Democratic capitalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_capitalism 

Democratic capitalism, also referred to as market democracy, is a political and economic system that integrates resource allocation by marginal productivity (synonymous with free-market capitalism), with policies of resource allocation by social entitlement. The policies which characterise the system are enacted by democratic governments.

Democratic capitalism was implemented widely in the 20th century, particularly in Europe and the Western world after the Second World War. The coexistence of capitalism and democracy, particularly in Europe, was supported by the creation of the modern welfare state in the post-war period. The implementation of democratic capitalism typically involves the enactment of policies expanding the welfare state, strengthening the collective bargaining rights of employees, or strengthening competition laws. These policies are enacted in a capitalist economy characterized by the right to private ownership of property.

Catholic social teaching offers support for a communitarian form of democratic capitalism with an emphasis on the preservation of human dignity.

The different definitions

Democratic capitalism is a type of political and economic system characterised by resource allocation according to both marginal productivity and social need, as determined by decisions reached through democratic politics. It is marked by democratic elections, freedom, and rule of law, characteristics typically associated with democracy. It retains a free-market economic system with an emphasis on private enterprise.

Professor of Entrepreneurship Elias G. Carayannis and Arisitidis Kaloudis, Economics Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), describe democratic capitalism as an economic system which combines robust competitiveness with sustainable entrepreneurship, with the aim of innovation and providing opportunities for economic prosperity to all citizens.

Edward Younkins, professor at Wheeling University, described democratic capitalism as a “dynamic complex of economic, political, moral-cultural, ideological, and institutional forces”, which serves to maximize social welfare within a free market economy. Younkins states that the system of individual liberty inherent within democratic capitalism supports the creation of voluntary associations, such as labour unions.

Philosopher and writer Michael Novak characterised democratic capitalism as a blend of a free-market economy, a limited democratic government, and moral-cultural system with an emphasis on personal freedom. Novak comments that capitalism is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of democracy. He also proposes that the prominence of democratic capitalism in a society is strongly determined by the religious concepts which drive its customs, institutions, and leaders.

History

Early to mid-20th century

The development of democratic capitalism was influenced by several historical factors, including the rapid economic growth following World War One, the Great Depression, and the political and economic ramifications of World War Two. The growing critique of free-market capitalism and the rise of the notion of social justice in political debate contributed to the adoption of democratic capitalist policies.

At the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, officials from the United States and the United Kingdom and forty-two other nations committed to trade openness. This commitment was made in conjunction with international guidelines which guaranteed autonomy for each country in responding to economic and social demands of its voters. Officials requested international capital controls which would allow governments to regulate their economies while remaining committed to the goals of full employment and economic growth. The adoption of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade supported free trade, while allowing national governments to retain veto power over trade policy. Such developments saw the incorporation of democratic demands into policies based on capitalist economic logic.

Democratic capitalism was first widely implemented after the Second World War in the Western world, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Following the severe economic impacts of the war, working classes in the Western world were more inclined to accept capitalist markets in conjunction with political democracy, which enabled a level of social security and improved living standards. In the post-war decades, democratic capitalist policies saw reduced levels of socioeconomic inequality. This was synonymous with the expansion of welfare states, more highly regulated financial and labour markets, and increased political power of labour unions. According to political scientist Wolfgang Merkel, democracy and capitalism coexisted with more complementarity at this time than at any other point in history.

Policy makers in Europe and Asia adopted democratic capitalist policies in an attempt to satisfy the social needs of their voters and respond to the challenge of communism. The policies implemented supported the public provision of medical care, improved public housing, aged care, and more accessible education. Guarantees of full employment and the support of private research and innovation became priorities of policy makers. Policy developments were based on the rising notion that free markets required some state intervention to maintain them, provide structure, and address social inequities caused by them. Governments around the world regulated existing markets in an attempt to increase their equity and effectiveness. In order to stabilise the business cycle, the role of government was reconceived by anticommunist leaders in Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, and Japan. An emphasis was placed on supporting economic growth, promoting innovation, and enhancing living standards. This saw the expansion of educational opportunities and public insurance of basic health and aged benefits.

United States

As automated production expanded in the United States, demand for semi skilled workers increased. Combined with the expansion of secondary education, this saw the development of a large working class. The resulting strong economic growth and improved income equality allowed for greater social peace and universal suffrage. Capitalism was viewed as a means of producing the wealth which maintained political freedom, while a democratic government ensured accountable political institutions and an educated labour force with its basic rights fulfilled.

Europe

In the postwar period, free market economic systems with political systems of democracy and welfare states were established in France and Germany. This occurred under the leadership of the Popular Republican Movement in France and the Christian Democratic Union in Germany.

Late 20th century

Following the oil shocks of the 1970s and the productivity slowdown in the United States in the 1980s, politicians and voters maintained strong support for democratic capitalist policies and free markets. Globalisation and free trade were promoted as a means of boosting economic growth, and this saw the formation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union. Labour market and competition regulations were eased in existing free-market economies, particularly in Anglo-America.

Rapid technological innovation and globalisation brought widespread international economic change. Publicly funded democratic capitalist policies were designed and implemented to compensate individuals negatively affected by major, structural economic change. Implemented beginning in the early years of the Cold War, such policies included unemployment benefits, universal or partially universal healthcare, and aged pensions. Post-1970s, the number of public sector jobs available expanded. Ageing populations in Europe, Japan and North America saw large increases in public spending on pensions and healthcare. In the 1980s, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development economies began reducing corporate taxation, though personal income taxes and public spending on social security programs generally remained stable.

Large-scale innovation in production technology throughout the 20th century had widespread economic benefits in many capitalist economies. These benefits contributed to the conciliation of democratic politics and free markets and the widespread acceptance of democratic capitalist policies by voters.

