Sutra

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutra

A Sanskrit manuscript page of Lotus Sutra (Buddhism) from South Turkestan in Brahmi script

A manuscript page from Kalpa Sūtra (Jainism)

Sutra (Sanskrit: सूत्र, romanized: sūtra, lit. 'string, thread') in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a condensed manual or text. Sutras are a genre of ancient and medieval Indian texts found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

In Hinduism, sutras are a distinct type of literary composition, a compilation of short aphoristic statements. Each sutra is any short rule, like a theorem distilled into few words or syllables, around which teachings of ritual, philosophy, grammar, or any field of knowledge can be woven. The oldest sutras of Hinduism are found in the Brahmana and Aranyaka layers of the Vedas. Every school of Hindu philosophy, Vedic guides for rites of passage, various fields of arts, law, and social ethics developed respective sutras, which help teach and transmit ideas from one generation to the next.

In Buddhism, sutras, also known as suttas, are canonical scriptures, many of which are regarded as records of the oral teachings of Gautama Buddha. They are not aphoristic, but are quite detailed, sometimes with repetition. This may reflect a derivation from Vedic or Sanskrit sūkta (well spoken), rather than from sūtra (thread).

In Jainism, sutras, also known as suyas, are canonical sermons of Mahavira contained in the Jain Agamas as well as some later (post-canonical) normative texts.

Etymology

A 17th-century birch bark manuscript of ancient Panini Sutra, a treatise on grammar, found in Kashmir.

The Sanskrit word Sūtra (Sanskrit: सूत्र, Pali: sutta, Ardha Magadhi: sūya) means "string, thread". The root of the word is siv, "that which sews and holds things together". The word is related to sūci (Sanskrit: सूचि) meaning "needle, list", and sūnā (Sanskrit: सूना) meaning "woven".

In the context of literature, sūtra means a distilled collection of syllables and words, any form or manual of "aphorism, rule, direction" hanging together like threads with which the teachings of ritual, philosophy, grammar, or any field of knowledge can be woven.

A sūtra is any short rule, states Moriz Winternitz, in Indian literature; it is "a theorem condensed in few words". A collection of sūtras becomes a text, and this is also called sūtra (often capitalized in Western literature).

A sūtra is different from other components such as Shlokas, Anuvyakhayas and Vyakhyas found in ancient Indian literature. A sūtra is a condensed rule which succinctly states the message, while a Shloka is a verse that conveys the complete message and is structured to certain rules of musical meter, an Anuvyakhaya is an explanation of the reviewed text, while a Vyakhya is a comment by the reviewer.

History

Sutra known from Vedic era

Veda	Sutras
Rigveda	Asvalayana Sutra (§), Sankhayana Sutra (§), Saunaka Sutra (¶)
Samaveda	Latyayana Sutra (§), Drahyayana Sutra (§), Nidana Sutra (§), Pushpa Sutra (§), Anustotra Sutra (§)
Yajurveda	Manava Sutra (§), Bharadvaja Sutra (¶), Apastamba Sutra (§), Vadhuna Sutra (¶), Vaikhanasa Sutra (¶), Laugakshi Sutra (¶), Maitra Sutra (¶), Katha Sutra (¶), Varaha Sutra (¶)
Atharvaveda	Kusika Sutra (§)
¶: only quotes survive; §: text survives

Sutras first appear in the Brahmana and Aranyaka layer of Vedic literature. They grow in number in the Vedangas, such as the Shrauta Sutras and Kalpa Sutras. These were designed so that they can be easily communicated from a teacher to student, memorized by the recipient for discussion or self-study or as reference.

A sutra by itself is condensed shorthand, and the threads of syllable are difficult to decipher or understand without associated scholarly Bhasya or deciphering commentary that fills in the "weft".

The oldest manuscripts that have survived into the modern era that contain extensive sutras are part of the Vedas, dated from the late 2nd millennium BCE through to the mid 1st millennium BCE. The Aitareya Aranyaka, for example, states Winternitz, is primarily a collection of sutras. Their use and ancient roots are attested by sutras being mentioned in larger genre of ancient non-Vedic Hindu literature called Gatha, Narashansi, Itihasa, and Akhyana (songs, legends, epics, and stories).

In the history of Indian literature, large compilations of sutras, in diverse fields of knowledge, have been traced to the period from 600 BCE to 200 BCE (mostly after Buddha and Mahavira), and this has been called the "sutras period". This period followed the more ancient Chhandas period, Mantra period and Brahmana period.

(The ancient) Indian pupil learnt these sutras of grammar, philosophy or theology by the same mechanical method which fixes in our (modern era) minds the alphabet and the multiplication table.

— Max Muller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature

Hinduism

Further information: Hindu texts

 

Some of the earliest surviving specimens of sutras of Hinduism are found in the Anupada Sutras and Nidana Sutras. The former distills the epistemic debate whether Sruti or Smriti or neither must be considered the more reliable source of knowledge, while the latter distills the rules of musical meters for Samaveda chants and songs.

A larger collection of ancient sutra literature in Hinduism corresponds to the six Vedangas, or six limbs of the Vedas. These are six subjects that said in the Vedas to be necessary for complete mastery of the Vedas. The six subjects with their own sutras were "pronunciation (Shiksha), meter (Chandas), grammar (Vyakarana), explanation of words (Nirukta), time keeping through astronomy (Jyotisha), and ceremonial rituals (Kalpa). The first two, states Max Muller, were considered in the Vedic era to be necessary for reading the Veda, the second two for understanding it, and the last two for deploying the Vedic knowledge at yajnas (fire rituals). The sutras corresponding to these are embedded inside the Brahmana and Aranyaka layers of the Vedas. Taittiriya Aranyaka, for example in Book 7, embeds sutras for accurate pronunciation after the terse phrases "On Letters", "On Accents", "On Quantity", "On Delivery", and "On Euphonic Laws".

The fourth and often the last layer of philosophical, speculative text in the Vedas, the Upanishads, too have embedded sutras such as those found in the Taittiriya Upanishad.

