![]() A localised world thus emerges – one that is qualitatively better and more joyful. Community is built on a shared and vibrant culture – culture replaces the market and money as the mode by which human relationships are mediated.Ĥ. Human resilience / survival is only possible through community – small-scale community is our default pattern to which we return following civilizational collapses.ģ. A crash of the present market-based system is imminent due, among other factors, to fossil fuel-based energy peak and to the impossibility of endless growth.Ģ. ‘Community is culture’s habitat’ (Lean Logic: 87).Ī crude summary of Fleming’s thesis might be presented as follows:ġ. It will be difficult: we are standing in the wrong place’ (Lean Logic: 17).Ĭulture, he argues, is best manifested within small-scale, resilient, diverse communities: The main burden of holding society and economy together will shift to culture and reciprocal obligation, embedded in social capital. ‘During the early decades of the century, the market will lose its magic as a stabiliser. Core ArgumentĪt the risk of simplification, the core argument of Fleming’s work may perhaps be presented as follows: Anyone seeking hope and direction in these troubling times would greatly benefit from this work. However, I do urge all those interested in sustainability and resilience and how we might imagine a benign future to read these books and use them for their own reflections. I hope therefore to attempt to present what I think is the central core of Fleming’s ideas and then offer some tentative thoughts in response. It is not wise to facilely offer a critical perspective on a lifetime work that is so rich and it is certainly going too far to claim that the reader can encompass this work in one sitting and understand it. Secondly, I feel I should also record that the various entries in Lean Logic are so diverse and considered that the reviewer should exercise both caution and humility in assessing them (though humility warrants an entry in Lean Logic in which Fleming makes some negative judgements of it as a supposed virtue!). The two books complement each other: the one a clear and coherent introduction, the other the rich source itself. In Lean Logic we encounter directly a genuinely original thinker, one who stimulates, delights, infuriates, confuses but who is always intriguing and engaging. In passing, I think it worthy to note as well that it is also a testament to the value and beauty of books – Lean Logic is a very handsome object indeed. He has also performed a commendable task in re-presenting the complex and myriad ideas of Fleming into a single edition in Surviving the Future. It is a worthy tribute to Fleming and represents a true labour of love by Chamberlin. This is a rich and complex text, an effort by Fleming to express ideas and ways of living on our shared planet outside the familiar framework of free-market economics. Surviving the Future on the other hand is Shaun Chamberlin’s commendable effort to present Fleming’s wide and varied work in a coherent, more conventional, format.īefore examining these books a number of initial comments are worth recording.įirst, the publication of Lean Logic is a considerable achievement. It is a book to be explored at leisure therefore rather than read straightforwardly from cover to cover. It does not have the structure of a straightforward text or of a linear argument but rather it is a type of dictionary or even an encyclopaedia, a style of book with echoes in the early Enlightenment but one rarely encountered in today’s Internet-mediated world. Lean Logic is the culmination of David Fleming’s lifelong work. Among other contributions, he wrote an important paper in Feasta Review 2 – The Lean Economy: A vision of civility for a world in trouble. Surviving the Future – Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economyīy David Fleming, Selected and Edited by Shaun Chamberlinĭavid Fleming was a good friend of Feasta’s. Surviving the aftermath components production how to#Lean Logic – A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It ![]()
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