The Humanization of Economic Life: The Legacy of Martin Buber

Abstract

In one of his columns, the entrepreneur David Nordfors (2015) predicts that the “task-centered economy” will give way to a “people-centered economy,” which will be a “meaningful economy.”1 While one cannot tell the difference between a person and a machine in the first, in the future economy, the robot will pass the Turing test, but will fail what Nordfors calls the “Buber test.” “The Buber test,” Nordfors (2015) asserts, “is as important as the Turing test for discussing the economy. The humane economy defines meaning: improving interpersonal connection, relating to other living beings.” A new type of economics (as science) will accompany such transition, namely, a “Thou-economics” (Hoover 1996, 259)—as opposed to an “It-economics.” While social economics is now a sub-discipline of economics, and perceived more as a social science than an “exact” economic science, future mainstream economics will no longer need an extra label “social” or “philosophical” because it will be intrinsically a human science. This means that it will no longer presume, normalize, and legitimize the fictive figure homo economicus, but will instead strive to be true, and do justice, to the whole human being. In other words, the human will no longer be demanded to split him(her)self into a calculating and ruthless utility- and profit-maximizer on the market, an active citizen in the public space, and a devoted friend, lover, and parent in his (her) private life. Mark Lutz (1996, 273) observes that once economic discourse starts presuming the “whole or authentic person, there is much to be gained in turning to Martin Buber's work.” This is precisely what I am doing in this paper, specifically exploring how our economic life can be reconciled with the norm of dialogical life or communion. Buber is well known for his lifelong advocacy of dialogue between persons and between nations. “If the world of man is to become a human world,” he maintains, “then immediacy must rule between men, and thus also between human house and human house” (Buber 1990, 95). Indeed, according to him, every human being longs to be confirmed in his or her being, and such confirmation can only be a mutual confirmation (Buber 1957, 225). This mutual confirmation is hindered by the objectification of the other fellow being, other living beings, and nature. I-It relations are created between humans themselves, between humans, on the one hand, and animals, nature and the world, on the other. Such attitude, Buber emphasizes, is a degenerate state, and certainly no primal instinct or lust (Buber 1947, 86). His conviction that the “instinct for communion” is greater than any other instinct appears in his later works as well (88). It is significant that Buber (1957, 161) distinguishes between the “social principle” and the “political principle,” thereby deploring the lack of such differentiation in, among others, Plato. While politics, for the latter, was “the art whose business it is to care for souls” (Cooper 2008, 5), for Buber, politics is characterized by the will to power. One could therefore say that, for Buber (1957, 213), the will to dominate becomes stronger in modern times when the political principle becomes the “practical axiom that predominates in the opinion and attitude of a very great part of the modern world,” so that man becomes Caesar's.2 To the question of what comes first, society or politics, it is clear that Buber would reply “society,” that is, the fellowship of humans. For him, indeed, “the basic structure of society is historically and even prehistorically […] based on personal relations, and where it subdues them it becomes wrong” (Buber and Friedman 1964, 80). This is a normative view of society: society ought to be relational for the sake of human souls. Indeed, according to Buber, “human life approaches its fulfilment, its redemption in the measure that the I-Thou relation becomes strong in it” (Buber and Friedman 1964, 117). Quite unsurprisingly, he considered his little and yet difficult I and Thou as representative of his thought.3 In his correspondence with Dag Hammarskjöld, in August 1961, Buber (1996a,b, 641) recommends that book for translation into Swedish because it introduces the reader to the world of dialogue. Hammarskjöld (1996a,b, 641) rightly mentions the difficulty of translating the subtleties involved in Buber's books.4 A simple word such as “Thou” is loaded and captures much that may not be evident to the present-day reader. Clearly, it is not simply about saying “you” to someone (or something). Thou, as I shall show in the first section, is meant to convey the idea of the addressee's unique and irreplaceable personhood, and correspondingly, of his (her) personal responsibility for life and the world. The one who addresses the other as a Thou refuses to consider the latter as means to his (her) own self-aggrandizement. Yet, the