The compendium of ancient Vedic sutra literature that has survived, in full or fragments, includes the Kalpa Sutras, Shulba Sutras, Srauta Sutras, Dharma Sutras, Grhya Sutras, and Smarta traditions . Other fields for which ancient sutras are known include etymology, phonetics, and grammar.

Post-vedic sutras

Example of sutras from Vedanta Sutra

अथातो ब्रह्मजिज्ञासा ॥१.१.१॥
जन्माद्यस्य यतः ॥ १.१.२॥
शास्त्रयोनित्वात् ॥ १.१.३॥
तत्तुसमन्वयात् ॥ १.१.४॥
ईक्षतेर्नाशब्दम् ॥ १.१.५॥

— Brahma Sutra 1.1.1–1.1.5

Some examples of sutra texts in various schools of Hindu philosophy include

• Brahma Sutras (or Vedanta Sutra) – a Sanskrit text, composed by Badarayana, likely sometime between 200 BCE to 200 CE. The text contains 555 sutras in four chapters that summarize the philosophical and spiritual ideas in the Upanishads. It is one of the foundational texts of the Vedānta school of Hindu philosophy.
• Yoga Sutras – contains 196 sutras on Yoga including the eight limbs and meditation. The Yoga Sutras were compiled around 400 CE by Patanjali, taking materials about yoga from older traditions. The text has been highly influential on Indian culture and spiritual traditions, and it is among the most translated ancient Indian text in the medieval era, having been translated into about forty Indian languages.
• Samkhya Sutra – is a collection of major Sanskrit texts of the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy, including the sutras on dualism of Kapila. It consists of six books with 526 sutras.

Sutra, without commentary:
Soul is, for there is no proof that it is not. (Sutra 1, Book 6) This different from body, because of heterogeneousness. (Sutra 2, Book 6) Also because it is expressed by means of the sixth case. (Sutra 3, Book 6)

With Vijnanabhiksu's commentary bhasya filled in:
Soul is, for there is no proof that it is not, since we are aware of "I think", because there is no evidence to defeat this. Therefore all that is to be done is to discriminate it from things in general. (Sutra 1, Book 6) This soul is different from the body because of heterogeneousness or complete difference between the two. (Sutra 2, Book 6) Also because it, the Soul, is expressed by means of the sixth case, for the learned express it by the possessive case in such examples as 'this is my body', 'this my understanding'; for the possessive case would be unaccountable if there were absolute non-difference, between the body or the like, and the Soul to which it is thus attributed as a possession. (Sutra 3, Book 6)

– Kapila in Samkhya Sutra, Translated by James Robert Ballantyne

• Vaisheshika Sutra – the foundational text of the Vaisheshika school of Hinduism, dated to between the 4th century BCE and 1st century BCE, authored by Kanada. With 370 sutras, it aphoristically teaches non-theistic naturalism, epistemology, and its metaphysics. The first two sutras of the text expand as, "Now an explanation of Dharma; The means to prosperity and salvation is Dharma."
• Nyaya Sutras – an ancient text of Nyaya school of Hindu philosophy composed by Akṣapada Gautama, sometime between the 6th century BCE and 2nd century CE. It is notable for focusing on knowledge and logic, and making no mention of Vedic rituals. The text includes 528 aphoristic sutras, about rules of reason, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. These sutras are divided into five books, with two chapters in each book. The first book is structured as a general introduction and table of contents of sixteen categories of knowledge. Book two is about pramana (epistemology), book three is about prameya or the objects of knowledge, and the text discusses the nature of knowledge in remaining books.

Reality is truth (prāma, foundation of correct knowledge), and what is true is so, irrespective of whether we know it is, or are aware of that truth.

– Akṣapada Gautama in Nyaya Sutra, Translated by Jeaneane D Fowler

• Mimamsa Sutras – the foundational text of the Mimamsa school of Hinduism, authored by Jaimini. It emphasizes the early part of the Vedas, i.e., rituals and religious works, as means to salvation. The school emphasized precision in the selection of words, construction of sentences, developed rules for hermeneutics of language and any text, adopted and then refined principles of logic from the Nyaya school, and developed extensive rules for epistemology. An atheistic school that supported external Vedic sacrifices and rituals, its Mimamsa Sutra contains twelve chapters with nearly 2700 sutras.
• Dharma-sutras – of Āpastamba, Gautama, Baudhāyana, and Vāsiṣṭha
• Artha-sutras – the Niti Sutras of Chanakya and Somadeva are treatises on governance, law, economics, and politics. Versions of Chanakya Niti Sutras have been found in Sri Lanka and Myanmar. The more comprehensive work of Chanakya, the Arthashastra is itself composed in many parts, in sutra style, with the first Sutra of the ancient book acknowledging that it is a compilation of Artha-knowledge from previous scholars.
• Kama Sutra – an ancient Indian Sanskrit text on sexual and emotional fulfillment in life
• Moksha-sutras
• Shiva Sutras – fourteen verses that organize the phonemes of Sanskrit
• Narada Bhakti Sutra – a venerated Hindu sutra, reportedly spoken by the famous sage Narada

Buddhism

In Buddhism, a sutta or sutra is a part of the canonical literature. These early Buddhist sutras, unlike Hindu texts, are not aphoristic. On the contrary, they are most often quite lengthy. The Buddhist term sutta or sutra probably has roots in Sanskrit sūkta (su + ukta), "well spoken" from the belief that "all that was spoken by the Lord Buddha was well-spoken". They share the character of sermons of "well spoken" wisdom with the Jain sutras.

In Chinese, these are known as 經 (pinyin: jīng). These teachings are assembled in part of the Tripiṭaka which is called the Sutta Pitaka. There are many important or influential Mahayana texts, such as the Platform Sutra and the Lotus Sutra, that are called sutras despite being attributed to much later authors.

In Theravada Buddhism suttas comprise the second "basket" (pitaka) of the Pāli Canon. Rewata Dhamma and Bhikkhu Bodhi describe the Sutta pitaka as

The Sutta Pitaka, the second collection, brings together the Buddha's discourses spoken by him on various occasions during his active ministry of forty-five years.

Jainism

In the Jain tradition, sutras are an important genre of "fixed text", which used to be memorized.

