, at least in its current form, is fatally flawed. One only has to listen to people like investment guru Jeremy Grantham to hear the rumblings of an on-going mainstream disquiet with capitalism.

Campaigners who seek reform or replacement of capitalism suggest that at best corporate social responsibility and ‘sustainable capitalism’ is only able to contribute to progress in minor ways at the margins of the market. Their fear is that these efforts can in fact hold back more fundamental change by obfuscation and giving the illusion of progress.

Others will counter that only by pushing the envelope of what is possible in capitalism 1.0 will we see its limits and what reforms are needed.

Evidence does show that, whilst some corporate actors might be making real efforts to reduce emissions or source resources like timber and water sustainably, overall the capitalism-machine is increasing its exponential devastation of the natural world and the continual commodification of everything from air to child care.

Some leading CEOs are outspoken in pushing the boundaries of capitalism.

Unilever’s Paul Polman insisted:

“I don’t work for the shareholder I work for the customer.”

While Kingfisher’s Ian Cheshire said:

“Imagining a new, sustainable capitalism, we need to radically redesign our business models with less emphasis on growth and more on wellbeing.”

But many others are at best silent or actively lead companies doing their best to lobby against progress.

The problem, according to many campaigners for change, is that capitalism is just not up to the task at hand. It was designed to maximise short term returns to capital, and, with the best will in the world, it is not often able to take account of its effects on people and planet.

Wherever one sits in this debate it is perhaps time for us to consider what might replace capitalism, if only to inform its possible reform. If capitalism can make the grade then great; if not then the sooner we understand that the better.

“It’s the economy, stupid”

So is it perhaps time for politicians of all hues to consider the possibility capitalism can’t just be tweaked, that it is not up to the job? Perhaps instead of blaming the left for an overbearing state having led to our ‘broken society’ should not the Tories recognise ‘it’s the market, stupid’?

Some would argue Reaganite and Thatcherite neo-liberalism started the rot which has brought us to where we are and that Bill Clinton’s rescinding of the Glass-Steagall Act (pdf) set in train events in the financial system which brought us to our current ‘debtonation’.

Perhaps if the left are to blame for anything it is not an overbearing state sailing too close to the socialist wind but one which in fact failed to intervene sufficiently and left the blind ‘invisible hand’ at the helm of the ship?

Smith versus Marx – the least bad economic system?

Ever since Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 and then Karl Marx’s Manifesto in 1848, political economists have debated whether capitalism is the most effective economic system to deliver to our needs or whether it is merely a wealth-concentrating ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’.

Some would argue capitalism is the least bad option and it has done an OK job of improving the lives of billions and freeing much of the world from hunger and disease. Others would fundamentally disagree arguing imperialist expansionism has ridden roughshod over the rights of people and planet for centuries.

Post-2008 it is certainly hard to argue with Professor David Harvey’s suggestion Marx’s ‘contradictions of capital’ theory (in simple terms capitalism ‘will eat itself’) is coming true in front of our eyes.

An observer of history might say Marx got more right than Smith. Capitalism’s very heart, the capital system, is in meltdown. The dynamics of capitalist economics seem intent on pushing us dangerously beyond safe limits. Smith’s system was also underpinned by a logic reliant on an understanding of the human mind’s rationality which has now been soundly debunked by science and psychology.

The question for many is now whether capitalism can be reformed or whether we need a fundamentally new system.

Reformation and eco-capitalism

There is a rising consensus we need to ‘dethrone growth’ as our objective for society. Some in the sustainable development world are now going further and being explicit that it is either no longer safe to continue to grow the global macro economy or indeed that, like it or not, growth is already at an end.

It is becoming clear to many that ‘absolute decoupling’ of the scale and urgency required might have been possible if we had put a Marshall Plan in place when the Club of Rome rang the alarm bells in the 70’s, but, as Paul Gilding is saying, it is just too late now. We had our chance and we missed it in our blind obsession with growth.

Techno-fixes and a whole-economy shift from products to services would have been wonderful, but now nothing short of the discovery of a perpetual motion machine will save us from the inevitable need to cease our exponential push beyond safe planetary limits. Halting global macro growth would, if the poor world is to continue to develop, require a reverse gear to be found in the rich world.

But many still cling to the hope that we can have our cake and eat it. That we can have beyond-growth, steady-state economics within a reformed capitalism; to many, the idea of a new economic paradigm is either unnecessary or too radical or they are too worried about scaring the horses and not being taken seriously by the ‘mainstream’ to consider change.

Others counter that debates about such reform are pointless if one accepts that growth is no longer possible.

And yet, unless and until capitalism can show any potential to reform and solve issues such as increasing inequality, flat-lining wellbeing and runaway climate chaos, it seems only sensible for a debate to be held about what might replace capitalism.

What economic system might replace capitalism?

Perhaps, rather than waiting for capitalism to reform sufficiently, it is worth considering a Plan B. We may indeed learn useful lessons from considering alternatives which can inform such reform.

As we have seen above, the underlying dynamics of capitalism are those of competing capital owners needing to constantly maximise returns, and to pursue a constant ‘rent-seeking’ with all its social and ecological externalities. This dynamic is arguably fundamentally locked into requiring ever more growth.

If one agrees growth is now no longer possible or safe then what form of economics could one envisage to replace capitalism?

This new economics could have as its new objective not growth for growth’s sake, not money or making markets our gods. Its aim could be to maximise the ecological efficiency of delivering to the wellbeing needs of today’s and future people.

It could seek not to rely on growth of the macro-economy. It could recognise the intrinsic value of the natural world with which we are so spiritually linked. It could once again make us stewards not dominators of nature.

It could be framed not by a drive towards efficiency but one of sufficiency and will require a values shift from extrinsic individualist values to intrinsic ones which champion collective, greater-than-self solutions to sustainability challenges.

It could seek to learn from recent breakthroughs from leading thinkers including Nobel Prize winners like Amartya Sen in Welfare Economics, Daniel Kahneman on rationality and Positive Psychology, Elinor Ostrom in the economics of the commons and Joseph Stiglizt in Wellbeing Economics.

