The Social Infrastructure

A SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE IS NECESSARY

By Joachim Hirsch

[This article originally published in arranca, June 26, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.linksnet.de/artikel.php?id=1254.]

The Frankfurt group links-netz reflects on a new social policy aiming at developing a comprehensive social infrastructure as an alternative to the social state oriented in paid labor (http://www.links-netz.de). This is not a new discussion but reaches back to the 1980s. This discussion began in the context of the unemployment movement and the women’s movement. Neither the time period nor the political-social connection was accidental. The background at that time was the manifest crisis of Fordism and the beginning of the neoliberal restructuring offensive when the “golden age” of Fordism ended and the “dream of perpetual prosperity” dissolved.

The criticism of “dismantling the social state” was unsuccessful because of the superior force of neoliberal models and because the traditional social system with its disciplining, controlling and excluding effects did not seem worth defending unconditionally. In addition, economic and social changes greatly undermined the foundations of the traditional social state, the Fordist labor society. Therefore a defensive attitude stands on shaky ground and is hardly suited for questioning neoliberal ideological hegemony.

Following a superficial realism that explained existing capitalist conditions as unchangeable, very different forms of work and socialization in the realm of utopia do not seem viable. The alternative between reform projects without perspective and abstract revolution metaphysics appeared. Instead we should remember that capitalist society has assumed very different forms in the course of history. Economic laws and forced objective conditions cannot be simply covered up. Social hierarchies of power are always involved.

The social organization is in a mis-relation to the social potentials. Another radical form of reflection about society, its possibilities and forms of realization is necessary. No finished blueprints or esoteric political strategies are needed. Effective alternative social concepts are not invented at the writing desk but develop out of practical conflict with the experiences and needs of people.

New forms of work are central, no longer only improvement of the conditions of paid labor. A movement will only develop successfully if the existing ideological hegemony is radically put in question, that is withdrawn from the logic of the dominant “uniform thinking” (Bourdieu). Connecting practical initiatives and struggles with theoretical discussions is imperative. Our thesis is that the capitalist work society as it developed up to the second half of the 20th century in the form of Fordism has already largely lost its foundation.

The neoliberal attack on the Fordist class compromise described with the term “globalization” has speeded up an economic-technical development revolutionizing working conditions. The traditional normal working conditions gained over long social struggles crumble. The possibility of a permanent full employment proves to be an illusion. Therefore redefining social work and imagining completely different forms of social community are necessary.

PRESUPPOSITIONS

Firstly, the societies at least in the developed capitalist parts of the world have reached a level of productivity that the work necessary to produce the necessary goods and services has decreased considerably. Their actual and potential wealth allows renouncing on the general work pressure as a basis of their reproduction. Under capitalist conditions, this development is manifest in the expansion of unemployment and marginalized employment conditions while work tends to be longer and more intensive in core economic sectors integrated in the world market.

Social work is distributed very unequally. As a result, poverty increases with the growing wealth of society. The claim to social state benefits is still tied in principle to normal working relations. Therefore the material inequalities are enlarged and economic growth no longer goes along with increasing mass prosperity. That capitalism produces poverty through wealth is very clear in its centers. At the same time a growing amount of social work serves useless or even damaging goals to open up additional profitable investment possibilities for capital.

Secondly, the social division of labor has reached a degree of complexity that makes it harder and harder to calculate the material incomes of individual work performance. The “higher incomes” in the core economic sectors can only offer their “performance” because they can hearken back to a growing quantity of products and services from housework and personal services to the production of fast food. The existing income differences that can hardly be justified by an objective concept of performance are maintained by a complex system of exclusions and discriminations, guided through the education system, gender and racial discriminations, existing social state mechanisms and so forth. As a result, present division of labor conditions require at least a relative uncoupling of labor in the sense of conventional normal paid labor conditions and incomes.

The concept of the social infrastructure is based on three presuppositions. In its center is a comprehensive structure of public goods and services that must be available to all people free of charge. These extend from education, training, health care and housing to transportation.

These measures serving the reproduction of workers are also a part of capital’s necessary infrastructure. A fundamental “de-commodification” (i.e. removal of the commodity form of goods and services) is vital in clear opposition to the privatization policy currently enforced by individual states and on the international plane. This infrastructure should be organized as decentrally as possible so it can be immediately influenced and controlled by the participants. For the health system, the expertocracy of the very inefficient social-medical, industrial complex can only be broken this way.

Persons should not be treated as dependent clients of the social state and its experts but should decide what institutions and services they need. This aims at a fundamental transformation of institutions and the dominant form of bureaucratic-budgetary socialization. The current system of income support and social security could be replaced by a general basic security for everyone financed by taxes and not restricted to a material subsistence level that guarantees a dignified life, free development of personality and far-reaching social participation. In addition, higher old-age pensions could then be arranged individually and privately. The basic security could cover the needs not satisfied by the developed social infrastructure. A close connection exists between “infrastructure” and “basic security”.

