Fish are disappearing from the oceans, rainforests are disappearing, forest fires and storms are getting worse.

The rich are getting richer, the streams of refugees do not stop. No one is allowed to express their opinion aloud so as not to jeopardise arms exports. One war after another flares up.

Politicians do nothing about it, because rebuilding what has been destroyed by wars and climate catastrophes also serves economic growth.

People feel that something is wrong, but they don’t know what to do. Politicians only offer half-hearted excuses. New parties are emerging, but they too only make vague promises. There is no viable vision for the next 20 years.

In the face of adversity, society is drifting apart.

Ironically, we are perpetuating this development ourselves. Employees are always demanding higher wages and pensioners are always wanting more in their pensions. Even if growth were to stop, most people would see it as a sacrifice.

But this ongoing spiral of growth is leading to the Earth’s resources being ruthlessly exploited.

On average, the things we need to live only last 50 per cent of their lifespan. Then they are thrown away and bought new – but the faster products are disposed of and remanufactured, the higher both profits and emissions. The production and transport of these consumer goods are responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions.

Politicians and the media strictly refuse to mention the connection between economic overproduction and climate change, as well as the intensification of inequality. They dazzle us with green hydrogen, decarbonisation and biokerosene, even though the global share of alternative energy production is only around 20 per cent.

Although the share of renewable energies is growing, the majority of the energy supply will continue to be fossil-based in the future. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to rise every year.

It would be so easy. We would only have to prevent the goods produced from being thrown away before they reach the end of their useful life. Then the economy could shrink and the long-term climate goals would be achieved immediately.

However, this would result in millions of additional unemployed people, and the social unrest that would come with that is something we are keen to avoid.

The financial system also exploits this fear of mass unemployment to exert its influence on the economy. New money is created by generously granting loans. If the economy were to stop growing and the loans could not be repaid, the money supply would be cut off and we would have the next major financial and economic crisis.

The reason for today’s global problems is therefore this symbiosis of fear of unemployment and the greed of the financial system for money multiplication.

Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes assumed a long time ago that most of today’s work would be done by robots. They assumed that the distribution of social wealth would regulate itself, thus resolving the contradiction between gainful employment and unemployment by itself. But unfortunately this did not happen and none of our current politicians and philosophers are willing to address this hot potato.

This article presents a concept that, on the one hand, resolves the contradiction between gainful employment and unemployment and, on the other hand, decouples the financial system from the economy.

What happens to a company that is considered unprofitable? Let’s imagine that it is not unprofitable because of poor management, but because it has decided to produce in a truly sustainable way. It maximises the lifespan of its products, sources raw materials from fair trade and ensures that the products are repairable and fully recyclable at the end of their lifespan.

Despite these positive approaches, the company is failing in the competition – and the reason for this is profit alone.

Many critics of capitalism call for a socialisation of the economy. But does that solve the problem?

Not at all. Because only when the financial system can no longer exert pressure on the economy will the problem actually be resolved. No growth is necessary for this.

The financial system forces the economy to grow constantly. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that the global gross domestic product will increase by almost 30 per cent by 2029. This means that the global economy must do everything it can to achieve this goal.

Since consumption cannot be increased infinitely, further wars will inevitably occur. This is because the production and sale of weapons and the reconstruction of war-related destruction also contribute to the gross domestic product. The same applies to destruction caused by climate change-related events.

The public media are now discussing man-made climate change, but they are keeping quiet about the fact that about three-quarters of emissions come from industrial production and global supply chains.

Instead of addressing this dependency, they continue to call for ‘more growth’ – without truthfully saying what that means: growth comes from selling goods, and producing those goods requires energy, resources and transport.

By presenting growth as the solution, they obscure the fact that it is precisely the compulsion to grow that fuels climate change, the waste of resources and rising inequality.

Why don’t we focus all our energy on solving this central problem?

Quite simply, we don’t know how a world without a financial system would function.

There is another reason why growth continues. If the economy were to allow less to be produced, unemployment would inevitably skyrocket.

In principle, this would not be a problem because both Marx and Keynes assumed that much less work would be done in today’s economy due to the progressive automation of the economy.

But they also tacitly assumed that both the employed and the non-employed have an equal opportunity to lead a dignified life. That is, the non-employed are not at a disadvantage compared to the employed. This is the prerequisite for ensuring that work is also distributed fairly.

