Afterword

This book is the result of years of toiling between abstract truth and daily reality. My common sense told me that interest on money is an illusory mutual agreement which has created a world unto itself and which ultimately has turned against society and democracy. It has taken me years and years to integrate this abstract truth in daily political and economic reality. I alternated periods of pure capitalism with moderate communism, knowing that each contained a germ of truth. If I felt dispirited, I was the anarchist and atheist who no longer believed in anything.
It has taken years of fighting to integrate the concepts of solidarity, freedom and individual responsibility bit by bit within and without myself. This process is still ongoing. I would like to thank everyone whose ideas and opinions have challenged and inspired me.

One of the most important breakthroughs in my thinking process came from the film A Beautiful Mind about the mathematician and Nobel Prize winner for economics (1994) John Nash. In the late 1940s, his search for the governing dynamics ultimately resulted in a mathematical theory, which was named the Nash equilibrium. I had been rather taken with the philosophy of Adam Smith, but realised that something in his theory did not make sense. In A Beautiful Mind I saw just what I needed to understand what the flaw was in Smith’s philosophy. Smith assumed that both pursuing one’s enlightened self-interest and competition ultimately served the general good. In the film about John Nash’s life it was made clear that one has to pursue one’s own self-interest and the general good in relation to others (= society). The theory of Adam Smith ensures that sooner or later, as a consequence of stitches dropped in the pursuit of our own self-interests (in monetary terms, profit), we push reality into the future. The Nash equilibrium demonstrates that we in the here and now must find agreement with each other among our differing self-interests. In the here and now, the general good of society and our self-interests can merge. The only requirements for this are: open communication with each other, integrated business leadership and the courage to take new paths.
With this political and economic illusion I have attempted to make visible Adam Smith’s two unseen hands.