means-ends category is not sufficient to understand Buber's thought since the I and the Thou are not two sovereign subjects, but related. The human vocation is communion, and not so much solitary autonomy. The transformation from I-It to I-Thou entails giving up the urge of mastery over others, and instead, accepting the responsibility of an I for a Thou (Buber 2013, 11). However, as Buber points out, only the one who “takes his stand in love, and gazes out of it” is able to treat the other in a holy way, as a Thou (11). Readers might find it difficult to recognize “love” as conceived and used by Buber. In the second section, I show that his recourse to the concept of dialogue constitutes a reconceptualization of “love,” so that the latter is truly the love of the other (Other). He thereby reckons with the human tendency to monological existence, and the ever-recurrent temptation to fall back into I-It “relationships.” The transcendence of the latter type of relationship is a responsibility that is incumbent on all, including managers of the technical enterprises—or any other organization in which the human and personal element has been minimalized. The necessity of going beyond opportunism or exploitation is therefore dealt with in the third section. Communion only exists between unified souls. In Buber's works, the question of a wholesome economy is in fact a question of whole, unified persons. In other words, the collective level and the personal level are intimately connected. The unity and unification of the soul is the subject of the final section. In order to appreciate why the uttering of Thou is so “powerfully stirring” (Buber 1990, 100), we have to understand Buber's answer to the question of who the human is. The dominant answer to this question, “represented by a powerful stream of German philosophy from Hegel to Heidegger, sees in man the being in whom Being attains to consciousness of itself” (Buber 1990, 118). That “empty Being,” as he calls it, is the subject of metaphysics, but cannot be encountered in the real, lived life of the human person. It is the capacity for encounter and communion with everyone and everything he (she) meets that characterizes the humanum. By preferring to observe and using beings to further his goals instead of opening his soul to them, modern man fails to recognize, honor, and cultivate the humanity in himself and others. Buber therefore retrieves an older epistemology, which, in his case, has biblical roots. He transcends the subject-object relation, the premise underlying modern epistemology and science, by pointing to the “knowing” (yada) involved between Adam and his wife Eve (Genesis 4:1).5 As I shall show in this section, marriage is one of the two relationships that is paradigmatic for understanding the dialogical principle, that is, the I-Thou relation. The other relationship is the one between God and the human. Despite all possible signs to the contrary, the human does not necessarily and essentially consider the world and all that which constitutes it as being at his disposal. His predatory tendencies are symptoms of a pathological state. The human, Buber holds, is instead able, “out of the overflow of his existence, to come into direct contact with everything that he bodily or spiritually meets—to address it with lips and heart or even with the heart alone” (Buber 1990, 119). He can therefore cut down a tree and kill animals for his food, but, at moments, he can also experience his relatedness to that tree and those animals. In those rare moments, trees and animals, all those things that are part of our world, are no longer objects that are up for grabs. Self-seeking, Buber asserts, does not belong to the “nature” of man, but is a pathological form of “self-relatedness,” whereby the latter becomes the goal of life itself (Buber and Friedman 1964, 116). Accordingly, self-seeking or predatory behavior reflects the failure to sprout and maturate into a being capable of reaching out to the other. Since such growth and maturity are enabled through the life of dialogue, the pathological form of self-relatedness is both the cause and the consequence of the absence of dialogical life—that is, of human communion. The being who has made self-relatedness instead of communion become the end of human life therefore undermines the unification of his own self. He knows no “inner unity, the innermost life of which is mystery” and therefore cannot “honour the mystery in all its forms” (Buber 1947, 116). This person is other, essentially other than myself, and this otherness of his is what I mean, because I mean him; I confirm it; I wish his otherness to exist, because I wish his particular being to exist. That is the basic principle of marriage and from this basis it leads, if it is a real marriage, to insight into the right and the legitimacy of otherness and to that vital acknowledgement of many-faced otherness (Buber 1947, 61). The unreserved