While capitalism being criticized for inequity in distribution of wealth and causing injustice and enlarging social gap, some suggest the concept of “good” capitalism in contrast with the original bad capitalism. The good capitalism is still pro-capitalist, pro-market mechanism, and pro-business. But it’s more than that. It includes more social responsibility among the business in the society. It does hate the original capitalism, it just believe there’s a better version of capitalism existed.
The agents in reality that intend to put into practice the ideal of good capitalism are probably the social democratic parties in each European countries. Through modest and gradual reform, they hope to achieve democratic socialism. Some of the examples are German Social Democratic Party (SPD), Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP), and Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE).
However, not only the social democratic parties promote the good capitalism. The leader of Labour party of Great Britain, Ed Miliband in 2011 proclaimed its position of continuity of pro-capitalist and pro-business, while condemning the current bad capitalism, and said that the successive British governments hadn’t distinguished well enough between good and bad capitalism.
The good and bad capitalism are hard to categorized and define. However, in a looser way, the good capitalism are usually formed by fairer regulation, taxation and procurement of goods and services and also, more well-rounded social policies in spheres of education, health, labor, etc.
However, does good capitalism really exist? Or it is just an aloft goal, an imaginary myth?
The longtime victory of and the support to social democratic parties and the praises to social democratic governments could possible imply the answer to this question is positive.
But as the crisis in 2007 broke out and many states enter a period of permanent austerity up until now, there are more doubts in the existence of good capitalism and the operation under the belief of achieving good capitalism. Instead of taking the advantage of the economic crisis which could be considered causing by the free-market, the popularity of the social democratic parties declined significantly. SPD, PSOE, and SOP all experienced their lowest supporting rate post-war.
The notion of good capitalism goes bad is associated with the moralizing of the holding of debt of European countries in the crisis. And this provided a platform to solve anxieties and concerns of the public in the implication toward the crisis. The implications included that Germany took constitutional action, and the media and the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) criticized Spain and Greece constantly for encouraging the unsustainable excess.
Instead of saying the good capitalism is gone, it’s more accurate to say the practice of good capitalism has shifted from simple neoliberalism to more authoritarian neoliberalism. Not only for the ideal of good capitalism, but rather more of the necessity of current reality. The public requests for more immediate appeal to material circumstances to relocate the inequality and distortion of wealth and resources in the society. Under this circumstance, to implicate necessary social policies, the reconfiguring and strengthening of the state’s power is emphasized. These could be deem not so democratic, but to improve the current difficult situation, more coercive legal and constitutional rules are required. Also, on the other hand, the non-market institutions had played even more important role, and not merely in the ways of coercive exercises, but also in deeper and long-term recalibration.
Related to that, many different new commons are being created. The relation between social movement and the making of social policies has always been close and interactive. The different focuses or features in different time periods are just in response to the need of that time. Therefore, nowadays new commons are revolved around urban and the issues within it, playing as strong non-market institutions. In response to the immediate material necessity, the new commons demand for simply more decent everyday life. And furthermore, the new commons try to redefine welfare and claim that in the city we live, everyone should be able to find a place, physically, and socially. In the coercive ways mentioning above, they take non-violent but effective measures to make the changes happen. And in the deeper and longer-term sense, the commons are don’t just ask for one-time achievement, but rather, continue to supervise and submit proposal to the government and demand for profound reform in the regulation system.
Therefore, the good capitalism is still alive, but trying very hard to survive. And it tries to survive in a different way. What’ for sure is, in the period of austerity, the good capitalism should continue to live on as the crisis made the dislocation of wealth in the society grow even larger, the good capitalism is still the only clue and cure.
References:
Ian Bruff, 2013, The Rise of Authoritarian Neoliberalism.
Ida Susser and Stéphane Tonnelat, 2013,Transformative cities: The three urban commons
Will Hutton , 10.02. 2011, ‘Good capitalism does exist. And it’s more crucial now than ever’, The Guardian.
Social Policy UPF 