To ensure this, there are two possibilities:

A: You could give the unemployed exactly as much money as the employed, so that a life in dignity is ensured for all people. However, this contradicts our sense of justice, which is characterised by competition, and is therefore out of the question.

B: A better approach could be to give everyone unconditional access to the necessary resources for a dignified life. This would eliminate inequality because all other activities that have nothing to do with unemployment but are nevertheless unpaid, such as care work, housekeeping, child-rearing or civil society activities, for which at least as much time is spent daily, would be equated with today’s gainful employment.

Only in this way would social wealth be truly and fairly distributed. In addition, the difference between gainful employment and care work would be eliminated, thus removing one of the main causes of patriarchal structures.

This problem was already addressed in the New Testament (Matthew 20:1-16). In the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, it is reported that the vineyard owner does not pay the workers according to the hours they have worked, but gives them what they need for the day.

The concept presented here goes even further. People can really take what they need for a dignified life, and not just a sum of money allocated by others.

Under these conditions, the desire to work less overall would also be encouraged. The result would be that the lifespan of products would be maximised again and production would be further automated.

This would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conserve natural resources, since less would be produced and thus fewer raw materials would be used and less waste would be emitted.

The financial system only has access to the economy because the goods produced and the services have a financial value, an exchange value.

Adam Smith already argued that the value of a good is primarily determined by the labour required to produce it. Karl Marx expanded on this labour theory of value and examined the connection between goods, labour and value in his critique of political economy.

Here, we would like to focus only on the question of how the financial value, the exchange value of a good, comes about. The material itself is originally free of charge, since the raw materials of the earth are available to us free of charge. After all, we do not pay the earth for its treasures.

The value of a product arises from the fact that human labour goes into its production, which is remunerated with money. This financial value is transferred to the material, which is what ultimately gives the goods a price.

In order to receive all goods and services for free, people would actually only have to renounce their wages, i.e. give their labour away for free, so to speak, in return for the goods and services that would then be available for free.

The transfer of monetary value to the goods is made visible in this graphic.

If the goods are given no financial value, then they would of course be available for free, so no wages would be required at all.

This may seem absurd at first glance, but let’s think of the work we do at home: we don’t get paid to educate our children, care for relatives, clean or repair clothes – and yet we do it all as a matter of course.

We work unpaid for about half of each day. In addition, there are numerous voluntary activities in civil society. Many people even work all day without pay. So there is nothing inherently wrong with working without pay.

We would just have to extend this principle to production. The goods produced are completely indifferent as to whether they are produced with voluntary or paid labour.

To summarise, we can say that an economy based on unpaid work does not need money and finance because the raw materials are free and the work is done voluntarily.

But what about the global economy? Here, too, all raw materials are free because the earth does not demand money from us.

If we were to work voluntarily, i.e. without pay, all goods and services would have no monetary value in the global economy either, and thus the financial system would no longer have any point of attack.

Then the economy would really be free.

The main condition for a society in which there is no growth and the economy could shrink without any problems if necessary would thus be met.

We would only take what we really need to live, because there would no longer be any incentive to take more than we really need, as is the case today, when we are persuaded by advertising and discount offers to buy as much as possible to boost economic growth.

We would just have to switch the global economy to voluntary work on a specific day, and then all produced goods and services would no longer have any financial value and we would have banned the financial system from the economy.

This would make the financial system obsolete, it would dissolve. Since it does not create any material value, there will be no complications. Then there will be no more profit, because profit is nothing more than money.

In this way, our affluent society can be overcome, which on the one hand consumes more and more resources and produces more and more waste, and on the other hand excludes people from participating in it.

The motive that makes most people shy away from transforming capitalism into a sustainable economy, namely having to do without, would thus be eliminated.

It is a completely new kind of revolution, a revolution of giving. Instead of taking away the means of production from the owners and distributing them differently, we humans voluntarily give each other our work.

Many people who are actively involved in overcoming capitalism strive for a socialisation of property. But we have to remember that even social property is property. In real existing socialism, all means of production and raw materials were socialised. The author of this draft programme has lived in real existing socialism for 35 years and is very familiar with public property.

