.
He starts right in, without preamble: “As we already know, money is not a simple unit of exchange. Money is a weapon, most often wielded by the nation state.”
I thought it was a strong opening: punchy, intriguing. I was immediately curious where he would take it next. At the same time, I couldn’t get over the fact that just a few minutes ago I was relatively certain he was dead. That this was a gathering in his memory.
“The nation state is necessary to create a stable base upon which capitalism can operate. But capitalism seems not to fully know this, and continuously drives toward actions that destabilize this necessary base. It is the nature of capitalism to destabilize itself, to generate cycles of destabilization, and it is often only forces of opposition – socialism, regulation, trade unions, protest, counter-culture – that manage to temporarily restabilize it, allowing the next cycle to continue. Nonetheless, we must work and build on the premise that capitalism will not be able to prolong this bad relationship with human and non-human existence forever, that eventually something is going to give.”
There was a sense of gentle agreement in the room. A quality of agreement I couldn’t recall having experienced in other settings. But there was also another feeling, something more unnerving, that I wasn’t able to fully identify until much later.
“If capitalism does eventually collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, it is our job to provide a model for what could replace it, a model that must be open enough to grow and change with our ever-shifting world. And I would like to propose that we give this model the name of economics, a different kind of economics, an economics dedicated to making life livable for all beings, in which I believe we should include, at the very least, the air, soil, spirit and waters. Claiming that economics only concerns finance, interest rates, markets and self-interest is like saying that eating only consists of raw ingredients (which economics refers to as commodities) and leaving out farming, cooking, socializing over food, or the prayer of gratitude that begins the meal. Everything that makes the ingredients worthwhile is set off to one side. The economics I’m proposing would turn the official discourse inside out. It would be an economic system that would make it impossible for anyone to get rich.”
I was skeptical, but felt a desire to be less skeptical, since I found his tone and general approach quite likable. And it occurred to me that he wasn’t speaking of reality but rather about a model. A model might be like an ideal or it might be like a blueprint.
“Economics is culture. Culture is the habits, institutions, stories and rituals that underlie and create our daily actions. Economics can be renewed – if we have the tenacity and panache to do so – to create a culture in our image, a culture that makes life worth living, a culture full of value, depth and reciprocity. Those of us who study and practice radical economics already have the tools and permission to push for those necessary changes. And know that anything less only perpetuates the current status quo: an economics that does little more than oil the gears of our societies ever-accelerating death drive. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I realize I am feeling quite tired. I will take a short rest before we continue on with our next session.”
Alfreda is still standing beside me. I look over, her expression difficult to read. What was she thinking about her professor’ s presentation, which seemed to end just as it was getting started.
Alfreda says: “He seems so much older since the last time I heard him speak. We used to joke that he was our young professor, even though he was so much older than us, but he felt young. He treated us a equals and that made us feel he was closer to us in age. But I also feel a lot older than I did back then. In fact, listening to him, hearing him again after such a long time, was like realizing how different everything feels today. You can just be living your life and the whole world changes around you and you barely even notice it happening. That was all before I started working for the enemy, which I’m also now realizing how deeply it changed me, how deeply that decision changed me, so it wasn’t just the world changing around me, at the same time I was also changing.”
As Alfreda’s talking, her professor continues to push his way through the audience, stopping to chat with a few acolytes on the way but also focused on getting out of the room as quickly as possible. As he passes I momentarily think Alfreda is going to stop him to say something, but then she decides to let him go.
I say: “When you first told me about him I somehow imagined him differently.”
Alfreda says: “How did you imagine him?”
I say: “I don’t know. Like a historical figure. Like a colorful story from your past. When I see him now he seems almost too real. Just a person. A person who’s struggling. Who’s maybe no longer doing so well.”
By the time I finish my thought her professor has already made it out the door. The room seems a little bit more empty without him. Yet, I don’t quite know how to explain it, but it also feels like a relief that he is gone. That there’s no longer a focus for all of our attention.