From the late 20th century, the tenets of democratic capitalism expanded more broadly beyond North America and Western Europe.

United States

After taking office as president in 1981, Ronald Reagan advocated for a reduced role of government in the economy, while responding to voters’ skepticism of liberal capitalism by maintaining strong public sector spending. Many voters doubted the ability of free market capitalism to provide consistent peace, security and opportunity, and sought improved living standards, aged care, and educational opportunities for youth. The Reagan administration maintained previous levels of government expenditure on Social Security and Medicare as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP). Total government expenditure levels as a percentage of GDP also remained stable under the Reagan administration.

The anarcho capitalist Hans Hermann-Hoppe got quoted in the book "Against the Left- A Rothbardian Libertarianism, (Preface)" from Lew Rockwell, where Hoppe said followed: "The "neo-conservatives" a movement inspired and led by a group of former Trotskyite intellectuals, who proposed to combine a "Welfare-State" at home, also called "democratic capitalism," with US imperialism abroad and the drive toward world-domination."

Former US President George W. Bush said in the past:"Democratic capitalism is the greatest system ever conceived." He intended to describe the threat to capitalism linked to democracy both in his country and in most of the world, in the context of the dramatic speech (September 2008) in which he raised the need to save it from the financial crisis of 2008, which he posed in very serious terms.

Europe

From the mid-1980s, European leaders began endorsing neoliberal ideas, such as those associated with Reaganomics and Thatcherism, based on the notion of the interdependence of economic and social policy. In this context, European competition law policy developed as a method of curbing the excesses of capitalism, while aligning the economy of the European Union with the existing democratic ideals of European society. This saw the advancement of democratic capitalism throughout the European region.

South Africa

The South African Competition Act of 1998 prioritised the eradication of anticompetitive business practices and the free participation in the economy of all citizens, while maintaining a pro-free-market economy.

Early 21st century

India

India enacted the Competition Act, 2002 to promote and sustain competition and protect the welfare of market participants, goals synonymous with democratic capitalism.

Implementation

The post-war implementation of democratic capitalism saw the expansion of welfare states and the free collective bargaining rights of employees, alongside market policies designed to ensure full employment.

Under democratic capitalism, an autonomous democratic state enacts of policies which in effect create a compromise between upper and lower classes, while remaining compatible with free-market capitalism. Such policies include the establishment or expansion of a welfare state, as a method of mediating social class conflict and catering to the demands of workers.

The system is characterised by the establishment of cooperative economic institutions. This includes institutions which facilitate bargaining between government bodies and business and labour organisations such as unions, and those which regulate the relationships between employees and management within private firms. The development of institutions to promote cooperation among public and private economic entities acknowledges the benefits of market competition, while attempting to address the social problems of unrestrained capitalism.

Economic security concerns of citizens are addressed through redistributive policies. Such policies include income transfers, such as welfare payment programs and pensions, to support the financial needs of the elderly and the poor. Other policies which promote economic security include social insurance, and the fiscal financing of education and job training programs to stimulate employment.

The right to private ownership of productive property is a central tenet of democratic capitalism, and is recognized as a basic liberty of all democratic citizens, as in a regular free-market capitalist economy. According to political philosopher John Tomasi, democratic capitalism addresses social entitlement and justice concerns through the preservation of citizens’ private property rights, allowing citizens to be “free, equal, and self-governing”.

The robust competitiveness and sustainable entrepreneurship which define democratic capitalism are characterised by top-down policies and bottom-up initiatives implemented by democratic governments. Top-down policies are planned and implemented by formal leaders in an organisation, while bottom-up policies involve gradual change initiated and sustained by lower-level members of organisations. Policies implemented are designed to incentivise public and private sector innovation. Examples include strong research and development funding, and policies which protect intellectual property rights.

Competition law

See also: United States antitrust law

Further information: Competition law

A characteristic of democratic capitalist economies is the democratic enactment of laws and regulations to support competition. Such laws include United States antitrust laws. Competition laws are designed to regulate private sector activities, including the actions of capital asset owners and managers, in order to prevent outcomes which are socially undesirable according to the democratic majority.

The implementation of competition law is intended to prevent anti-competitive behaviour that is harmful to the welfare of consumers, while maintaining a free market economy. The implementation of antitrust laws was found to be a characteristic of democratic capitalism specifically, and not regular free-market capitalism.

Conflicts between notions of resource allocation

According to economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, the capitalist markets and democratic policies that characterise democratic capitalism are inherently conflicting. Streeck suggests that under democratic capitalism, governments tend to neglect policies of resource allocation by marginal productivity in favour of those of resource allocation by social entitlement, or vice versa. In particular, he comments that the accelerating inflation of the 1970s in the Western world can be attributed to rising trade-union wage pressure in labour markets and the political priority of full employment, both of which are synonymous with democratic capitalism.

In Catholic social teaching

Catholic texts offer support for a form of socially regulated democratic capitalism. The papal encyclical Centesimus annus, written by Pope John Paul II, emphasizes a vision of a communitarian form of democratic capitalism. The communitarian system of democratic capitalism described promotes respect for individual rights and basic workers’ rights, a virtuous community, and a limited role for the state and the market. According to the encyclical, these characteristics should be combined with a conscious effort to promote institutions which develop character in individuals. The encyclical stressed to decision makers the importance of the dignity of the person and a concern for the poor, while acknowledging the need to balance economic efficiency with social equity. The US Bishops’ 1986 Pastoral Letter Economic Justice for All suggested that specific institutional arrangements be developed to support this form of democratic capitalism. Arrangements proposed included structures of accountability designed to involve all stakeholders, such as employees, customers, local communities, and wider society, in the corporate decision making process, as opposed to stockholders only. The letter offered acceptance for the market economy under the condition that the state intervene where necessary to preserve human dignity.

White backlash

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_backlash

White backlash, white rage, whitelash, and white grievance are terms used by some scholars and commentators to describe reactions by certain white individuals or groups to social, economic, or political changes related to race. It is often discussed in connection with perceptions of declining relative status, changes in cultural influence, or shifts in political power following efforts to expand civil rights and economic opportunities for other racial or ethnic groups.

George Yancy, Robin DiAngelo and other writers have used the term to characterize strong negative reactions to discussions of racial inequality or the concept of white privilege. In this framing, such reactions may include hostility, resistance to critique, or, in more extreme cases, racist rhetoric or threats of violence. These interpretations are sometimes contrasted with concepts such as white fragility, which focuses more narrowly on defensive responses rather than overt hostility.

Discussions of white backlash most commonly focus on the United States, particularly in relation to the social, economic and political status of African Americans. However, similar dynamics have also been examined in other national contexts, including the United Kingdom and South Africa, especially in analyses of racial politics during and after apartheid, the system of legally enforced racial segregation and discrimination against black South Africans by the minority Afrikaner herrenvolk government.

Sociology

Concerns among some whites about immigration and demographic change have been identified by researchers as factors associated with political and social opposition to these trends. Political scientist Ashley E. Jardina spoke about how perceptions of shifting social structures influence attitudes, noting that some white Americans perceive changes in the country's demographic composition as altering long-standing cultural and political arrangements, including the historical prominence of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) norms.

A 2018 study conducted at the University of California, Riverside found that awareness of the growth of Hispanic and Latino populations can lead some non-Hispanic white Americans to perceive existing racial hierarchies as being challenged, which may affect political attitudes and behavior. Similarly, research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology reported that informing white British participants about rising immigration levels increased their likelihood of supporting political candidates with restrictive immigration policies.

Commentator Kevin Drum has observed that as the proportion of residents in the United States who are not non-Hispanic white increased from 25 percent in 1990 to 40 percent in 2019, this demographic change may have produced a "short-term white backlash in recent years.".

Historian Lawrence Glickman, writing in The Atlantic in 2020, situates such political responses within a broader historical context. He argues that political reactions labeled as "backlashes" became more prominent in the 1960s but reflect earlier patterns in American political history, including those following Reconstruction. Glickman suggests that these responses often emerge in anticipation of social change and that narratives emphasizing perceived disadvantage have played a role in shaping various political movements over time.

Regions

United States

See also: White identity § Trump presidency and Republican Party, and Politics of resentment § White

One early example of this concept occurred when Hiram R. Revels became the first African-American to serve in the United States Senate in 1870 after he was selected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi legislature to finish the term of one of the state's two seats in the US Senate, which had been left vacant since the American Civil War. This was before the ratification of the 17th Amendment to the constitution of the United States in 1913, which introduced direct elections for the office of senator. The backlash to this event ultimately helped to derail Reconstruction, which ended after the contested presidential election in 1876. The Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the American South, effectively leaving the region to the hands of Jim Crow racial segregation policies and the effective disenfranchisement of black Americans in the region.

Similarly, the 1898 massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina occurred as a backlash by white Democrats to significant political changes in the city at the time, when the city was governed by a legally elected, biracial coalition supported by blacks and white Republicans. This arrangement was strongly opposed by the white Democratic leadership and their supporters, who viewed the existing government as illegitimate and destabilizing to the political and social order they favored. This ultimately contributed to the backlash that ultimately led to the forced removal of elected officials. The events that followed involved violence, the suppression of black political influence, and the imposition of a new municipal leadership aligned with the insurrection's leaders, contributing to the broader pattern of disfranchisement of black Americans in the South.

Another backlash happened after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many Democrats in Congress, as well as President Lyndon B. Johnson himself, feared that such a backlash could develop in response to the legislation, and Martin Luther King Jr. popularized the "white backlash" phrase and concept to warn of that possibility. The backlash that they had warned about occurred and was based on the argument that whites of immigrant descent did not receive the benefits that were given to African Americans in the Civil Rights Act. After signing the Civil Rights Act, Johnson grew concerned that the white backlash would cost him the 1964 presidential election later that year. Specifically, Johnson feared that his opponent, Barry Goldwater, would harness the backlash by highlighting the black riots that were engulfing the country. Despite the fears, Johnson won the election by a landslide, only losing South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Goldwater's home state of Arizona. Eventually, white southerners switched to the Republican Party.

From then on, Republican politicians have been accused of carrying out dog-whistle politics, and examples of this arguments include the phrase "welfare queen" and the Willie Horton ad during the 1988 election.

Following the election of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States in 2008, some commentators later argued that political and cultural reactions to demographic and social change led to a backlash, and influenced subsequent electoral outcomes such as the 2010 and 2014 midterms.

In this context, many pundits saw the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 as an example of whitelash. CNN contributor Van Jones coined the term whitelash (a portmanteau of "white" and "backlash") during the 2016 election night coverage by the network to describe what he viewed as a backlash to these changes, including opposition to Obama's presidency. He said: "This was a whitelash. This was a whitelash against a changing country. It was a whitelash against a black president in part. And that's the part where the pain comes." Jones used the term to describe one of the reasons he thought Trump won the election, and he characterized Trump's victory as partly reflecting this reaction, a view that has been discussed but not universally accepted.

During Trump's first presidency he used the example of Luis Bracamontes, a man convicted of killing two police officers in Sacramento in 2014 and sentenced to death, to migrant caravans with the slogans "Democrats let him into our country" and "Democrats let him stay".

After the 2020 election, which was won by Joe Biden, Trump and his allies carried out attempts to overturn his election loss, with many participating in the so-called "Stop the Steal" movement, which culminated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. These events have been interpreted by some scholars and commentators as reflecting broader historical narratives in American politics. Certain analysts have drawn parallels between these events and the Lost Cause myth after the Confederacy lost the American Civil War. Historian Joseph Ellis has argued that overlooking the role of race in Trump's political support echoes earlier historical tendencies to downplay racial factors in major national conflicts, including the disputed argument made by Lost Cause advocates, who attributed the American Civil War to a clash over constitutional issues while downplaying the role of slavery. These interpretations, however, remain subjects of debate among historians and political analysts.

South Africa

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, South Africa’s apartheid system faced growing political, social, and moral pressure, both domestically and internationally. The Afrikaner government's actions during this period frequently reflected concern over potential backlash from segments of the white electorate, particularly among Afrikaners, whose political dominance apartheid was designed to protect.

In 1975, reports indicated that the government was slow to approve the desegregation of residential areas due to fears of resistance from conservative Afrikaner communities. This reluctance underscored the extent to which apartheid policies were maintained to preserve racial privilege rather than to promote equality. Similarly, in 1981, The New York Times reported that Prime Minister P. W. Botha's cabinet, wary of a white backlash, publicly emphasized statistics showing disproportionately higher per capita spending on education for white children than for Black children—figures that highlighted the systemic inequalities at the core of apartheid.

During the 1980s, electoral trends reflected growing divisions within the white population. Support for the ruling National Party declined among white Afrikaners, while the Conservative Party gained traction by advocating for even stricter racial separation. At the same time, a significant number of white South Africans - including clergy, journalists, academics, business leaders, and members of liberal political parties - actively opposed apartheid, participated in protests, supported reform, or worked with anti-apartheid movements despite social and legal risks.

As apartheid began to be dismantled, resistance from parts of the white population persisted. In 1990, political commentator Jeane Kirkpatrick observed that President F. W. de Klerk was aware that opinion polls showed substantial white opposition to his reform policies. Nevertheless, de Klerk proceeded with negotiations that led to a 1992 referendum which ultimately led to the end of apartheid. In 1994, South Africa held its first multiracial democratic election, resulting in Nelson Mandela being elected president of South Africa (the first black president in South African history), the African National Congress winning a majority in the South African Parliament, and marking the formal end of institutionalized racial segregation.

In the years following apartheid, concerns about Afrikaner identity and political marginalization continued to surface. By the late 1990s, some Afrikaner groups warned of backlash unless cultural autonomy initiatives, such as the proposed so-called Volkstaat at Orania, were recognized. Former president P. W. Botha also cautioned against threats to the Afrikaans language, framing them as potential sources of unrest. These debates occurred alongside efforts by the post-apartheid government to redress historical injustices and promote inclusion.

More recently, discussions of historical memory and transformation have continued to provoke controversy. In 2017, scholar John Campbell suggested that opposition, particularly among Afrikaners, to the removal of colonial-era statues, the renaming of places, and the increased use of English at historically white universities was, to some extent, predictable. These debates reflect the ongoing challenge of reconciling cultural identity with the legacy of a system widely condemned for its racial oppression and denial of basic human rights.

Critique of work

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_work

Since 1870, the amount of hours of waged work has decreased and GDP per capita has increased.

Critique of work or critique of labour is the critique of, or wish to abolish, work as such, and to critique what the critics of work deem wage slavery.

Critique of work can be existential, and focus on how labour can be and/or feel meaningless, and stands in the way for self-realisation. But the critique of work can also highlight how excessive work may cause harm to nature, the productivity of society, and/or society itself. The critique of work can also take on a more utilitarian character, in which work simply stands in the way for human happiness as well as health.

History

Many thinkers have critiqued and wished for the abolishment of labour as early as in Ancient Greece. An example of an opposing view is the anonymously published treatise titled Essay on Trade and Commerce published in 1770 which claimed that to break the spirit of idleness and independence of the English people, ideal "work-houses" should imprison the poor. These houses were to function as "houses of terror, where they should work fourteen hours a day in such fashion that when meal time was deducted there should remain twelve hours of work full and complete."

Views like these propagated for in the following decades by e.g. Malthus, which led up to the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834.

The battle of shortening the working hours to ten hours was ongoing between around the 1840s until about 1900. However, establishing the eight-hour working day went significantly faster, and these short-hour social movements aligned against labour, managed to get rid of two working hours between the mid-1880s to 1919. During this epoch, reformers argued that mechanization was not only supposed to provide material goods, but to free workers from "slavery" and introduce them to the "duty" to enjoy life.

While the productive capacity rose enormously with industrialization, people were made busier, while one might have expected the opposite to occur. This was at least the expectation among many intellectuals such as Paul Lafargue. The liberal John Stuart Mill also predicted that society would come to a stage where growth would end when mechanization would meet all real needs. Lafargue argued that the obsession society seemed to have with labour paradoxically harmed the productivity, which society had as one of its primary justifications for not working as little as possible.

Paul Lafargue

Paul Lafargue

In Lafargue's book The Right to Be Lazy, he claims that "it is sheer madness, that people are fighting for the 'right' to an eight-hour working day. In other words, eight hours of servitude, exploitation and suffering, when it is leisure, joy and self-realisation that should be fought for – and as few hours of slavery as possible".

Automation, which had already come a long way in Lafargue's time, could easily have reduced working hours to three or four hours a day. This would have left a large part of the day for the things which he would claim that we really want to do – spend time with friends, relax, enjoy life, be lazy.

The machine is the saviour of humanity, Lafargue argues, but only if the working time it frees up becomes leisure time. It can be, it should be, but it rarely has been. The time that is freed up is according to Lafargue usually converted into more hours of work, which in his view is only more hours of toil and drudgery.