The Kalpa Sūtra is, for example, a Jain text that includes monastic rules, as well as biographies of the Jain Tirthankaras. Many sutras discuss all aspects of ascetic and lay life in Jainism. Various ancient sutras particularly from the early 1st millennium CE, for example, recommend devotional bhakti as an essential Jain practice.

The surviving scriptures of Jaina tradition, such as the Acaranga Sutra (Agamas), exist in sutra format, as is the Tattvartha Sutra, a Sanskrit text accepted by all four Jainism sects as the most authoritative philosophical text that completely summarizes the foundations of Jainism.

Reserve army of labour

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour

Reserve army of labour is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy. It refers to the unemployed and underemployed in capitalist society. It is synonymous with "industrial reserve army" or "relative surplus population", except that the unemployed can be defined as those actually looking for work and that the relative surplus population also includes people unable to work. The use of the word "army" refers to the workers being conscripted and regimented in the workplace in a hierarchy under the command or authority of the owners of capital.

Marx did not invent the term "reserve army of labour". It was already being used by Friedrich Engels in his 1845 book The Condition of the Working Class in England. What Marx did was theorize the reserve army of labour as a necessary part of the capitalist organization of work.

Prior to what Marx regarded as the start of the capitalist era in human history (i.e. before the 16th century), structural unemployment on a mass scale rarely existed, other than that caused by natural disasters and wars. In ancient societies, all people who could work necessarily had to work, otherwise they would starve; and a slave or a serf by definition could not become "unemployed". There was normally very little possibility of "earning a crust" without working at all, and the usual attitude toward beggars and idlers was harsh. Children began to work at a very early age.

Marx's discussion of the concept

Although the idea of the industrial reserve army of labour is closely associated with Marx, it was already in circulation in the British labour movement by the 1830s. Engels discussed the reserve army of labour in his famous book The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) before Marx did. The first mention of the reserve army of labour in Marx's writing occurs in a manuscript he wrote in 1847, but did not publish:

Big industry constantly requires a reserve army of unemployed workers for times of overproduction. The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it, i.e., when the overpopulation is the greatest. Overpopulation is therefore in the interest of the bourgeoisie, and it gives the workers good advice which it knows to be impossible to carry out. Since capital only increases when it employs workers, the increase of capital involves an increase of the proletariat, and, as we have seen, according to the nature of the relation of capital and labour, the increase of the proletariat must proceed relatively even faster. The above theory, however, which is also expressed as a law of nature, that population grows faster than the means of subsistence, is the more welcome to the bourgeois as it silences his conscience, makes hard-heartedness into a moral duty and the consequences of society into the consequences of nature, and finally gives him the opportunity to watch the destruction of the proletariat by starvation as calmly as any other natural event without bestirring himself, and, on the other hand, to regard the misery of the proletariat as its own fault and to punish it. To be sure, the proletarian can restrain his natural instinct by reason, and so, by moral supervision, halt the law of nature in its injurious course of development.

— Karl Marx, Wages, December 1847

The idea of the labour force as an "army" occurs also in Part 1 of The Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels in 1848:

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

Marx introduces the concept of the reserve army of labour in chapter 25 of the first volume of Capital: Critique of Political Economy, twenty years later in 1867, stating the following:

[...] capitalistic accumulation itself [...] constantly produces, and produces in the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relatively redundant population of workers, i.e., a population of greater extent than suffices for the average needs of the valorisation of capital, and therefore a surplus-population... It is the absolute interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labour out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of labourers, if the cost is about the same. [...] The more extended the scale of production, the stronger this motive. Its force increases with the accumulation of capital.

His argument is that as capitalism develops, the organic composition of capital will increase, which means that the mass of constant capital grows faster than the mass of variable capital. Fewer workers can produce all that is necessary for society's requirements. In addition, capital will become more concentrated and centralized in fewer hands.

This being the absolute historical tendency under capitalism, part of the working population will tend to become surplus to the requirements of capital accumulation over time. Paradoxically, the larger the wealth of society, the larger the industrial reserve army will become. One could add that the larger the wealth of society, the more people it can also support who do not work.

However, as Marx develops the argument further it also becomes clear that depending on the state of the economy, the reserve army of labour will either expand or contract, alternately being absorbed or expelled from the employed workforce:

Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army, and these again correspond to the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. They are, therefore, not determined by the variations of the absolute number of the working population, but by the varying proportions in which the working-class is divided into active and reserve army, by the increase or diminution in the relative amount of the surplus-population, by the extent to which it is now absorbed, now set free.

Marx concludes as such: "Relative surplus-population is therefore the pivot upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works". The availability of labour influences wage rates and the larger the unemployed workforce grows, the more this forces down wage rates; conversely, if there are plenty jobs available and unemployment is low, this tends to raise the average level of wages—in that case workers are able to change jobs rapidly to get better pay.

Composition of the relative surplus population

Marx discusses the army of labor and the reserve army in Capital Volume III, Chapter 14, Counteracting Factors, Section IV. The army of labor consists in those working class people employed in average or better than average jobs. Not every one in the working class gets one of these jobs. There are then four other categories where members of the working class might find themselves: the stagnant pool, the floating reserves, the latent reserve and pauperdom. Finally, people may leave the army and the reserve army by turning to criminality, Marx refers to such people as lumpenproletariat.

• The stagnant part consists of marginalised people with "extremely irregular employment". Stagnant pool jobs are characterized by below average pay, dangerous working conditions and they may be temporary. Those caught in the stagnant pool have jobs, so the modern definition of the employed would include both the army of labor plus the stagnant pool. However, they are constantly on the lookout for something better.
• The modern unemployed would refer primarily to the floating reserve, people who used to have good jobs, but are now out of work. They certainly hope that their unemployment is temporary ("conjunctural unemployment"), but they are well aware that they could fall into the stagnant pool or the pauper class.
• The latent part consists of that segment of the population not yet fully integrated into capitalist production. In Marx's day, he was referring to people living off of subsistence agriculture who were looking for monetary employment in industry. In modern times, people coming from slums in developing countries where they survive largely by non-monetary means, to developed cities where they work for pay might form the latent. Housewives who move from unpaid to paid employment for a business could also form a part of the latent reserve. They are not unemployed because they are not necessarily actively looking for a job, but if capital needs extra workers, it can pull them out of the latent reserve. In this sense, the latent forms a reservoir of potential workers for industries.
• Pauperdom is where one might end up. The homeless is the modern term for paupers. Marx calls them people who cannot adapt to capital's never ending change. For Marx, "the sphere of pauperism", including those still able to work, orphans and pauper children and the "demoralised and ragged" or "unable to work".

Marx then analyses the reserve army of labour in detail using data on Britain where he lived.

Controversies and criticism

Economist criticisms

Some economists such as Paul Samuelson have taken issue with Marx's concept of the reserve army of labour. Samuelson argues that much Marxian literature assumes that the mere existence of the unemployed drives down wages, when in reality is dependent upon contingent factors. (Are the unemployed easily available as replacements? Is the mere threat of replacement sufficient to get workers to accept a wage cut or does the employer have to demonstrate this is not an empty threat?) Samuelson argues that if prices also fall with money wage, then this does not mean real wages will fall. Samuelson also argues that wages will fall only until there are no more unemployed to bid it down: the reserve army can reduce wages only by decreasing its size. Samuelson's concludes that to mean that while the unemployed can reduce wages, they are incapable of reducing them to anywhere near subsistence levels before the unemployed all become employed.

A similar argument was made by Murray Rothbard, who argued that if the reserve army lower wages by being absorbed into the ranks of the employed, then eventually it will disappear and be incapable of being a threat (that also means that the risk of perpetual impoverishment is averted). Rothbard observes that this is supported by modern market economics, which holds that unemployment lowers wages and thus ultimately eliminates itself. Thus, Rothbard concludes that the reserve army would ultimately cease to be a threat. Rothbard also argues that industries can experience an increase in demand for other works thanks to increasing productivity caused by technology, which will then decrease unemployment due to a greater demand for workers caused by expanding production capability.

Immiseration

Some writers have interpreted Marx's argument to mean that an absolute immiseration of the working class would occur as the broad historical trend. Thus, the workers would become more and more impoverished and unemployment would constantly grow. This is no longer credible in the light of the facts because in various epochs and countries workers' living standards have indeed improved rather than declined. In some periods, unemployment had been reduced to a very small amount. In the Great Depression, about one in four workers became unemployed, but towards the end of the post-war boom unemployment in richer countries reduced to a very low level. However, economic historian Paul Bairoch estimated in the mid-1980s that in Latin America, Africa and Asia "total inactivity" among the population was "on the order of 30-40% of potential working man-hours"—a situation without historical precedent, "except perhaps in the case of ancient Rome".

Other writers, such as Ernest Mandel and Roman Rozdolsky, argued that in truth Marx had no theory of an absolute immiseration of the working class; at most, one could say that the rich-poor gap continues to grow, i.e. the wealthy get wealthier much more than ordinary workers improve their living standards. In part, the level of unemployment also seems to be based on the balance of power between social classes and state policy. Governments can allow unemployment to rise, but also implement job-creating policies, which makes unemployment levels partly a political result.

If chapter 25 of Marx's Capital, Volume I is read carefully, it is plain that Marx does not actually say what many critics accuse him of. Marx himself says that the "absolute general law of capitalist accumulation" is that the more that capital grows in size and value, the bigger the working class becomes and the larger the pauperized sections of the working class and the industrial reserve army become. However, he does not say that the whole working class becomes pauperized, but rather that the part of it which is pauperized grows in size. He then carefully qualifies this argument by saying that the absolute general law is "like all other laws [...] modified in its working by many circumstances". Next, Marx says that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low must "grow worse". It is quite clear from the context though that by "worse" Marx does not primarily mean poverty. He means instead, as he says himself explicitly, that "all means of development of production undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become means of domination and exploitation of the producers". He is talking about "worse" in the sense of "inhuman", "more exploited" or "alienated".

Overpopulation

Another dispute concerns the notion of "overpopulation". In Marx's own time, Thomas Robert Malthus raised dire predictions that population growth enabled by capitalist wealth would exceed the food supply required to sustain that population. As noted, for Marx "overpopulation" was really more an ideologically loaded term or social construct and Marxists have argued there is no real problem here as enough food can be produced for all; if there is a problem, it lies in the way that food is produced and distributed.

Consent

In the social welfare area, there are also perpetual disputes about the extent to which unemployment is voluntarily chosen by people, or involuntary, whether it is forced on people or whether it is their own choice. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment rose to 20–30% of the working population in many countries, people generally believed it was involuntary, but if unemployment levels are relatively low, the argument that unemployment is a matter of choice is more often heard.

Measurement

There are endless debates about the best way to measure unemployment, its costs and its effects and to what extent a degree of unemployment is inevitable in any country with a developed labour market. According to the NAIRU concept, price stability in market-based societies necessarily requires a certain amount of unemployment. One reason a reserve army of the unemployed exists in market economies, it is argued, is that if the level of unemployment is too low, it will stimulate price inflation. However, the validity of this argument depends also on state economic policy and on the ability of workers to raise their wages. If for example trade unions are legally blocked from organizing workers, then even if unemployment is relatively low, average wages can be kept low; the only way that individual workers have in that case to raise their income is to work more hours or work themselves up to better-paying jobs.

Normally, the government measure of unemployment defines "unemployed" as "without any job, but actively looking for work". There are also people defined as "jobless", who want work yet are not, or no longer, actively looking for work because they are discouraged and so on. This official view of the matter is closely linked to the administration of unemployment benefits. To be entitled for an unemployment benefit, it is a requirement that the beneficiary is actively looking for work.

Hidden unemployment

There are also many controversies about hidden unemployment. Hidden unemployment means that people are not counted or considered as unemployed, although in reality they are unemployed. For example, young people will stay in the family home, in schooling, or in some make-work scheme because they can not find a paid job. People might also have a job, but they might be underemployed because they cannot get more working hours or they cannot get a job for which they are qualified. People might also drop out of the official labour force because they are discouraged and no longer actively looking for work; they are no longer counted as unemployed, although they are. Governments can also subsidize employment of people who would otherwise be unemployed, or put people on benefits even although they could be working. It may be that workers are hired, but that they do nothing while at work.