OBJECTIONS

In many discussions, we are confronted with objections that must be taken seriously and examined.

1st objection: These reflections go at least partly in the same direction as the neoliberal social state “reorganization”. In fact, similar tendencies prevail in dominant policy. This is particularly true for the basic security that originally represented a neoliberal invention. A basic income on a low level appears to some neoliberal strategists as a suitable means for quieting the growing number of precarious and marginalized workers. The process of social division accelerates. Joined with extensive need tests and controls, this could include an intensification of the surveillance and disciplining effects of the social state. This should be completely different.

The social infrastructure making available necessary goods and services free of charge must be administered decentrally and democratically. Basic security only makes sense in the context of this material infrastructure. Three principles are crucial for this basic security. It must be sufficiently high and far above a minimum material subsistence level. It must be available for everyone and offered unconditionally, that is without proofs and controls. While something like this is hardly acceptable to neoliberals, the dominant “reorganization”-strategies must be confronted.

2nd objection: The concept cannot be financed. A fundamental development of the publically financed social infrastructure including an adequate basic income would doubtlessly entail considerable costs. Realizing this concept is not possible without considerable political-social battles.

That the current social state involves immense costs must be considered, for example for a rather inefficient health system and a gigantic complex of administering and controlling bureaucracies that mostly are no longer necessary. From our perspective, the enormous social security transfers would fall away. However a drastic increase of taxes on incomes and assets that were reduced again and again in the last years if not abolished contrary to all economic and social reason is necessary. In addition, the profit tax on non-essential or injurious products should be increased, public budgets shifted and subsidies that only serve to maintain uneconomical production with the argument of preserving jobs or often lead to incident effects, for example with technology- and regional promotion, should be dismantled.

Our central argument is that this society is rich enough to finance such an infrastructure with a rational organization of public revenues and expenditures. This means – contrary to the dominant trend – that considerable redistributions must occur vertically between “capital” and “labor”, “rich” and “poor” and also horizontally.

3rd objection: Paid labor declines; no one wants to work any more. Therefore the pressure for paid labor should be reduced but not abolished. Abolishing this pressure would mean in fact the end of capitalism. As desirable as this would be, the conditions for this transformation do not exist. We presently do not have a convincing model of social regulation that manages without private property and the market economy. Therefore paid labor – or independent work for the market – is necessary to satisfy the needs that go beyond basic security. Reducing paid labor pressures means that people should no longer be forced to accept any work under all conditions. This right can be realized in view of the social and economic development.

Even unpleasant and hard work will be done when they are paid adequately. The assumption that people do not want to work any more if they aren’t forced means that an historically arising compulsory relation is declared an anthropological constant. People want to realize themselves through labor whether through paid labor when it is satisfying and meaningful or through other forms of activity. Reducing paid labor pressure could diminish the importance of “personal labor” in the production of goods – subsistence production in the broadest sense. This “personal labor” would be a good means against a throwaway society ruining the environment. Creating working conditions where people can freely realize themselves and develop their abilities would produce a considerable social innovation potential. This even has its rationality in the capitalist sense.

4th objection: This concept is limited to developed capitalist metropolises and deepens global inequalities. This objection should be taken seriously. The necessary change of the economic world order with its conditions of inequality and dependence presupposes radical revolutions of the way of life and production in the capitalist metropolises. As long as conditions remain as they are and the commodification of social relations and the commodity form of need satisfaction advance more and more, the idea of a more just world economic order remains illusory. A change of economic-social relations in the metropolises will radiate to the periphery as an example and because the economic relations between centers and peripheries will also change.

The objection that positional competition in a globalized economy will destroy individual state efforts from the start is not very convincing. Firstly, the argument of positional competition is an essential part of a neoliberal propaganda argument. Secondly, larger economic areas like the European Union for example can go their own way to realize this politically. A re-regulation of the world economy is on the agenda in view of its increasingly clear crisis nature. The question is only whose interest is followed. The economic-social constellations and hierarchies of power in the metropolises are decisive. Another social policy must reconfigure these constellations.

5th objection: This concept cannot be realized under capitalist conditions. Caution is commanded with this argument. That the capitalist accumulation dynamic contains basic laws can be established both theoretically and historically. The form of this dynamic depends on a multitude of factors, cultural norms, values and social pecking orders. As long as the society is not revolutionized, capital must make more profits to prevent the collapse of economic reproduction. However this can happen under socially controlled conditions.

The goal in reflections on the social infrastructure is a “radical reformism”. A basic change of socialization conditions, e.g. the form of work and division of labor, gender relations, consumerism etc, is crucial. This change is only conceivable as a gradual process because changing values and behavioral routines are involved. Therefore the realization of this concept will fail if it is enforced “from above” over the heads of people. A social movement that develops political power and becomes practically effective in everyday life is necessary. What is central is not government counseling but spelling out concretely that these changes are necessary and possible. Whether and how these movements become reality depends on their implementing new paradigms, priorities and forms of social praxis.