This new economy could seek to liberate us all from the roles of ‘passive‘ worker and ‘active’ capitalist to a new social contract based on the understanding that a commons-based economics underpinned by equity is one which could provide the most materially light wellbeing for all. This commons-based economy might be run by and for the people not the state.

What might this mean for business?

As within a natural ecosystem which is in overall stasis, within such an economy there may still be growth of parts of the economy as others shrink. Innovation and dynamism may well be far more crucial and vibrant in such an economy than in our current one.

In the perhaps decades-long transition to such an economics there will be winners and losers. Sectors and enterprises which maximise the ecological efficiency of satisfying real needs will prosper. Those which satisfy too few real needs in too materially-heavy a manner will need to die back.

So, for instance, enterprises satisfying needs for good healthy food, for exercise, for heat, for socialising and for communication might prosper; unaffordable and uneconomic sectors such as leisure aviation will need to die back.

In such an economy we will still need things produced and services undertaken. Much of this activity might be undertaken by co-ops, mutuals, community and employee owned enterprises and family owned enterprises. Some of these might be very large like the Mondragon co-op in Spain which provides employment for 83,000 people, though the question of appropriate scale needs to be carefully thought through.

Already CEOs like Ian Marchant at SSE are championing a flourishing of things like co-operative energy and a whole new class of B-Corp enterprises are springing up in the US.

So if one works today for a shareholder-owned company one might in future be part of something that looks more like Mondragon or John Lewis. There will still be lots of great employment. In fact such a system would seek to maximise the provision of good employment for all.

I call these Flourishing Enterprises as for me they would be enterprises whose role would be to satisfy wellbeing needs in an ecologically sound way within strict science-based limits. The Transition Towns movement, which I am involved with and a huge fan of, has coined the term Transition Enterprises and set out some key principles these might exhibit.

Nimble existing incumbents in markets might be able to transition into being compatible with this new form of economics. Where they do not the niches they currently occupy will see a flourishing of new co-operative and collaborative innovations.

Fertile political territory

Sadly this debate has yet to permeate politics much beyond the Green Party and the left and right seem intent on point scoring, fighting over some ‘middle ground’ and rearranging deckchairs rather than confronting inconvenient truths which point to the need for a debate about alternatives to capitalism.

It seems the long shadow of the ‘red-peril’ and the ecological and human consequences of the collapse of many socialist experiments has for too long stifled this political debate. But it is a debate which is happening outside politics and which politicians of all colours would do well to tune into and join.

Ed Milliband is making ground in questioning capitalism but has done little to envision real reform let alone consider, if reform cannot make the grade, that we may need a replacement of capitalism. The Tories are, as alluded to above, starting to flex their muscles in this debate.

In the meanwhile, the currently predominant Orange Book Lib Dem thinking bears close resemblance to Conservative neo-liberalism and Blairite New Labour dogma and may find less reliance on free markets a challenge.

Whilst it is clear how the left might find much fertile ground in this debate for reinvention and for rising to the challenges of our times, it is perhaps less clear how this might fit with Conservativism. But as currently the Conservatives are in power it is perhaps worth considering the politics of the right more closely.

There are, broadly speaking, two dominant traditions within conservative thought: firstly, the more frequently held paternalistic, One Nation Disraeli tradition; and secondly the Liberal or Libertarian free-market economics, of the small state, and individualism perspective of Burke, Peel, Hayek, Gladstone, Heath and Thatcher.

The latter tradition is most commonly associated with a ‘rational self-interest model’ which underpins neo-classical economics and neo-liberal policy, while the former is more in line with what is known as the ‘embodied mind’ set of values which accepts culture and emotional values are more important than self-interest.

It is these values which map best onto an updated economics which puts the interests of the collective good of people and planet ahead of the market.

Conservative thinking and policy has swung between these two traditions, most recently returning towards the former. Progressive Conservatives like Jesse Norman MP and Phillip Blond have largely repudiated Thatcherite values.

Says Blond:

“If conservatism is to be more than just moralism plus the market, the logic of a revivified conservatism must also be applied to the economic sphere.”

He calls for Conservatives to:

“Tie economic policy to the social outcomes they favour… the extension of wealth, assets and the benefits of ecological and social wellbeing to all.”

Cameron has been brave to continue to support alternative measures of progress to GDP and to champion a wellbeing agenda. But at a macro-economic level it is less and less clear where David Cameron and the rest of his party sit on this One Nation to Libertarian continuum.

Whilst Cameron has in the past refused association with the extremes of neoliberal free-market economics, it is as yet not clear if he and Compassionate Conservatism can deliver on Philip Blond’s vision of a post-neoliberal Conservatism.

Indeed, many would say that since taking power in a flurry of ‘hug a hoodie’ and ‘hug a huskie’ progressive noises, project-Cameron has reverted to many old-school Conservative values and policies.

In sum, currently neither left nor right are showing much inclination to envision radical reform let alone replacement of our current economics. The party that gets this right will win the right to power.

The jury is still out on whether capitalism can be reformed or whether we need to evolve and transition over time to a new form of economics. But what is clear is that it is time to debate the issues this blog points to.

If you are interested to join those of us involved in debating these new economy questions please do get in touch: jules@flourishingenterprise.org

The world has maybe awoken to the power shift, if not yet as comfortable as it might be with its democratic delivery. Calls for regulation and transparency, felt the world over, are really coded pleas for responsibility and accountability. Only a culture deeply – and misguidedly – embedded in compliance, calls for greater regulation; one that sees the future in values-based leadership can more comfortably throw off these shackles. At Davos, attention will no doubt turn once again to the issue of Executive Pay. Simply regulating financial excess is never going to be the answer, which must surely be found, honestly, from within. Leaders must look to themselves to discover a new, citizen-centric, moral framework within which to base their decisions – if they and we are truly to escape the compliance culture that has not served us well.

