The debate on “Building the Good Society” continues to fill up the Social Europe Journal. Some of the contributions have been of high quality, others theoretically displaced from reality and somewhat negative. One piece which finally gave some reason for optimism came from Paolo Borioni.
What he has written applies very specifically to Hungary, where the problem is not simply that there is “no economic growth” or that “everyone is broke” – it is that the nature of the economic growth has been to benefit relatively few members of society, on a selective and particular interaction of region, combined with class and social capital.
He obviously has some economics background, and he picks up on some of the Marxist economists assertion that “wage-based growth is much more reliable than growth based on debt and finance. Historically, indeed, low wages for too many people were a precondition of debt-based demand in the USA.”
As David Harvey has pointed out, the instability which led to the current crisis is a direct consequence of wage stagnation, stemming from the systematic removal of regulation. Only where the government has remained interventionist in the economic sphere, has the state managed to allay negative consequences in the social sphere. Massive investment in infrastructure and technology is needed, directed into those areas which are considered to have socially beneficial outcomes. This is the bread and butter of social democracy – and as Borioni says, “Progressive reformism has in recent decades neglected the need for the continuous reform of capitalism.”
Borioni rightly points the finger at Blairites for dropping the ball, whom he accurately describes as “communitarians, not socialists.” Central to his thinking is the idea that ethics are central to “determining the direction and means by which we as democratic socialists seek to ensure piecemeal reform of society in a given historical context.” So there is acknowledgement, that social democracy must have a strong indigenous basis in order to succeed – something that I am sure many “traditional” social democrats in Hungary would readily agree with.
He says that “the present crisis can be interpreted as a consequence of capitalistic internal logics meeting no real reforms, which leads to an environment of ethical standardisation: turbo-finance is attractive not only because of its enormous profits, but also because it avoids the obligations connected to the legitimately different interests of labour.” This is extremely impressive – the arguments used in favour of privatisation and unrestricted markets in Hungary have always used the language of “reform” – casting its opponents as conservatives. In fact, it is capitalism itself that constantly needs reform in order to result in favourable outcomes for society and avoid its own monopolistic, exploitative tendencies.
I look forward to reading more from Paolo Borioni – definitely one to watch.
