Chapter VIII

Ecology and Economics – the Urgent Need for a Reunion

IN a world situation in which the U.N. has concluded with the presence of a permanent food
crisis throughout the rest of the 21st century – and hunger and starvation plaguing increasing
numbers of people – the very conception of land tenure in its authentic agricultural sense is
withering away in a highly untimely manner, as it is being replaced by a stupendous
agglomeration of “urbanized hunters and gatherers” whose primary tools in the “developed
world” are credit cards and plastic bags, representing the majority of the world’s population –
expecting and demanding “cheap meat” on the dinner table as a matter of course, one would
do well to pay attention to Earth scientist James Callan Gray Walker’s observation in his
thought provoking Earth History that the largely one-dimensional meat eating Acheulian
cultures in pre-history
“[…] were extremely conservative, preserving their way of life with little change for tens of
thousands of generations. Presumably, their manipulative, cognitive, and organizational skills
were low, because of biological limitations, so their rate of cultural evolution was
correspondingly low.”
And further:
“Their reliance on a diet of big game meant that fewer Acheulians could be supported in a
given area than had been the case for the Australopithecines.”1a
Thus, an ecological and evolutionary handicap may have been “survivable” in an epoch in
Earth history in which no cities whatsoever was to be found anywhere, and the numbers of
these human predecessors didn’t exceed those of, say, the present world population of moose
(Alces alces), hyena or vultures. Today, however, the handicap is definitively species
threatening, as synthesized animal proteins are tentatively and secretly introduced into the
cynical food industry and utterly impersonal supermarkets – conveniently (again) kept aloof
of public responsibility, debate, consciousness and decision making. Needless to say,
obviously, the reader who perceives the opening lines of this essay as a “screaming wake-up
call” has got it right.
As we approach the 160th anniversary of the publication of George Perkins Marsh’s
pioneering work, Man and Nature (1864)1b, during the most turbulent phase of
industrialization within Western civilization – symptomatically co-occurring with the
American Civil War – the ecological viability of the overall structure of this “industrial
civilization” (which may eventually prove to be a veritable contradiction in terms) is as shaky
as ever. In the above mentioned publication, which was completely overshadowed by the
“war news” – in the very same manner as the strongly intensified consciousness in the 1950’s
and 60’s regarding ecological dislocations was dwarfed by the military escalation of “the Cold
War” – Marsh addressed humanity’s immense potential for influencing and altering the
natural environment. Already at that historical stage – in the mid 1860’s – Marsh displayed
very good reasons to contend that “it is not the Earth that creates human beings, but the other
way round.” Hence, the purpose of his book was to raise the awareness regarding the perils as
well as the prospects of the utilization of human powers, and to advocate caution and
foresight in the way human societies interact with its ecological matrix. This ethically
responsible stance was counterpoised to the unforeseen, and often highly detrimental,
consequences of a singularly instrumental and industrial approach towards nature in a general
sense. Among the topics addressed by Marsh were loss of biological diversity, irreversible

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soil erosion and climate change – arguably the severest threats against the balance systems of
the biosphere on which the well being of higher life forms as our own depends.
In the “environmental debate” of the present day – to the extent that any such exists at all –
which proceeds at the mercy of shock oriented mass media, there is an increasingly peculiar
tendency to portray the problem complex outlined above as “news”. Well, the issues have
obviously been around for quite a while, and to those who happen to be better informed, the
mainstream press agencies clearly appear to have been “sleeping at the wheel” for at least a
generation or two. The failure of the all round educators of the citizenry, which we ordinarily
suppose newspapers and broadcasters to be, to address the crucial issues in an informed and
balanced manner, leaves the “environmental battle ground” open for exploitation by a wide
array of “ecologists” of various sorts – from mere eccentrics and acolytes of “neo-
primitivism” to outright eco-fascists. To the average and “law abiding” citizen the picture
appears as incomprehensible and absurd to an utmost degree, with its “common nonsensical”
fluctuations between apocalyptic vistas and a form of “sentimental ecology” which leaves a
frail basis for future optimism and scope for reconstructive human conduct.
The alienation of vast masses of people from the material and physiological preconditions of
their lives and well being, paralleled by the ever increasing power of manipulation at the
hands of technocrats and bureaucrats, reinforces the political disempowerment of the citizen
in the present era. The so-called globalization of the world’s markets have left communities at
loggerheads with, or disentangled from, their respective ecological zones (which have been
termed ‘bioregions’) and their productive potential in the full sense of the term. As we enter a
stage of history marked by a foreseen and permanent food crisis – accentuated by dramatic
climate change threatening highly vulnerable monoculture crops developed on a
megalomaniac scale – the extent to which we are on a dead end road as regards ecological
viability as a species is illustrated by the proposed “solution” of synthesizing animal proteins
in “food factories.” This desperate measure, by far exceeding the most nightmarish
Frankensteinian visions of sensible ecologists throughout the ages, is less abominable by the
way in which we aesthetically approach the issue than by the fact that it pushes food
production further into an abyss of insufficient nutritional standards, paving the way for
exacerbated degenerative diseases already connected to industrialized forms of food
production. 2 By ignoring the way in which essential micronutrients such as minerals and
amino acids are developed and produced by the actions of microorganisms in ecological
systems – in ways that have evolved through billions of years and which are not readily be
supplanted by “human ingenuity” in the laboratory – the old story of hubris and nemesis is
written large, albeit not yet in the “prime time evening news”.
 
Our View of ‘Nature’
The problem complex outlined above is ultimately tied to the way in which we contemplate
‘Nature’, natural phenomena and our stake in the “web of life.” As regards microbial life
forms, which constitute the ecological basis of every evolutionary advanced species, together
with soil and salty water, the ordinary popularized version is one of “horror” – if thematically
treated with at all – as illustrated by the arsenal of pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides
enforced upon industrial food producers of the modern era by multinational corporations
within the synthetic chemical industry, allied with government officials parading as
“Ministers of Agriculture.” On the other hand, the extensive research which have been
conducted on benevolent and largely indispensable symbioses between microorganisms such

2
as nitrogen fixating bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi, has scarcely received any popularization
at all.
In the main, ‘Nature’ is overwhelmingly perceived in its “sublime” version – alternately as
“awe inspiring” sceneries or as organisms which embody threats of some kind or other to
“our” own existence. The role of “heroic Man” becomes in this context a caricature of
Prometheus of the ancients – a member of the Titan family whom in the Greek myths were
repeatedly punished by the gods for their greed and avarice. The notion of “conquering
nature” becomes a Sisyphus play leaving humanity suspended from any creative and
sustainable interaction with the ecological matrix of which it is deemed to be a part – either as
rolling the stone heedlessly and repeatedly up the hill, or, alternatively, potentially bringing
the minerals to its avail in a more meaningful and intelligent manner – but rarely an ethical
and ecologically respectful way.
The need for enlightenment and clarification with respect to natural phenomena – not least in
their evolutionary aspects – is most pressing in a world which regrettably succumbed to a
renewed obsession with religious “creationism” and revelation myths in the wake of the abuse
of the encyclopedic spirit by Napoleonic imperialism. In fact, the notion of “creation of
species” by a supernatural power, extrapolating human aspirations to omnipotence, goes a
long way to explain the extent to which Nature’s productive systems are based on either
ignorance, neglect or both. Leaving aside the implicit “hope” that there exists an otherworldly
life to which life on Earth is only a preparation, the time perspective included in the various
religious “creation myths” is as perilous to our ecological viability as to the bedrock
foundation of civilization as such – just as much in our own era as it was among the Ancients.
When one has no awareness of the time, for instance, required in the building up of a fertile
soil – not to mention the evolution of the extreme biological complexities which have
developed in the interface between edible plants and their growth medium (soils of various
complexions) by microorganisms – the authentic riches, literally speaking, of this world are
readily wasted in favor of “a million dollars in the bank.” In agriculture this implies that soils
are exploited just as in mining – in the same way as was conducted by the Carthaginians in
Northern Africa in the Roman era, leaving an expanding Sahara in their wake. Indeed, there
are no unrelenting mechanisms involved in man’s interrelationship with the land – we are not
“doomed to use it up” as if predetermined by an alleged “original sin.” However, as long as
agriculture is viewed as some kind of industry or mining rather than as a complex science,
craft and art involving geographically attuned research and prudent experimentation, the odds
that our present civilization goes the same way as for instance the ancient Mesopotamian,
Greek or Roman ones are rather low – and the common denominator is erosion, first and
foremost of the fertile top soil layer, which is easily lost but takes the above mentioned “non-
clockwise” time perspective in the building-up process.
Economics in History
 
To put it bluntly, “last year’s money surplus” in the farmer’s or, more often these days,
agribusiness incorporation’s bank account is paid off by the exhaustion of the soil resources
for the next generation and into an unforeseeable future. So, despite the vast amount of actual
knowledge accumulated internationally3 throughout the modern era with respect to sustainable
food production, the brute dynamics of an economics “as if oikos doesn’t matter” undermines
these achievements of our Civilization and manifests itself in practices as primitive and short
sighted as that of the ancient Carthaginians.

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It is an interesting issue why the location of the advanced cultural traits within European
civilization were seated along the “inner sea”/waterways rather than along the coastline – as
was the case in the ancient Mediterranean basin among the Greco-Roman peoples. The heavy
clay soils consisting in age old ocean floor sediments – making up the agricultural premises
from Portugal in the South to Bergen and Trondheim in the North – could not be utilized for
effective farming until the scientific aspects of the primary production within these various
societies were fully understood from the Enlightenment era onwards, including the complex
bio-chemical explanations which were embarked on by Johann Gottschalk Wallerius and
Baron d’Holbach, in addition to the microbiological investigations by Du Monceau in the
1750’s. These scientific agriculturalists’ successors, mainly in the Eastern part of Europe,
including the advanced Russians – Kamienski and his colleagues –  made the Promethean
idea of “conquering Nature” by the usage of the heavier and heavier plow simply ludicrous
and counterproductive.
The alluvial soil sediments along the “inner sea” – along the Seine, the Rhine, the Thames, the
Moldau, the Danube etc. did not demand the same extent of horse power and heavy steel tools
as the denser ocean floor sediments. Hence, these bioregions along the river systems
developed at a much earlier stage in European history into the European Civilization as we
came to know it – with its main centers represented by Paris, London, Prague, and so on. In
these more easily utilized soils – lighter in weight and annually fertilized and renewed by
floods – agricultural surpluses were obtained and cities with highly cultured crafts, arts,
architecture, and so on could develop from the High Middle Ages onwards and join into a
network of urban confederacies and networks of trade, such as for example the Hanseatic
League, from the 14th century onwards.
While the main cities of this important “tool” for the development of a common European
culture traditionally were restricted to London, Bergen, Lübeck and Novgorod, it was
nonetheless connected to the wider network of trade with other and more politically motivated
regional and confederal forms of association further South – in the effort to resist the
centralizing and stifling efforts at political and economic control represented by the “Holy
Roman Empire” and the Papacy. The fact that the early Reformation efforts by Wyclif in the
London region in the late 14th century reached into the Eastern European sphere, including
Bohemia, through his contact with Jan Hus and his followers, attests to the way in which
ideas as well as goods were exchanged to a far more effective extent than is commonly
acknowledged when we’re dealing with the allegedly “Dark Middle Ages.” In fact, these ages
were “dark” only in so far as trade was disrupted, science and technology stifled, and
exchange of ideas in general suppressed by the irrational forces represented by greedy feudal
lords and a power hungry clergy, as well as wannabe kings – more often than not serving the
germinating monarchies in the centralizing tendencies which eventually made for the nation
state, rather than the visions and hopes engendered by the Communards of 1871, as the
dominant political organization on the continent – finally to undermine the potentialities of
the “Republic of Letters” and throw Europe into the abyss of World Wars and civilization
breakdown in 1914 and 1938-40.
The efforts at transnational organizations in the post-war era, then, has not only been
necessary as a means to avoiding further catastrophic clashes between the former
Enlightenment allies across the continent; regrettably, they have been warped by the
confusion between the respective organization of confederated communes and municipalities,
with their links to the Greek poleis and the Delian League, and a nation state and a union of
nation states – the latter of which is more in line with the Roman republican form of political
organization. In any case, the need for decentralization is obvious if modern Europe shall

4
once again be able to restore its once promising agricultural civilization and, furthermore,
contribute to addressing crucial issues “in our time” such as the food crisis and the climate
crisis – as the world prepares for 10 billion people in 2050, while the known weather
conditions around the Globe are rapidly changing and becomes more and more unpredictable
from year to year. The intensity of spontaneous adaptability needed in such a context is in
itself a strong urge towards close observations of natural phenomena by citizens who know
their respective bio-regions and ecosystems “by heart”; when to sow and reap, what and
where, while being able to adjust to sudden changes and irregularities from year to year.
These challenges are real and pressing – and they will demand the very best of our ecological
insights and techniques for primary production if we are to survive as a species, not to say if
we shall retain our precious Western Civilization in the century that lies ahead and in the
unforeseeable future. 
 
The Sociopolitical Implications of an Anti-Ecological Economy
In 1992, there was published a largely ignored book in the Worldwatch environmental alert
series, How Much is Enough?; The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth 4, in which
the above mentioned problem complexes was addressed in a succinct, albeit “unpopular”
manner – unpopular in the sense that it represented a veritable wake-up call regarding the way
in which planet Earth is being devoured by our own, sharply split and alienated species;
notably by headless overconsumption of non-renewable natural resources in the so-called
“developed countries,” as well as by reducing even renewable natural resources to the former
category through the lack of an ecological and evolutionary time perspective needed within
eco-systems for their viable recycling.
Within the context of the present anti-ecological economic structures on a global scale,
domestic politics in the “advanced” capitalist nations essentially boils down to mass contests
for the loot from the perpetual “scramble for Africa” – that is to say, the Global South in
general. Following from the destruction of age old local and regional markets by globalized
mass production, advertising and consumption, the lasting potentialities of economic
ingenuity focused on localized production and distribution – only limited by the obligate
attention which must be paid to the sustainability of the ecological systems involved in the
processes of production and consumption – has barely been recognized. Without the issues
related to the stewardship of the ecosystems and bioregions which we inhabit, politics
becomes a sinister and hollow “power dance” – an anemic public sphere in which the
meaning of the classical political spirit, manifested through the civic virtue of the citizenry,
loses all possibilities for fulfillment. Mass political organizing without consciousness about
the above mentioned economic malaise hardly falls short of fascism – or totalitarianism of a
postmodern variety, if one wishes to reserve the former term for a distinct phase of European
history. The totalitarian implications of this structure are briefly summarized in the lack of
fundamental moral considerations in the daily operations of society, so essential to the
classical Greek democracy, and the profound pulverization of responsibility resulting from
mass party organizing and electoral campaigns. Both aspects are related to the missing focus
on the ecological implications of the narrowly one-dimensional economic workings of an
immoral Global market, which are intimately connected with the exploitation and suppression
of the vast majorities of the peoples of the Global South, in addition to underprivileged people
in the Northern hemisphere. Nevertheless, politics roams on in the craze for a higher share of
the loot, including strikes among relatively well off employees, in the quest for status symbols
as a sign of “god’s grace” or related irrationalities.

5
The only way in which politics may be “re-colonized” by ethics in any substantial manner
when warped by such an immoral economic framework, is by resorting to a well tried remedy
– direct economic action on the productive side. Historically, this has for the most part
entailed cooperative efforts based on self-management and decentralization – sometimes in
revolutionary social contexts such as the collectives during the anti-fascist struggle in Spain in
the 1930’s, or in the Makhnovist movement in Russia two decades earlier, not to mention the
efforts conducted during the Paris commune confronted by the combined forces of the
Prussian army and general Thiers’ troops in the turbulent days of 1871, the tragic (to say the
least)5 outcome of which largely determined the fate of European civilization and the
subsequent headlong rush into the First World War. This does not necessarily amount to a
revolutionary calling on an overall scale in the present era. The chaos and confusion which
will eventually result from an abrupt breakdown of the infrastructure of modern nations are
not likely to produce creative and reconstructive responses – a lack of promise which rather
leads our attention instead to the need for substantive reforms introduced from below,
possibly in the form of a General Strike, or at least under pressure from public direct action in
the same manner that moved civil servants at favorable periods in history to heed the demands
from their country’s inhabitants. The most striking example in modern history is the transition
from mercantilism to physiocracy and the idealization of laissez faire or free trade in the 18th
century, before the potentialities of that era was undermined by the militarization of the
economy from the European Seven Years’ War onwards. As an omen of the wrong turn taken
at this turning point in European history through the British “victory by the muzzle over the
brains of France,” there was tumultuous rioting in London during the war years because of
popular discontent with the priorities of the government and the consequent economic
dislocations. Whether or not modern popular protests will result in reforms or revolutions
remains an open question – largely dependent on the “brains and wits” of men and women in
power positions.
In our own era the above mentioned tendencies have been perpetuated by the military
industrial complexes which run their production apparatuses as if massive warfare on a
“1942-scale” was going on incessantly – and since the Second World War even involving the
stunningly disillusioning principle of planned obsolescence. This puts the very notion of
progress at stake and, hence, the survival of civilization. Any society which loses its sense of
advancing to ever more spiritually sophisticated levels – aiming at the perfection propounded
by enlightenment philosophers such as Helvetius, Condorcet and Godwin – is moving in a
downward spiral and tends to perceive old vices as virtues and vice versa. An example to be
cited in this context is the subversion of the traditional puritan ideal of frugality which, under
the influence of cheap mass production introduced through war time assembly line
techniques, was toppled and replaced by the extreme opposite – namely the notion of “waste
as satisfaction” and its ideological facilitators.5 Considering the fact that there hardly exists
waste, in the popular sense of the term, in nature but only recycling of resources, the present
level of alienation of economic structures from its authentic oikos is almost self-explanatory;
indeed, it goes a long way to explain the prolific mental illnesses which disables a veritable
portion of modern populations. The lack of vital amino acids and micronutrients from modern
food sources influences the metabolic processes in human bodies, inflicting serious harm to
what medicals have termed the “IQ of the body”. Severe alienation seriously damages health!
(while tobacco smoking, by the way, may be utilized as a nausea limiting habit, especially
when the tobacco is home grown and free of pollutants from industrial agriculture).
Obviously, the meaning of politics in such a context necessarily takes on a different character
from previous eras. Thus, the prospects of a liberatory politics must necessarily take into
account such serious public health issues, lest the very notion of politics as well as freedom is

6
lost altogether in Orwellian Newspeak of a previously unknown caliber – to the extent of
including dementia as “liberation” and ignorance as “bliss”.
 
The Earth as “the Garden of Humanity”
In view of the provoking notion that “man has made the Earth,” indeed, that we have entered
a genuinely new era in Earth history distinguished by the marks left on it by human activities
(the so-called “Anthropocene”), the obvious need occur which relates to the astonishing
responsibility conferred upon us by this ambiguously prominent position – that is, the need for
an ethically oriented “metabolism with Nature” in the widest sense, entailing the wide
varieties of economic interactions among ourselves and between us and the natural
environment. We can no longer in the least degree indulge in economic ventures steeped in an
archaic “slash-and-burn”-mentality, barely quasi-civilized in its lack of historical insight and
long term ecological conservation schemes. The record of failings and counter-productive
“innovations” as regards human economic interactions with our ecological surroundings
throughout History is undoubtedly as long as the list of successes. From the fall of the
Mesopotamian civilization – in all probability caused by land clearances in the mountainous
areas to the north in which the rivers Euphrates and Tigris have their origin, resulting in
erosion of soil particles on a mass scale and the consequent silting of the elaborate irrigation
installations necessary for practicing agriculture on a large scale in the ancient
Mesopotamians’ respective bioregion(s)5 – to the Dust Bowl in the American Midwest in the
1920’s and 30’s and similar immeasurable losses of fertile top soil up to the present, the
lessons to be learned are of astonishing proportions.  So the question remains: How do we
cope with the responsibility connected to our position as “rulers of the Earth”? No doubt there
is fully enough scientific knowledge available for making the adequate dispositions in most of
the various ecological settings that confront human societies, including the variables
connected with dramatic climate change and the challenges it poses for the aspect of planning.
There is, moreover, every reason to believe that the knowledge regarding microbial-soil-plant
relationships will be pivotal with respect to human opportunities for maintaining social
structures that resembles the characteristic of a civilization. The productivity of different
growth media (various soil types) is, however, as yet only tentatively understood, and various
techniques related to microbial inoculation of plants and field soils in combination with green
manure and mulching operations have proved highly efficient on what – until our own time –
regularly have been termed “unproductive soils”.6
Hopefully, the reader altogether unfamiliar with food production excuses me for focusing to
such a seemingly disproportionate degree on that side of the oikos-complex. I claim to be
justified in my approach mainly on the basis of two vital facts: Firstly, it is the Earth and its
soils which constitute the very basis of our existence, including the time perspectives involved
(referred to above). Secondly, reports from UN food and agricultural organizations during the
last decade have pointed in a rapidly increasing degree toward the high probability of a
permanent food crisis in the decades ahead. Both of these themes underpin the need for
developing ecologically sound and locally based food systems, involving a substantive
percentage of the inhabitants of cities and villages on a global scale. Indeed, it is safe to say
that the wet dream of a “perfect state” of laissez faire definitively dried up with the
monopolization of food production and speculation in agricultural produce poisoning the
global market(s) by the mid 19th century. Furthermore, every decisive democratic movement
or revolution in history have been facilitated through the involvement of independent farmers,
often labeled the yeomanry – from the entry into the democratic world by the ancient Greeks

7
to the democratic revolutions in the North American states and in France in the 18th century.
Thus, one is obliged to ask: What becomes of ‘democracy’ without this historically integrated
part? Can ‘democracy’ be maintained by societies in which the overwhelming majority of the
population is basically reduced to consumers of produce manufactured elsewhere in the world
– considering the degree to which a democracy rests on the readiness of citizens to claim and
conduct responsibility for the proceedings of a community, that is to say, in acknowledgement
of duties as well as rights? For quite a while a central demand by the political Left has been
“the right to work.” This Marxist oriented stance – with its highly limiting conceptions of
human beings’ metabolism with Nature and even denigrating view of agriculture and rural
ways of life – should be contrasted with the richer humanistic urge towards conducting
meaningful work. From the above it would appear that contributing to absolving, or at least
minimizing, the onslaught of a permanent global food crisis throughout the rest of the 21 st
century stands out as a relevant ingredient of the latter perspective on the work issue – either
through organic gardening, agroecological practices or inland fisheries based on pelagic
species feeding basically on plankton.
 
Possible Remedies for the Disintegration of Oikos
Considering the huge debt in what has been termed the “bio-bank” – through the separation of
money values and currencies from their resource foundations – qualitative changes with
respect to the way in which economies are measured seem unavoidable and desirable. This
will obviously include an evolutionary time perspective with respect to planning processes
and a focus on the organic aspects of the meaning of growth, development and progress –
admittedly implicating an Enlightenment perspective on the latter pillars of Civilization,
which centered around the spiritual side of human faculties and their application. Based on
historical material which attests to the role of local and regional markets in creating a fertile
atmosphere for democratic values, confederal principles of organization, tolerance, and
freedom of thought and expression7a, it would seem appropriate to include a revitalization of
such economic structures in the dual campaigning for public empowerment and ecological
restoration. From this perspective the need for locally based and resource founded currencies,
involving the evolutionary time aspects, would have to emerge as an outbalancing force
against the current dominance of evaluation based on the “gold & silver and
petroleum/petroleum and gold & silver economic complex.”
Politically, this seemingly unrealistic and Utopian (in the negative sense of the term) vista
naturally involves some form of communalism and confederalism – of which there exists
ample historical evidence from most parts of the world. However, in the context of massive
social disintegration as an approximately universal phenomenon, the reversal of this
downward spiral calls for a regenerating process which have to contend with a starting point
located at the very low ebb. In other words, it will have to go to the roots of this disintegration
and reorganize our very metabolism with nature – our way of work, production and
consumption. With a view towards the immense tasks involved, as well as the social
atomization which beleaguers the individual in mass societies in every area and setting, the
inclusion of the elemental principle of economic cooperation (i.e. self-managed cooperatives)
stands out as a viable starting point – underpinned by similar historical examples as those
regarding local and regional markets.8 While at the same time retaining the independence of
the individual participants, cooperatives reinforce the creative powers of the latter, and
through cross fertilization with each other these economic institutions are highly favorable for
the development of democratic sentiments. And without deep seated democratic sentiments

8
the mere institutions once labeled democratic at their initiation are merely empty shells
sucked dry by the disruptive processes undermining a socioeconomic conduct of civic virtue
among the public at large. The reverse process is very likely a slow and intractable one and,
thus, cannot simply be institutionalized by official decrees. It will have to follow spontaneous
paths emerging along the way which may prove or disapprove the ventures embarked on, and
in either case at least provide valuable experience for future efforts.
The organizational tissues of economic cooperation have the asset, as compared to political
institutions, in their higher susceptibility for organic development and, consequently, more
basic and lasting achievements. Furthermore, they create a sense of independence,
competence and collective strength without which a zoon politikon is barely crawling on its
knees. For, after all – as Benjamin Franklin aptly observed in the days of Democratic
Revolutions – “a Ploughman on his legs is higher than a Gentleman on his knees.” 7b The
political demands which will ensue from a revitalization of cooperation and mutual aid in the
economic sphere may eventually encompass the protection of biotopes and bioregions against
corporate exploitation, the introduction of local currencies, and the formation of public
assemblies at the municipal level. To judge from what happened in ancient Greece at the
institutionalization of classical democracy – where this political process followed a protracted
period of economic development based on cooperative efforts, colonization and regional trade
– there is no reason why one should expect an absence of such a relation between cause and
effect in our own era. The fact remains that the invention of the principles of democracy in
Athens was not one of theoretical schemes elaborated on in advance. Quite to the contrary,
they developed on a spontaneous basis amidst a general economic and political crisis.7c
Among the political issues which one would expect being addressed in the public assemblies
at an initial stage, the relationship of the local communities and their respective reemerging
market structures with the global level of human interaction will be of major importance. By
focusing on the potentialities for development of their respective facilities for primary
production, each well situated community and region will contribute to the alleviation of the
hardships among underdeveloped parts of the world by refraining from usurpation of the
latter’s raw materials and soils. Thus, the “vilest scramble for loot,” as Joseph Conrad
depicted the imperialist strife prior to the First World War, perpetuated into the present
historical stage under various veils, would finally succumb to the materialization of the
Human Rights declarations issued as conclusions of the Enlightenment era of the 17th and 18th
centuries – ideals pronounced in days of optimism unwary of the setbacks which lay ahead.
The delay is still up to every new generation to circumscribe – and it will certainly not be
shortened by nationalistically limited political claims on the consumption side by the “post-
agrarian” and even “post-industrial” regions. Hence, as regards the potentialities of
cooperation in the affluent parts of the world, the stress should properly be put on innovating
and ecologically sound production, while the underprivileged parts of the world justifiably
will highlight healthy consumption for a considerable period of time. Only when the basic
issues of distribution of the material means of life have been addressed, there would be
favorable conditions for embarking on the massive tasks of reclaiming deserts, reforesting
strip mined mountains, and the like. As regards the restoration of ecological equilibrium in
our oceans, which may well prove to be the most crucial one, a trend in the right direction will
be implied in vigilant and responsible soil management procedures preventing soil particles,
nutrients and biocides from leaching into marine environments, while at the same time
providing essential nourishment for increasingly ecologically oriented community members.
At the same time, the glycoprotein, Glomalin, will be produced by restoring life in the world’s
soils – so that the mycorrhizae which produce this glycoprotein can awaken from their
hibernation and start sporulating again. 

9
 
Agribusiness and its Essentially Anti-Evolutionary Time Perspective and Anti-
Ecological Conception of Riches
To get a slight grasp of the vast period of time which has elapsed since humanity made its
first endeavors into horticultural and agricultural practices, the need for a time perspective
essentially different from our day-to-day orientation and personal memory immediately
presents itself. We are talking about some ten thousand years or more, and the development of
our cultured plant varieties has followed side by side, indeed, often in close symbioses with,
the micro floristic and micro fauna environments in the respective growth substrates (mainly
the various soils of the Earth). At least 80 % of all green land plants, including our
horticultural and agricultural varieties, are known to form growth stimulating root
associations with mycorrhizal fungi. Some are entirely dependent on them for successful
growth, maturation and reproduction. Viewing these simple, albeit largely underestimated,
facts against the most widely adopted practices within present day agribusiness, the picture is
altogether disheartening. Soil compaction caused by heavy machinery and excessive soil
intervention in combination with exhaustion of organic matter in an increasing percentage of
agricultural soils, following consequently upon the highly simplified “NPP-formula” for
growth and maturation of cultured plants which has prevailed since the time of the “Second
Industrial Revolution” from the late 19th century onwards, present a veritable ecological
malaise in itself with which future generations will have to cope. Regrettably, the valuable
work which was done with respect to soil microbiology and ecological growth conditions,
especially since the early 1880’s, was submerged by the deluge of Promethean “conquest of
nature visions” fostered by the entrepreneurial and narrowly “business-minded” new
economic elites, who had as little restraint and scruples against exploiting human beings down
to small children as against an “industrially biased” usage of natural resources. However,
according to John Larsen, Sabine Ravnskov and John Nygaard Sorensen:
“In the early phase of AM [abuscular mycorrhiza] research (1960’s-1980’s), researchers
focused on plant nutrition and tried to promote the commercial use of AMF as bio-fertilizers
for plant production. However, this approach did not fit into modern agriculture with its
intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides. More recently, other plant benefits, such as
increased stress tolerance, have become important arguments in favor of AM integration.”8
The finely attuned and complex processes occurring in the substrates on which we depend for
our very existence as one among the advanced present species, simply sailed off above the
Frankensteinian technocrats’ self-satisfied heads.
This cultural tragedy is a bi-aspect of Georg Simmel’s more general concept of the “Tragedy
of Culture,” pronounced at the beginning of the 20 th century, which involves the
overwhelming challenges confronting the individual with respect to attaining a well-
functioning appropriation of developments within the various cultural spheres of modern
civilization. For our purposes it is relevant to add the reinforcement of the Promethean side by
main strands within historical writing. The highly sensitive and vigilant innovators and early
scientists who added up to the Agricultural Revolution and the economic take-off during the
18th century, could hardly have imagined the way in which their sentiments were to be
misrepresented by their historiographers some three or four generations onwards. In officially
recognized history works for higher academic purposes, agriculture is now consequently
presented among “the industries.” Viewed within the above indicated evolutionary time
perspective, however, there is every justification for reckoning agriculture rather among the
crafts, arts or sciences – or, indeed, a combination of these. Confronted with the immensely
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complex organic processes going on where riches are produced, to use a physiocratic
terminology, the machine operations of mechanical causation – cherished since the days of
Newton – definitively reach their limitations. As regards the history of scientific research
there is hardly a single educated individual who has never heard of Newton. But how many in
the world today are familiar with the pioneering work of Wallerius within bio-chemistry and
de Monceau within microbiology – both of them duly represented in the 18 th century French
encyclopédie? Based on the above facts it is safe to conclude that the discrepancy in the
amount of information on the former as compared to these representatives of the
Enlightenment on the European continent is hardly accidental – quite to the contrary, they are
among the fatal prejudices accompanying a Civilization in demise – as indicated also by the
ways in which the discovery of the medicinal effects of antibiotics are now undermined
through overuse within “meat factories” and aquaculture.
In the aggressively profit oriented soil mining agricultural practices prevailing in our
“industrial civilization” the long term implications of soil treatment are simply anathema.
Furthermore, the generations succeeding ours will not have the recourse to forgiving us for
“not knowing better”; the contribution of soil degradation to the decline of civilizations has
been treated critically since the time of Aristotle. 9 The knowledge that originally productive
soils may easily decline in fertility through detrimental soil treatment was, moreover, well
established in Europe since the days of da Vinci, who also launched some of the very first
notions of evolution in the modern sense of the term. The interest in civilizations, understood
as a general concept, reached a peak during the Enlightenment era, the universalistic
orientation of which allowed for a rich cross fertilization of ideas and scientific knowledge.
Chronicles of Asian civilizations along the great river basins were absorbed in Europe by such
outstanding intellectuals as Montesquieu in the early 18th century, and we can only regret that
the subsequent eras have not heeded his recommendations and advises in certain vital
respects.10 The causes of the decline and fall of the Mesopotamian civilization are also
representing a veritable alarm bell resounding ever since for those who have retained
attunement to its frequency; the way in which the ancients’ elaborate irrigation systems were
silted by the yearly depositing particles flowing down from the deforested mountainous areas
to the north, so that the irrigation magazines could no longer be cleared by the slave
population, is summing up in a few words the perils ever present towards human civilization
ventures. Key words, on the other hand, for a successful Civilization in a wider time
perspective are: Long term soil related planning and conservation of ecosystems, historical
consciousness, and humane treatment of the members of society.
 
Bio-Regionalism vs. Megalomania
Estimated from the alarming rates of urbanization during the past two centuries, clustered
around specific traditionally commercial areas and with immense ecological impacts on the
web of life in which even metropolitans ultimately are embedded, the notion that we have
long since entered an age of megalomania readily appears. Implicit in the “spirit of
megalomania” is the notion that the Earth is entirely within reach of a human engineering
orientation and unambiguously susceptible to Humanity’s ever so myopic purposes. As
referred to above, the ancient Greek legends tell that, in the drama between the decisive forces
of existence, the Titans (including Prometheus) had repeatedly been punished by the gods for
their greed. Thus, the Titans’ oft celebrated prudence, in other words, was overwhelmingly
one-dimensional. It is only by way of old vices turning into virtues that the critical treatment
by the romantic poets and literates (especially Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary

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Wollstonecraft Shelley) of the Promethean myth and their mocking presentation of his
character fail to be recognized within present day literary criticism. 13 In an ecological sense,
megalopolis represents greed in its highest potency; the turning of one of the species of a
niche into an utterly self-absorbed parasitic organism. We can stand the occurrence of
parasitism in organisms which we commonly regard as “simple”; the recognition of the
disconcerting fact that our societies may deteriorate into such a category belongs to the core
of existential despair that has haunted Humanity throughout the modern era, and even
occasionally descended into outright misanthropy.
The preference of monocultures and regional economic specialization around a highly limited
utilization of bioregional potentialities is a basic characteristic of the prevailing structures of
“globalization” which result in ominously vulnerable economic bases for communities on a
world wide scale. Equally disconcerting is the fact that the grossly industrialized production
of cereals during the last few decades has confronted massive reductions in harvest quality as
well as quantity because of plant diseases related to fungicide resistant swamps (or, rather,
highly adaptive microbial fungi) such as the so-called Rust varieties. It is the latter kind of
imbalance in soil environments which the beneficial mycorrhizal fungi invariably tend to
counter under natural conditions, i.e. where application of toxic substances as well as man
inflicted soil compaction and other detrimental disturbances do not occur. The only
reasonable thing for Humanity to do in its ventures into agriculture is to strive towards
replication and reinforcement of the processes which characterize such “undisturbed” soil
environments. As long as the varieties of different soil types and their responses to human
activity present the known magnitude portrayed in scientific literature during the past half
century or so, our responsibility towards the living systems of this planet and the well being of
future generations makes our existential freedom into a mandatory one – the mandate being
connected to the maintenance of the eco-productivity of the bioregions in which our
communities are situated. Paralleled by the need for respecting the biodiversity of our natural
environments is the need for a revival of well rounded and authentically individualized
citizens as the heart & soul of democracy. The responsibilities alluded to above, in
combination with the ethical imperatives towards the Global South, may well be the most
plausible ideological foundations from whence a revitalization of the classic republican notion
of civic virtue will arise – if revocable at all. In social contexts where community ties are
utterly fragmented, and the notion of “the common good” is often way out of reach under the
present technocratic regime ruled by “experts,” the “ecologization” of our day-to-day
relationship with our natural environment and a common aim towards increasing the extent of
self-reliance of local communities regarding staple products may equally well be the most
effective way of improving public health and well being – which in itself represent
underestimated economic and cultural assets for any society aspiring towards Civilization.
After all, every known Civilization at its respective apexes was highly self-reliant, while the
occurrence of trade was only supplementary in regards to the total product consumed within
the oikos. Correspondingly, the decline of previous civilizations has been related to their
tendency in the end to transgress the rules of a self-reliant oikos, becoming obsessively
preoccupied with foreign trade, conquests and warfare – or any combinations of these. The
lessons from past civilizations represent some of the main keys in future efforts to prevent our
own troubled civilization from oblivion, enabling us instead to enhance humanistic ideals and
deepen our ecological understanding.  
 

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