As the Occupy Wall Street movement grows in sheer numbers and clout, the commonplace narrative – that it is just a bunch of complaining left-wing nutbars – is losing credibility. In the scramble to find meaning and significance, there may be important lessons to learn from the insights of the esteemed economic historian, Karl Polanyi, and his analysis of economic crisis and spontaneous social movements.In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, Polanyi’s ideas have gained fresh relevance. It was Polanyi who declared that the self-regulating market is inherently self-destructive because it degrades the very conditions upon which it depends. The notion of a “free” market implies that everything must be treated as a commodity, existing exclusively for the purpose of being bought and sold. There are, however, key elements to the market that cannot abide by this definition: labour, land, and money. Polanyi called these “fictitious commodities” because, although they were treated as commodities, they performed other, essential functions in society that made them dangerous to degrade: with labour, it is human lives that are at the behest of the market; with land, it is nature or the environment; and, finally, there is money, which Polanyi reminds us is just a token of purchasing power. Anticipating the problems of financialization, Polanyi argued precociously that, “the market administration of purchasing power would … prove as disastrous to business as floods and drought in primitive society.”
If left to their own devices, then, markets are self-destructive, generating short-term wealth on their way to destroying the human and natural substance of society. For Polanyi, the failure to stem these self-annihilating tendencies was at the heart of the Great Depression.
In recent years, as the financial crisis has cascaded across the globe, and with the possibility of a second recession looming, it is easy to see why Polanyi’s ideas have regained traction. However, if Polanyi’s account of economic crisis is apposite in the era of unregulated financial capital, then there is a second, equally important, part to his analysis that also needs to be taken seriously.
Polanyi argued that, throughout market-capitalism’s history, spontaneous social movements have risen to protect civil society from the market’s self-destructive tendencies. This, he observed, is a driving force behind political and economic change. Polanyi traced the very origins of liberal democracy to this dynamic, writing: “The more the labour market contorted the lives of the workers, the more insistently they clamoured for the vote.” Significant economic and political transformations, he argued, did not come about haphazardly. They were the consequence of social movements of protest, disobedience, and, sometimes, revolt.
We now stand more than three years out from the financial crisis that brought the global economy to its knees. Despite financial reform remaining atop the U.S. political agenda, the most pressing structural problems remain. While banks are once again reporting record quarterly profits, millions remain unemployed, homeless, and bankrupt, and the prospect for a brighter tomorrow is bleak.
Cue Occupy Wall Street.
Although a sound-byte mission statement may still be a bit murky, the general frustration felt by so many can be traced to growing economic inequality and the subsequent perversion of political equality upon which all democracies rest.
Despite steady economic growth in the U.S. over the past 30 years (prior to 2008, of course), real wages for the average worker have flat-lined, the middle class is shrinking, and the gap between rich and poor has reached historic levels.
While this tension between equality and inequality may be especially palpable today, it is in fact an eternal struggle that underpins liberal democracy. There is a contradiction at the heart of our beloved political system. It arises from the conflicting ideals of a political system committed to equality (democracy) and an economic system that necessarily breeds inequality (capitalism). This latter observation needn’t be read critically: By simple definition, capitalism requires a minority that owns productive capital (the job creators, in today’s vernacular) and a majority that must sell its labour for a wage (the work force). These are inherently unequal relationships.
The tension arises because economic inequality has the tendency to undermine the promise of political equality. In the words of the late Canadian political theorist C.B. Macpherson, this creates the condition where “all are free but some are freer than others.”
It is a growing conscientiousness with respect to this reality that has given rise to the Wall Street protests. One does not have to look very hard to find supporting evidence. It may be especially true in the U.S., but it is increasingly true in Canada as well, where monied interests carry ever-greater influence in national politics, skewing the promises of democracy.
The constant tension between market pressures and social forces, as Polanyi tells us, is not static, but oscillating. The amount of equality and inequality that capitalism and democracy can respectively tolerate without compromising their necessary ideals is like a pendulum driving political and economic transformation.
With the trillions of dollars of debt dumped onto the public sector following the 2008 financial crisis, the same precarious practices that caused the crisis still rampant, and a dominant financial class hollowing out democracy, the protests now “occupying” cities around the world may very well mark the start of the pendulum’s backswing: the pushback against the scourge of the “free” market from a newly awakened civil society.
Origin
Source: the Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment