Jean Hardy is a writer, teacher and editor, actively working towards social change. She writes for us about a time of considerable disenchantment with the political formula of Conservative – Liberal – Labour – Communist, and a need for a re-framed view of the issues faced by the world in the early 21st century.

Modern politics is dominated by money, business and capitalism. Since the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement between America and the United Kingdom, and the subsequent setting up of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, created to assist nations to recover from the second World War, international control has been heavily controlled by business and capital. The United Nations is given of course a wider brief but often carries a secondary role in world politics

Capitalism in Europe had its roots in seventeenth century England when for the first time usury, the lending of money for interest, was legalised by a series of Acts at the end of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth. As Tawney writes, this marks the separation of ethical from economic interests in public affairs. In this same period, modern science was developing;  the subsequent massive and varied use of the earth and her creatures by humans, was seen as legitimate and indeed necessary.

It is increasingly obvious today that this old narrow definition of politics is  not only limiting for people, but also most dangerous for the earth. It was recently announced that half the species of the earth are becoming extinct. The massive and dangerous migration of people from poorer and more troubled countries on the earth to richer lands indicates that the extraordinary increase in the human population over the last two hundred years is outstripping the resources available.

The first Part of ‘A Wiser Politics’ traces the  growth of the politics we have now from the original writers over the last four hundred years – Hobbes, Locke, Machiavelli, Burke, Mill, Marx and others.  But in this history and their considerations, many aspects of the human condition have been omitted, and these are the subject of the second Part of the book.

There were few women political writers and the most powerful voices are the masculine ones. The wisdom of indigenous peoples who have lived relatively peacefully on the planet for many thousands of years, is ignored. Political writers usually omit the integrity of the earth and the sense that it is a powerful, spiritual and mysterious world we live in: it is assumed that humans – who have lived here for such a short period – can use it all for their own benefit.   Children are mistreated all over the world – more and more evidence is emerging daily: it is my view that the mistreatment of children is the cause of most war.

The third section is an attempt to look at the potential of modern politics. Could we develop an alternative politics that could take all that is missing into account, and to see that ‘politics’, the use of power, could be far more than capitalism, business, and the present diminished view of the person? I make some suggestions about what a more comprehensive politics could offer us at the present time, giving particular attention to some of the elements that are not defined as ‘political’ now – but which could, if adopted, enable us to live very differently here.

‘A Wiser Politics’ – By Jean Hardy is out now published by O-Books.