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]