Meanwhile, the Jan/ Feb issue of the Harvard Business Review splashes a big, smiley face across its cover and boasts about The Value of Happiness. It triumphs employee well-being and ties this, positively, to the profit motive, in warming echoes of Citizen Renaissance from the spring of 2008. It also reflects the Trust Barometer findings – ‘regular employees’ are now equally as credible as NGO spokespeople, who for so long have quenched the thirst for responsibility and social conscience among business and government. We are trusting ourselves, as fellow citizens, to do what is right and to herald future trust. And we can start in the workplace.

This is not the first time that the HBR has picked up on the Citizen Renaissance theme – its earlier call for Shared Values was both a persuasive argument in favour of more balanced and participatory ownership models and business metrics and a clarion call for public engagement (see Blog Posts passim). Indeed, in the twelve years of the Trust Barometer itself, the sentiment has clearly moved from Profit to Profit + Purpose and now to Profit + Purpose + Engagement. For business in particular, leadership and ultimately success can only flow when delivered through this three-dimensional model.

And this, at its heart, is what the transformative agenda of Citizen Renaissance has always been about: the shift of power from government to citizens; the accountability of both government and business to we, the people; the consequent moderation of excess and better behaviours through transparency –accelerated and amplified by the social digital age and by communities thriving in (social) networks; and the increasingly primary role of a reformed business sector in setting the transition agenda. In addition, Citizen Renaissance has always recognised the fundamental role of communications in shaping good – as it rightly drives partnerships with those who can help deliver societal benefit. Here, we see the confluence of policy and communications – both demanding and driving radical change.

Increasingly, we must learn to live in an era of low and conditional trust. This may not be such a bad thing. Trust in an age of radical transparency is harder to earn but more deeply felt. We have no right to expect false dawns of soaring trust levels and should increasingly accept their passing. The optimistic, current trend is towards increased trust both in one another and in social media – the new glue that binds us. Low trust scores for government (and even for business) should drive current leaders to think again about to whom they stand accountable and, more fundamentally, to the values that they must demonstrate to hold the trust of their constituents and customers. Cynicism may be corrosive but scepticism can be energising, provocative and ultimately reforming. In this sense, just as Renaissance is being realised, what we might in fact be seeing are the first, tentative steps towards real world change – corporate, governmental, environmental and systemic – a story surprisingly told through low levels of trust. Reformation and renaissance go hand-in-hand – and otherwise depressingly low trust scores can hopefully accelerate the reformation.

Well trust in governments around the world has plummeted – no surprise there as there is consensus around our political leaders’ ineptitude over the last few years. This puts ever more pressure on companies to lead change. But trust in companies has also fallen to reveal a yawning trust gap. The Barometer also shows that companies cannot expect to build future trust unless they focus very hard on addressing the real needs of people and planet. Sadly the data shows that there is a consensus that currently companies are doing badly at addressing these issues.

Along with falls for government and business, the other headline message from the Barometer this year is that the citizen and society now stand centre stage. Those we trust most are “people like me”, academics and ‘citizen-journalists’ and bloggers.

In this context of falling trust, the Barometer shows that society is calling for much increased regulation to deal with the problems of our current economic system. Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever and co-chair of this year’s World Economic Forum, who is often ahead of the curve in progressive CEO thinking, has echoed this recently saying that “Our version of capitalism has reached its sell by date.”

Polman, has also famously, and controversially, said “I do not work for the shareholder but for the customer” echoing findings from last year’s Barometer which found that 89% of those polled in countries as diverse as the UK and China thought companies should now put the interests of society and ecology above those of shareholders.

Whilst Polman, and a few other leading CEOs like Ian Cheshire of Kingfisher, are leading the way in progressive thinking, this year’s Barometer shows the biggest drop in its history for trust in CEOs.

So what does the Barometer tell us CEOs should focus on at this year’s Davos? Well as the Barometer has shown, and as the 2012 WEF Global risks report maps, we still face the same extreme challenges around resource, ecology, economic and social collapse as last year’s map showed. We have learnt little in the last year and continue to accelerate into a nose-dive. Some radical changes and new models are needed. And one of those new models must be a new form of economics that goes way beyond our current growth-obsessed consumerist-capitalism.

At the heart of this current model is the idea that consumerism, the market and growth are gods. We are the slaves. But as the above evidence shows, people will now only begin to trust once companies put society’s interests at the heart of their vision of what prosperity and progress really mean. This year’s headline report from WEF ‘More with Less: Scaling Sustainable Consumption and Resource Efficiency’, examines ‘sustainable consumption’ but, whilst containing some valuable thinking, does so only through one of the two keys lenses we need to be using for developing a new vision of progress. As I wrote in my recent blog for the Guardian, the UN Brundtland Commission’s definition of Sustainable Development (as opposed to unsustainable growth) is:

“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: –the concept of needs; and –the idea of limitations imposed on the environment.”

Brundtland’s twin focus boils down for me to a question of ‘means’ and ‘ends’. The ‘means’ is about how much planet we have left and the ‘ends’ is about understanding real human needs and where we actually want to get on our journey to towards ‘progress’. And yet this recent report by WEF focuses only on the second half of that formula – efficiency of use of limited resources. This is akin to obsessing about how much fuel is in our tank whilst forgetting to ask where we are trying to get to. Such a perspective asks nothing about ‘consumption for what?’ It does not attempt to understand what real wellbeing needs we have and so is missing the opportunity for real breakthrough thinking.

This is a shame as WEF has written thoughtfully on these subjects in the past. Last year they wrote in The Consumption Dilemma that:

“Development – qualitative improvements in people’s lives – is more important than narrow definitions of growth – quantitative increases in the size of an economy or in the scale of its throughputs. Our economic imperative should be to meet needs rather than create wants.”

And in 2010 in Redesigning Business Value they wrote:

“The ‘new normal’ is an economy in which consumers view a product as a means to a solution or enhanced experience rather than a product as an end in itself. We have certainly managed to get across the message that we are no longer selling ‘stuff’; we are enhancing people’s well-being overall.”