Mailman comes overt to join us and says: “It’s beautiful so many people have gathered to pay their last respects.” For a long moment I don’t quite understand. Then I somehow do, he’s saying the professor is once again dead and we are here to gather in his memory. Since we all just, moments ago, saw him on stage in front of us, speaking, this makes absolutely no sense. But what I have to admit is most strange is that, in another way, it makes almost perfect sense. I’m not quite sure how to explain it.
I say: “I have the feeling so many people here were changed by their experiences at his school.”
Mailman says: “Why else would they be here?”
Alfreda says: “But you have to understand, that only partly had to do with him. What was so amazing about it was how much we were learning from each other. In some ways he was only a pretext for us to gather. When he was fired from the university it suddenly gave us a cause to gather around, a cause that was immediate, so close to our immediate experience. Something we could do right away. And then we were the ones who organized it all. There were ideas we were learning and proposing, but then there was the proactive learning of figuring out how to organize it all as we went. When we were fighting with each other and had to consciously decide to stop fighting long enough to get things done. Because there was always so much to do. Our professor was there for maybe one hour each weekday to give his lecture and then the rest of the time we were on our own. It was our school even though we would say it was his. Now that I think about it, it even makes me a little mad. How we did the work and he took the credit.”
Mailman says: “I think if you would have asked him at the time he would have said the credit belongs to everyone.”
Alfreda says: “You weren’t there, how would you know?”
Mailman says: “I’ve read about it.”
I say: “You’re comparing Alfreda’s first-hand experience to your reading about it?”
Mailman says: “It’s perhaps not the same level of knowledge. But it’s still knowledge.”
Alfreda says: “How do you two know each other again?”
I say: “We wandered together. That was a long time ago.”
Mailman says: “I pretended not to know him when he tried to join our spiritual retreat. I was doing the work of a charlatan.”
Alfreda says: “I have also, up until recently, been working for a charlatan.”
I say: “There’s so many of them around. And they have all the money. It’s hard to avoid working for them.”
Mailman says: “Have you ever worked for anyone?”
I say: “That’s a story for another time.”
*
An announcement is made. We’re going to take a forty-five-minute break before the next presentation. There seems to be some difficulties occurring behind the scenes but here in the audience no one seems especially bothered as we all quietly files out of the room. The three of us end up in the backyard, a well manicured lawn that stretched out in every direction. There are a few empty chairs in a circle of people talking, so as we sit down we join a conversation already under way. It takes me a while to figure out the topic, but eventually I realize they’re debating whether the professor had died of “natural causes” or whether he’s been assassinated, and if so by who. There were many different kinds of capitalists who might have liked to see him dead. And then it hit me all over again only this time much harder. Just moments ago we were all listening to him speak, listening to his coherent arguments pertinent to the field of radical economics, and now we were spending our break considering who might have killed him. No one knew who, but at least two in our circle were clear that if he had been killed the method had to have been poisoning.
“People always say his speeches weren’t popular enough to be a real threat to anyone. Certainly not enough of a threat for anyone to kill him. But that doesn’t take into account how potent he could be. Even if only a few dozen people heard him each year, he often changed those people’s lives. They went back to their economics classrooms and taught different, taught different material, his vision of economics was spreading.”
“He was a very old man. I don’t think there’s any surprise in the fact that he died, or any need to resort to conspiracy theories to explain the causes. Wanting to believe someone killed him certainly gives him a greater importance, and he’s an extremely important thinker for all of us, so I can understand why we’d want to further increase his importance. But his thinking remains just as essential if he died quietly in his sleep of old age.”
It occurs to me to ask the group if we’re sure the professor is dead, how we know he’s dead, what proof do we have. But everyone seems so certain. I feel they’d think me insane if I were to begin to question the basic facts of the situation. I try to think of something else I can contribute, then I notice Alfreda and Mailman also aren’t saying anything. Maybe, for now, it’s more interesting to listen. Lately I’ve been worried that I’ve been talking too much anyway, taking up too much space.
