Value, Money, and Accounting for Pax Ecologica: Contouring a Price-Coordination System for Ecological-Economic Provisioning
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Abstract
The objective of this dissertation is to conceptualize and contour an alternative provisioning system (“Pax Ecologica,” “ecocentric provisioning”) to address, account for, and coordinate humankind’s scientific-technological relationship and impact upon the Earth system. The analysis advances heterodox economics in framing a fundamentally novel planning and value-money-accounting specification for qualitatively measuring the ecological-economic provisioning dispensation. This interdisciplinary examination evinces a wholly distinct theoretical and philosophical paradigm for transitioning from the ceremonial, profit-oriented capitalist price system, to a coordination framework where ecological and a priori humanist dimensions take precedence in repurposing certain insights from classical political economy for a more distilled, robust and resolute heterodox political ecology. The investigation begins from the hypothesis that capitalism – as a historically situated provisioning arrangement of unpaid ecological and social costs – cannot dependably navigate the transition to a consequence-oriented social dispensation where accounting for human life and scientific-technological efficiency are the core guiding analytical principles. In order to reconcile the existing deficiencies the present analysis compels, among other facets, the following original contributions: 1.) an application of the ceremonial-instrumental dichotomy as a valuation mechanism for assessing discrete money-credit forms, price systems, monetary production economies, and economic indicators – e.g., GDP; 2.) a composite, multidimensional approach to value theory via modification and synthesis of the labor theory of value tradition and the instrumental value theory of Institutional Economics; 3.) an appeal to Modern Money Theory (MMT) to clearly “pre-frame” and delineate the ontological and analytical foundations necessary for specifying a novel ecocentric money-credit form; and, 4.) a substantiation of each the ecological-economic theory of value, theory of money, and money-credit form into a rhetorical (demonstrative) accounting system with qualitatively distinct accounting categories and measurement indicators – e.g., net technological progress (“ecocentric accumulation”). In sum, the results sketch a transitory adjustment path from the current ceremonial capitalist money credit form and price-competition system to an instrumental price-coordination system denominated in a supranational ecological-economic money-credit form, one that bears a functional or consequential relationship with the scientific-technological efficiency of humankind’s shared provisioning capacities. In articulating a distinctly non-capitalist – a priori humanist, scientific-technological – interdisciplinary approach to redress humankind’s use and impact on the Earth system, this dissertation further evidences the possibilities for heterodox economics to advance theoretical contributions for evaluating, specifying, and measuring novel labor and market forms; for exhibiting and establishing additional methodological possibilities and distinction; and, for further evidencing and validating the analytical potential for envisioning, conceptualizing, and generating theoretical and philosophical foundations for alternative provisioning arrangements and alternately conceived monetary production economies.
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Introduction and outline -- Prolegomena: ecology, economic theory, and ecocentric provisioning -- Value for Pax Ecologica -- Money for Pax Ecologica -- Accounting for Pax Ecologica -- Restatement and conclusions
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Ph.D.