Lean Logic: Difference between revisions
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Published by [http://www.chelseagreen.com/ Chelsea Green], 2016 | Published by [http://www.chelseagreen.com/ Chelsea Green], 2016 | ||
The book is arranged as a dictionary, or perhaps more accurately, an encylopaedia. The articles are highly individualistic, containing many personal views, asides, favourite quotes. There is a | =Contextual Citation= | ||
"Our large-scale problems do not need large-scale solutions. Rather, they need small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework. The large-scale framework is provided by his central concept of ‘leanness’. To be ‘lean’ means to act on the smallest scale possible with maximum participation." | |||
- David Fleming [http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-01-19/lean-logic-and-surviving-the-future-review-2/] | |||
=Description= | |||
Shaun Chamberlin: | |||
"The book is arranged as a dictionary, or perhaps more accurately, an encylopaedia. The articles are highly individualistic, containing many personal views, asides, favourite quotes. There is a article on The Commons, which could be very helpful as an introduction. On the other hand, there are no entries starting with "Peer"." | |||
=Reviews= | |||
Marc Garavan: | |||
"The core argument of Fleming’s work may perhaps be presented as follows: | |||
‘During the early decades of the century, the market will lose its magic as a stabiliser. The main burden of holding society and economy together will shift to culture and reciprocal obligation, embedded in social capital. These assets will need to be remade. It will be difficult: we are standing in the wrong place’ (Lean Logic: 17). | |||
Culture, he argues, is best manifested within small-scale, resilient, diverse communities: | |||
‘Community is culture’s habitat’ (Lean Logic: 87). | |||
A crude summary of Fleming’s thesis might be presented as follows: | |||
1. 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. | |||
2. Human resilience / survival is only possible through community – small-scale community is our default pattern to which we return following civilizational collapses. | |||
3. Community is built on a shared and vibrant culture – culture replaces the market and money as the mode by which human relationships are mediated. | |||
4. A localised world thus emerges – one that is qualitatively better and more joyful. | |||
Indeed, it is important to stress that sustainability is presented in Fleming’s work as joyful – rooted in human carnival, conviviality and music. | |||
Thus, Fleming argues that our large-scale problems do not need large-scale solutions. Rather, they need small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework. The large-scale framework is provided by his central concept of ‘leanness’. To be ‘lean’ means to act on the smallest scale possible with maximum participation. | |||
‘In the context of energy and material deprivation and, more generally, of the climacteric, community – most especially in the sense of locally-competent cooperative groups – will be the only way forward. Community will need to be reinvented as the defining form of human society.’ (Lean Logic: 72-3). | |||
The climacteric is Fleming’s adopted term for the point of crisis or collapse in the system – | |||
‘a stage in the life of a system in which it is especially exposed to a profound change in health and fortune’ (Surviving the Future: 5). | |||
Fleming argues that there is no point in trying to collapse capitalism – it will collapse anyway. The key therefore is to build community resilience now based on a shared and agreed culture embedded within the local people and place. | |||
Fleming here takes his stance in the logic of necessity – we must return to, or create anew, culturally cohesive communities. There is simply no choice he says. Collapse is inevitable due to the growth problem and only community and lean economics can provide the basis for survival. Culture becomes the antidote to strife and turmoil. | |||
While this hopeful option suggests optimism Fleming is no idealist. Indeed, there is a grim sense of reality throughout his work. Local communities of the future will not necessarily be good but possibly ‘impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to virtue’ (Surviving the Future: 172). Communitarian solutions may not succeed and instead the crash may lead to warlordism, authoritarianism, and Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan solution. The key to determining a more benign future – a model for literally surviving the future – is to build community resilience and capacity today. | |||
Future possibilities are therefore open and need, he argues, to be invented. For this, lean thinking is required. This is a thinking derived from a well-defined intention and the freedom to invent. We need to construct a future because inevitable descent needs to be managed. It is in this precise context that communities will have to step in to provide services. Communities are ‘localised habitats on a human scale’. Culture replaces price as the engine / stabiliser of the lean economy. Adam Smith’s self-interest is replaced by benevolence and reciprocal ties. | |||
It is difficult to overstate the importance of culture in Fleming’s work. Culture plays a central structuring role in summoning up, regulating and sustaining human communal relationships. | |||
In schematic terms, culture achieves: | |||
1. Social cohesion – for example, choirs, music, carnival, dance. | |||
2. Develops a public sphere – a way of moving beyond oneself to become situated as part of a community. | |||
3. Develops practice – for example, accomplishment in an artistic skill. | |||
4. Develops judgement – to think clearly by establishing your identity, and by not having to prove anything, in the sense that one knows who one is by being part of a community. | |||