“The fact that they haven’t released the autopsy is the main reason we all continue to speculate. There’s this feeling that surrounds his death, a feeling that something is being suppressed. But maybe in the next few weeks they will release the autopsy and then at least some of this speculation might stop. I came here because I wanted to be around other people who were thinking deeply about radical economics, not to speculate whether or not there was a third poisoner on the grassy knoll.”
“I also wonder what it matters. If someone poisoned him, what can we do about it anyway. All we can do is continue to disseminate his ideas. Continue to develop them. Continue to figure out how to make those concepts most rhetorically effective. How to make them attractive for out students and colleagues. Because economics departments could be a place that triggers change. It seems farfetched. And I haven’t yet seen it happen. But the fact that we’re all here makes me believe that there’s people who want it. The question is how many of us are there and how tenacious can we be.”
It occurs to me that maybe I don’t have anything to say because I’m not a radical economist. In fact, I’m of not an economist of any kind. And yet I’ve ended up here. I’ve ended up here because I’m searching for something. Might the lost masterpiece be a work of radical economics? Of course it might be, it could be anything, that’s the magic of it. I’m here because a series of random events led one into the next, some of which weren’t so random. And I’m here because wandering was the decisive event of my recent past, and the school of radical economics was the decisive event of Alfreda’s recent past, and in that sense it reflects something we have in common.
“I guess if we discover he was murdered, if we find the smoking gun so to speak, no of us holds any real hope that we’ll manage to hold the person responsible accountable. Because we also all basically think we know who did it. And that person is too powerful. That person is not someone any of us would be able to reign in. No matter how many of us there were working on it.”
I look over at Afreda. From the way she looks back at me I realize we both know who they’re referring to. But it’s all just speculation, and in a way too suspicious to be true. You give a free building so someone can run a free school, and it sets off a chain of events. Now you and the person you’ve helped are intertwined, are connected, are part of the same story and that story can grow, be embellished, in the minds of everyone who knows even the basic facts. And maybe now I do want to consider the possibility that the professor might still be alive. But consider it only for myself, not try to convince anyone else.
*
They announce the next presentation will begin in ten minutes and we all file back into the main room. Once again there’s an introduction and once again they introduce the professor. I watch as he slowly makes his way onto the stage. For the first time since we arrived it occurs to me that perhaps I do have a concussion. That wouldn’t really explain anything, but it’s nonetheless a theory I shouldn’t so easily dismiss. Once again he starts right in, without preamble: “There is no reason economics has to be a field that serves the interests of capitalism. Nonetheless, businesspeople want economics to be a field that serves their interests and are willing to work overtime to make it so. How hard are we willing to work to ensure they don’t get their way? The university is an institution that can be much-too-easily bought, we all know this, though we would prefer not to. But can the university become an institution that resists being bought. Because economics departments do, undeniably, affect public policy, affect how governments are run, affect how businesses are run. You are the next generation and you can’t let anyone, not my generation and not anyone else, tell you that it’s not possible. No one is going to give you power, you have to take it.”
As I listen, I think about how just moments ago we were speculating about who might have murdered him and now we were, once again, listening to him hold forth. When we went on break I assumed the next presentation would be by someone else, but it now seems like every presentation is going to be by him. I don’t know quite how to put it, but I find it extremely difficult to imagine the people in this room taking power of any kind. But I just met them, maybe they have some secret reserve of tenacity that’s not apparent at first glance. And another thought follows this first wave of reservations, that if some of them were to fully follow their professor’s noble example maybe they would be killed as well. Though rarely does a corpse give a presentation as energetic at the one we are all listening to now.