On the one side, governments often try to make unemployment seem as low as possible because that is politically desirable. On the other side, governments also often provide "broader" and "narrower" measures of unemployment. For example, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics provides six measures of labor underutilization (U-1, U-2, U-3, U-4, U-5 and U-6). The U-3 rate is the "official" unemployment rate.

Global reserve army of labour

Marx was writing in the mid-19th century, and his discussion of unemployment may therefore be in part out of date, especially if one considers only particular developed countries. However, his analysis may continue to be quite valid if considered globally. The ILO reports that the proportion of jobless has been steadily increasing since the beginning of the financial crisis of 2007–2008.

In 2007, the ILO standard global unemployment measure stood at 169.7 million. In 2012, the ILO global unemployment rate reached 5.9% of the civilian labour force (195.4 million, or a net 25.7 million more), 0.5 percentage points higher than the 5.4% rate before the financial crisis. The official global unemployment rate was expected to have risen to 6% of the civilian labour force in 2013. Over 30 million jobs were still needed to return total employment to the level that prevailed before the financial crisis. It was expected in 2013 that globally about 205 million people would be unemployed in 2014 and 214 million in 2018. However, the official total of the unemployed was subsequently (in 2017) forecast to be just over 201 million persons in that year and with an additional rise of 2.7 million expected in 2018. The official world total of unemployed in the labour force is approximately equal to the total number of employed workers in the United States, Canada and Mexico put together.

The official unemployment figures do not include jobless people who have dropped out of the labour force altogether because they can not find work as they include only those actually looking for work. The global unemployment rate is strongly influenced by population growth; the more population, the more unemployed and employed in absolute numbers. However, the proportion of jobless people now rises every year and is expected to continue rising for quite some time.

Among the world's unemployed, the ILO estimates that roughly half the global total are young people aged 15 to 24. In the rich countries, it often does not matter so much if young people are unemployed at that age, but in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America where most of the unemployed youths are it is often a much more serious problem.

Modern academic usage

In recent years, there has been a growing use in Marxist and anarchist theory of the concept of "the precariat" to describe a growing reliance on temporary, part-time workers with precarious status who share aspects of the proletariat and the reserve army of labor. Precarious workers do work part-time or full-time in temporary jobs, but they cannot really earn enough to live on and depend partly on friends or family, or on state benefits, to survive. Typically, they do not become truly "unemployed", but they do not have a decent job to go to either.

Although non-employed people who are unable or uninterested in performing legal paid work are not considered among the "unemployed", the concept of "conjunctural unemployment" is used in economics nowadays. Economists often distinguish between short-term "frictional" or "cyclical" unemployment and longer-term "structural unemployment". Sometimes there is a shortterm mismatch between the demand and supply of labour, at other times there is much less total demand for labour than supply for a long time. If there is no possibility for getting a job at all in the foreseeable future, many younger people decide to emigrate to a place where they can find work.

Systemic functional grammar

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemic_functional_grammar 

Michael Halliday at his 90th-birthday symposium, 17 February 2015

Systemic functional grammar (SFG) is a form of grammatical description originated by Michael Halliday. It is part of a social semiotic approach to language called systemic functional linguistics. In these two terms, systemic refers to the view of language as "a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for making meaning"; functional refers to Halliday's view that language is as it is because of what it has evolved to do (see Metafunction). Thus, what he refers to as the multidimensional architecture of language "reflects the multidimensional nature of human experience and interpersonal relations."

Influences

Halliday describes his grammar as built on the work of Saussure, Louis Hjelmslev, Malinowski, J.R. Firth, and the Prague school linguists. In addition, he drew on the work of the American anthropological linguists Boas, Sapir and Whorf. His "main inspiration" was Firth, to whom he owes, among other things, the notion of language as system. Among American linguists, Whorf had "the most profound effect on my own thinking". Whorf "showed how it is that human beings do not all mean alike, and how their unconscious ways of meaning are among the most significant manifestations of their culture". From his studies in China, he lists Luo Changpei and Wang Li as two scholars from whom he gained "new and exciting insights into language". He credits Luo for giving him a diachronic perspective and insights into a non-Indo-European language family. From Wang Li he learnt "many things, including research methods in dialectology, the semantic basis of grammar, and the history of linguistics in China".

Basic tenets

Some interrelated key terms underpin Halliday's approach to grammar, which forms part of his account of how language works. These concepts are: system, (meta)function, and rank. Another key term is lexicogrammar. In this view, grammar and lexis are two ends of the same continuum.

Analysis of the grammar is taken from a trinocular perspective, meaning from three different levels. So to look at lexicogrammar, it can be analysed from two more levels, 'above' (semantic) and 'below' (phonology). This grammar gives emphasis to the view from above.

For Halliday, grammar is described as systems not as rules, on the basis that every grammatical structure involves a choice from a describable set of options. Language is thus a meaning potential. Grammarians in SF tradition use system networks to map the available options in a language. In relation to English, for instance, Halliday has described systems such as mood, agency, theme, etc. Halliday describes grammatical systems as closed, i.e. as having a finite set of options. By contrast, lexical sets are open systems, since new words come into a language all the time.

These grammatical systems play a role in the construal of meanings of different kinds. This is the basis of Halliday's claim that language is meta-functionally organised. He argues that the raison d'être of language is meaning in social life, and for this reason all languages have three kinds of semantic components. All languages have resources for construing experience (the ideational component), resources for enacting humans' diverse and complex social relations (the interpersonal component), and resources for enabling these two kinds of meanings to come together in coherent text (the textual function). Each of the grammatical systems proposed by Halliday are related to these metafunctions. For instance, the grammatical system of 'mood' is considered to be centrally related to the expression of interpersonal meanings, 'process type' to the expression of experiential meanings, and 'theme' to the expression of textual meanings.

Traditionally the "choices" are viewed in terms of either the content or the structure of the language used. In SFG, language is analysed in three ways (strata): semantics, phonology, and lexicogrammar. SFG presents a view of language in terms of both structure (grammar) and words (lexis). The term "lexicogrammar" describes this combined approach.

