Distribution - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 92

rather the important question becomes a distributional issue: What happens
when there is a surplus, and who gets it?
Revisiting the Notion of Surplus
An intriguing way to categorize and assess any economic system is the man-
ner in which it handles surplus. Surplus can be defined as production (and,
of course, subsequent use or consumption) above the level of perceived sub-
sistence. Moving beyond subsistence therefore involves the creation of sur-
plus. Hence, when an economy gains the ability to generate products and
incomes in excess of the necessities perceived as subsistence, that excess
must somehow be distributed. Virtually every economic conflict throughout
history can be fundamentally interpreted as fights over surplus.
Pursuing this point briefly can demystify the formal disciplinary attitude
toward the field of economic development, including the methodological
assumption that economics tacitly seems to make, namely that develop-
ment is always positive (read mathematically derived and thus objective).
Producing for subsistence at its most elementary level involves simply pro-
ducing enough to satisfy the basic necessities of food, water, shelter, and space,
which explains why an agrarian economy is often seen as “underdeveloped.”
Industrial production is therefore above the level of subsistence by definition,
because it is seen as producing surplus. Thus, in the broad scheme of “more is
always better, richer is always better,” industrial production is thought to be
at a higher level of development than is agricultural production.
More than any other factor, the method of distribution characterizes an
economic system. Some broad examples will underscore this vitally impor-
tant point. Early civilizations, such as the Egyptians and Romans, employed
slaves to create surplus, maintained the slaves at the level of subsistence, and
kept the surplus they produced to support the upper classes of Egyptian and
Roman citizens in lavish lifestyles.
In Europe, on the other hand, little surplus existed during the Middle
Ages. Due to Europe's complicated feudal system and the marked influence
of religious thought, what surplus did exist found its way to the Church and
to the ruling monarch and nobility, who were seen as earthly representatives
of the Kingdom of God. The serfs were effectively the slaves of the Middle
Ages.
Then, in the mid-18th century, the British Industrial Revolution substituted
machines for human labor, which meant substituting the power of fossil fuel
and steam for a slave economy, which used mainly wood and solar power.
This all-important transformation of an economy from a primary source of
energy, which is a renewable flow (solar energy), to one that is dependent on
a secondary source of energy (fossil fuel, a nonrenewable resource or stock