Sociology, Capitalism, Critique

by Hartmut Rosa, Stephan Lessenich, Klaus Dörre

Three German sociologists each submit their own critique of capitalism in three opening essays, then each makes a robust attack on the other two essays, while defending their own.   The format turns out to be effective in making the  material come alive: making the various insights seem relevant and the differences of opinion seem important.   Unusually, for all I know uniquely, this is a book by no less than three German sociologists that can be read by civilians without incurring brain melt.  What emerges is a sobering reflection on the hostile conditions in which people are presently attempting to construct lives for themselves and their families.

They recognise (without accepting) the widespread conviction that capitalism in some form may always be necessary. “James Fulcher takes an unambiguous stance on this question: ‘The search for an alternative to capitalism is fruitless … Those who wish to reform the world should focus on the potential for change within capitalism’.  [P87]   “Another line of argument could be that which Marx deployed against his anarchist critics: capitalism, just as the capitalist state, cannot be ‘abolished.”  [P302]

More to the point, capitalism is all pervasive:  for this reason, if no other, merely in order to do their job at all, it is necessary for sociologists to provide a meaningful account of capitalism.    Lessenich writes:  “Should sociology take this task seriously, it will have to recognise and come to terms with the fact that the capitalist form of social order found in contemporary societies (not only) of the West represents the basic determining factor forming, shaping, and transforming the conditions under which subjects individually and collectively pursue their own life plans.”   [P141]

If Capitalism is indeed pervasive, they do not accept the resulting illusion that capitalism is inevitable or can be regarded as an impersonal force of nature, beyond the reach of  informed policy making, since there are more than a few quite different forms of capitalism to be considered.  In one sentence, Rosa lists “Manchester Capitalism and social market economy; early capitalism; Fordism and flexible post-Fordism; as well as Anglo-Saxon, Rhenish and Southeast Asian Capitalism” [p113] and his list does not even include Dorre’s main preoccupation, which is financial capitalism.   The differences are quite systematic,  differing not just historically but also between different countries in the same time periods (South Korea, Japan, Germany, Norway, Britain, the USA are all, after all, capitalist economies: “Just as all cats are grey by night, so is capitalism always capitalism.” P218). These differences demand an explanation, which can only be found by examining the political processes by which those various conditions have been established, organised and enforced,   Behind the so called “hidden hand” of the market, they find the perfectly visible hand of the  state.

Lessenich in particular describes how capitalism and the welfare state are entirely interdependent and complementary.   Recent transformations in the organisation of the market have been associated with corresponding changes to all aspects of the welfare state. The point is that it is not sufficient for society to be arranged in a particular way, it is also necessary for people to be brought to believe that this is how things ought to be, even if the laws of nature have to be rewritten for that purpose.  He writes, for example: “The fact that the Federal Republic of (West) Germany in a specific world-economic and geopolitical constellation still managed – thanks to an expanding welfare state that was not only active in terms of social policy in the strict sense but also in terms of economic, fiscal, infrastructural and subsidies-related policies – to become one of the world’s leading industrial nations is obscured by a negative retrospective myth-making designed to politically discredit the antiquated welfare-state agenda of political regulation, social protection and economic redistribution (however limited the latter may be). The relevant institutional mechanism is well-known to sociology: the ‘old’ is portrayed to be obviously unsustainable, indeed even mischievous and reprehensible, so as to then let the ‘new’(a different welfare state, an altered regime of state activity) appear all the more plausible and inevitable; to turn it into ‘the conclusion of a long chain of imperative “necessities”’.  As we know, such a view of the old versus the new – if repeated and heard often enough – will begin to seem perfectly plausible; positive and negative readings are gradually perceived as self-evident, indeed as ‘true’.”   [P184]