Metafunctions

From early on in his account of language, Halliday has argued that it is inherently functional. His early papers on the grammar of English make reference to the "functional components" of language, as "generalized uses of language, which, since they seem to determine the nature of the language system, require to be incorporated into our account of that system." Halliday argues that this functional organization of language "determines the form taken by grammatical structure".

Halliday refers to his functions of language as metafunctions. He proposes three general functions: the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual.

Ideational metafunction

The ideational metafunction is the function for construing human experience. It is the means by which we make sense of "reality". Halliday divides the ideational into the logical and the experiential metafunctions. The logical metafunction refers to the grammatical resources for building up grammatical units into complexes, for instance, for combining two or more clauses into a clause complex. The experiential function refers to the grammatical resources involved in construing the flux of experience through the unit of the clause.

The ideational metafunction reflects the contextual value of field, that is, the nature of the social process in which the language is implicated. An analysis of a text from the perspective of the ideational function involves inquiring into the choices in the grammatical system of "transitivity": that is, process types, participant types, circumstance types, combined with an analysis of the resources through which clauses are combined. Halliday's An Introduction to Functional Grammar (in the third edition, with revisions by Christian Matthiessen) sets out the description of these grammatical systems.

Interpersonal metafunction

The interpersonal metafunction relates to a text's aspects of tenor or interactivity. Like field, tenor comprises three component areas: the speaker/writer persona, social distance, and relative social status. Social distance and relative social status are applicable only to spoken texts, although a case has been made that these two factors can also apply to written text.

The speaker/writer persona concerns the stance, personalisation and standing of the speaker or writer. This involves looking at whether the writer or speaker has a neutral attitude, which can be seen through the use of positive or negative language. Social distance means how close the speakers are, e.g. how the use of nicknames shows the degree to which they are intimate. Relative social status asks whether they are equal in terms of power and knowledge on a subject, for example, the relationship between a mother and child would be considered unequal. Focuses here are on speech acts (e.g. whether one person tends to ask questions and the other speaker tends to answer), who chooses the topic, turn management, and how capable both speakers are of evaluating the subject.

Textual metafunction

The textual metafunction relates to mode; the internal organisation and communicative nature of a text. This comprises textual interactivity, spontaneity and communicative distance.

Textual interactivity is examined with reference to disfluencies such as hesitators, pauses and repetitions.

Spontaneity is determined through a focus on lexical density, grammatical complexity, coordination (how clauses are linked together) and the use of nominal groups. The study of communicative distance involves looking at a text's cohesion—that is, how it hangs together, as well as any abstract language it uses.

Cohesion is analysed in the context of both lexical and grammatical as well as intonational aspects with reference to lexical chains and, in the speech register, tonality, tonicity, and tone. The lexical aspect focuses on sense relations and lexical repetitions, while the grammatical aspect looks at repetition of meaning shown through reference, substitution and ellipsis, as well as the role of linking adverbials.

Systemic functional grammar deals with all of these areas of meaning equally within the grammatical system itself.

Children’s grammar

Michael Halliday (1973) outlined seven functions of language with regard to the grammar used by children:

• the instrumental function serves to manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to happen;
• the regulatory function of language is the control of events;
• the representational function is the use of language to make statements, convey facts and knowledge, explain, or report to represent reality as the speaker/writer sees it;
• the interactional function of language serves to ensure social maintenance;
• the personal function is to express emotions, personality, and "gut-level" reactions;
• the heuristic function used to acquire knowledge, to learn about the environment;
• the imaginative function serves to create imaginary systems or ideas.

Relation to other branches of grammar

Halliday's theory sets out to explain how spoken and written texts construe meanings and how the resources of language are organised in open systems and functionally bound to meanings. It is a theory of language in use, creating systematic relations between choices and forms within the less abstract strata of grammar and phonology, on the one hand, and more abstract strata such as context of situation and context of culture on the other. It is a radically different theory of language from others which explore less abstract strata as autonomous systems, the most notable being Noam Chomsky's. Since the principal aim of systemic functional grammar is to represent the grammatical system as a resource for making meaning, it addresses different concerns. For example, it does not try to address Chomsky's thesis that there is a "finite rule system which generates all and only the grammatical sentences in a language". Halliday's theory encourages a more open approach to the definition of language as a resource; rather than focus on grammaticality as such, a systemic functional grammatical treatment focuses instead on the relative frequencies of choices made in uses of language and assumes that these relative frequencies reflect the probability that particular paths through the available resources will be chosen rather than others. Thus, SFG does not describe language as a finite rule system, but rather as a system, realised by instantiations, that is continuously expanded by the very instantiations that realise it and that is continuously reproduced and recreated with use.

Another way to understand the difference in concerns between systemic functional grammar and most variants of generative grammar is through Chomsky's claim that "linguistics is a sub-branch of psychology". Halliday investigates linguistics more as a sub-branch of sociology. SFG therefore pays much more attention to pragmatics and discourse semantics than is traditionally the case in formalism.

The orientation of systemic functional grammar has served to encourage several further grammatical accounts that deal with some perceived weaknesses of the theory and similarly orient to issues not seen to be addressed in more structural accounts. Examples include the model of Richard Hudson called word grammar, and William B. McGregor's Semiotic Grammar which revises the organization of the metafunctions.

Progressive utilization theory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_utilization_theory

Progressive utilization theory logo

The Progressive utilization theory (PROUT) is a socioeconomic and political philosophy created by the Indian philosopher and spiritual leader Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. He first conceived of PROUT in 1959. Its proponents (Proutists) claim that it exposes and overcomes the limitations of capitalism, communism and mixed economy. Since its genesis, PROUT has had an economically progressive approach, aiming to improve social development in the world. It is in line with Sarkar's Neohumanist values which aim to provide "proper care" to every being on the planet, including humans, animals and plants.

PROUT has not been implemented in any part of the world, though there are a number of books and articles on the subject.

History

P.R. Sarkar, propounder of PROUT

In 1959, Sarkar started to develop the ideas of Prout. In 1961, the theory was formally outlined in his book Ananda Sutram, published under his spiritual name Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti.

A number of organizations have been created for the promotion and dissemination of Prout, such as Proutist Universal, Prout Globe, Prout Institute, etc. Since the 1980s a number of cooperative communities have been established across the world by Ananda Marga in an attempt to provide ideal models for the society outlined in Prout.