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell, writer of In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

Russell's book In Praise of Idleness is a collection of essays on the themes of sociology and philosophy. Russell argues that if the burden of work were shared equally among all, resulting in fewer hours of work, unemployment would disappear. As a result, human happiness would also increase as people would be able to enjoy their newfound free time, which would further increase the amount of science and art. Russell for example claimed that "Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish".

Contemporary era

David Graeber

The anthropologist David Graeber has written about bullshit jobs, which are jobs that are meaningless and do not contribute anything worthwhile, or even damage society. Graeber also claims that bullshit jobs are often not those with the lowest pay.

Man with sign that roughly translates to: Bullshit job example from nature: President of the Republic of Slovenia

The bullshit-jobs can include tasks like these:

• Watching over an inbox which received emails merely to copy and paste them into another form.
• To be hired to look busy.
• Working with pushing buttons in an elevator.
• Make others look or feel important.
• Roles that exist merely because other institutions employ people in the same roles.
• Employees that merely solve issues that could be fixed once and for all, or automated away.
• People who are hired so that institutions can claim that they do something, which in reality they are not doing.
• Jobs where the most important thing is to sit in the right place, like working in a reception, and forwarding emails to someone who is tasked with reading them.

Frédéric Lordon

In Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire, the French economist and philosopher Frédéric Lordon ponders why people accept deferring or even replacing their own desires and goals with those of an organization. "It is ultimately quite strange", he writes, "that people should so 'accept' to occupy themselves in the service of a desire that was not originally their own." Lordon argues that surrender of will occurs via the capture by organizations of workers' "basal desire" – the will to survive.

But this willingness of workers to become aligned with a company's goals is due not only to what can be called "managerialism" (the ways in which a company co-opts individuality via wages, rules, and perks), but to the psychology of the workers themselves, whose "psyches… perform at times staggering feats of compartmentalization." So consent to work itself becomes problematic and troubling; as captured in the title of Lordon's book, workers are "willing slaves."

Franco "Bifo" Berardi

Franco Berardi, an Italian Autonomist thinker, suggests in The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy, that capitalism has harnessed modern desires for autonomy and independence:

No desire, no vitality seems to exist anymore outside the economic enterprise, outside productive labour and business. Capital was able to renew its psychic, ideological and economic energy, specifically thanks to the absorption of creativity, desire, and individualistic, libertarian drives for self-realization.

Knowledge workers, or what Berardi calls the "cognitariat" are far from free of this co-option. People in these jobs, he says, have suffered a kind of Taylorization of their work via the parceling and routinization of even creative activities.

George Alliger

In the 2022 book Anti-Work: Psychological Investigations into Its Truths, Problems, and Solutions, work psychologist Alliger proposes to systematize anti-work thinking by suggesting a set of almost 20 propositions that characterize this topic. He draws on a wide variety of sources; a few of the propositions or tenets are:

• Work demands submission and is damaging to the human psyche.
• The idea that work is "good" is a modern and deleterious development.
• The tedious, boring, and grinding aspects of work characterize most of the time spent in many and probably even all jobs.
• Work is subjectively "alienating" and meaningless due to workers' lack of honest connection to the organization and its goals and outcomes.

Alliger provides a discussion of each proposition and considers how workers, as well as psychologists, can best respond to the existential difficulties and challenges of work.

Guy Debord

One of the founders of the Situationist International in France (which helped inspire the student revolt of 1968), Guy Debord wrote the influential The Society of the Spectacle (La société du spectacle). He suggested that since all actual activity, including work, has been harnessed into the production of the spectacle, that there can be no freedom from work, even if leisure time is increasing. That is, since leisure can only be leisure within the planned activities of the spectacle, and since alienated labour helps to reproduce that spectacle, there is also no escape from work within the confines of the spectacle. Debord also used the slogan "NEVER WORK", which he initially painted as graffiti, and henceforth came to emphasize "could not be considered superfluous advice".

Anti-work ethic

"Anti-work" redirects here. For the subreddit, see r/antiwork.

History

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche rejected the work ethic, viewing it as damaging to the development of reason, as well as the development of the individual etc. In 1881, he wrote:

The eulogists of work. Behind the glorification of 'work' and the tireless talk of the 'blessings of work' I find the same thought as behind the praise of impersonal activity for the public benefit: the fear of everything individual. At bottom, one now feels when confronted with work—and what is invariably meant is relentless industry from early till late—that such work is the best police, that it keeps everybody in harness and powerfully obstructs the development of reason, of covetousness, of the desire for independence. For it uses up a tremendous amount of nervous energy and takes it away from reflection, brooding, dreaming, worry, love, and hatred; it always sets a small goal before one's eyes and permits easy and regular satisfactions. In that way a society in which the members continually work hard will have more security: and security is now adored as the supreme goddess.

Buckminster Fuller

The American architect, philosopher, designer, and futurist Buckminster Fuller presented a similar argument which rejected the notion that people should have to earn a living.

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

— Buckminster Fuller, The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In, 1970

Contemporary era

Particularly in anarchist circles, some believe that work has become highly alienated throughout history and is fundamentally unhappy and burdensome, and therefore should not be enforced by economic or political means. In this context, some call for the introduction of an unconditional basic income and/or a shorter working week, such as the 4-day workweek. The anarchist/situationist writer Bob Black wrote a well-regarded manifesto in 1985, The Abolition of Work.

Media

The Idler is a twice-monthly British magazine dedicated to the ethos of "idleness." It was founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and Gavin Pretor-Pinney with the intention of exploring alternative ways of working and living.

The largest organized anti-work community on the Internet is the subreddit r/antiwork on Reddit with (as of November 2023) over 2.8 million members.