In outlining Fleming’s ideas it should be acknowledged once again that they are not presented in his work in so linear and structured a form. Instead, individual entries in his Lean Logic dictionary cross-reference with other entries in a kind of mosaic of interlinking thought. Chamberlin’s book very well succeeds in presenting this weave of thought in a more easily comprehensible manner. | |||
To offer a perspective on Fleming’s ideas it might be helpful to address two crucial points Chamberlin presents in Surviving the Future – how the Lean Society will work in practice and how we might get to it." | |||
(http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-01-19/lean-logic-and-surviving-the-future-review-2/) | |||
=Discussion= | |||
==The [[Lean Society]]== | |||
Marc Garavan: | |||
"Many books and writings on sustainability offer detailed criticisms of the contemporary market-based growth economy and society. Often however, they can be less successful in delineating a clear alternative. Fleming, by contrast, presents quite a detailed picture of a new, post-crash, community-based society. As noted above, this is grounded fundamentally on a shared, living culture. As Chamberlin outlines, it will have the following features: | |||
1. Carnival – literally a recovery and affirmation of communal festival and collective play. As in the pre-modern world these social events serve to forge social bonds, radically break from the mundane, conventional mode of life, elide social hierarchies, lead people to take themselves less seriously, allow our wilder ‘second nature’ to be manifested, and permit representations of symbolic sacrifice and succession thereby ensuring the continuity of the culture. | |||
2. Slack employment – inefficient technology will be freely chosen to spare nature. Hhuman work becomes merely part of the daily task of life. Efficiency and economic ‘tautness’ will no longer be considered objectives in a future lean economy. | |||
3. Eroticism – the full range of human emotion and desire will be acknowledged as important drivers of human creativity. | |||
4. Needs and Wants – these will very much remain. ‘In the Lean Economy, effective signals of identity, of good faith, of availability, will be needed – goods will have to work hard again; to say something’ (Surviving the Future: 89). Material processes will reflect culture, place, community – it will ‘be robustly materialist’. | |||
5. Small Scale – the problems with larger scale are loss of elegance, judgement and presence and, what Fleming designates as, the ‘sorting’ problem (the question of the distribution of goods). A small-scale economy will be more effective. For example, the Lean Economy ‘learns, by scale management, to minimise the intermediate economy – the regrettable necessities’ (Surviving the Future: 100). | |||
6. Intentional Waste – there will be a deliberate destruction of goods or a deliberate production of goods of no practical value. Fleming has in mind here ‘growth capital’ – goods which give rise to economic growth for its own sake. Resilient societies will limit growth capital by i) preventing its growth ii) destroying it following growth iii) ensuring its output does not lead to further growth capital. | |||
7. Religion – this is affirmed by Fleming as part of the social, cultural bond forging community. ‘Religion is the community speaking. It is culture in the service of the community’ (Surviving the Future: 112). ‘A coherent social order in the future will need a religion; a religion will need a rich cultural inheritance’ (Surviving the Future: 115). | |||
8. Utopia – can all of this be dismissed as merely utopian? Fleming is no sentimentalist and recognises that the future is open to various possibilities. He is clear however that the Lean Economy is not a Utopia. ‘The turbulent decline of the market economy could stir these ingredients into action’ (Surviving the Future: 119). ‘The Lean Economy is set at a time when the potential for the extremes of disorder and tyranny is increasing’ (Surviving the Future: 124). ‘Local lean economies are unique expressions of particular places, and lean thinking says that the people who live there are best able to work out what to do, if given the chance’ (Surviving the Future: 124)." | |||
(http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-01-19/lean-logic-and-surviving-the-future-review-2/) | |||
==More Reviews== | |||
* [http://thackara.com/learning-institutions/lean-logic-a-dictionary-for-the-future-and-how-to-survive-it-2/ review] by [[John Thackara]] 2016-08-30 | * [http://thackara.com/learning-institutions/lean-logic-a-dictionary-for-the-future-and-how-to-survive-it-2/ review] by [[John Thackara]] 2016-08-30 | ||
* [http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/a-review-of-david-flemings-lean-logic-and-resilience.html review by Lambert Strether], 2016-10-02 | * [http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/a-review-of-david-flemings-lean-logic-and-resilience.html review by Lambert Strether], 2016-10-02 | ||
=More Information= | |||
* [http://www.leanlogic.net/ The book's own web site] linking to | * [http://www.leanlogic.net/ The book's own web site] linking to | ||
** [http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/david-flemings-posthumous-books/ a page with links to many reviews, etc.] | ** [http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/david-flemings-posthumous-books/ a page with links to many reviews, etc.] | ||
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[[Category:Books]] | [[Category:Books]] | ||
[[Category:Ecology]] | |||
Revision as of 20:42, 14 May 2017
= Book by David Fleming
"A dictionary of the future and how to survive it"
Published by Chelsea Green, 2016
Contextual Citation
"Our large-scale problems do not need large-scale solutions. Rather, they need small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework. The large-scale framework is provided by his central concept of ‘leanness’. To be ‘lean’ means to act on the smallest scale possible with maximum participation."