That focus on real needs not created consumerist wants and on wellbeing will be the key to breakthrough innovation and thinking which helps to update capitalism and ‘sustainability’.

As Thoreau wrote “A man is rich in proportion to that with which he can do without.” We have to hope that we can meet the real wellbeing-needs of 9 billion people but it’s a fair bet we can’t meet their advertising created potential-wants.

* *

Twelve months ago, the 2011 Barometer carried an image with the headline ’48 hours to save the Euro’. One year later, and the Eurozone crisis remains un-resolved: country ratings have been down-graded; at least one nation teeters on the brink of default; and markets fluctuate with increasing volatility. More importantly, the reality of crisis, the sentiment of “this country is headed in the wrong direction” and, above all, the failure of leadership is accurately and starkly reflected in the 2012 Trust Barometer data.

Of course, the Euro was not the only crisis to sweep through the region in 2011: from riots on the streets of London to protests on the streets of Moscow; the Arab Spring and the resultant regime change in North Africa and the Middle East; phone hacking scandals and also a painful reminder of race relations issues in the UK – plus a fragile relationship of trust in the police. Now, the spectre of unemployment looms larger than ever before – with the UK at a sixteen year high and levels of youth unemployment in Spain hitting 40%. All is not well in EMEA and the young are understandably restless and increasingly angry.

The EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East & Africa) – and, more specifically, the Eurozone – now sits in the very crucible of Trust. The global findings of the 2012 Barometer (the decline of government and business’ opportunity to earn the license to lead) are accentuated across EMEA, as trust continues to democratise and diversify across all channels and institutions.

The net effect is that EMEA is now, without doubt, a region of Distrusters. On the composite trust scores, only the Netherlands secures ‘Trusted’ status at 61% – and even that usually stable country has seen a significant 8% composite decline in trust. Globally, Distrusters are about half (11 out of 23 countries). When focused exclusively on the Eurozone countries, 7 out of 9 countries are Distrusters. Scepticism has engulfed the region. Russia suffers the ignominy of being the least trusted of all 25 countries surveyed globally. Bear in mind, though, that the region was always tipping towards dis-trust. Trust in business and government has never been that high anyway – EMEA has lived for a while with the vacuum of the approximate 50%.

Government – seen to be paralysed and failing to deliver on its promises – is surely the originator of this 2011 Trust crisis and the evidence suggests that, from government, the contagion has spread to trust in business also. France has seen trust in government plummet from 49% to 31%; in Spain (admittedly, polled pre-election), the fall is equally dramatic, from 43% to 20%; Italy (pre-Monti) collapsed from 45% to 31%. And, in Russia, trust levels fell 13 pct points to 26%. Only Germany remained stable within the Eurozone countries (leveling at 33% trust in government), while German trust in Business took the hit instead, falling from 52% to 34% during 2011. In France, the decline in business trust was from 48% to 28% and, in Spain, from 53% to 32%. Spain’s descent into a state of distrust is just as dramatic as Japan’s trust collapse post Fukushima.

Mapping the crop of S&P recently ‘downgraded’ Eurozone countries against the Trust data, it becomes clear that there is a direct correlation between the paralysis of leadership and the shockingly steep declines in Trust. The average fall in Trust in Government for the three most recently downgraded nations (France, Spain, Italy) was from 46% to 27%, compared to a fall of 6% pts (to 44%) for those who escaped the downgrade. Governments who, un-democratically to some, embarked upon the ‘gigantic monetary experiment’ that is/ was the Euro, are now paying the Trust price.

In Business, the downgraded segment fell from 55% to 41%, versus a 57% to 46% drop for the others. Curiously, Ireland, which had an election early in the year, saw Trust in Government rise 15 pct points to 35%, though essentially acknowledging that Ireland remains at the bottom of its own bathtub: mostly flat on trust numbers but still depressing. Last year, Ireland recorded a (rather worrying) record 6% level of Trust in banks and bankers and that group has suffered another painful year. At 29% and 28% respectively, Financial Services companies and Banks across Europe remain the least trusted of all the industry sectors surveyed. The French took their revenge on their bankers (down 29 pct points to 23%), as did the Germans on theirs (down 4 pct points to 19%). Again, the trust data reflects the reality of a parlous, paralysed year and a region in crisis.

While (as explained below) Business still has an opportunity to step forward and lead, scepticism abounds and business will now need to come to terms with leadership in an era of low and conditional trust.

At least those surveyed believe that Business leaders are less likely than Government leaders to just tell lies. Here, the data is equally shocking, though. On the government front, so the data says, EMEA is, quite simply, a region of liars. Respondents stated that in Italy (73%), Spain (69%), UK and France (66%) and Germany (65%) they just do not trust government leaders to tell the truth at all. At all. The Business leader ‘lying’ numbers are lower but still of concern, oscillating between 40%-50%. Unlike in the 2008/9 Crisis, business is not being made to carry the can – but this is hardly a champagne moment.

The election landscape looks interesting – and somewhat challenging for Putin and Sarkozy. If the Trust data is a reflection of popular sentiment, real challenges lie ahead. In France, 73% believes that the country is heading in the wrong direction; the figure is 55% for Russia. There is a vacuum of leadership, ready for others to fill. Worries abound in France about the rise (again) of the Right. This time it is Marine Le Pen and not her father but the message is the same.

In the UK, PM David Cameron is suffering from his own very particular Trust dynamic. While his anti-Eurozone stand on ‘protect the City at all costs’ seems to have played well for trust in government, there is a yawning gap of how he is rated for expectations versus delivery. On ‘listening to citizens’ alone, the government expectations vs. performance gap is a shocking 58%, making something of a mockery of his Big Society play. The summer riots have taken their toll. Of those who said the riots impacted their trust in various groups, only 4% of adult respondents trust young people more than they did twelve months ago compared with 30% trusting young people less. Politicians score no better: 36% trust them less than they did a year ago; the police – enmeshed in the riots and the hacking scandal – are trusted 27% less than one year ago.