self-communication that characterizes a genuine marriage can become a more or less permanent personal disposition so that one can be unreserved with every passer-by (Buber 1947, 21). In saying Thou, one turns oneself to the other, with whole one's soul. A genuine dialogue can therefore be “measured” by the extent to which one acts with one's “essential being.” The trust that develops between lovers can confirm and reinforce the trust in life. In a more religious language, Buber (1957, 229) maintains that “if our mouths succeed in genuinely saying ‘thou,’ then, after long silence and stammering, we shall have addressed our eternal ‘Thou’ anew.” It is significant that, in Judaism and Christianity, the marital bond symbolizes the spiritual marriage between God and humankind. Hence, the Song of Songs—to which innumerable commentaries have been devoted—is read as both an erotic poem and an allegory of the love between God and humankind. The one who is able to address God as a Thou contrasts with the one who kills in the name of God or God's will. Conversely, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is said to address the human person, in the form of divine commandments, both positive and negative. These commandments help us to grasp the full purport of Buber's Thou. In “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Carroll and Prickett 2008, Deuteronomy 6:5), the whole (wo)man is being addressed and demanded to turn to and devote his (her) whole being to God. The negative commandments starting with “Thou shalt not” appear in Exodus 20: 2-17, among others. In this case as well, the addressee is personally addressed and deemed responsible and capable of responding to the calling. It is noteworthy that Buber suggests that the Israelites survived their trial in the desert because “Thou shalt not” never faded from their hearts and ears (Buber 1947, 109). In spite of their despair, they remembered the voice asking “where art thou?” (Genesis 3: 9). “That,” says Buber (1947, 166), “is the cry of conscience. It is not my existence which calls to me, but the being which is not I.” The Israelites resisted the temptation of giving up the responsibility that is tied up with humanity, and therefore resisted the anti-human. Turning to the other and addressing him (her) as a Thou, as a partner (Gegenüber), is not self-evident and does not happen spontaneously or “naturally.” The mortal human is caught between It and Thou, that is, between the use of the other and fellowship with the other—or, between dominion and communion. Buber, as I noted at the outset, transcends the end-means paradigm. The other is not an “end,” but a partner, a neighbor. In this sense, the I-It-Thou language more successfully resists the instrumental approach to reality than Kant's contra-utilitarianism riposte, for instance, has ever been able to do. Consequently, the anthropocentrism that follows from the man-world (subject–object) dualism is also effectively countered without dissolving the humanity of the human into animality or nature. The uniqueness of the human no longer lies in his power to dominate, destroy, and re-create in his own image all that which he meets. Instead, the transformed human is able to maintain a “holy intercourse with the little world entrusted” to him (Buber 1994, 33). According to Buber, we thereby “help the holy spiritual substance” contained in living beings and things, including the tools we use, “to accomplish itself in that section of Creation in which we are living” (33). For the religious person, this entails accepting the responsibility of being God's partner in creation: action becomes “purposive” and yet “is no longer imposed upon the world, it grows on it as if it were non-action” (Buber 2013, 75). For both the religious and the non-religious person, addressing the other as a Thou means accepting the responsibility for him or her (Buber 1947, 51). Fellowship, mutuality, and responsibility for each other are therefore the core concepts that are attached to the I-Thou relation. We may wonder how different the dialogical life is from the love of the neighbor, if the life of dialogue (similarly to love) consists in directing one's attention to the other with one's whole being (cf. Buber 1947, 22)? The dialogical principle would seem to be intimately tied up with love since in both early and later works dialogue and love appear to be core concepts in Buber's thought. It is therefore noteworthy that he should emphasize that the dialogic is not to be identified with love (Buber 1947, 21). Yet, the dialogical principle, I argue, is not so much an alternative for Love as a qualification of love. Buber therefore points out that “love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, and companying with the other, the love remaining with itself […] is called Lucifer” (Buber 1947, 21). It is clear that he has consistently tried to distinguish between love, on the one hand, and affects or feelings, on the other. Love is not a feeling, but can be accompanied by feelings. Hence, while one cannot be expected to have feelings of affection for the stranger, one does have the duty of openness toward him (her). This endeavor to dissociate love from “sentimentalism” or “emotionalism” explains why Buber (2013, 21) refers to the “metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love.” Years earlier, in his letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé (10 February 1910), he distinguishes between eros and affects (the first one being a “primal word” and the latter so “limp”), saying to prefer the word “love”: “you have only to pronounce the word love […] to have all at once and together both eros and amor spiritualis dei” (Buber 1996a,b, 123). Why does Buber go to such great pains to reconceptualize love? This is what I will try to answer in this section. Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its “content,” its object; but love is between I and Thou […] Love ranges in its effect through the whole world. In the eyes of him who takes his stand in love, and gazes out of it, men are cut free from their entanglement in bustling activity […] Love is responsibility of an I for a Thou (Buber 2013, 11). Above, I noted that mutuality and responsibility are the essential dimensions of the I-Thou relation. Here, we read that love expresses itself in carrying the responsibility for the other. Hence, “‘evil’ man is simply one who is commended to [us] for greater responsibility, one more needy of love” (Buber 2013, 75). We could conclude that the dialogical life is enabled by love since, according to Buber, love is that “power” between, that which relates, I and Thou. It is the “great Love” that is to be found in the callousness of one's fellow humans beings (Buber 1947, 98). It is the love that can “redeem the crowd into men and strike even the heart of the crude, the greedy, [and] the stingy” (Buber 1957, 111). Though love certainly appears later in the history of man, it cannot be derived from sex. […] Love is the cosmic and eternal power to which sex is sent as a sign and a means it employs in order that out of it love may be reborn on earth (Buber 1957, 65–66). Buber's apophatic description of love seems to be the logical approach in trying to understand the cosmic and eternal power. How can we indeed grasp that which is eternal and which in fact “contains” us, and every one of us—or, in which we stand? Nonetheless, Buber (1957, 28–30) goes beyond apophasis and clearly presumes the primacy of love when he says that love precedes and enables the true knowledge of the world, true art, true science, true philosophy, and every true deed. The loving human can truly get to know the world because he grasps each thing “non-relatively” and immediately. Things are experienced, not observed and categorized. The “effective reality” of things “reveals itself only to the loving man who knows them” (Buber 1957, 28); such a loving being discerns the mystery of the universe. Every true deed is a loving deed. All true deeds arise from contact with a beloved thing and flow into the universe. Any true deed brings, out of lived unity, unity into the world. Unity is not a property of the world but its task. To form unity out of the world is our never-ending work. The idea that unity or peace in the world is brought about by the “lived unity” of individual persons who are capable of true deeds is one that recurs in Buber's works. I will come back to this important thought, which is highly relevant in re-thinking the connection between personal and politico-economic justice (or, between private and public moralities). For the time being, it suffices to remark that every person, scientist, philosopher, artist, or simply the toiling (wo)man who lovingly approaches everything he (she) encounters partakes in the mystery of the universe. Reverence and the lack of presumption characterize such a person. This conceived absolute prerequisite of love for all true human deeds also applies to our economic activities. We should however bear in mind that love, for Buber, is not a “norm”: “the commandment of love cannot command other than to be ready to love and willing to act lovingly ‘with all thy soul’” (Buber and Friedman 1964, 79). The I-Thou relationship presumes directness between persons, and this is precisely what is lacking in the (post-)modern organization of social life. The interaction with each other is mediated by impersonal, bureaucratic apparatuses. “Is the communal life of modern man not then of necessity sunk in the world of It?” asks Buber (1947, 33). He even alludes to the belief that increased productivity and efficiency result from dealing with men and women “not as bearers of the Thou […] but as centres of work and effort” (34). Even if that would be the case that the I-It attitude is more lucrative than the I-Thou attitude (which Buber (1947, 38–39) denies), the “most valuable of all goods—the life between man and man—gets lost” when men become cogs in a machine (Buber 1949, 132). The condition whereby men and women do not feel responsible for their actions means the death of the soul (Buber 1947, 115). The rebirth of directness is therefore the precondition for the I-Thou relation in economic life. Of course, less bureaucracy does not automatically entail the community spirit that Buber has in mind. The directness to which he refers is not the directness of the crowd. Being side by side is not enough. It is about people being together and being able to address each other with all their might as Thou. In such an economy, workers, consumers, producers, and investors will be able to experience the meaningfulness of their endeavors. The economic sphere, according to Buber, is characterized by the “will to profit;” the political sphere by the will to power. This is the mortal condition that Buber does not wish to deny or change. He is not concerned with perfection, but with the “pedestrian, with toil and dull contrariness” (Buber 1947, 36). He therefore advocates the ordering of economics and politics so that they may have their “natural and proper effect” (Buber 2013, 35). The ends proper to economics and politics are reached when those who dwell in economic and political life are driven by the spirit that says Thou. According to Buber, the statesman and the economist—that is, political and economic leadership—can accept the rule of the “spirit that says Thou” to every one of those for whom they carry responsibility (Buber 2013, 35). By substituting this life of spirit for the life of mastery, they do not become less “professional,” but instead accept their responsibility for the creation of the conditions in which the meaningfulness of work and the charge of wealth can be experienced. They co-operate toward the transfiguration of the world of It (the inescapable mortal condition) so that work becomes infused with “meaning and joy,” and possession with “awe and sacrificial power” (Buber 2013, 35). Such transfiguration does demand a radical change of disposition, that is, conversion. In order to dwell in the spirit that says Thou, one has to turn away from the “spirit of capitalism,” which, for Buber, refers to the “ruthless exploitation of opportunities and eventualities” (Buber 1949, 36). As a result, actions are no longer to be aimed at exploiting, either of so called “natural resources” (a term that already presumes the I-It mentality) or of “labor.” Such conversion will be most difficult given the self-evidence of current practices, ways of thinking, perceiving, and experiencing the world around us. The idea that one is meant to get the most of one's life, talents, or relationships seems innocent and “natural.” So is the idea of the maximization of personal happiness, utility, or profit. One might start to get alarmed when one catches oneself thinking in terms of investments and returns in intimate relationships; for instance, when one mourns the fact that one's efforts (investment)—as a parent, lover or friend—are wasted or are not sufficiently rewarded. The wide use of the term “strategy,” derived from military practices, shows how deeply ingrained the idea of victory and domination is. In this sense, it is fair to say that the “spirit of capitalism” (in the Buberian sense) is older than capitalism (as an economic system) itself. In slightly different words, the spirit that capitalism has legitimized is as old as human life. Indeed, as noted earlier, mortal man sways between I-It and I-Thou relationships, even if his (her) vocation is to address nature, fellow human beings, and spiritual beings as a Thou (Buber 2013, 70). Is the business employee to ‘communicate himself without reserve’ to his colleagues? Is the worker at the conveyor belt to ‘feel himself addressed in what he experiences’? Is the leader of a gigantic technical undertaking to ‘practise the responsibility of dialogue’? (Buber 1947, 35). Against the objection that the “responsibility of dialogue” cannot take place in business settings, Buber retorts that dialogue is not a luxury, but the precondition for human life (35). The leader of an enterprise engages in dialogical life when he is willing and able to transcend the mechanical and functional vision of his firm, employees, and other relations. Within the constraints of his concrete situation, he sees and deals with “persons with faces and names and biographies, bound together by a work that is represented by, but does not consist of, the achievements of a complicated mechanism” (Buber 1947, 38). This effort is to be exerted repeatedly, with one's whole being, since dialogue is no habit or maxim (and cannot become one). The desire for certainty—under the guise of “professionalism”—may incite managers to protocolize dialogical life. This would be consistent with the general tendency to impersonalize economic transactions, making