In art

The Swedish Public Freedom Service is a conceptual art project which has been running since 2014, promoting an anti-work message. One of the artists involved argued in relationship to the project that "changes in the last 200 years or so have always been shifts in power, while not much that is fundamental to the construction of society has changed. We are largely marinated in the belief that wage labour must be central."

Innatism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innatism 

In the philosophy of mind, innatism is the view that the mind is born with already-formed ideas, knowledge, and beliefs. The opposing doctrine, that the mind is a tabula rasa (blank slate) at birth and all knowledge is gained from experience and the senses, is called empiricism.

Difference from nativism

Main article: Psychological nativism

Innatism and nativism are generally synonymous terms referring to the notion of preexisting ideas in the mind. However, more specifically, innatism refers to the philosophy of Descartes, who assumed that God or a similar being or process placed innate ideas and principles in the human mind. The innatist principles in this regard may overlap with similar concepts such as natural order and state of nature, in philosophy.

Nativism represents an adaptation of this, grounded in the fields of genetics, cognitive psychology, and psycholinguistics. Nativists hold that innate beliefs are in some way genetically programmed in our mind—they are the phenotypes of certain genotypes that all humans share in common. Nativism is a modern view rooted in innatism. The advocates of nativism are mainly philosophers who also work in the field of cognitive psychology or psycholinguistics: most notably Noam Chomsky and Jerry Fodor (although the latter adopted a more critical attitude toward nativism in his later writings). The nativist's general objection against empiricism is still the same as was raised by the rationalists; the human mind of a newborn child is not a tabula rasa but is equipped with an inborn structure.

History

Although individual human beings vary in many ways (culturally, ethnically, linguistically, and so on), innate ideas are the same for everyone everywhere. For example, the philosopher René Descartes theorized that knowledge of God is innate in everybody. Philosophers such as Descartes and Plato were rationalists. Other philosophers, most notably the empiricists, were critical of innate ideas and denied they existed. The debate over innate ideas is central to the conflict between rationalists (who believe certain ideas exist independently of experience) and empiricists (who believe knowledge is derived from experience). Many believe the German philosopher Immanuel Kant synthesized these two early modern traditions in his philosophical thought.

Plato

Plato argues that if there are certain concepts that we know to be true but did not learn from experience, then it must be because we have an innate knowledge of it and that this knowledge must have been gained before birth. In Plato's Meno, he recalls a situation where his mentor Socrates questioned a slave boy about geometry. Though the slave boy had no previous experience with geometry, he was able to answer correctly. Plato reasoned that this was possible because Socrates' questions sparked the innate knowledge of math the boy had from birth.

René Descartes

Descartes (1596–1650) conveys the idea that innate knowledge or ideas is something inborn such as one would say, that a certain disease might be 'innate' to signify that a person might be at risk of contracting such a disease. He suggests that something that is 'innate' is effectively present from birth and while it may not reveal itself then, is more than likely to present itself later in life. Descartes’ comparison of innate knowledge to an innate disease, whose symptoms may show up only later in life, unless prohibited by a factor like age or puberty, suggests that if an event occurs prohibiting someone from exhibiting an innate behaviour or knowledge, it doesn't mean the knowledge did not exist at all but rather it wasn't expressed – they were not able to acquire that knowledge. In other words, innate beliefs, ideas and knowledge require experiences to be triggered or they may never be expressed. Experiences are not the source of knowledge as proposed by John Locke, but catalysts to the uncovering of knowledge.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) contends that we are born with certain innate ideas, the most identifiable of these being mathematical truisms. The idea that 1 + 1 = 2 is evident to us without the necessity for empirical evidence. Leibniz argues that empiricism can show us that concepts are true in the present; the observation of one apple and then another in one instance, and in that instance only, leads to the conclusion that one and another equals two. However, the suggestion that one and another will always equal two requires an innate idea, as that would be a suggestion of things unwitnessed.

Leibniz called such concepts as mathematical truisms "necessary truths". Another example of such may be the phrase, "What is, is" or "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be". Leibniz argues that such truisms are universally assented to (acknowledged by all to be true); this being the case, it must be due to their status as innate ideas. Often some ideas are acknowledged as necessarily true but are not universally assented to. Leibniz would suggest that this is simply because the person in question has not become aware of the innate idea, not because they do not possess it. Leibniz argues that empirical evidence can serve to bring to the surface certain principles that are already innately embedded in our minds. This is similar to needing to hear only the first few notes to recall the rest of the melody.

John Locke

The main antagonist to the concept of innate ideas is John Locke (1632–1704), a contemporary of Leibniz. Locke argued that the mind is in fact devoid of all knowledge or ideas at birth; it is a blank sheet or tabula rasa. He argued that all our ideas are constructed in the mind via a process of constant composition and decomposition of the input that we receive through our senses. Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which he published in 1690 under his own name, contends that the concept of universal assent, in fact, proves nothing, except perhaps that everyone is in agreement. In short universal assent proves that there is universal assent and nothing else. Locke goes on to suggest that, in fact, there is no universal assent. Even a phrase such as "What is, is" is not universally assented to; infants and severely mentally disabled adults do not generally acknowledge this truism. Locke also attacks the idea that an innate idea can be imprinted on the mind without the owner realizing it. For Locke, such reasoning would allow one to conclude the absurd: "All the Truths a Man ever comes to know, will, by this account, be, every one of them, innate." To return to the musical analogy, we may not be able to recall the entire melody until we hear the first few notes, but we were aware of the fact that we knew the melody and that upon hearing the first few notes we would be able to recall the rest.