At that time, the inhibition threshold for taking a writing pad home from the office, i.e. making it private property, was not particularly high, since it already belonged to some extent to the employee. And that also happened on a large scale. After 1989, everyone was able to witness how their public property was converted back into private property in a very unspectacular way.

This privatisation would be much more difficult if there were no property at all, as it was before the beginning of ‘civilisation’, until about 10,000 years ago. The reason is that in such a system the formal legal infrastructure is lacking to clearly define property and transfer it privately. If land is not understood as property, it is more difficult to legally sell or transfer it to individuals because there are no fixed claims to it that could serve as a basis for privatisation.

When we think of property, we imagine fenced-in land or a privately owned factory. But we can also look at ‘property’ from a completely different perspective. We don’t have to see ownership as a subject, because it is above all an object.

Property is a tool for generating profit.

Even a self-used condominium generates profit by allowing you to spend the unpaid rent on something else. Even fenced-in land that is not cultivated at all generates profit by making the remaining area scarcer, thereby increasing the price of the land.

Property did not come into being so that someone could say, ‘This is my property’. The main reason for the emergence of property was to make other people work in the fenced-in fields to make a profit. Before that, there was no property at all. The land did not belong to everyone, but to no one.

Now, of course, the big question is how we could get back to exactly that. But that’s not that hard.

If there is no profit at all, as described in this draft programme, then the tool of property is as useless as a broken knife. You leave the handle lying in the corner for a while and then throw it in the yellow bin.

So the owner loses interest in his property and what’s more, he will be interested in getting rid of it because he still bears responsibility for it, even if he can no longer make a profit.

Since there is no more money, he cannot sell his property and so he will release it. This release means that it does not belong to everyone, but rather, it belongs to no one. This is the big difference to socialisation.

When there is no more profit, that is, after the overcoming of the financial system and money as described here, property will automatically become common property again, as it was the case in 95 percent of human history.

Exactly then, raw material deposits such as iron ore mines, oil wells or drinking water wells will also become common property. This ensures that all raw materials are available free of charge.

Therefore, the only solution to completely abolish ownership is to decouple the financial system from the economy and to consequently dissolve the financial system and money.

It is important that this transition to voluntary work takes place simultaneously worldwide, so that all raw materials, intermediate and finished products, as well as all services, are immediately available everywhere free of charge. Due to international trade, it is essential that this is a global simultaneous measure. Only in this way can it be guaranteed that goods worldwide can simultaneously lose their financial value and become freely available.

How could humanity be motivated to work voluntarily from one day on? Probably no one can really imagine that.

However, many people could imagine organising a worldwide general strike. Normally, a strike is a stoppage of work to bring the economy to its knees in order to enforce demands. Often, it is about higher wages, better working conditions or the threat of plant closures.

With the help of such a worldwide general strike, it would also be possible to free the global economy from the financial system. After all, the aim is to prevent the financial system from influencing the economy. Therefore, money must be banned from the economy, which means that goods must not be given any financial value.

The motivation for such a strike could be that all strikers demand that the unemployed must not be disadvantaged compared to those in employment, because this is a prerequisite for the work to be distributed equally.

Because the aim is not to punish the economy but to eliminate the influence of the financial system on the economy, we will not stop working during this strike, but everyone will start working voluntarily, without pay. This will make the goods free and immediately after this changeover we can take what we need unconditionally, without paying anything for it. As a result, we will no longer need wages at all after this changeover.

What will the transition look like immediately after the changeover? For the time being, work must continue exactly as it did the day before, so as not to disrupt existing supply chains. This is not a problem because the economy is based on supply and labour contracts, which continue to apply. Only the payments are of course no longer necessary. The goods produced do not care whether they are produced by paid or voluntary work.

So we don’t have to change anything about the economy at all. The changes will come all by themselves when there is no more profit. This will disappear together with the financial system.

Immediately after the changeover, we will live in a completely different society. Because we give each other gifts in this society, we will only deal with each other in a spirit of solidarity. This society will function completely differently than our present one, in which greed and scarcity determine life.

The economy can therefore shrink as needed after the conversion, i.e. the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources will stop and people will suddenly have a lot more time.

Of course, the supply of goods for everyday needs to everyone will continue, because these industries will continue to operate as normal and they will be supported by people who previously worked in industries that are no longer needed, such as in the financial system.