them less dependent on the variable moral energies of individual persons. Buber foresees such development, but hopes that later generations will undo the procedural approach and again go back to the spontaneous and candid directness that characterizes dialogue. The renunciation of the spirit of opportunism, exploitation, and maximization will of course greatly benefit our ecology and the ones who are in vulnerable positions. Yet, in the first place, it entails the liberation of the person himself from idols that he wishes to conquer and possess. The man who turns away from his idols does not simply change direction or his goal, but is himself changed. Such change is no sudden metamorphosis, but is a lifelong endeavor. It starts with his being educated to solidarity. Gradually, he will develop an aversion to “the lust of grabbing and of laying up treasure,” helped by the joy of being able to say Thou to his fellow beings, and if he is religious, to God, the “eternal Presence” who cannot be possessed (Buber 2013, 74). In the next section, I elaborate on this transformation in more detail. The dialogical approach clearly presumes interpersonal interaction, which becomes scarcer as (social) organizations become bigger and more technologized. Moreover, as we saw above, the dialogical life also depends on the personal will to engage with another. Buber would agree with the observation that most organizations impede dialogical life. This is the reason why he pleads for the rebirth of directness, and points out the problems of representation. Yet, it could further be objected that such directness cannot be expected at all since society is necessarily impersonal and artifactual. That is to say, there is an unbridgeable gap between the personal sphere where dialogue might be possible and the impersonal economic and political sphere where personal dispositions pale away beside the tremendous clash of interests and strivings for power. Buber replies that modern technical society is indeed dependent on “artfully constructed equilibria of power,” but then for its order and not for its justice (Buber and Friedman 1964, 80). Justice cannot be something else other than being just. This means that justice at the collective level depends not only on effective formal institutions—such as legal and tax systems, for instance—but also (if not, especially) on the spirit of justice of persons who strive to be just toward each other. Every person is called upon to be just, that is, to act without inner conflict and in accordance with his or her conscience (Lutz 1996, 272). This unity of life and action is tied up with the unity of being, that is, with personal unity (Buber 1947, 116). Buber's religious humanism is characterized by the reconciliation of particularity and universality (universal values), individuality and community (solidarity), individual freedom and responsibility, body and spirit. The soul, for him, refers to the whole person, body and spirit together. This means that there is no personhood “unless all bodily energies, all the limbs of the body, are united” (Buber 1994, 18). Personhood is therefore a condition that has to be achieved: “Every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique […] called upon to fulfil his particularity in this world” (Buber 1994, 9). The individual freedom that is so sacred to Buber is the freedom to respond to one's particular vocation. It is not simply the freedom to be what one “chooses” to be, on a whim, or in a particular period of one's life. Accordingly, he distinguishes between the “unfree will that is controlled by things and instincts,” and the “grand will” that strives for “destined being” (Buber 2013, 42). The “self-willed” man is the solitary being who (falsely) believes himself to be sovereign, and whose “Thou” is in fact “my….” Only the grand will, Buber asserts, is the genuine will, and it is the will that corresponds to the being one ought to become. Accordingly, it is a will that develops as the destined self or being becomes. This self “receives its direction from eternal values” (Buber 1947, 115). This line of reasoning presumes rootedness in religious and spiritual traditions. The core of his soul, the divine force in its depths, is capable of acting upon it, changing it, binding the conflicting forces together, amalgamating the diverging elements – is capable of unifying it. This unification must be accomplished before a man undertakes some unusual work. Only with a united soul will he be able to do it that it becomes not patchwork but work all of a piece (Buber 1994, 17). Asceticism, Buber warns, is not the way to the unification of the soul; it cannot overcome the latter's inner contradictions. At best, it can create the conditions for the unification of the soul, in helping to purify it and protect it from distractions. At worst, it prevents the human from fulfilling his (her) particularity in the world. Responsibility is