The ‘crisis of capitalism’ is not the one Europeans think it is | Branko Milanović | Opinion | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/27/crisis-of-capitalism-europeans-gig-economy
Le capitalisme est plus puissant que jamais ; s’il est source d’appauvrissement du plus grand nombre et donc de rejet dans les pays occidentaux, il n’en est pas de même dans d’autres aires géographiques, notamment asiatiques.
La marchandisation de domaines antérieurement épargnés, y compris de la politique et des politiciens, est une cause plus commune de rejet du capitalisme.
An avalanche of recent books and articles about the “crisis of capitalism” is predicting its demise or dépassement. For those who remember the 1990s, there is a strange similarity between this and the literature of the time, which argued that the Hegelian “end of history” had arrived. That theory was proved to be wrong. The former, I believe, is also factually wrong and misdiagnoses the problem.
The facts show capitalism to be not in crisis at all. It is stronger than ever , both in terms of its geographical coverage and expansion to areas (such as leisure time, or social media) where it has created entirely new markets and commodified things that were never historically objects of transaction.
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So if capitalism has spread so much in all directions, why do we speak of its crisis? Because we focus on the malaise of the western middle classes and the rise of populism. But the dissatisfaction with globalised capitalism is not universal: a YouGov survey showed a very high degree of support for globalisation in Asia, with the lowest support in the US and France.
The western malaise is the product of uneven distribution of the gains from globalisation. When globalisation began in the 1980s, it was politically “sold” in the west – especially as it came together with “the end of history” – on the premise that it would disproportionately benefit richer countries. The outcome was the opposite. Asia in particular was a beneficiary, especially the most populous countries: China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia. In Europe, as in the US, it benefitted the 1%. It is the gap between the expectations entertained by the middle classes and the low growth in their incomes that has fuelled dissatisfaction with globalisation and, by association, with capitalism.
There is however another issue that does seem to affect most countries, and it is to do with the functioning of political systems. In principle, politics, no more than leisure time, was never regarded as an area of market transaction. But both have become so. This has made politics more corrupt. Even if a politician does not engage in explicit corruption during their time in office, they tend to use the connections acquired to make money afterwards. Such commodification has created widespread cynicism and disenchantment with mainstream politics and politicians.
While politics as entrepreneurship was often seen to afflict only less developed countries, it has now spread to Europe. It is otherwise hard to explain the political evolution of figures such as Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right former interior minister. Political connections can also be used as a valuable asset throughout political careers: take José Manuel Barroso, the former head of the European commission who moved to Goldman Sachs. This commodification is what Francis Fukuyama – who wrote The End of History and the Last Man – refers to as “reciprocal altruism”: it is not unlawful, but is a time-delayed exchange of favours.
The crisis therefore is not of capitalism per se, but a crisis brought about by the uneven effects of globalisation and the expansion of capitalism to areas traditionally not considered apt for commercialisation. Capitalism has thus become too powerful, and in regions such as Europe, it is in collision with strongly held beliefs. Unless it is controlled and its “field of action” reduced to what it used to be, it will continue this conquest of as-yet-uncommercialised spheres.