Surviving capitalism
Reasons why capitalism is unacceptable for social life
- markets are becoming wider and deeper
- more things are being sold and to ever more people
Commodification
- prices replace values
- everything is for sale
Economists can show that this is the most efficient way
- all resources end up where they are most productive
But these are also our lives
- enormously destructive impact
- Schumpeter: creative destruction
- Marx: destroys all time-honored structures
Marx, The Communist Manifesto
- “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. … All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind”
- ”The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere”
- ”The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. … All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries… In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes”
- ”Modern bourgeois society … is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. … In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. … Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; … because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce”
For example:
- we are forced to move
- breakup of social ties
- our value as human beings are the values we fetch in the market
Conclusion: we need to protect ourselves from the market
- the market needs to be contained
Protective strategies
- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation
Home
The 19th century middle-class home
- protective sphere of love, ruled by women
- contrast with the rule of market forces outside
- prepare the young for their encounter with the market
- take refuge there is time are rough
Associations
- trade unions — fight for better working conditions, but also provide a social life
- corporations can provide a social life too
- religion, churches
- this is why Americans still are so Christian — their capitalism is so harsh, and they have little other protection
The state
- the nation — unite people in a community
- we talked about this last week — industrial revolution and nationalism go together
But also
- provide legislation
- insurance schemes
- provision of services
- all kinds of other support
This is the welfare state
Spheres of justice
Michael Walzer:
- different parts of society are organized in different way
- different rules of behavior — different descriptions of success
- different kind of morality — conceptions of justice
The market is one of these spheres
- market rationality
- individual self-interest
- utility-maximization
But it should be contained
- dangerous if the logic of the market influences other spheres
- or if everything is reduced to market transactions
Example:
- educational sphere
- family sphere
- religious sphere
The state plays a role in keeping them separate
- legislation etc
- but so does civil society
- and the respective institutions themselves — self-protection
Laissez-faire states:
- the market as big as possible
European states:
- take somethings off the market
But, note, other spheres are still fully operative
- you are making the scope of the market smaller
- but it still operates according to its own principles
“The well-ordered police state” (Raeff)
- these are the monarchies we already have talked about
Early modern Europe
- state involvement in the economy
- organizing everything
Polizeiwissenschaft — Cameralism
- early modern political scientists
“Science of policing”
Foucault: “pastoral power”
- pastor as looking after his flock
- caring for them but also controlling them
Cameralism or Polizeiwissenschaft
- central European tradition
the state taking charge of society
- regulation of economic and social activities
administrative ethos — combines two functions:
- care for the well-being of the people
- supervise the people under its jurisdiction
chief administrative task:
- reduce the insecurity of people’s lives — social planning
- society rational, well-organized and harmonious
- it will replace the multitude of incoherent preferences with one single well-intentioned and enlightened will
regulation of religious matters
- to assure peace and harmony within the realm
regulation of family matters
- infidelity – illegitimate children — domestic servants – family property
lifestyle of subjects
- consumption, clothes, prevent waste & moral dangers
- regulation of the consumption of coffee
morality and hygiene
- regulation of beggars and paupers – workhouses
- fight against disease – small pox –
- improve sanitation and public health – dispose of waste –
- regulation of chimneys – training of midwives
regulation of economic activity
- guild privileges – monopolies & patents – “enriching the state”
The welfare state
- telling people what’s best for them
- “the nanny state”
But the state often is right
- it knows what’s in your “true interests”
- how much you should eat and not eat
- how often you should exercise
Devastating conclusion:
- you can only be against the state by being wrong
- about yourself above all
Paternalism
- in principle we must accept the idea
- in relation to children
- or other people who cannot take care of themselves
- drug addicts — domestic violence victims
The idea of “the social”
The industrial revolution
- enormous transformation of society
- new problems
- social changes
- poverty
- dislocation
“The social”
- the social problem
- social democracy
- social science
- social movements
Cf. The republican tradition
- people are on their own
- in a free society the state is only concerned with justice and military defense
Hannah Arendt on the Greek ideals:
- providing for yourself is something you do at home
- only free individuals can make political decisions
- “the social” as a perversion of the political sphere — privatization
English Poor Laws, 1832
Solve “the social problem” by means of the market
- there is a wage for which they will work if they only are desperate enough
- the market can be used to discipline people
But transformations of the economy
- not a matter of individual ethics — laziness, inventiveness, etc
- you cannot “try harder” — there simply are no jobs
Labor movement and socialist parties
- trade unions as a way to fight for better conditions and higher wages
- making political demands — universal right to vote
- social and political upheaval
- “revolution!”
German reforms
Under Bismarck
- afraid of the new power of the working class
- Socialist and Communist parties
- the traditional elite must protect their positions
A religious dimension
- care for those who have fallen on hard times
- help for the poor
The Great Depression
- the economy collapses
- something like a third of the workforce have no jobs
- productive resources are not utilized
At the same time:
- Soviet Union, run by workers, seems very successful
Social Democratic parties come to power
- they did not create the welfare state, but they developed it
- more responsive to demands from labor movements etc
The World Wars
Common sacrifices
- changes many things — relations between the sexes
- care for all members of the community
- relations to colonies
National Health Service in Britain
- free, universal, healthcare
- similar programs in other countries
Development of rights
- civil rights
- political rights
- social rights
And the social rights include the preconditions for a certain kinds of status
Cf. John Rawls
- the veil of ignorance, etc
the libertarian critique:
- the state should not get involved
- people should be allowed to chose themselves
The Folkhem
Swedish Social Democrats
we should take care of each other just as we do in a family
- social solidarity
- more equality
the implicit paternalism of the model
anti-feminist?
nationalist reinterpretation
We only care about people like us
- foreigners should not come here and enjoy our benefits
- defend the welfare state against refugees, etc
- cf. Brexit and the NHS
Features of the Nordic welfare state
Legislation
Labor conditions
Vacation — 6 weeks paid
other right — support trade unions
staying at home with sick child
Social insurance
sickness
unemployment
accidents etc
old age pensions
Universalism
everyone is included
you get 85% of your salary if you are sick
State provision of services
child-care, basic education, universities
all kinds of health-care
- small fee, but not very much
free medicine
home-help for old people
and it is all provided by the state
- it used to be illegal with private alternatives
- lock in the demanding middle-class
- keep up the standard
recently:
Connection to the labor market
- retrain and educated
- help move and find jobs
- “miljonprogrammet”
- support trade unions
Challenges
tax burden
it shouldn’t survive
curious thing:
- the higher taxes, the happier people are to pay them
- the lower taxes, the more unhappy
welfare provisions go to everybody
- not just to the poor
- it is an insurance scheme
migration
- more pressure on the system
globalization
transformation of work
- everything is focused on work — maybe not so much in the future
- what happens if work disappears?