to be carried in and for the world, which is to be hallowed “with our whole being” (Buber 1994, 12). Correspondingly, the “deeper self” is the self (person) in “relationship to the world” (22). The environment which I feel to be the natural one, the situation which has been assigned to me as my fate, the things that happen to me day after day, the things that claim me day after day – these contain my essential task and such fulfilment of existence as is open to me. As we give up the instrumental approach to the world and start taking time to develop “a genuine relationship to the beings and things in whose life we ought to take part, as they in ours,” we discover that meaninglessness cannot be the truth (Buber 1994, 31). The daily little encounters reveal the light in the darkness (Buber 1947, 98). We develop a sensitivity to the “spiritual substance” in all that which we meet. The fulfillment of existence consists much more in responding to one's calling than in measurable achievements. [The educator] can help the feeling that something is lacking to grow into the clarity of consciousness and into the force of desire. He can awaken in young people the courage to shoulder life again (Buber 1947, 115). The educator should unceasingly emphasize not so much perfection as the unity of the person and the unity of the lived life. The burning question is, of course: who can be the educator of working adults in contemporary societies? How can the desire to seek full existence and to accept the responsibility for the world be awakened in City and Wall Street workers, the business magnate, politician, civil servant, or simply the administrative assistant? These questions will remain unanswered in the present article. I am inclined to think that the change of our physical living and work environments might be a good starting point. Such an approach is in accordance with the transcendence of the mind-body dualism. Buber's thought has far-reaching implications for our interpersonal relationships, our relationship to the biosphere, other living beings, our perception and experience of time, our conception and use of technology, our consumption and production patterns, our methods of production (capital, labor, or energy intensive), the types of risks involved, urban and rural planning (Hoover 1996, 259–60). Concretely, it may mean more people and less robots, more “human power” and less technical power. For the technologists among us, such a suggestion might seem like a regression to an earlier “phase” in history. Yet, they would thereby forget that technology was meant to serve and not supplant humans, and that human communion is to be preferred to the satisfaction of the ambition of technology-owners and other stakeholders. The transformation, nay, revolution that is required is therefore colossal. The issue of disproportionate powers will have to be addressed, and it is quite obvious that those who possess exorbitant economic power will not simply and voluntarily give it up. Should we conclude that Buber's narrative is charming, but quite irrelevant to our politico-economic plight? It has to be noted that Buber does plead for the physical re-organization of our work and living conditions. He is aware of the fact that the impersonal organization and bureaucratic apparatuses in which we dwell undermine the sense of personal responsibility. Yet, “he who no longer, with his whole being, decides what he does or does not, and assumes responsibility for it, becomes sterile in soul. And a sterile soul soon ceases to be a soul” (Buber 1947, 115). This is why Buber pleads for the rebirth of directness. The transformed economy will therefore have to consist of communes or fellowships, which he refers to as “Full Co-operatives” (Buber 1949, 140).7 Decentralization—with the corresponding functional autonomy and minimal state—mutual recognition and mutual responsibility (both individual and collective) are the characteristics of a reformed economy (and society). The Zapatista Movement and the La Via Campesina (International Peasant's Movement) are examples of initiatives informed by solidarity and traditions in which harmony and relatedness instead of mastery are core values (cf. Esteva 2014, i151). These movements manifest the characteristics of the Full Cooperative. In Buber's days, the only experiment that, according to him, was more or less successful was the Jewish Village Commune in Palestine. It is significant that the elite (“Chaluzim or pioneers”), Buber (1949, 143) remarks, was “drawn from all classes of the people and thus beyond class.” That elite, like any genuine elite, had “the power to replenish and renew themselves in a manner conformable to their task (Buber 1949, 144). We therefore come back once again to the issue of the transformation of souls, which does not get the attention that it should in our personal and interpersonal lives and in our economic and political dealings with each other.