Civil Macroeconomics

The dominant macroeconomic framework rests mainly on two intertwined assumptions: (i) the reduction of macroeconomic dynamics to the optimizing behavior of a representative agent; and (ii) the substantial neutrality of monetary and fiscal policies, conceived essentially as tools aimed at stabilizing prices, output gap, and public finances indexes without adequate consideration for their significant effects on the ethical, relational, structural, and institutional features of the economic systems. We contend that this framework is inherently unable to account for the complex relational interactions among heterogeneous economic agents and feebacks between key quantitative macroeconomic phenomena, on the one side, and emerging factors such as cooperation, social trust, institutional legitimacy, resilience to systemic shocks, and long-term sustainable wellbeing, on the other. We advance a new foundation for macroeconomics grounded in the recognition of the biodiverse and relational nature of economic reality. Individuals, as persons with their own uniqueness, have also other-regarding preferences and are capable of "relational intelligence". Firms and intermediate institutions operate with plural objectives (overall impact and not just profits); and macroeconomic outcomes emerge from complex interaction processes between heterogeneous agents with a key role for economic policy decisions and the formation of prevailing expectations in condition of systemic uncertainty. On this basis, we argue that macroeconomic policies cannot be neutral. Monetary and government authorities inevitably take sides by either reinforcing extractive and short-term equilibria or actively promoting generativity, participation, subsidiarity, relational goods, and life flourishing. We therefore propose a civil macroeconomic framework in which central banking, government policy (including, in addition to fiscal policy, also industrial and innovation policies and regulation decisions), public debt management and trade and exchange rate policies are explicitly purpose-driven, oriented toward the structural expansion of capabilities and the improvement of sustainable and inclusive wellbeing rather than the sole stabilization of conventional aggregates. Illustrative policy implications include socially and environmentally targeted monetary interventions, generativity-oriented fiscal incentives and regulations, and debt strategies preserving market trust through policy makers' cooperation and coordination aligned with intergenerational justice and ecological and social sustainability. In the international domain, the framework supports open trade and exchange-rate regimes only insofar as they are institutionally designed to prevent races to the bottom in labour, health, and environmental standards, combining openness with minimum global floors, supply-chain responsibility, and macroeconomic coordination to preserve trust, legitimacy, and long-term wellbeing. By reframing macroeconomics as a science of emergent collective dynamics rather than a mere optimization of an individual choice, the paper contributes to ongoing debates on the foundations of macroeconomic theory and offers a normative and analytical basis for a civil-oriented redesign of macroeconomic policy.