- David Fleming [1]
Description
Shaun Chamberlin:
"The book is arranged as a dictionary, or perhaps more accurately, an encylopaedia. The articles are highly individualistic, containing many personal views, asides, favourite quotes. There is a article on The Commons, which could be very helpful as an introduction. On the other hand, there are no entries starting with "Peer"."
Reviews
Marc Garavan:
"The core argument of Fleming’s work may perhaps be presented as follows:
‘During the early decades of the century, the market will lose its magic as a stabiliser. The main burden of holding society and economy together will shift to culture and reciprocal obligation, embedded in social capital. These assets will need to be remade. It will be difficult: we are standing in the wrong place’ (Lean Logic: 17).
Culture, he argues, is best manifested within small-scale, resilient, diverse communities:
‘Community is culture’s habitat’ (Lean Logic: 87).
A crude summary of Fleming’s thesis might be presented as follows:
1. 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.
2. Human resilience / survival is only possible through community – small-scale community is our default pattern to which we return following civilizational collapses.
3. Community is built on a shared and vibrant culture – culture replaces the market and money as the mode by which human relationships are mediated.
4. A localised world thus emerges – one that is qualitatively better and more joyful.
Indeed, it is important to stress that sustainability is presented in Fleming’s work as joyful – rooted in human carnival, conviviality and music.
Thus, Fleming argues that our large-scale problems do not need large-scale solutions. Rather, they need small-scale solutions within a large-scale framework. The large-scale framework is provided by his central concept of ‘leanness’. To be ‘lean’ means to act on the smallest scale possible with maximum participation.
‘In the context of energy and material deprivation and, more generally, of the climacteric, community – most especially in the sense of locally-competent cooperative groups – will be the only way forward. Community will need to be reinvented as the defining form of human society.’ (Lean Logic: 72-3).
The climacteric is Fleming’s adopted term for the point of crisis or collapse in the system –
‘a stage in the life of a system in which it is especially exposed to a profound change in health and fortune’ (Surviving the Future: 5).
Fleming argues that there is no point in trying to collapse capitalism – it will collapse anyway. The key therefore is to build community resilience now based on a shared and agreed culture embedded within the local people and place.
Fleming here takes his stance in the logic of necessity – we must return to, or create anew, culturally cohesive communities. There is simply no choice he says. Collapse is inevitable due to the growth problem and only community and lean economics can provide the basis for survival. Culture becomes the antidote to strife and turmoil.
While this hopeful option suggests optimism Fleming is no idealist. Indeed, there is a grim sense of reality throughout his work. Local communities of the future will not necessarily be good but possibly ‘impious, immoral, even monstrous and contrary to virtue’ (Surviving the Future: 172). Communitarian solutions may not succeed and instead the crash may lead to warlordism, authoritarianism, and Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan solution. The key to determining a more benign future – a model for literally surviving the future – is to build community resilience and capacity today.