Theory

Overview

Prout proposes a socioeconomic system that is an advancement on capitalism and, what Prout sees as "the largely outdated" system of communism. Under the system, resources would be collective property from which usufructuary rights are carved out for use by individuals or groups of individuals. Distribution of goods in a market has to be rational and equitable, so that the allocation of a good maximizes the physical, mental, and spiritual development of all people. There must always be a baseline distribution that intends to guarantee food, clothing, shelter, education, and medical care (what the theory regards as minimum requirements for humans).

Prout advocates a three-tiered approach to industrial organization. Key industries and public utilities would operate on a no profit - no loss basis as these are resources held on trust for the public. Decentralized industry run by cooperatives would provide people's minimum necessities and other amenities of life. The majority of economic transactions would be through producers' and consumers' cooperatives. Incentives for people serving society would be funded via surpluses. A small business sector would also operate providing goods and services on a more individualized basis.

At the political level, Prout discourages nationalism, though nation-states would form a world government in the form of a confederation. There would be a world constitution and a bill of rights for human being, and for ensuring the biological diversity and security of animals and plants. Locally governed self-sufficient socio-economic units or zones would support a decentralized economy.

Law of social cycle and governance

Prout takes account of Sarkar's law of social cycle. It sees the social order as consisting of four classes of people that cyclically dominate society: shudras (workers), kshatriyas (warriors), vipras (intellectuals) and vaishyas (acquisitors).

However, Prout does not seek the abolition of these four classes, as it sees them as "... not merely as a power configuration, but as a way of knowing the world, as a paradigm, episteme or deep structure if you will." It considers that any person can be worker, warrior, intellectual or acquisitive minded.

Prout sees the four classes as connected to cyclic processes across time. That when a class of people struggle and rise to power they cause a revolution in the physical and mental world. To prevent any social class from clinging to political power and exploiting the others, a "spiritual elite" sadvipras (etymologically sad – true, vipra – intellectual) would determine who will hold political leadership. Prout theorises that the first sadvipras would come from disgruntled middle-class intellectuals and warriors.

Sadvipras would be organized into executive, legislative, and judicial boards which would be governed by a Supreme Board. They would be responsible for the order of dominance within the social order.

Neohumanism

Main article: Neohumanism

The Prout theory is inline with Sarkar's Neohumanism philosophy. The philosophy is a reinterpretation of humanism integrating the idea of unity of all life. In it all living beings belong to a universal family deserving equal care and respect.

The five fundamental principles

In 1962, Prout was formally outlined in sixteen aphorisms (see Chapter 5 of Ananda Sutram). The last five aphorisms (5:12-16) are commonly referred to as the five fundamental principles of Prout. These five principles are deemed to be fundamental because it would be difficult to get a clear understanding of Prout without comprehending the underlying concepts of these principles, the interrelationship of the principles, and their respective areas of application.

The five aphorisms from Ananda Sutram translate into English as follows:

1. There should be no accumulation of wealth without the permission of society.
2. There should be maximum utilization and rational distribution of the crude, subtle, and causal resources.
3. There should be maximum utilization of the physical, mental, and spiritual potentialities of the individual and collective beings.
4. There should be a well-balanced adjustment among the crude, subtle, and causal utilizations.
5. Utilizations vary in accordance with time, space, and form; the utilizations should be progressive.

An initial glimpse of these five principles first appeared in Sarkar's earlier work, Idea and Ideology.

The market

As far as Prout's values and goals differ from those of capitalism and communism, so does its economic structure. Following a close analysis of the two systems, Prout's propounder argues that these philosophies are "anti-human“ in the sense that they encourage people to relentlessly pursue material attainment, like name, fame, etc.

Another criticism of neo-liberalism and capitalism in general is the centralization of economic power in the hands of the rich leads to the exploitation of the masses and ultimately to the degeneration of society.

Prout claims that both capitalism and communism have been built on shaky foundations, and identifies weaknesses to a point where a new market system is required. He heavily critiqued communism, indicating that one of the reasons the USSRs experiment with communism did not work, causing the eventual implosion of their political structure, is that the Soviet central planning committees (Gosplan) had too much economic decision and cohesion power in the federation (see Marxism–Leninism).

Nonetheless, Sarkar observed aspects of market planning that help to create and sustain a healthy economy. In summary, Proutist thought considers that planning allows the market to protect its stakeholders from the meanderings of neo-liberal economics where profit-motive speaks highest. However, he stresses that a planning committee at a national level should only outline the broader aspects of economic development, leaving the details to be resolved by planning bodies at a local level where problems are best understood and more easily dealt with. (see diseconomies of scale). Consequently, this kind of top-down planning will leave communities, enterprises and ultimately workers with a significant level of freedom to decide their own economic future (see decentralized planning).

Prout also claims that the nationalization of enterprises is inefficient due to the larger costs and amount of bureaucracy necessary to keep state-controlled industries running. Yet, there are some industries that should be nationalized, operating on a "no-profit, no-loss" principle.

Concerning wealth distribution among the population, Sarkar argues for an "optimal inequality" where the wage gap between the richer strata of society is substantially subsided. Richard Freeman, a Harvard economist, points out income inequality comes from the monopoly of power and other activities with "negative consequences" in terms of social development. Nonetheless, Prout is not in favour of total income equality, claiming that in a society where material motivation to work is absent, the willingness to strive for financial success and to thrive in the creative development of industry and society will be lost in its citizens. Therefore, this theory argues for the implementation of a policy allowing the most meritorious in society to receive added perks for the added benefits they bring to society. It is thus theorized that the communist's motto of from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs cannot work in the real world. Prout proposes instead a minimum and maximum wage, roughly attributed according to the value the work of each person brings to society. We see examples of attempts in this direction in companies like Mondragon or Whole Foods.

Regarding neo-liberalism, Sarkar throws a new light to the concept of Adam Smith's invisible hand, where individual producers acting self-interest benefit the community as a whole. Prout claims that, unchecked, societies economic elite will disrupt the just circulation of material wealth within society. The market will then require regulatory measures so as to create a functional economic system.