Yet Britons have seen a clearer pathway on trust in media in general. Surprising some observers, this has jumped by 15% points to 37% among informed publics across the year – although further investigation shows that there is now a clear delineation between more credible commentariat broadcasters and broadsheets and the tabloid gossip-peddlers who have been tarred by phone hacking scandals. The BBC retains an astonishing 87% level of trust (Ipsos Mori poll Nov 2011), for example, while it should not be forgotten that it was a newspaper (The Guardian) that chased and then broke the phone hacking story. In the business world – and across the region – serious media outlets are seen to have provided a more coherent and authoritative narrative to the financial crisis – as witnessed by a 16% increase in informed Brits’ trust in Traditional Media (to 32%). It can be said that not all media is now equal.

The rise (or return?) of Social Media is part media-story, part citizen renaissance. Trust in authority figures continues to disperse and citizenship rises across EMEA. Big ratings boosts were seen for ‘people like me’ and ‘regular employees’, as well as for social media itself (up 7% pts, admittedly off a low base) – emphasising the long-term shift away from traditional institutions and ‘established’ hierarchies and the continued democratisation of trust. Across nine EU countries, trust in CEOs is down 14% points to 30% as trusted spokespeople; a government official (sometimes known as a regulator) is there alongside him or her – also at 30%. A regular employee is now trusted to the same level (51%) as an NGO spokesperson – possibly proving that real people/ real citizens can now bridge the conscience deficit, once the sole preserve of the NGOs. And citizens, of course, are becoming increasingly vocal on the need for both business and government to do real societal good. This is a call for values-led leadership – as seen also in the global data in the 2012 Trust Barometer. Of course, the Arab Spring and, to an extent, what happened in Russia pre-Christmas, were visceral and violent manifestations of citizens rising – but the peacetime equivalent can also be seen in this year’s Barometer.

Much can be learned from the stakeholder expectation gaps of institutions – in EMEA, just as worldwide. Business holds a slight but still significant advantage over government – the latter suffering an average 44% point deficit between public expectations and delivery. Business only suffers a 27% point deficit – and scores fairly well on the core competencies around products, innovation and profit. But the data tells us that business has much more to do on the societal front: helping the environment; partnering for good; treating employees fairly. If Business Competence is established then (as with the global responses), Societal Competence still has some way to travel; and fundamental Engagement Behaviours (Transparency, Listening, Active Participation and Partnerships for Good) are now mandatory. Business leaders across EMEA would do well to consider this three dimensional approach of operations, social responsibility and engagement to building/ maintaining/ protecting trust. If 2011 was about Profit with Purpose, 2012 is about Profit + Purpose + Engagement. This is a big message for business in the region. When people clamour for ‘more regulation’, they are often just asking for businesses run on values, not compliance. When the cry goes up for ‘transparency’, the simple ask is for accountability and responsibility again.

What this tells us, of course, is that – if it moves to fill the vacuum left by government – compliance alone will not be enough for business. EMEA, and the Eurozone in particular, is craving real leadership, which is properly values-based. Business needs to increase its social footprint (through social networks but also as part of its wider social responsibilities) and to re-discover its citizen-values – if it is both to participate and to lead.

Eighty-plus years ago, John Maynard Keynes wrote that ‘the businessman is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society’. If the Trust data in 2011 told us that Milton Friedman is dead (the social responsibility of business extends beyond the profit motive), then maybe the 2012 findings suggest that Keynes is re-born. With serendipitous wisdom John Plender quoted this recently in his FT article on Capitalism in Crisis – the FT, itself, a haven of trust in an age of dis-belief.

If EMEA is the crucible, then the Eurozone is the centre of that crucible where trust burns most fiercely. So many of the global findings are reflected in the EMEA research – yet amplified and accentuated for the world to see. It is January 2012 and we still have 48 hours to save the Euro. This is the challenge of government. But the opportunity for business extends far beyond this. Wealth creation and sustainable economic development drives trust and the wealth of nation-states sure needs boosting now. No-one can be in it alone; nor is mere compliance or business competence enough. Without a drive for real social reform and towards real, societal values – and without a new approach to business, based on public engagement – the EMEA crisis could deteriorate further still. Business can do it, of course. Radical social change, from the mills of New Lanarkshire to the factories of Port Sunlight, was born in Europe. ‘Better regulation’ means helping the drive for change flourish and providing a progressive fiscal framework within which this can more easily happen. Business needs to ‘play long’, for sure, and government needs to help business get there.

Pessimists may argue that the year ahead is not going to be a pleasant or an easy one. Optimists, however, will see not only the positive challenges of citizenship, but also a real opportunity for the next generation of values-led business visionaries to become the new ‘political’ leaders of the period forward. Whichever way the story plays out, the fragility of trust remains – and those who do step forward and lead will henceforth be held to account by citizens and stakeholders on a more acute and more transparent footing than ever before. Albeit by accident, the crucible of Europe may yet be at the vanguard of where the world goes next on trust.

Sustainable Development’s blueprint – needs and means.

As we emerge from our collective failures of Durban, and before we commence the Rio+20 jamboree in 2012, it is perhaps worth looking back to remind ourselves of the some of the thinking which led up to Rio in 1992. In particular I think its worth revisiting a blueprint definition for ‘Sustainable Development’ which came out from the UN in 1987 as the Brundtland Commission’s:

“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: –the concept of needs; and –the idea of limitations imposed on the environment.”

Brundtland’s twin focus boils down for me to a question of ‘means’ and ‘ends’. The ‘means’ is about how much planet we have left and the ‘ends’ is about understanding real human needs and where we actually want to get on our journey to towards ‘progress’.

Redefining ‘prosperity’

Having pushed our one and only planet to breaking point, we surely cannot continue on our current trajectory. As the realisation that we cannot keep growing the economy starts to sink in it is time for us to shift from a ‘wealth and growth as prosperity’ to a ‘wellbeing as prosperity’ paradigm.

