John McMurtry

Dr John McMurtry, FRSC is a moral philosopher and ethicist who works at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. He is a firm anticapitalist and advocate of the anti-globalization movement. He was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in June 2001.

Biography

John McMurtry received his doctorate in 1975 from University College, London. Prior to doctoral studies, he was "a professional football player, print and television journalist, academic English teacher and world-traveller" and a student of Eastern philosophy. In his own words, he

"came to philosophy as a last resort, because as someone naturally disposed to question unexamined assumptions and conventional beliefs, I could find no other profession which permitted this vocation at the appropriate level of research."

He calls 'value theory' "my unifying field of research", but has also published and taught in social and political philosophy, Asian/Indian and Chinese philosophy, philosophy of economics, philosophy of education, philosophy and literature, philosophy of history, post-Kantian continental philosophy, the logic of natural language, and, recently, philosophy of the environment.

He is also subscribes to the Peace Movement and various international law study bodies. He served as Chair of Jurists, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Tribunal at the Alternative World Summit in Toronto, 1989. His professional work has been published in over 150 books and journals, including Inquiry, the Monist, the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Praxis International, the Encyclopedia of Ethics, Atlantic Monthly, Guardian Weekly, and the Norton Anthology of Prose.

Political, philosophical, and economic views

His recent research has focused on the underlying value structure of economic theory, its consequences for global civil and environmental life, and the life ground and civil commons. McMurtry considers the global free market "inefficient and life-destructive" in proportion to how unregulated it is, and believes systems should take into account "life-capital."

In Unequal Freedoms: The Global Markets As An Ethical System, 1998, he lays out strong arguments for moral purchasing and ethical investing. Any purchasing or investing decision makes ethical and moral choices anyway, by default, he argues, and a market system must by definition reflect the morality of the society that conducts commerce via that system.

Globalization, for example, is driven by what he calls "an unexamined and absolutist value system whose principles and unseen meaning it lays bare." He criticizes capitalist scientific technology, transnational trade apparatuses, NATO wars, and an expanding prison regime as symptoms of a "new totalitarianism cumulatively occupying the world and propelling civil and ecological breakdowns."

Value Wars: The Global Market Versus the Life Economy, 2002, which outlines this analysis, also explains "the shared life-grounds, public sectors and cross-cultural movement of the "'new resistance'", and systematically defines the moral compass and constitutional standards of a global life economy alternative."

A consistent theme is to argue strongly against any definition of the Commons that excludes property controlled by the Nation-State and refers only to atmosphere, oceans, genes and other "unowned" elements of the environment. To exclude terrestrial ecoregions, he argues, is to exclude biodiversity, watershed, river, and other resources that are under the sole purview of states to protect. This is in contrast to definitions that tend to refer to the commons only in terms of what is outside the control and jurisdiction of the nation-state. This is a major point of tension between apolitical Greens and those engaged in left-wing politics to control state power - one not wholly resolved by green politics which has so far failed to fully control any nation state.

McMurtry advocates a monetary policy that would represent what he sees as the true value system of the society, opposes a North American currency union, and has been a long standing member of the Canadian Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform, which often publishes and distributes his work.

McMurtry believes that the September 11 attacks were the fault of the US government, with the official explanation a "big lie." He compares the event to the Reichstag fire and believes that both World War II and the "9/11 Wars" were organized by multinational corporations.

Notable works

• Value Wars: The Global Market Versus the Life Economy (London and Sterling Va: Pluto Press, 2002), 277 pages. ISBN 0-7453-1890-8.
• The Cancer Stage of Capitalism. London, Pluto Books, 1999
• Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market As An Ethical System, Toronto: Garamond & Westport, Conn., 1998.
• Understanding War: A Philosophical Inquiry. Toronto: Science for Peace & Samuel Stevens, 1989.
• The Structure of Marx's World-View. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
• The Dimensions Of English. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.
• Monogamy: A Critique The Monist 67(4): 588-600, 1972.
• Sex, Love and Friendship In Soble, Alan & Barbara Krishner, eds, Sex, Love and Friendship Value Inquiry Book Series, Takoma: Rodopi, 1995.
• Education and the Market Model Journal of the Philosophy of Education 25(2): 209-218, 1991.
• How Competition Goes Wrong. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 8(2): 200-210, 1991.
• Rethinking the Military Paradigm. Inquiry (Europe) 34(4): 415-432, 1991.
• The Unspeakable: Understanding the System of Fallacy of the Media. Informal Logic 10(3): 133-150, 1988.
• Fascism and Neo-Conservatism: Is There a Difference? Praxis International 4(1): 86-102, 1983.
• Philosophical Method and Rise of Social Philosophy. Eidos, 11(2): 139-176, 1981.
• The Case for Children's Liberation. Interchange 10(3): 387-412, 1979-80.
• How to Tell the Left From the Right. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 9(3): 387-412, 1979.

External links

• Speech on the future of the one-world government by tyranny
• John McMurtry speaks on the "ruling group mind" and the suppression of truth
• The Human Vocation: An Autobiography of Higher Education