In the background paper for this meeting the contradiction between the ethics of production and consumption - market ethics - and values like basic fairness, equity, intrinsic value of work, is highlighted. I would add to this list of non-market values respect for nature and for the dignity of all creatures, solidarity and compassion, caring and nurturing, mutuality, love and co-operation. All these values stand for what we understand as a humane economy and society. Since the eighteenth century, however, all these values are in sharp contrast to the philosophy and ethics of the European Enlightenment which considers man's dominance over nature by virtue of his rationality the precondition for this" freedom. Feminist scholars have criticized this concept of rationality and ethics not only because of its androcentric bias (Merchant 1983, Fox- Keller 1985) but also because an ethics that considers values like caring, nurturing, responsibility for the maintenance of everyday life (housework for example) as only private values whereas rationality, competition, aggression, selfishness are seen as public values - such a contradictory and polarized moral order cannot save the environment or do justice to women or any other oppressed group.

Lieselotte Steinbrugge has shown that this contradiction was already bothering the Enlightenment philosophers: Rousseau, Diderot and others. They tried to solve it by making women the "moral gender", that is by making them responsible for maintaining such humane values within an overall competitive, "rational" economy based on the dogma of expansionism and self-interest (Steinbrugge 1987).

But many of us made it clear that as we women are no longer willing to play this role or to be the "moral gender" within an overall immoral global system. Not only because we don't want to be the eternal "Trümmerfrauen", but also because the damage done by the "military and corporate warriors" (King) is so vast that all women of the world are no longer capable of restoring humanity to this system.

There is still another, much more compelling reason why new, more humane values will find it extremely difficult to challenge the destructive system. This is the material, factual violence with which modern megatechnology, in combination with global capital have structured reality in such a way, that ethical considerations are made more or less impotent. Globalization of capital and new technology, particularly communications - and biotechnology have made ethics virtually obsolete. I shall explain this with regard to biotechnology and TRlPs.

Biotechnology in combination with the globalization of the Free Trade philosophy through GATT (WTO), TRlPs, World Bank, lMF is used by a few "corporate warriors" (MNCs) to commodify, commercialize and monopolize (through TRlPs) all life-forms on earth. The new "creations" of capital and science are not just products of the ever inquisitive human (male) mind, they are commodities to be sold and consumed. Take the example of genetically or bio-technological manipulated food, e. g. the "flavr savr tomatoe". This tomato may be produced in Punjab, in India, combined with some genetically produced enzymes from Mauritius or the Philippines, then made into ketchup by a "daughter" of Unilever in Holland and sold world-wide on pizzas in PIZZA HUTS, or on BIG MACs in MacDonalds, or in the supermarkets where you and 1 will have to buy our necessary foodstuff in future. This is, I think, what some call the McDonaldization of the economy. Now, in such a situation, where practically all consumers have been turned into compulsory consumers and accomplices of the MNCs, how can we still speak of ethics? What can a movement like the "Ethical Consumer" do to use consumption in an ecologically responsible way? Or how can the consumer assess what work conditions existed at the various points in the global production chains whose end result is now the ketchup on his/her pizza? He/she will not know what he/she eats, who is exploited in which country, to what degree or who is reaping the enormous profits out of this world-wide production and trade All ethics presuppose some sort of choice, some sort of freedom. But this new megatechnology in combination with the new globalization of capital has turned all life pure and simple into a commodity which can be monopolized. And this commodity is not just a luxury item. We need it. Therefore we can be forced to become coerced consumers. This, in my view, is the end of ethics as understood so far. Not even women would be able to make such a world-system more human.

7. The Need for an Alternative Perspective

And I think this is possible now - for two reasons: 1) More and more people in the world rebel against this commodification and monopolization of life. 2) Even those who so far have profited by this system realize more and more that in the midst of the global supermarket we live in a state of permanent want, danger, catastrophe and warfare.

