Philosophy

Today the money meme rules our lives and social interactions in most societies on Earth. How did this happen? I studied all the economics textbooks of every perspective from the Austrian “laissez-faire” market fundamentalists to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, (1776) and his earlier Theory of Moral Sentiments, (1759), as well as Karl Marx, who claimed not to be an economist. From Karl Polanyi’s broader views, I learned that trading was innate in human behavior and how indigenous peoples in the South Pacific traded shells in their canoe travels and visits among these islands in “Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economics, (1968). In Polanyi’s “The Great Transformation”, (1944), I learned how traditional societies and local market norms in communitarian village life were over-ruled by legislation in the British parliament which created national markets and facilitated global trade and colonial exploitation as these markets expanded. I was fortunate to know Polanyi personally...

TFF celebrates the world-renowned international law professor, activist, writer, TFF Associate and dear friend By Jan Oberg November 13, 2020 At TFF, we are blessed by having a number of peace and future scholars, world-leading in their professions, who have followed world events over many decades and continue to be committed to world order change and public education. I say “blessed” because I assume that the reader share my reverence for high age and the sharing of long life experience as well as the wisdom that may accompany it in the midst of the youth-worshipping which characterises the ageing and increasingly grumpy West itself – also sometimes called age discrimination. Last month we celebrated Johan Galtung at 90. And today, Richard Falk at 90 – both world-renowned mega-productive scholars restlessly seeking ways to make the world a more peaceful place. And both TFF Associates, mentors and friends of the founders...

By Bhikhu Parekh November 5, 2020 If he were alive today, how might Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest apostle of non-violence, challenge Osama Bin Laden’s worldview? Bhikhu Parekh is Vice-President of The Gandhi Foundation, a professor of political philosophy, a Labour peer, and the author of three books on Gandhi. This article first appeared in Prospect Magazine in April 2004. Originally published at Gandhifoundation.org Bhikhu Parekh’s preface Like millions around the world, I found the atrocities of 9/11 abhorrent and utterly condemn such acts of terror. Despite the war against terror, we continue to see more horrors such as that in Madrid. What drives the bombers? How do they live with their deeds? Is there no alternative to the cycle of violence? No one is better qualified to advise on this than Mahatma Gandhi, the great apostle of non-violence. My imaginary exchange between him and Bin Laden tries to do two things: to comprehend...

Photo credit: Donald Trump at a rally in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. Source: AFP/Getty Images/sbs.com The Frankfurt School on the appeal of authoritarianism – and how to counteract it. By Charles H. Clavey* November 5, 2020 A number of recent books have put the methods of the social sciences in the service of understanding Trump, his movement, and his enablers, from Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum’s A Lot of People Are Saying (2019) to Jennifer Mercieca’s Demagogue for President (2020). But it may be equally constructive to examine the older works of social science and theory upon which these new studies, at least implicitly, rest. On this list would be canonical sociological studies such as Max Weber’s Economy and Society (1922) and historical essays such as Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (1964) as well as the radically interdisciplinary projects undertaken by the researchers and theorists who comprised the Frankfurt School—Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert...