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Foreword by Marc Luyckx Ghisi: Extending Ideas Already Present in European Thinking

This book by Geneviève Bouché is visionary because the proposals presented in it are truly innovative and inspiring.

The basic assumption is new. It is about fully accepting the new immaterial economy built on data. But this economy is currently focused, by the GAFAs, on short-term profit and the utilitarian paradigm. And for us, in Europe, it is useless to “chase” the current Silicon Valley players. It would be a rearguard action.

On the contrary, it is a matter of innovating while understanding that one of the major challenges of our 21st century will be the reorientation of the world's immaterial economy towards the common good of all the citizens of the world and of Gaia.

This book shows us possible ways to prepare ourselves individually and collectively to build this world of tomorrow, which will be fully social and solidary, and which will also be totally respectful of and regenerative of the environment.

And there are new avenues that are opening up, because the immaterial economy offers us new tools to value the contributory economy in addition to the productive economy, which has been studied by “economic science” for centuries.

What is this contributory economy? The contributory economy is the Yin side, that is, the more feminine side of the world economy, which is concerned above all with the common good of citizens and the future of humanity and the planet. It also includes the symbiotic¹ economy, which values all the work that humans do to educate children and take care of the elderly in the family, the handicapped, the weak, immigrants, the environment, etc.

Hazel Henderson, a British-American futurist friend, had already denounced in 1990 the silence of the official economy with regard to the Love Economy², which constitutes more than 50% of human activities.

Geneviève Bouché is gradually inviting us to a changeover to a new civilization³ that will have much more meaning, and will promote a higher ethical dimension. She also opens the door to a more interior and spiritual vision⁴. In my categories, I would say that she is inviting us to leave modernity and to enter transmodernity⁵, which is characterized by a return to meaning, ethics and the inner dimension.

In this new civilization, the large multinational and pyramid companies, which currently dominate the world and therefore also our European construction, are called upon to gradually disappear in favor of new “companies with a mission” which will be smaller, more ethical and more rooted in the local common good.

The author follows the intuition of the founders of the World Business Academy, created by Willis Harman (who died in 1997) and Rinaldo Brutoco, in 1985. Their intuition was to understand that companies had become too important in the world economy not to be concerned with the common good, and this in an exemplary way. These founders launched the idea that the purpose of business was no longer profit, but the service of the common good. Profit became a consequence and a criterion indicating that everything was going in the right direction.

And the second major vector of transformation that she proposes to make the most of is the monetary tool. According to the author, the tool of digitalized money will make it possible to bring the contributory and symbiotic economies into GNP accounting, which will also be completely redesigned on new bases, being more focused on the common good.

We could therefore think of an innovative type of living wage that would be linked in a new way to all new initiatives to promote the local and global common good.

I relate this vision to that of the report of the Club of Rome to the European Parliament on monetary problems⁶. Alongside the major currencies, which are still useful, especially in terms of world trade, it promoted synergy with new complementary currencies, which were better able to promote the common good and strengthen a new type of social link within our communities.

But for the new societal paradigm in which the living wage fits to flourish, it will also be necessary to enter into a process of redefining the citizen in this new society. The citizen will no longer be defined by their “industrial” salary and job, so that if they lose their job, they lose their status as a fully-fledged citizen in society. On the contrary, the citizen will be redefined in all their dignity as a citizen, outside of any relation to employment, but rather as a Being who comes out of Plato's cave and seeks to see the light of the Beautiful, the Good and the True. And if this citizen receives a living wage that valorizes them in their being a citizen, they will do everything possible to give back to the society that has recognized them in their essence, the best of their economic, cultural or social creativity. And they will contribute to the progress of the common good and the quality of being of each individual and of the entire local community.

Geneviève Bouché finally gives us a picture of the 21st-century Europe. In order to be able to reorient the immaterial economy to serve the common good, Europe must absolutely distance itself from GAFAM and develop its own digital space. For, as she clearly notes, “data is as important as money.” And this digital space has already been in operation for 10 years in Estonia. The project is called X-Road and this national data circulation infrastructure for the common good could be the embryo of the European data circulation infrastructure. It was funded by the European Commission.

So, another visionary proposal from this book.

I would add that my personal impression over the years has been that if there is ethical and visionary thinking coming from Europe, it will be listened to and analyzed carefully. But if it comes from Russia, China or the United States, it will have much less credibility. It seems to me that there is a real curiosity about European initiatives, even at the world level.

In this perspective of the European common good, we could also see the disappearance of all lobbying activities in the European institutions. For lobbying only promotes the particular interests of the most powerful players. The only thing that would be allowed is “advocacy”, which proposes changes to legislative proposals, solely with a view to the common European good. This is a new vision of Europe. And in Jacques Delors' time, this was the implicit rule. We could come back to this.

My conclusion is that this work by Geneviève Bouché places her rightfully in the court of the great architectural thinkers of our 21st century.

Well done and thank you.

Dr. Marc LUYCKX GHISI

Former member of the European Commission’s Prospective Studies Unit

Former member of the Auroville International Advisory Council

Former Dean of Cotrugli Business School in Zagreb and Belgrade

1 1 The term “symbiotic” first appeared around 1600, in the writings of Althusius (von Althaus) who also invented the principle of subsidiarity. See my book Surgissement d’un nouveau monde (Ghisi 2012, p. 263).

2 2 Here is a video on this theme of the Love Economy: https://vimeo.com/27949858. See also Hazel Henderson’s books and her famous website Ethical Markets.

3 3 In speaking of a new civilization, the author is following in the footsteps of Edgar Morin, Le temps est venu de changer de civilisation, éditions de l’Aube, 2017.

4 4 The spiritual dimension must be absolutely distinguished from religions. We can be spiritual and religiously atheist.

5 5 The term “transmodernity” means retaining the positive dimensions of modernity but in a new, more ethical, social and spiritual context. This concept was created by Willis Harman, one of the great thinkers of Silicon Valley, in the 1990s. Together with Peter Drucker, Harlan Cleveland and Jim Garrison, they initiated high-quality global thinking on paradigm shift. Unfortunately, this high-level thinking has not been accepted or taken up by the current generation of GAFA managers.

6 6 The French version of this report was published in 2012 by Odile Jacob, Paris, under the title “Halte à la toute-puissance des banques: rapport du club de Rome au Parlement européen sur les enjeux monétaires.”