Dorre deals with the same argument in his own way. writing that “capitalism was never, not even in its beginnings, a self-regulating market economy; rather, the state served as a crucial midwife of the new mode of production. It ensured that market formation occurred under the conditions of structural power asymmetries. ... Market formation during that centuries-long period of primitive accumulation was, then, a process to a large extent politically motivated and marked by power asymmetries. Marx held the view, however, that political coercion, including open violence in its most extensive manifestation, would remain a mere episode in the early history of capitalism. Over the course of history, a class of workers that ‘by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature’ would emerge. Violence outside the economic realm would only be deployed in exceptional cases, but usually, the workers could be left to the ‘natural laws of production’. ‘The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist’.” [P41]

Yet what can be decided politically can be changed politically.  As Dorre writes, wittily enough: “no historical social formation has a monopoly on eternity. After all, the example of state-bureaucratic socialism has shown rather clearly how quickly scientifically veiled guarantees can be embarrassed by reality.” [P90]  

Rosa sums up his view of the debate as follows:  “The authors of this volume unanimously agree on three points: firstly, social critique represents both a vital impulse and an indispensable component of sociology; secondly, such a social critique requires a careful diagnosis of the times; and thirdly, neither in modernity nor in the present day can such a diagnosis of the times do without an analysis of capitalism.”  [P240]  “...the argument against the contemporary capitalist social formation then would read: firstly , the formation is not sustainable over the long term, and secondly , the formation is unjust. I see nothing stopping us from adding to these two points that, thirdly , it systematically makes us unhappy.”  [P241]

One contribution Rosa makes to the debate is a discussion of the nature of sociology, which is worth describing here.    He writes: “Whether we choose to believe it or not, the ultimate object of sociology, though rarely articulated (at least not consciously), is the question of the good life , or more precisely: the analysis of the social conditions under which a successful life is possible.”  [P103]   “In my view, sociology is born out of the diffuse but probably universal basic human perception that ‘something is wrong here’.” [P104]   “What the analyses of the sociological classics, from Marx to Durkheim and from Weber to Simmel or Tönnies, have in common is that they all proceed from the observation of massive changes in the conditions of life – leading to the classical juxtaposition of ‘archaic’ versus ‘modern’ societies described by all the founding fathers of sociology – and that they all exhibit great concern for the consequences these changes may have for the human condition. These include, for example, alienation and demystification in Marx and Weber; anomie, loss of a sense of community, and the disappearance of individuality in Durkheim, Simmel and Tönnies. Underlying this socio-critical dimension of the sociological classics we find always the fear of both an almost ‘invisible’ loss of freedom which lurks behind modernity’s manifest liberalism – or rather, under its ‘steely shell’ – as well as a loss of meaning (as the downside of the possibility for individual self-determination).”  [Pp 105, 106]

The problem: Islam or Neoliberalism?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/16/future-egypt-revolution-tahrir-square-jack-shenker

This post is really a cut and past job, much more that just "quotation", and I do not claim credit for the content but it does serve a purpose for me.  The fact is that I will want to refer back to this quite a lot in the future and I do not want to lose sight of it. And experience tells me that few people actually check out internet links.

This artical includes enough material to examine the extent to which Egypt's problems arise from the imposition of USA, European and IMF directed neoliberal policies in an utterly undemocratic manner, and its recent revolution was not an outburst of Islamist fever, but a demand for economic protection and democratic accountability.  Contrary to the hysterical squeals of American and other Western media, the upheavals of the region are not a threat to western safety, but rather a threat to western imperialism and neocolonial practices, sucking the economic and political life out of the region, funding and protecting an arrogant elite that enjoy corrupt priviliges in exchange for protecting western corporate and financial interests, all at the expense of the people in a vast region filled with natural and human assets, from which a decent life could be achieved, but only when the western tyranny is terminated.