Future possibilities are therefore open and need, he argues, to be invented. For this, lean thinking is required. This is a thinking derived from a well-defined intention and the freedom to invent. We need to construct a future because inevitable descent needs to be managed. It is in this precise context that communities will have to step in to provide services. Communities are ‘localised habitats on a human scale’. Culture replaces price as the engine / stabiliser of the lean economy. Adam Smith’s self-interest is replaced by benevolence and reciprocal ties.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of culture in Fleming’s work. Culture plays a central structuring role in summoning up, regulating and sustaining human communal relationships.
In schematic terms, culture achieves:
1. Social cohesion – for example, choirs, music, carnival, dance.
2. Develops a public sphere – a way of moving beyond oneself to become situated as part of a community.
3. Develops practice – for example, accomplishment in an artistic skill.
4. Develops judgement – to think clearly by establishing your identity, and by not having to prove anything, in the sense that one knows who one is by being part of a community.
In outlining Fleming’s ideas it should be acknowledged once again that they are not presented in his work in so linear and structured a form. Instead, individual entries in his Lean Logic dictionary cross-reference with other entries in a kind of mosaic of interlinking thought. Chamberlin’s book very well succeeds in presenting this weave of thought in a more easily comprehensible manner.
To offer a perspective on Fleming’s ideas it might be helpful to address two crucial points Chamberlin presents in Surviving the Future – how the Lean Society will work in practice and how we might get to it." (http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-01-19/lean-logic-and-surviving-the-future-review-2/)
Discussion
The Lean Society
Marc Garavan:
"Many books and writings on sustainability offer detailed criticisms of the contemporary market-based growth economy and society. Often however, they can be less successful in delineating a clear alternative. Fleming, by contrast, presents quite a detailed picture of a new, post-crash, community-based society. As noted above, this is grounded fundamentally on a shared, living culture. As Chamberlin outlines, it will have the following features:
1. Carnival – literally a recovery and affirmation of communal festival and collective play. As in the pre-modern world these social events serve to forge social bonds, radically break from the mundane, conventional mode of life, elide social hierarchies, lead people to take themselves less seriously, allow our wilder ‘second nature’ to be manifested, and permit representations of symbolic sacrifice and succession thereby ensuring the continuity of the culture.
2. Slack employment – inefficient technology will be freely chosen to spare nature. Hhuman work becomes merely part of the daily task of life. Efficiency and economic ‘tautness’ will no longer be considered objectives in a future lean economy.
3. Eroticism – the full range of human emotion and desire will be acknowledged as important drivers of human creativity.
4. Needs and Wants – these will very much remain. ‘In the Lean Economy, effective signals of identity, of good faith, of availability, will be needed – goods will have to work hard again; to say something’ (Surviving the Future: 89). Material processes will reflect culture, place, community – it will ‘be robustly materialist’.
5. Small Scale – the problems with larger scale are loss of elegance, judgement and presence and, what Fleming designates as, the ‘sorting’ problem (the question of the distribution of goods). A small-scale economy will be more effective. For example, the Lean Economy ‘learns, by scale management, to minimise the intermediate economy – the regrettable necessities’ (Surviving the Future: 100).
6. Intentional Waste – there will be a deliberate destruction of goods or a deliberate production of goods of no practical value. Fleming has in mind here ‘growth capital’ – goods which give rise to economic growth for its own sake. Resilient societies will limit growth capital by i) preventing its growth ii) destroying it following growth iii) ensuring its output does not lead to further growth capital.
7. Religion – this is affirmed by Fleming as part of the social, cultural bond forging community. ‘Religion is the community speaking. It is culture in the service of the community’ (Surviving the Future: 112). ‘A coherent social order in the future will need a religion; a religion will need a rich cultural inheritance’ (Surviving the Future: 115).
8. Utopia – can all of this be dismissed as merely utopian? Fleming is no sentimentalist and recognises that the future is open to various possibilities. He is clear however that the Lean Economy is not a Utopia. ‘The turbulent decline of the market economy could stir these ingredients into action’ (Surviving the Future: 119). ‘The Lean Economy is set at a time when the potential for the extremes of disorder and tyranny is increasing’ (Surviving the Future: 124). ‘Local lean economies are unique expressions of particular places, and lean thinking says that the people who live there are best able to work out what to do, if given the chance’ (Surviving the Future: 124)." (http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-01-19/lean-logic-and-surviving-the-future-review-2/)
More Reviews
- review by John Thackara 2016-08-30
- review by Lambert Strether, 2016-10-02