Locke ends his attack on innate ideas by arguing that the mind is a tabula rasa or "blank slate", and that all ideas come from experience. All our knowledge is founded in sensory experience. Essentially, the same knowledge thought to be a priori by Leibniz is, according to Locke, the result of empirical knowledge, which has a lost origin [been forgotten] in respect to the inquirer. However, the inquirer is not cognizant of this fact; thus, he experiences what he believes to be a priori knowledge.

1. The theory of innate knowledge is excessive. Even innatists accept that most of our knowledge is learned through experience, but if that can be extended to account for all knowledge, we learn color through seeing it, so therefore, there is no need for a theory about an innate understanding of color.
2. No ideas are universally held. Do we all possess the idea of God? Do we all believe in justice and beauty? Do we all understand the law of identity? If not, it may not be the case that we have acquired these ideas through impressions/experience/social interaction.
3. Even if there are some universally agreed statements, it is just the ability of the human brain to organize learned ideas/words, that is, innate. An "ability to organize" is not the same as "possessing propositional knowledge" (e.g., a computer with no saved files has all the operations programmed in but has an empty memory).

Noam Chomsky

In his Meno, Plato raises an important epistemological quandary: how is it that we have certain ideas that are not conclusively derivable from our environments? Linguistics scholar Noam Chomsky (born 1928) has taken this problem as a philosophical framework for the scientific inquiry into innatism. His linguistic theory, which derives from 18th-century classical-liberal thinkers such as Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), attempts to explain in cognitive terms how we can develop knowledge of systems which are said, by supporters of innatism, to be too rich and complex to be derived from our environment.

It is claimed one such example is our linguistic faculty. According to Chomsky, our linguistic systems contain a systemic complexity which supposedly could not be empirically derived: the environment seems too poor, variable and indeterminate, to explain the extraordinary ability to learn complex concepts possessed by very young children. Essentially, their accurate grammatical knowledge cannot have originated from their experiences as their experiences are not adequate. It follows that humans must be born with a universal innate grammar, which is determinate and has a highly organized directive component, and enables the language learner to ascertain and categorize language heard into a system. Chomsky contends that the ability to learn how to properly construct sentences or know which sentences are grammatically incorrect is an ability gained from innate knowledge. Noam Chomsky cites as evidence for this theory, the apparent invariability, according to his views, of human languages at a fundamental level. In this way, linguistics may provide a window into the human mind, and establish scientific theories of innateness which otherwise would remain merely speculative.

One implication of Chomsky's innatism, if correct, is that at least a part of human knowledge consists in cognitive predispositions, which are triggered and developed by the environment, but not determined by it. Chomsky suggests that we can look at how a belief is acquired as an input-output situation. He supports the doctrine of innatism as he states that human beliefs gathered from sensory experience are much richer and complex than the experience itself. He asserts that the extra information gathered is from the mind itself as it cannot solely be from experiences. Humans derive excess amount of information from their environment so some of that information must be pre-determined.

Welfare trap

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap 

A hypothetical example: A disabled single mother with two kids in Pennsylvania earning $30,000 receives government support that increases their effective income to $80,000 in 2012. She hits a welfare cliff when her income increases to $31,000, losing several welfare benefits and tax credits, making their effective less than $50,000. At an earned income of $45,000, she would hit a bigger cliff, paying additional taxes while losing more benefits, taking the effective income below $40,000.

The welfare trap (aka the welfare cliff, unemployment trap, or poverty trap in British English) theory asserts that taxation and welfare systems can jointly contribute to keep people on social insurance because the withdrawal of means-tested benefits that comes with entering low-paid work causes there to be no significant increase in total income. According to this hypothesis, an individual sees that the opportunity cost of getting a better paying job is too great for too little a financial return, and this can create a perverse incentive to not pursue a better paying job.

Different definitions

The term used for this concept varies depending on country. In the United States, where government benefit payments are colloquially referred to as "welfare", the welfare trap often indicates that a person is completely dependent on benefits, with little or no hope of self-sufficiency. The welfare trap is also known as the unemployment trap or the poverty trap, with both terms frequently being used interchangeably as they often go hand-in-hand, but there are subtle differences.

In other contexts, the terms "welfare trap" and "poverty trap" are clearly distinguished. For example, a Southern African Regional Poverty Network report on social protection clarifies that "poverty trap [means] a structural condition from which people cannot rescue themselves despite their best efforts. A welfare trap in this context, by contrast, refers to the barrier created by means-tested social grants that have in-built perverse incentives." The South African definition is typically used with regard to developing countries.

This concept may include other adverse effects of welfare such as on the family structure: it may encourage the increase in the numbers of single-mother families and divorce rates, as individuals see a distinct benefit in such a lifestyle.

In the UK, there is a distinction between two concepts within the welfare trap:

• The unemployment trap occurs when the net income difference between low-paid work and unemployment benefits is less than work-related costs (bus pass, work clothes, daycare), discouraging movement into work;
• The poverty trap is the position when means-tested benefit payments are reduced as income rises, combined with income tax and other deductions, with the effect of discouraging work with a higher income, longer hours or acquiring skills. In some cases, if a recipient's wage income rises too much, they may lose some or all of their social assistance.

Causes of welfare traps

There are two predominant views which look to examine how recipients can become stuck in such traps. The first view examines the behavioural traits of recipients and their inability to climb the socio-economic ladder. This view holds that recipients' lack of necessary traits is a result of their decision-making or individual psychology.

The other view examines analyses of labour supply wherein individuals will act to maximise their utility. This utility acts as a function of the amount of goods and services they can enjoy (their real disposable income) and the amount of non-working time available to them. For example, if a worker is free to choose the amount of hours they work, they will continue to offer more labour until an additional hour of leisure forgone is worth more than the goods and services attained through the additional work. Thus, people strive for a utility maximisation in which individuals may deliberately choose to continue receiving employment benefits, as the opportunity cost of employment is too high for the reduction in means-tested support they would otherwise receive.