“A university has a responsibility to the truth. A businessman does not. If money is being made, the “truth” can be made to conform to the requirements of that money. But this is not a way of life that can sustain itself, eventually it’s going to crash. Or, to put it another way, this is a system that has crashed over and over again, and each time managed to rebound, often through the efforts of those who wanted something different but failed at creating something completely different and therefore only managed to achieve temporary reforms. But you can’t crash over and over again and survive. Sooner or later you have suffered one crash too many. You don’t come back. To some what seems most likely is a return to feudalism. And that might be where we are headed if we don’t find a way to activate something else, some otherwise, a new kind of economics that believes the future doesn’t just repeat the past.”
As I listened, I started to think again about our collective dream journal. What was happening now could have easily been one of those dreams. This professor could have easily been one of our shared characters. Yet I knew I wasn’t dreaming. And then there is the other meaning of the word “dream,” that this professor is espousing a dream for the future he wants us to believe is achievable. He is saying this is not a dream but a plan. Could we really sit down and map out how to take over the economics departments of the universities one by one? How to go about it in concrete and effective detail? What strategies and tactics would most likely lead to success? That would be a kind of planning I’ve never really seen at the kinds of conferences and meetings I’ve previously attended and that this particular gathering echo’s in some ways but not others.
“Now is the time for us to invest in our own tenacity and conviction to an unprecedented degree. The scare of the problems and obstacles we face may seem insurmountable, by they are problems that also have clear and often quite simple solutions. What we require is the accumulated power to implement those solutions. Money is power, but the field of economics has the possibility to undermined some of that power, to expose some of the ways money isn’t real and close some of the loopholes that allow pyramid schemes and the corruption of pure gambling to masquerade as business as usual. Use your doubt to fuel your conviction.”
I look over at Alfreda and realize she is almost in tears. She turns, pushes through the crowd and out the back door as I do my best to follow. I find her in the backyard crying as hard as I’ve ever seen anyone cry. I sit down quietly beside her, waiting for things to calm down, trying to exude peaceful calm in the hope it might be contagious. Slowly her crying begins to settle.
I say: “Are you sad because your professor is dead?”
Alfreda says: “He’s not dead. We were just watching him speak.”
This confuses me further but I decide to stay on topic.
I say: “Then why are you upset?”
Alfreda says: “I heard the line ‘use your doubt to fuel your conviction’ and it hit me in such a specific way. Everything took on a greater clarity. Since we arrived here I’ve been thinking so much about my time running the school. I’ve been thinking back so much, too much. I’ve been thinking about Driver, about how our time together was the only time in my life I was completely in love. And we’re still in love, somehow I now realize that almost nothing has changed. And I can’t believe we let that bastard separate us. I can’t believe we agreed that she would move away for something as stupid as a paycheck. About a month ago she sent me a text to ask if I was planning to come to this gathering and I wrote back that I wasn’t planning to come. Then, as you know, I changed my mind at the last minute, which is why we’re here, but I didn’t write to tell her, which is probably why she isn’t here. But I now realize that I was hoping to see her here, that I was almost expecting it. And I also now realize what I need to do. I need to use my doubt to fuel my conviction. I need to go find her. We need to be together. I realize now that’s the only important thing. Everything else I’m doing is so much less important. I’m going to get my things and leave right away.”
I say: “You’re going to leave right now?”
Alfreda says: “Yes.”
I watch her stand up, head upstairs to get her bag. I stand limply by the front door waiting, trying to think what is the best way for us to say goodbye. It crosses my mind I might never see her again. She comes back down and we hug for a long time. Then she says goodbye, walks out the door. I hear her get into her car, hear the car start up and drive away. A few weeks ago I barely knew Alfreda at all and now our story already has a beginning, middle and end. I stand by the front door wondering what I should do. In a way this is mainly a gathering for Alfreda’s professor, so now there’s no longer much reason for me to be here. For a long moment I consider going back in to hear the rest of the presentations but realize I don’t much feel like it. I instead decide to go for a walk to clear my head. So many things have happened in a relatively short period of time.
*
[I am gradually realizing that in my current still-in-progress trilogy -
Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim,
Amateur Kittens Dreaming Solar Energy,
Desire Without Expectation - all
three books are based loosely around questions concerning the desire for utopia.]
.