As Herman Daly, guru of Ecological Economics, points out, there is an important distinction here to be made between growth, which is quantitative, and development which is qualitative. So we need to ask ourselves what sort of development might be sustainable. And answering this calls for a redefined version of ‘prosperity’ that takes a good hard look at the ‘ends’ part of the blueprint and asks what it is we are striving for. Is it more and more stuff? Or is it wellbeing, flourishing, and meaningful lives for all (within the planet’s limits)? For me its very much the latter.

Twenty five year review – ‘efficiency’ or ‘sufficiency’

So how well are we delivering on Brundtland’s definition almost 25 years on from the Commision’s blueprint?

Well, as I pointed out in a recent Guardian piece, my feeling is that we have somewhat lost our way in ‘sustainability’ and ‘CSR’ circles. We’ve become overly focused on only half of the Sustainable Development journey.

‘Sustainability’ and ‘CSR’ are both largely missing the ‘needs’ part of the above equation and focused mainly on the ‘means’. Progressive companies are well versed in grappling with environmental limits and efficiency – the means – but have little or no real understanding of the ‘ends’ – real needs and finding ‘sufficiency’.

At best the ‘human’ side of Brundtland’s definition is dealt with in a very utilitarian way in terms of ‘community involvement’ and workers rights. Of course those issues are crucial but they are far from the whole ‘needs’ story. We don’t just need job security or corporate handouts. Real needs are about so much more. They are about our ability to feel good and function well, our connections to friends and family, our dreams, hopes and fears. And yet the science and understandings of positive psychology, welfare economics and wellbeing are rarely if ever considered when ‘Sustainable Development’ is discussed.

This focusing on just the ‘means’ whilst ignoring the ‘ends’ half of Sustainable Development is rather like worrying about how much fuel is in your tank without considering where you are trying to get to or what route you will take. So where are we trying to get to? What is our definition of ‘progress’ and ‘prosperity’? My sense is that only by asking what real ‘needs’ are can we begin to answer these questions and determine our endpoint.

Wellbeing as a new strategic lens

To properly understand these real needs (as opposed to advertising created wants) we must examine the evidence from positive psychology, welfare economics and wellbeing. There is now a huge and growing body of research into what brings wellbeing.

With clear evidence of a void of leadership from politicians, as evidenced so starkly in Durban, the onus seems to be on other actors like communities and perhaps progressive business to step up. Civil society movements like Occupy and Transition are working hard to fill this vacuum and their objectives around building community and shifting from extrinsic to intrinsic values come far closer to integrating a ‘needs’ and wellbeing perspective than currently does business or Government.

More and more corporate leaders are recognising that their current CSR efforts are far from sufficient to meet the scale and urgency of challenges we face and are looking for a gear-change and a new strategic compass. Progressive business leaders like SSE’s CEO Ian Marchant are championing community-led sustainable development and Ian Cheshire and thinkers like Naomi Klein are joining the debate about the nature of our economics, of capitalism and how a fuller picture of progress can be developed through using wellbeing-needs as an additional lens for strategic thinking.

The UK Government’s record versus rhetoric

While some in the commercial world are tuning in to this ‘needs’ aspect of Sustainable Development, the coalition Government are all over the place, ripping their green credentials up for the sake of a blind obsession to growth with no real reflection on real needs and wellbeing.

One does not have to look very far to find a reality-check to the ‘greenest Government ever’ tagline. And, although David Cameron has been quite supportive of alternative measures of progress, the term ‘sustainable development’ seems to the UK Government to mean something very different to the Brundtland definition. Indeed, not only does it miss the twin focus on ‘needs’ and ‘means’, its vision of progress is firmly in the ‘bigger not better’ mindset.

One indication of this is a key provision in the new National Planning Policy Framework which stipulates the favouring of what is termed ‘Sustainable Development’ over any decentralisation of power or relocalisation. But it’s understanding of Sustainable Development is a pretty odd perversion of Brundtland’s vision. To the Government, ‘Sustainable Development’ seems to mean building roads and houses on what remains of our countryside for the sake of jump-starting economic growth. Nothing here to suggest that Cameron’s tacit support for a focus on wellbeing and a more sophisticated vision of progress is anything more than lip-service and window dressing.

In the ongoing debacle over planning law reform, green groups have called on Government to provide a clear definition of ‘Sustainable Development’ to guide planners. They would do well to return to Brundtland and consider this ‘means’ and ‘ends’ formula.

The good news and looking forward to Rio+20

The good news is that there are plenty of ideas out there about the general new direction we need to be taking and of the eventual endpoint. Economies, enterprises and society itself can regroup around an updated vision of progress that puts achievement of (bounded) real wellbeing-needs at its heart as opposed to on the sideline.

A ‘wellbeing dividend’ to sustainability efforts can be found, but only by taking a new fuller view of the true meaning of Sustainable Development. So lets make 2012 not only a celebration of Rio+20 but the year that society re-found the true meaning of prosperity through a focus on real needs and wellbeing.

A recent series of blogs on this site discussed the idea that the UK might finally be starting to decouple growth from environmental destruction. Whilst this looks unlikely, my concern is that the debate is in any case missing half the story. By focusing on consumption alone we are looking only at the means and not the ends. The real question should be ‘consumption for what?’ What is the endpoint we seek? To me the answer is sustainable-wellbeing.

The debate so far
The first blog loudly proclaimed the UK had reached the mythical ‘decoupling’ so dreamed of by technophiles, as consumption of some materials appears to be falling in the UK despite growth increases. Professor Tim Jackson responded by blogging that any declines in UK material consumption are tiny percentage changes, usually smaller than margins of statistical error. He also points out that the figures ignore carbon intensity from things like imports. Jackson noted that much of the UK’s growth has been related to financial transactions with concomitant increases in real material and carbon impacts around the world – our eco-financial footprint if you like. Next in line was George Monbiot who added additional concerns about the first blog and further undermined the idea that we are decoupling UK material use let alone overall UK emissions and global impacts.

