Friday, November 1, 2019

Neoliberalism Tells Us We’re Selfish Souls – How Can We Promote Other Identities? — Christine Berry


At the simplest level, "it's the incentives, stupid."

And incentives reflect underlying values and value structure that shape interests and the their pursuit.

Foundationally, it about the level of collective consciousness. Want to change social behavior for the "better"? Raise the level of collective consciousness. But what are the criteria of "better"? How can they be determined – instrumentally by outcomes, deontologically on the basis of universally applicable rules), virtue based on character, or simply constructed institutionally through the historical dialectic, or some combination thereof? How would a combination be arrived at – theoretically, practically, or through emergence? How objective can a conclusion regarding this be?

The current dialectic between "capitalism" and "socialism" is about individuality versus community. This leads to various paradoxes of liberalism, such as freedom versus responsibility, individual liberty versus social order, homo economicus versus homo socialis.

This is reflected in part in the current dialectic between liberalism and traditionalism that dominates the world stage now that fascism and communism have more or less taken a back seat but not disappeared either, with nationalism and populism rising, and China still a communist country even though no longer Maoist.

Each of these political systems and theories on which they are based contains a kernel of truth. The challenge is harmonizing them in terms what is valuable while losing what is not, especially when what is not dominates.

This is not something that is going to be figured out intellectually and then imposed. It is going to develop organically on the field of history, where the future is uncertain. It is subject to emergence since societies are complex adaptive system. However, the unfolding of history is also path-dependent and constrained by "endowments."

Open Democracy
Neoliberalism Tells Us We’re Selfish Souls – How Can We Promote Other Identities?
Christine Berry, freelance researcher and writer was previously Director of Policy and Government for the New Economics Foundation
ht Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism.

5 comments:

Matt Franko said...

“societies are complex adaptive system.”

No they’re not they’re operating dialectic just like you point out which leads to synthesis of the opposing theses.... NOT adaptation which would require instead of synthesis it would rather require corrective adjustments... society never adjusts it synthesizes....

If it was correctively adjusted (adapted) we wouldn’t be having all of these problems...

We’re operating a Platonist utopia of repeated synthesis.... adaptations are never made...

Matt Franko said...

Look here you say: “dialectic between "capitalism" and "socialism"

Ok what we get when we are synthesizing these two theses is either shitty capitalism or shitty socialism....

Here this week we have Leon Cooperman (capitalism) telling Liz Warren (socialist) “what about charity?” this week like charity is going to solve our problems.... yeah right....

Then Liz counters with “tax the rich because they have all the money!”...

Fucked up either way due to Platonistic synthesis....

Matt Franko said...

Your methodology simply doesn’t work....

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Links on Christine Berry’s ‘Neoliberalism Tells Us We’re Selfish Souls — How Can We Promote Other Identities?’

To begin with, economics is NOT about souls and identities. This is the business of other disciplines. Economics is a system science, i.e. more like aviation than psycho-socio carpet flying. While carpet flying is inclusive and free for everybody, system science is exclusive, that is, folks who cannot put 2 and 2 together are NOT admitted.

Homo oeconomicus: the never-ending folk-psychological shitshow
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/09/homo-oeconomicus-never-ending-folk.html

PsySoc — the scourge of economics
http://axecorg.blogspot.com/2015/09/psysoc-scourge-of-economics.html

Economics is NOT about Human Nature but the economic system
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/05/economics-is-not-about-human-nature-but.html

Economics as storytelling and entertainment for the masses
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2019/01/economics-as-storytelling-and.html

Economics is NOT a social science
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/08/economics-is-not-social-science.html

and NOT a science of behavior. See cross-references
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/12/behavior-cross-references.html

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

Peter Pan said...

My crystal ball tells me we won't be saying goodbye to the status quo anytime soon. More likely, is the status quo will be saying goodbye to us.