I find it hard to stomach the deep awareness that the chaos and violence in this region is being systematically provoked by the most cynical people on our planet, who get much of their power not just from money and wealth as such, though that is real, but from the machinery of government, for which they require our votes.  I observe so many internet forums in which it is clear that a great many people accept without question the racist, islamaphobic, "orientalist" cover stories under which the west is using OUR resources to reduce other countries to a social and environmental wilderness. Others fall prey to the cynical belief (carefully nurtured) that they cannot change government and that it is preferable to leave major decisions to secretive, unaccountable and deeply untrustworthy corporations.  The so called "hidden hand" of the market is far more often the "unhidden hand" of economic, military and political coercion.

Yet we have the power to use those same governmental resources to change things and create a far better world.  I do not know if the people of Egypt will manage to exercise their latent power, as intimated in this excellent article, but I would like to see the people in western democracies, living in much better conditions, with much greater resources and far greater freedoms,  getting their heads out of their fundaments and using their political resources to demand - and to effect - radical change.


"The Nasserite state succeeded in delivering material security to much of its population, but it was based on a strictly paternal model of authority: the highest ranks of the military would rule in the interests of everybody, and everybody would be grateful for their munificence. As had been the case under colonialism, there was no room for popular participation or dissent. Over the following decades, as Nasser passed away and others succeeded him, that fundamental exclusion of most Egyptians from the political arena remained in place. One could plead for concessions, as a child might petition a father, but never intrude upon the state’s private fiefdoms, never exist as an equal.

"When Mubarak took office in the early 1980s, the Egyptian state remained as undemocratic as ever; by now, though, its operation was less concerned with delivering material security to its population and more with carving up social assets for the financial benefit of its custodians. In 1991, the Mubarak regime signed Egypt up to a structural adjustment programme administered by international financial institutions tasked with entrenching the free market mantra – “stabilise, privatise, liberalise” – wherever they wielded influence. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Egypt’s government sold off hundreds of public institutions, usually at below-market prices, to private investment consortiums that were often partnered with cabinet ministers or close Mubarak allies; social safety nets were scaled back, workers’ rights curtailed, and ordinary living standards reduced.[/quote]
[quote]A state that Nasser once claimed would offer an escape from feudal violence and imperialism had, by Mubarak’s era, become a transmission line for privileged appropriation and brutality. Abroad, western power-brokers queued up to applaud the transformation. In the runup to revolution, the IMF hailed Egypt’s economic policies as “prudent”, “impressive” and “bold”, and the World Bank labelled the country its “top Middle East reformer” three years in a row. Multilateral development banks opted to invest in funds run by some of Egypt’s most prominent kleptocrats; as a consequence, European taxpayers became unknowing business partners not only of the Egyptian government, but of the Mubarak family itself.

"The US, which made Egypt a key partner in its “war on terror” and used the country as a central base in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme, transferred more annual aid to the Mubarak regime than to any other nation bar Israel. “I really consider President and Mrs Mubarak to be friends of my family,” said the then secretary of state Hillary Clinton in 2009. A few months later Barack Obama described Mubarak as “a leader and a counsellor and a friend to the United States”, and the American ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, declared that Egyptian democracy was “going well”. The following year, a young man named Khaled Said was beaten to death by police officers outside an internet cafe, and Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic party awarded itself 96% of the vote in the first round of parliamentary elections.

"When the revolution erupted, the state upon which these “impressive” conditions depended was plunged into an unprecedented crisis. 
...

"We are living through a period of global volatility, the roots of which can be traced back not only to 2011, when the Arab revolutions started, or even to the financial meltdown of 2008, but further still, to the late 1970s and early 1980s when the present iteration of highly financialised capitalism began to take hold. The relentless expansion of markets over recent decades has generated a growing disconnect between citizens and states, be they military autocracies or august procedural democracies; for better or for worse, from the rise of maverick politicians on both sides of the Atlantic to institutional chaos in southern Europe and the dissolution of national borders in the Middle East, existing political models are buckling under the strain. There is no guarantee that what emerges from this period will be more democratic than what has preceded it. But undoubtedly, those who are most invested in the old ways are facing a battle for their survival, and Egypt sits firmly on that battle’s frontline...."