Economic democracy

In relation to democracy, Prout argues that political democracy is not enough to free society from exploitation and what it considers extreme income inequality. As Roar Bjonnes, a known Proutist, states, "Unless we have deeper structural change – what we refer to as economic-systems change – we will never be able to solve such global and systemic problems as the environmental and inequality crises. History has demonstrated that political democracy is not enough."

Prout, therefore, advocates an economic democracy where the decision-making power for the economic future of a community is given to its inhabitants. Economic democracy is not a new term, but Sarkar reinvents it by setting four requirements for what he considers a successful one. The first and foremost requirement is guaranteeing the minimum requirements of life to all members of society. Secondly, and following one of the five fundamental principles, Prout argues that there should be an increasing purchasing capacity for each individual, stating that local people will have to hold economic power over their socio-economic region. Still, on this regard, Sarkar theorizes that, unlike capitalism, where the production and distribution of goods are mainly decided by market competition, in a Proutistic society it should be based on necessity. The third requirement of economic democracy is the decentralization of power, giving the freedom to make economic decisions to its stakeholders. That can be accomplished by adopting a worker-owned cooperative system  and by the use of local resources (raw materials and other natural resources) for the development of the region and not merely for export. In summary, Prout advocates a decentralized economy where self-sufficient economic zones are created and organized according to a set of predetermined conditions (see socio-economic units).

Prout claims this requirement does not express xenophobic feelings, it solely claims to be the realization that there should not be a constant outflow of local capital, where natural resources are explored by foreign investment companies that extract assets and money out of the community. From a Neohumanist perspective, all people are free to choose where they wish to live, as long as they merge their economic interests with the ones of the local people.

Socio-economic units

A socio-economic unit, or samaja in Sanskrit, is the Proutist materialization of the collective effort to create a strong and resilient local community, built on strong feelings of solidarity and self-identity. There are a few criteria that Sarkar outlined in order to build a working and cohesive socio-economic unit. Similar to bioregions, their purpose is to facilitate cooperative development, moving towards a decentralized economy, where these units are economically independent and self-reliant. Though still guided by national and federal guidelines and laws, they should prepare its own economic plan.

Aiming to achieve maximum efficiency in the utilization of local resources, they propose to make trade across borders more balanced and mutually beneficial.

Progress

From Prout's perspective, a progressive society cannot solely be measured by the wealth of a nation or its GDP levels. Prout recognizes the benefits of material progress, but deems them insufficient indicators of the development of human society. It argues that even though progress as its interpreted by society today has its advantages, there are negative side effects that, if unchecked, bring more harm than good. Ronald Logan, author of A new Paradigm of Development, reminds its readers that even though auto and air traffic enables us to travel at increasing speeds, bringing great convenience to travelers and commuters, it also brings air pollution, noise pollution, traffic congestion, accidental deaths, alienation from nature, etc.

Presented with this quasi-paradoxical situation, Prout offers a concept of progress as a society that transcends material and technological development.^[24] Moving along the lines of the triple bottom line that analyzes the social, environmental and financial output of a given enterprise, Prout advocates a measure of progress that encompasses the qualities of what could be termed a "fourth bottom line", characterized by the incorporation of a transcendental dimension of human life that focuses on the integrated development of the body, mind and spirit. This fourth bottom line will allow society in general and individuals in particular to develop an expanded sense of identity, allowing for a neohumanist will of inclusion, creating a society where material gains are not the summum bonum of life and allowing space to be created for people to work together in a symbiotic movement that primes for individual and collective welfare through social, cultural, as well as technological development.

Prout acknowledges that the well-being of individuals lies in the development of the collective, and that the collective depends on the development of individuals. Therefore, in order to understand how a progressive society is to be achieved, Sarkar tries to analyze what it means for a human being to grow and develop. He concludes that physical and psychic development render little progress for a human being as they are subject to deterioration and decay. There are multifarious diseases that affect our body and mind, and even if we stay free of them, eventually time will turn all our physical and mental faculties of no use. Sarkar argues that the only aspect of human life that seems to be subject to no change over time is its transcendental nature, the "supra-emotional values" intrinsic to the human mind and which exacerbate human multilateral existence.

"The deepest truths of life are an eternal fountain of inspiration. Spiritual, transpersonal development is a process of expanding one's consciousness to link with the Infinite, to reach a state of deep peace and happiness."

From a Maslownian perspective, Prout defends the need to meet physical and mental needs before being able to engage in a journey to find that transcendental nature of the world. The five fundamental principles stem from this idea that society needs to provide for the basic necessities of all human beings so that they can engage in this journey of self-discovery and achieve true progress. Fundamentally, progress in society is the effort through which communities engage in the fulfillment of human needs, with the goal of achieving a transcendental existence. As a goal, transcendence will offer a fourth bottom line which ideally would propel human society into a more peaceful, inclusive and all-round more progressive existence.

Reception

Prout is a relatively unknown theory.

Ravi Batra was one of the first economists that used the ideas of Prout in his bestseller The Great Depression of 1990. In time, the theory attracted attention of people like Johan Galtung, founder of the UN Institute for Peace studies who claimed that "Sarkar’s theory is far superior to Adam Smith’s or that of Marx." 

According to a description by Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill, Prout "envisages a decentralised, community-based world economy of self-sufficiency for the poor; economic democracy; small business; and limits on the accumulation of wealth." Sohail Inayatullah stated that the philosophy "attempts to balance the need for societies to create wealth and grow with the requirements for distribution." David Skrbina characterized Prout as a "model of social development... which advocates a 'small is beautiful' approach to society." Economics instructor Mark Friedman places Sarkar's economic thought in the tradition of Monsignor John A. Ryan, E.F. Schumacher and Herman Daly in Sarkar's incorporation of spiritual values into economic goals.

It has been characterized as a form of "progressive socialism" as well as a "socialist theory".

Hans Despain noted, in Monthly Review, that there are similarities between Prout and the theories of David Schweickart, Gar Alperovitz and Richard D. Wolff. Particularly the focus on economic democracy and co-operatives.

Political parties

Some political parties support the progressive utilization theory. They are:

• Amra Bangali
• Progressive Party of Aotearoa New Zealand