7.a  Beyond SAPs, GATT, IMF and World Bank

In the first part of this paper I tried to show that the aim of sustainability is incompatible with a growth-oriented economic system. But the solutions proposed by those world institutions which, so far, have tried to keep the capitalist industrial system going is just "more of the same" namely: more economic growth. And this should be achieved through cutting down on public spending, on social welfare, health, education, child-care, etc. At the same time there is a drive towards more "future technologies" like biotechnology, more privatization, more competition, the opening up of more markets and areas for investment. The GATT demands the elimination of all trade barriers which nations particularly in the South may have erected to protect their poor and their peasantry and to maintain their sovereignty and self-reliance with regard to their food security and their traditional knowledge All these policies have been criticized by feminists time and again, because women, particularly poor women, are the worst hit by them (Patnaik 1993). But criticizing the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), the IMF-and the World Bank, the GATT and the MNCs will not help us get out of the dead-end into which this system has landed us. Particularly not since the socialist countries of Eastern Europe have given up socialism as an alternative to capitalism and have opted for the market economy. Therefore a mere demand to restore the status quo ante, to reconsolidate the welfare state through Keynesian economic policies and more public spending will not do. We need a much more fundamental change if we really want to establish a sustainable economy and society in which women and children are the centre and in which nature is not destroyed for short-sighted monetary gains.

There is no ready-made blue-print of such a society or economy at present, no country in this world where we could find such a new social vision in practice. But looking around, one finds a surprisingly large number of individuals, groups, organizations, networks and grassroots movements where people are asking themselves the same questions which we are asking here. And most of these individuals and groups begin to ask: What would an economy look like in which nature mattered, in which women mattered, in which children, in which people mattered, which would not be based on colonizing and exploiting others? !t is perhaps no coincidence that such questions are often asked by women, and that such initiatives are started by women. Not always women who have studied economics, but always women who are concerned about the well-being of women, children and the planet. They are scattered all over the globe, both in the North and in the South. Some are more involved in practical survival struggles, others in the women's- and ecology movements, others doing more theoretical work. What unites them all is the fundamental critique of the dominant economic world - disorder and the endeavor to find new ways into the open (Ekins 1992, Mies/Shiva 1993). And they mostly begin with the same search for an alternative economics.

What I present in the following is what I gathered from the writings of such concerned individuals and groups. Some of the ideas are my own.

An alternative concept of economics will no longer isolate economic activity from other activities and spheres of life. Maybe one will not even call it economics anymore. The segregation of economics as an academic discipline and as practice from other disciplines like politics, psychology, pedagogics, sociology, and ethics occurred in the eighteenth century, in the time of mercantilist capitalism. At that time the concept economy, derived from oikonomia, the theory of household, was changed to mean only the production for the sake of making ever more money, to produce for the sake of capital accumulation, for profit (Binswanger 1991).

A new definition of economics will make it again part and parcel of all other spheres of life and areas of knowledge. The boundaries between the different disciplines will have lost their sense. A women-children-nature-life-centred economy will again be understood as part of a social whole of cultural, ecological and social interactions of people, with one another and with nature.

The aim of these interactions will not be the maximization of money-income through cost-benefits calculations, the economic calculus, but the production and preservation of life in a sustainable manner, life meaning not only human life but life of all the species. Particularly ethics will again be an integral part of "economic" activity, not as a simple coercive code of norms, but rather as a way of life, a changed life style, designed for permanence and respect for nature and others (Schumacher 1973). I call this a "New Moral Economy" (Mies 1992).

The second reintegration will be that of nature into economic activities and theories. Hans Binswanger has shown how nature, particularly in the form of land was in the 18th and 19th centuries gradually eliminated by classical political-economic theory from the factors of production. Whereas the physiocrats (Quesnay, Turgot) still considered nature and land as the only source of wealth, the theoreticians of modern capitalism, particularly A. Smith and Ricardo, and with them also Marx, saw labour and capital as the only source of wealth. "Nature" became a mere resource, a "free good", to be exploited at will. And women and colonies were then defined as "nature".

The reintegration of nature into economics as a subject, with an intrinsic value of its own, goes beyond the strategy of "internalizing the social and ecological costs" which were externalized by the economic calculus. This "internalization of costs" would only mean the further capitalization or monetarization of "nature" or some kind of green capitalism à !a Schmidtheiny (2).