Ends as well as means
Apart from these concerns about the data in the first blog, my worry is that this debate has still largely been missing what we should really be focusing on which is the far more crucial metric of the ecological efficiency of delivering wellbeing to all. This metric basically includes two factors, environmental-sustainability and wellbeing.

The means
In terms of the first – the ecological efficiency aspect of this metric – it might be possible we can decouple some material use from growth. But we not only need to do this for all (not just some) materials, we also need to do it for all environmental impacts and perhaps most urgently carbon emissions. And yet carbon emissions from the UK and globally continue to soar – by some estimates locking us already into 4,5 or even 10 degrees warming and on this basis the outlook for mankind is looking truly grim.

For moral as well as physical reasons, far from needing merely to peak in consumption, the rich world needs to find a significant reverse gear in material use and emissions. Based on IPAT we need 11% p.a. reductions in energy intensity on every global $ of economic output, everywhere, every year till 2050, just to reach 450ppm (which is of course 100ppm too high). Factor in a contract and converge, fair-earth-share based solution and, if the poor world is to continue to develop, that means far larger intensity reductions are needed here in the UK. And the best we have been able to do in the last 20 or so years is 0.7% intensity reductions. So we are way, way off the likelihood of absolute decoupling in the UK let alone globally.

The ends
So what about the second half of the above metric – of wellbeing? Well we have been more successful with this decoupling. The rich world long ago managed to decouple growth from increases in wellbeing. Unfortunately someone read the instructions wrong and we headed off in completely the wrong direction. It was growth that kept going whilst wellbeing has flat-lined in the rich world since the 1970’s. Indeed indexes like Nef’s Happy Planet Index show that countries with very low GDP and material use do far better than ’successful’, footprint-heavy and relatively unhappy countries.

In a post-consumerist, beyond-growth, ecoslowcialist world I suspect we will no longer be obsessed by ‘bigger’ and ‘faster’ and our definition of prosperity will be defined less by efficiency and more by sufficiency, by the quality of our lives and how to maximize it within the carrying capacity of the planet.

Wellbeing and the shift to intrinsic values
This will inevitably require a shift away from wellbeing-damaging and unsustainable extrinsic values to the kinds of intrinsic values WWF discuss in their important recent report on the effects of advertising Think of me as Evil. Since this provocative report came out last week several companies have shown interest in better understanding this values shift. To me this suggests WWF have hit a raw nerve near the heart of capitalism.

And one thing we know for sure is that the sorts of intrinsic values WWF point to are the same values which bring increased wellbeing and with it a shift away from the shallow consumerism eating up our one and only planet.

A recent survey has found global sustainability experts and practitioners believe that sustainable consumption is possible to achieve, but that to do so we need to change the way we produce, sell and consume. A majority felt this included reductions in, not just altered, consumption. With the survey also finding a dangerous vacuum of political leadership, more pressure is now on the corporate world. If companies can’t make the leap to a post consumerist, intrinsic world then what Jeremy Leggett calls ‘scaleable microcosms of hope’ – community, collaborative and citizen-led solutions – will continue to take over markets and push current incumbents into the shadows. To many, including me, these Phoenix or Cinderella enterprises already offer a growing ray of hope in a rather dark sky.

As 93% of company footprints comes from the use of products by consumers, companies are now more and more aware of the need to shift the consumer towards sustainability. This shift will inevitably require a shift to the kinds of citizen-centric wellbeing-focused values WWF are encouraging. That’s why I am encouraging business leaders like Ian Cheshire to tune their organizations into wellbeing as a key new lens for strategic innovation.

Where to next?
Perhaps instead of obsessing about peak-consumption we also need to think about peak-consumerism?

The novelist Ben Okri summed it up so very well for me when he said: “The meltdown in the economy is a harsh metaphor of the meltdown of some of our value systems. Individualism has been raised almost to a religion, appearance made more important than substance. The only hope lies in a fundamental re-examination of the values that we have lived by in the past 30 years”. And how might we do that? Personally, I’m with Vaclav Havel who believes that “the only option is a change in the sphere of the spirit, in the sphere of human conscience. It’s not enough to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. We must develop a new understanding of the true purpose of our existence on this Earth. Only by making such a fundamental shift will we be able to create new models of behaviour and a new set of values for the planet.”

I have spent the past twenty four hours in a luxurious retreat in the hillsides surrounding Lisbon, listening to the great and good of the global PR industry consider ‘the future’ and what it all really means.

Peter Gummer/ Lord Chadlington (for they are one in the same) sparked, for me at least, a frisson of excitement yesterday, when he spoke rather beautifully on the power that PR enjoys – to play a genuinely transformative role in society; specifically, to arrest the continued abuse of our planet and its finite resources. As readers of Citizen Renaissance will know, this is a theme to which we have returned many times – the essential ‘mea culpa’ being followed by a more positive and progressive use of communications skills to help address the great issues of our time. But Gummer/Chadlington was sadly full of paradox and contradiction. He veered from a sweet (but short) plea for environmental responsibility, to a call for aggressive industrial growth. He – understandably – failed to reconcile the two. He then went on to argue that the PR industry needs to ‘grow up’ (true) and that it does not ‘do Digital’ well (false). That may well be his experience of his firms but it is not a universal malaise. Digital Democracy will continue to drive important change. Chadlington obsessed about China (correct in principle) but rather pedestrianised the global inter-dependencies which characterize the real world today and China’s role within it. I think he tried to over simplify the uniquely complex. He spoke about his close relationship with David Cameron – it would be good if, together, they could find a stronger central narrative on this critical issue.

I am about to deliver my keynote to the same conference. It focuses on the role of Trust – a word that is often used but not always wisely. I am equally convinced that the PR industry has a vital role to play in a transformative future. I believe – and hope – that my arguments are slightly more coherent, even though the challenges are real and occasionally acute. I doubt I will match Lord Chadlington’s elegant delivery but, in today’s world, we really need content and substance to win out over style and effect. I, too argue, that the PR industry needs to ‘grow up’ and properly embrace the Social Digital future. But this is only part of the story of PR and of Trust – and how PR people can, and should, be trusted to do the right thing.

