2025-02-16 Jason Hickel Bluesky thread
@jasonhickel.bsky.social February 16, 2025 at 5:07 AM
Social democracy is not a viable alternative to capitalism. It is a tempting prospect, but ultimately suffers from violent contradictions that cannot be sustained.
Social democracy tries to establish a compromise between (a) capitalism, and (b) socialist demands for fair wages, public services, and environmental protection. But the latter represents a problem for capital. It increases input prices, and makes capital accumulation very difficult to achieve.
One way to resolve this tension is to abandon capital accumulation and transition to a post-capitalist economy where production is democratically organized around human well-being and ecology (in other words, socialism).
But social democracy, which is committed to capitalism, resolves the tension through imperialism. Social democratic states appropriate cheap labour and nature from the global South, thus allowing them to offer good wages and public services at home while maintaining capital accumulation.
Even states that may seem neutral or benevolent, like some of the Scandinavian countries, benefit from a massive net-appropriation of labour and resources from the global South through dynamics of unequal exchange, which enables them to sustain the social democratic compromise.
Crucially, this option is generally not available to states in the periphery. In the periphery, when capitalists face demands from unions etc., they don't have the option of conceding and then relying on imperialist appropriation to maintain accumulation. They have to crush the progressive demands.
This is why so many capitalist states in the South are characterized by violence and repression. It is because capitalism requires violence. By contrast, the core states can have nice human rights at home because they externalize the violence that capitalism requires.
Social democracy offers only the illusion of a solution. An illusion for some, that is. The Congolese coltan miners and Bangladeshi sweatshop workers that supply Western multinational firms are of course under no such illusion.
The only real solution is to overcome capitalism and achieve a post-capitalist economy. It is 100% possible to have a functioning economy that ensures human well-being and ecological stability without needing imperialism. But it requires abandoning capital accumulation.
"In 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49687-y
When we sweep away the illusions and false solutions, it always comes down to the one choice that humanity faces: socialism or barbarism.
Stowe Boyd@stoweboyd.bsky.social
So, true socialism, not just closely regulated markets. And Lindblom's observation 'The large private corporation fits oddly into democratic theory and vision. Indeed, it does not fit.' means dismantling Anderson's 'private governments' in business.