A few years ago, during the first Covid-19 lockdown, we already had a similar situation. The assembly lines in the car factories were at a standstill but the supply of the population was never at risk. At that time there was a lot of fear about the future but after the conversion all people are automatically provided for forever.

But will the entrepreneurs, the ‘capitalists’, go along with this, or will they still demand payment for their goods? This concern is unfounded, because after the conversion, entrepreneurs will also receive everything for free. It would be a completely unnecessary expense for them to collect the money that is no longer needed. They will certainly be happy to dispense with all financial accounting.

Of course, we could even threaten to destroy the economy if the entrepreneurs do not participate. However, we can assume that they will participate because everyone will be familiar with this programme and it describes plausibly and comprehensibly how there will no longer be any disadvantaged people and how general equal opportunities are ensured.

There are already many examples of structures based on voluntary work. Many grassroots initiatives or protest camps are provided for completely independently of financial influences in this way. These supply structures are tried and tested and stable.

A good example of how unpaid work works are the soup kitchens, the ‘Kitchens for All’ or KÜFA’s, which often serve to provide for the homeless and those in need. The raw materials for these kitchens come free of charge from supermarket containers, volunteer helpers prepare the food from them and take care of all the kitchen work, and the food can then be given away for free. Of course, the food has already had a life cycle, but here it is only about the free availability for the KÜFA and the free distribution of the food that is guaranteed as a result.

This involves a complete production process with raw material extraction, production and distribution and there are no finances at all.

Under the conditions of the KÜFA, which functions completely without money, the following conditions are given:

• We only take what we really need. There is no feeling of doing without. If I am not very hungry, I just take less, without comparing with others.
• No one is persuaded to take more than they need.
• No one is excluded: everyone gets what they need to be satisfied, with no restrictions.

Anyone who has ever been involved in a food bank can confirm that this voluntary activity generates far more enthusiasm than paid work. Such a positive atmosphere can also be found in many other voluntary activities.

This experience is consistent with the findings of sociologists like Dan Ariely, who show that volunteering often leads not only to equally good results, but even to better results than paid work. This voluntary work demonstrates a principle that could also have a greater social significance: the idea of an economy and society based on voluntary cooperation rather than on competition and market forces.

If everything is given away, then there is no need for advertising or any attempt to persuade people to take more than they need. We will therefore take less than before and the economy will shrink within a few days. But that’s not a problem because everyone is automatically provided for. There is no longer a horror like ‘unemployment’.

In the economic sectors where less is produced, people simply stay at home longer or they help where there is still a lot to do. This will work because we humans are so inclined that we want to return the favour when we receive something as a gift, and we receive everything as a gift. The many employees in the financial system will also help out. This means that we can switch to a two- or three-day working week within a few weeks.

Goods will also be manufactured again in such a way that they last as long as possible without breaking immediately after the warranty has expired. Because labour costs nothing, it doesn’t matter how long it takes to repair or completely recycle defective items. This will ease the overall raw materials situation and the main argument of today’s politicians and economists, that the market is needed to make increasingly scarce raw materials more expensive, will become obsolete.

For the sake of completeness, it should also be mentioned that it is not a problem if no more taxes are collected, since the people who work in administration, education or culture are, of course, also unconditionally provided for.

When work is voluntary, its meaning will change completely – it will become an expression of creativity and a contribution to the community. And when no one is forced to work anymore, the value of work will be appreciated quite differently. Motivation will then come from the joy of the activity itself.

With the decoupling of the financial system from the economy, the alienation of labour will finally be overcome. Everyone will then have the opportunity to find a job that matches their talents, abilities and inclinations, i.e. a job that is fun and that we do not feel compelled to do. No one will be forced to work just to earn money to survive.

Karl Marx was not the first to deal extensively with the alienation of labour. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ already advised people to increase their talent and not to constrain it (Matthew 25:14-30). This means that the compulsion to work for pay presents us with precisely this problem. If, on the other hand, we are able to work voluntarily, i.e. without compulsion, then we will also be able to develop our talents.

We will then really do what we want to do. There are many people who love to bake. I am sure that they will get up at four o’clock once a week to offer delicious rolls or croissants.

In this way, most jobs will surely be filled over time and if there are jobs that nobody wants to do and for which there are no robots, then we will divide these jobs up in a spirit of solidarity.

People are not only driven by external incentives. Solidarity, responsibility and community, as well as intrinsic motivation, are just as strong and perhaps even stronger driving forces as selfishness. The distribution of this work would then be based on principles of solidarity, no longer on the compulsion to make money.

In addition, many unpleasant jobs could also be taken over by robots. Today, unfortunately, people are often cheaper than machines for such activities. Only when the financial system has been overcome will the human being be at the centre of all decisions.

Imagine that most car factories could then be converted to the production of robots!

Unfortunately, especially in the Global South, many people are still being exploited so that we in the Global North can maintain our consumerist lifestyles. Just think of the extraction of raw materials for electric cars, toy production or shrimp peeling. It would certainly not be a problem if these people simply stopped working until better solutions are found.

However, we can assume that this change will be so exciting that we would gladly do without this luxury for a while until better solutions are found.

In many conversations, you can feel this uncertainty about what would happen if we had this revolution of giving behind us and were living in capitalism freed from the financial system, in the Benharmonia. Will everyone take two Lamborghinis? Won’t everyone want to bathe in champagne? Who would still go to work then? Would there still be any progress at all? Who would do the work that no one wants to do? Would the baker still get up at four in the morning?

Many people are convinced that this principle would never work because we humans are inherently bad. The church has been telling us this for almost 2000 years to secure a monopoly on forgiving people’s sins. But are we really bad 24/7?

One phenomenon that is rarely considered today, but is actually quite central, is the daily change in people’s behaviour when transitioning between work and leisure.

In the morning, when we start work, we primarily work for money. Our behaviour is determined by market forces: we compete, act on markets and follow the principles of efficiency and profit maximisation. In this phase of the day, we are in competition with others, and our actions are primarily purpose-oriented.

In the evening, however, when we return home, we enter the realm of unpaid reproductive work, which is largely done voluntarily. Here, we behave quite differently: we act cooperatively, in solidarity, and help each other. This voluntary aspect is the decisive factor that makes cooperation and solidarity possible. We educate our children, care for relatives and get involved in our social environment – not for financial reasons, but out of personal motivation and social responsibility.

This daily change from market-oriented behaviour in gainful employment to voluntary, solidary reproductive work remains completely unnoticed today, although it has a profound impact on the social fabric and our human relationships – and shows the potential for the new, cooperative form of our society.

Just as we take this change twice a day for granted today, without having to adjust each time, we will live in a cooperative and solidary society in the Benharmonia all day long. We will then give each other gifts and there will be no reason to be purposeful and competitive.

Even entrepreneurs and billionaires have a private life, which they can continue as usual. The often high expenses for representation, which are of course no longer necessary in a non-profit-oriented society, would of course no longer apply.

John Maynard Keynes describes in his essay ‘The Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren’ the present time in which we are living. Technology and automation have advanced to such an extent that human labour could be greatly reduced. Many people imagined such a life under the ‘year 2000’.

However, the reality is quite different. Science and technology would indeed allow for extensive automation, but the trade unions are fighting to preserve every job. The social wealth does not benefit all people, but is absorbed by a small group of people.

History has taken a wrong turn. Why? Is it because the symbiosis of economy and finance that rules us has no human feelings?All the people who work there are employed by one of these legal institutions and their job is to maximise the profit of their ‘employer’.

Since this system has no human feelings, it will not be able to respect our sensitivities.

Benharmony, the revolution of giving, is more than a utopia – it is a necessary step towards a future in which solidarity, responsibility and cooperation form the foundation of our society. It is time to actively shape this change instead of clinging to the existing structures.

Most people are currently ignoring the possibility of changing course. The reason for this is that we are afraid of no longer being able to force services with money.

We can confidently have a little more self-confidence in taking our future into our own hands. We can no longer leave it to an unpredictable system.

We are able to repair the hole in the ozone layer, we plan settlements on Mars, and at the same time we know what is happening on the other side of the earth. Our reason is more than ‘eat or be eaten’.

The path may seem challenging, but the possibilities are limitless. By placing the principles of voluntariness and giving at the centre of our economic and social interactions, we can create a world in which every person can live in freedom and dignity.