I would welcome your feedback.

Click the link below to download a copy of the keynote speech:

Who Do We Trust

The update suggests that these low levels of wellbeing are due to unusually high materialism levels. As one of the recommendations from UNICEF was a ban on advertising to children, the marketing sectors rag Marketing Week protested that this was unfair

It might feel unfair to marketers but they have to recognise that, as Brad Pitt in says Fight Club “The things you own end up owning you”. As Professor Tim Jackson says in his wonderful TED talk, we live in a world where ‘we spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to impress people we don’t even care about.’

And this ‘affluenza’ effect is all the more true for young people who are far more vulnerable to the influences of advertising and pester-power marketing. For proof of the intent of pester-power one only has to watch the chilling scene in the film The Corporation where the marketer for childrens’ goods talks about using child psychologists to understand how best to get in side our childrens’ heads. Robert Kennedy perhaps put it best in 1968 when he berated our obsession on materialist growth and GNP saying that it “surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things…gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play… It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” And as Polly Toynbee points out in this week’s Guardian it’s the UK’s children who are set to lose out most from the Government’s current evisceration of the welfare state. If that doesn’t break society I’m not sure what will. And all to protect a rotten banking system at the heart of a rotten economic system.

Huxley parodied this rising consumerism in 1931 in Brave New World “I do love having new clothes. Ending is better than mending…old clothes are beastly.” This was prescient of Huxley as in those days the grip of mass consumerism had not yet got a hold of our psyche.

As we wrote in Citizen Renaissance, soon after Huxley wrote this, Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays set about creating what we now know as marketing and advertising. Robert Lane describes what Bernays and others created in The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies, thus -  “The appetite of our present materialism depends upon stirring up our wants – but not satisfying them.” And we now have very strong evidence from Welfare Economics and Positive Psychology that this materialism harms our wellbeing.

In Affluenza, Oliver James points to this distinction between wants and needs “The Affluenza Virus …replaces our true needs with confected wants. We need emotional security or to be part of a community, we only want a newer I-pod or a car”. And as Doyal and Gough show in The Theory of Human Needs, “There can be little doubt that much of the excess energy and resources use in the first world goes to support the satisfaction of wants, not of basic needs.”

So we, and our children, are locked into patters of behaviour that are eating up our one and only planet and actually damaging not improving our wellbeing. Research from two colleagues of mine graphically illustrates how consumption patterns in the UK over the last 40 years have massively shifted away from real needs to materialist ‘wants’ causing increased ecological footprints and flatlining wellbeing.

As if to rub salt into the wounds reopened by the UNICEF update, Newsweek has just run a six page special on ‘Grimsville UK’ depicting London as rife with a disaffected youth, poverty and rioters stealing TVs.

And as if we are not already suffering from too much ‘buyological’ urge, Westfield have kindly opened yet another ‘worlds largest shopping mall’ in the Olympics site. These temples to ‘stuff’ are not just rubbing our noses in ever more materialism but robbing our high streets of life and hastening the spread of CloneTown Britain.

With the economy grinding to a halt, possibly at the edge of a cliff, our current form of growth obsessed capitalist economics badly needs us to ‘get out there and shop’. Without our noses firmly in the materialist troughs, the crazy system starts to unravel fast. This despite the fact that most in the rich world long ago shot past the point where we gained any more wellbeing from more money and stuff.

And its not just in the rich world that we suffer from this materialism. Indeed ad agencies see the markets of the developing world as prime for more of the kinds of materialist messages we in the rich world have long been drowned in. Surely all those ‘undeveloped’ people need lots of stuff to improve their quality of life?

Anyone who has not seen the wonderful film The Gods Must be Crazy really ought to rent it out as it’s a brilliant and funny parody of materialism based on a Coke bottle falling from a plane into a nomadic tribe. In a rich piece of irony, which predated Coke ‘happiness’ campaign, the bottle brings nothing but unhappiness to the tribe until they can rid themselves of it.

Cargo Cults have emerged all over the developing world and are the subject of numerous ethnographic studies. In Pagan Island in the Pacific there is a beach the locals call ‘the shopping beach’. They can find anything they want there washed up across thousands of miles. The island is about as far from ‘civilisation’ as you can get and yet it’s covered in waste plastic. It’s this kind of waste that floats thousands of miles killing albatross chicks and other wildlife and showing just how small and fragile our one and only planet is.

We talk of ‘cargo cults’ with disdain as if it’s all about ignorant primitive people with a fascination for ‘stuff’. The irony is that the lifestyles of ‘less developed’ societies brings far more wellbeing with far less effort and far less footprint as things like the Happy Planet Index show. And it’s our stuff which drifts to distant shores as the flotsam and jetsam of our greed. And evidence from the field of Wellbeing and Development shows that what people, and children in particular, in the developing world really want is not more stuff it’s the same sorts of aspects of wellbeing which bring flourishing lives to us all. Things like respect, community, a good education, connection with friends and family. Of course the developing world needs improved living standards badly. But that’s not an excuse for exporting the worst of our materialist excesses to them.

In any case our model of ‘development’ is proving itself near bankrupt. It seems that corporate-consumerist-debt based capitalism 1.0 is eating itself in front of our eyes. As market guru Noriel Roubini said recently “Karl Marx, it seems, was partly right in arguing that globalisation, financial intermediation run amok, and redistribution of income and wealth from labour to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct.”

So if uber-materialism and growth obsession are falling out of favour, what might replace them? Will it be some Big Society Cameron/Blond form of mutualism? Surely that’s just communism by another name? Didn’t Marx talk about the ‘fetishism of commodities’? Well if not communism then its socialism isn’t it?

Maybe we need a new name for the slowing down and tuning out from materialism? My money is on the new economy emerging from things like a local social enterprise I am involved in called Bath and West Community Energy.

I like the Slowcialism as a moniker. So let’s hear a cheer for slowcialism. And let’s dump cargo-cultism. And remember the words of the wise Henry Thoreau in Walden “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without.”