To integrate unpaid work - both in and outside the household - again into the overall economic-social-cultural-activities requires above all a change in the sexual division of labour. This means men will have to do as much of this unpaid work as women. They will have to share the responsibility for the care for children, the household, the sick, the old, they will have to share the necessary unpaid ecological work, communally and privately. And political work will also be done by both women and men. Caring, nurturing, mothering, taking care of relationships will no longer be seen as "female" qualities, but as human qualities, expected from everyone.

7.c  New Concepts

From the above it is clear that already such reintegration of the fragmented parts of our reality - and we could add several more - would necessarily lead to a redefinition of key concepts and the introduction of new concepts.

7.c.1  A new Concept of Labour

It is clear that the inclusion of unpaid work into economic theory and practice - no longer as the invisible colonized underground of mainstream economics, but shared by men and valued - would transcend the existing concept of labour, which is synonymous with gainful employment. Mainstream economics does accept unpaid labour, in a kind of dual economy, but will not give up the priority of wage labour and money income as the prime source of livelihood. In an alternative vision, however, work for money-income will play a secondary role. Many of the things and services people will need, will be produced locally or regionally and can be exchanged directly or for little money.

More important is that we stress that work, labour is done for another purpose. The alienation and unhappiness intrinsically connected with wage labour can only be removed when people see work again as both a joy and a burden. And this can only happen when they see again what they produce, for whom they produce and that it makes sense that they produce at all (Mies 1991, King 1993). There are other aspects of such a new concept of work I pointed out earlier and shall not repeat here. But one aspect needs to be emphasized: that work again will be seen as a direct interaction with nature and other people. 1 think only this awareness, apart from the creativity such work generates, is capable to make work again a source of joy, or to use the phrases of the German journeymen of the early 19th century, to recreate and preserve the unity of work and enjoyment. Enjoyment is not something that will come after work only, but should be part of the work life (Zerwas 1988, Mies 1991).

7.c.2  A new Definition of Productive Labour

But we must insist on a different meaning of productivity. I shall reserve this concept for the life-producing and life-sustaining work of women, of tribals, of small peasants, of all those who still know that life comes out of our interaction with nature and with one another, not out of money. We must reject the semblance of life which is given to money as the creator of life by calling only money-producing and -augmenting labour "productive".

7.c.3  A new Definition of the Aim of Economics

With such new concepts of work and of productive work, the aim of economic activity will automatically change. First of all this will lead to discarding the aim of permanent economic growth. This is one of the main requirements for a truly sustainable economy and society. The aim of a new perspective has to be the direct satisfaction of human needs and not the permanent accumulation of money or profit and their concentration in ever fewer hands. This satisfaction of human needs, however, has to take place within a given, limited globe, within a limited human life, in consideration of the entropy layer, and with a view that all people on earth must be able to achieve the same quality of life. A truly sustainable economy and society which has discarded the growth mania will necessary aim at some kind of permanence (Schumacher 1973), or at some kind of steady-state situation (Daly 1989). This does not at all mean that there will be no life, no change, no interaction, no trade. But the moving force behind this change etc. will not be the selfish narrow and destructive accumulation drive but the search for better relations between humans, between humans and nature, between man and woman, more happiness.

7.c.4  A new Definition of "Good Life"

In the mainstream economy, "good life", "happiness" is defined as an ever growing amount of goods and services, bought in the global supermarket. However, as has been said time and again, this superabundance of goods, of services, of amenities has not produced this state of "good life" even in the affluent societies. People's real needs are not satisfied, the consumption of ever more commodities still leaves people empty but, at the same time, addicted to these goods. The goods produced for the sake of profit making are no longer meant to satisfy legitimate human needs but to stimulate new wants, new addictions, new preferences and choices. The concept of choice has meanwhile replaced the concept of freedom. One of the greatest perversions of this war against people via consumerism is the selling of violence, horror, brutality to children in the form of videos, game boys, war toys. We need another definition of happiness and good life which is not dependent on the purchase of commodities, but which will mean different relations to ourselves, others, nature. I call this the non-commodified satisfaction of our needs (Mies-Shiva 1993).