Example 1: If a person on welfare finds a part-time job that will pay the minimum wage of $5 per hour for eight hours per week (totaling $40), and, of the amount earned per week, $20 is deducted from welfare, there is a net gain of only $20. If the government imposes taxes on the $40, at say 15% ($6), and there may be extra child-care and commuting costs as well since that the person can no longer remain at home all day, the person is now worse off than before getting the job. This result occurs despite performing eight hours of work per week that is productive to society.

Example 2: Consider a hypothetical welfare program that guarantees a minimum income level to welfare recipients, so that an increase in earnings results in a dollar-for-dollar decrease in benefits up to the income threshold. As shown in the diagram below, this creates a "spiked" budget constraint OABC. Indifference curve analysis reveals that a welfare recipient's utility may be higher if they don't work and earn the guaranteed minimum income (curve U1) than if they do work and earn slightly more (curve U0).

Welfare traps in practice

Range of Marginal Tax Rates Between the 10th and 90th Percentiles for Low- and Moderate-Income Taxpayers, by Earnings Group, 2016

Many western countries have developed complex social safety nets that act to protect vulnerable families and individuals experiencing poverty and destitution. As these individuals aim to move off of welfare, the complex labyrinth of programs and policies - such as the 80 federal anti-poverty programs currently available in the United States - create confusion in the process to understand effects of increased income to means-tested payments.

In the United States, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that median marginal tax rates will rise sharply for taxpayers in the lowest quartile who earn less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL). For a taxpayer earning less than 50 percent of the FPL, the median marginal tax rate would increase from 14 percent to 34 percent when they find work that places their earnings at just above the poverty line (100-149 percent of the FPL). Following the second view on welfare traps posited earlier, recipients are rational actors and would likely experience material losses in access to goods and services when taxes, loss of leisure time, and support for dependents is factored in.

High "effective marginal tax rates" (EMTRs) can identify welfare traps or poverty traps. EMTRs are affected by the combination of the increments of an individual's gross income and disposable income. The phenomenon of welfare traps or poverty traps appears when individuals lack encouragement to seek new jobs in the labour market due to the net growth in disposable incomes being too low. This low increasing disposable income is related to the interaction of social security and income taxation systems. The strength of poverty traps rises as the length of non-transfer-income ranges is subject to high EMTRs growth. So, understanding which factors lead to high EMTR can help people understand more about how to reform tax and welfare policy. In Australia, welfare traps have been improved by the Social Security (Poverty Trap Reduction) Act of 1985, for example, reforming pension policy, which does not charge tax to people with full-rate pensions, and integrating child family payments to welfare receipts. Another tax policy reform was conducted by the Coalition Parties that increased the annual threshold for income taxes and reduced the minimum percentage rate. After the Howard government introduced goods and services taxation (GST), welfare payments increased to respond to these taxes. All these political initiatives indirectly ameliorated welfare traps—however, they did not inhibit high EMTR.^[16]

Another measure called RRs (replacement rates) compares income from a person when he does not work and income from this person when he does work. RTR is the third measure which means the Participation Tax Rate. It means the proportion between the net influence of working with gross salary. RRs and RTR are used to compare the incentive between work and not work. In reality, it is difficult for people to choose how many hours more to work (no active option), and it is easy for people to choose between working or not working. So, compared with EMTRs, RRs and PTRs are more appropriate for measuring welfare traps.

Avoiding welfare traps

An incentive to get out of the welfare trap is that the return to the labour market gives a person chances of moving up the career ladder, improving old and acquiring new job skills, etc., thus eventually improving standard of living. Policies that allow for the continued receipt of benefit payments for a period of time after entering work or up to a specific earnings ceiling may also eliminate the welfare trap. For example, for UK claimants of Incapacity Benefit or Employment Support Allowance, "permitted work" arrangements allow for paid work up to either 16 hours or £95 per week without the withdrawal of the disability benefit payments, leading to a net overall increase in income. However, any earnings over £20 may be taxed, and additional earnings may affect receipt of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit, which is an example of the welfare trap remaining potentially in effect. To eliminate the welfare trap entirely would require a policy that permanently continues benefit payments regardless of any conditions, with no income from paid work being withdrawn. One example of this would be unconditional basic income. Addressing the affordability of education and healthcare is a way to escape the welfare trap. In the US, for some families on welfare, the high cost of healthcare and higher education drives them to remain in the welfare trap, even though being in the welfare trap reduces their health status and access to credit. Without welfare support, they would have difficulty affording the high cost of healthcare. If the provision of healthcare and education could be improved, this could encourage some welfare families to find work and escape the welfare trap.

In the UK, where single-parent families' reliance on benefits has been on the rise, welfare reformers argue that if the unemployed who are stuck in the benefit trap are taught skills that match their job prospects, then they will be more likely to seek work rather than remain in the benefit trap. They believe that there should be reciprocal obligations between the government and the individual, and that this will encourage welfare recipients to be more active in acquiring job skills and finding work, in order to prepare them for employment. In the United States, the government believes that the unemployed are not motivated to work, so they have taken steps to support work, such as raising the minimum wage, reducing taxes on low-income groups, and providing more health care to working families. However, the main measure that proved effective was the compulsory work scheme, wherein people could only receive benefits if they worked. This has led to a significant increase in the number of people employed and a reduction in the number of unemployed people caught in the welfare trap. In Australia, the government saw low work motivation as a barrier to the unemployed finding new jobs and moved away from helping the unemployed with skills training to motivating the unemployed to find work. The ultimate aim of these reforms is to reduce the number of unemployed people caught in the welfare trap.