Lecture
Это окончание невероятной информации про роли человека в экономике.
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regulated market economy who will react far more sharply to the premises formulated above. They will recall the well-known thesis that the market and capitalism had already changed substantially by the twentieth century, and that, consequently, the state's redistribution of a significant share of GDP is a development of the market (rather than a form transitional to post-market relations), that employee ownership is progress of capital (rather than the sprouts of post-capitalist relations), and so on.
The authors have already argued more than once against proponents of these views, so let us recall just one argument concerning capital. If employee ownership represents progress of capital, then why not proceed to worker ownership of the means of production (cooperative, collective, communal, municipal, federal, etc.) as the principal form of capitalist economic organization? Or would such a transition amount to a leap "beyond" capital? We will be told: this process can proceed only up to a certain point, so long as private property still remains the foundation of the economy. And this answer is entirely legitimate: indeed, as long as new forms (the same associated forms of property) develop only as transitional relations and as subordinate to capital as such (a relation in which the owner and the hired worker are separated from one another), they (these new forms) can serve to strengthen capitalism. But if the new relations become dominant... then we will find ourselves "beyond" capital. Exactly the same holds for the relationship between market self-regulation and conscious regulation. Thus, introducing into the analysis the parameter of historical development and the transition of quantitative changes (for example, the growth of regulation) into qualitative ones (the transition "beyond" the market in our example) allows us to argue the thesis that the existence of non-market relations can be acknowledged even from a position that we would mark politically as social-democratic.
After these preliminary remarks, we can return to the problem of a historical-dialectical study of the phenomenon called "social capital." What, then, is hidden behind this term? If we examine the first subtype of "social capital" (relations that produce a market effect), it turns out that the basis for this name is the ability of these relations and communities to bring profit to those agents who skillfully use them for their own private ends. So, outwardly, all the parameters are met. Even from the standpoint of Marx's general formula of capital (M—C—M′), what stands before us is capital. Moreover, we can present its own formula: M—S—M′, where S stands for social ties and relations. This formula, as will become clear below, is somewhat simplified, but that does not matter for now. From a practical standpoint, it presents itself in a rather cynical, but quite understandable, form. Suppose some agent X has, say, $1 million, which he wants to increase. In the case of ordinary investment, this initial capital would yield, say, 10% profit, i.e., $0.1 million. But if these investments are made using the patronage of fellow alumni of the prestigious N. University, the rate turns out higher, and our agent X receives not $0.1 million but, say, $0.2 million in profit. Accordingly, the $100,000 in this case will be the product of "social capital."1 However, from Marx's standpoint, the general formula of capital is not the essence but the mere appearance of capital as a special historical-economic phenomenon. This formula also covers those forms characteristic of "antediluvian" capital (for example, usurer's and merchant's capital). For us, this "detail" is very important, because these forms of capital, which existed long before capitalism, were a classic example of a transitional economic relation. Let us take as an example the following transaction, typical of merchant capital in the era of the Russian late Middle Ages: a merchant buys some good from a landowner in the N. province, transports it to St. Petersburg, and sells it to another landowner (or to the tsar's court) at a profit.2 This example points to a relation that contradictorily combined production that was feudal in its socio-economic essence (production based on the use of a personally dependent worker both by the seller of the goods and by its buyer, whose money, again, had been brought to him by a serf) with circulation that was capitalist in form. Let us go further. If we accept the definition of capital that we proposed earlier and substantiated to the best of our ability, it turns out that in the example we have given there is no capitalist socio-economic relation at all. There is only its appearance (a perfectly real one), i.e., before us is, as it were, capital, an appearance of capital.1 We can now look at the system of relations that characterize the "production" of social capital in the present era, and on this basis answer the question of whether the production of "social capital" is a capitalist relation of production. If we look at the process of this "production" through the lens of a historical-dialectical study of the market and capital, it turns out that in this case we are dealing with a class of phenomena which, in their basic parameters, do not belong to the attributes of commodity-capitalist relations. The relations and processes hidden behind the term "social capital" either (a) existed before and independently of the market and capital, exist under this economic system, and will continue to exist after it, or (b) belong to non-market, non-capitalist phenomena (below we shall try to demonstrate that they also belong, in part, to post-market and post-capitalist phenomena). As for subtype (a), here everything is relatively simple. Indeed, hardly anyone would dispute that family ties, friendship, or religious or national community are not products of the market and capital. Still, there are nuances here too. Just as a machine tool (or even a piece of gold) is by its nature not capital but merely some technological device (or metal), so too the family (let us dwell on this form of social bond as an example) is by its nature a way of reproducing the human race, not a means of making profit.
Let us note: if we deny the logical construction presented above, we thereby claim that, from the standpoint of capital and the capitalist social system based on it, there is no difference whatsoever between production based on the use of hired labor and production based on the use of serfs (or other persons in a condition of personal dependence — say, kolkhoz workers of the Stalin era, or inmates of the Gulag).
However, once incorporated into the capitalist process of production, a machine tool becomes [constant] capital. Can one speak, by analogy, of a similar transformation of the family?
The answer is not unambiguous. If a family is "produced" as part of the process of creating profit (accumulating capital to start a family life — producing the family — obtaining, as a result of the family's functioning, more than the capital advanced), then in form the process is capitalist. But in substance, family relations as such are, only in an exceptional case, relations between the owner of family-capital (the one who invested resources in creating the family) and someone who could conditionally be called a "family employee" (the one who receives maintenance from the master and performs functions stipulated by contract). Moreover, the transformation of intra-family relations onto a genuinely capitalist basis (or into relations of market partnership — the production of the family by co-owners of "family-capital") leads to the family ceasing to be a family in the proper sense — relations among people based on mutual love, friendship, tradition, and mutual assistance. So, in the case of subtype (a) of "social capital," which we have examined using the example of the family, we can draw an important conclusion. Instead of the formulation "the family is capital" (we simply dropped the adjective "social" from this formula), we arrive at a different one: by its nature the family is not capital, but it can take on the appearance of capital if it is used to extract profit. Moreover, it can even acquire the substantive features of capital if it is built on principles that negate genuinely familial ones. This formula can be generalized by replacing the term "family" with "basic social ties" (recall that "family" above was used only as an example to simplify the exposition). In this case we can say: a person's basic (kin-based) social ties are by their nature not capital, but they can take on the appearance of capital if used to extract profit, and can even acquire the substantive features of capital if built on genuinely capitalist (rather than socially invariant) principles.1 In the context of our study, this subtype of relations cannot be classified as either pre-market and/or pre-capitalist, or post-market and/or post-capitalist relations. For the most part, they belong to the non-economic spheres of the life of society and are merely absorbed (subordinated) by the market and/or capital. Far more interesting for us are social ties and interactions of type (b) — among which are those we have called post-market and post-capitalist.
1 Here a major difficulty awaits us: from the standpoint of neoclassical theory, the "natural," generic property of humankind is rational economic egoism. The authors have shown above the illegitimacy of this postulate, pointing out that it is a historically demonstrated fact that representatives of the most diverse pre-capitalist and extra-capitalist communities possessed principles, values, and behavioral motives significantly different from market, capitalist ones (thus, for pre-class society, gift-giving was the rule and equivalent exchange the rare exception; for pre-bourgeois society, extra-economic coercion was the rule, and any assertion of the equality of nobleman and serf as economic agents would have looked like nonsense...).
Let us first recall what processes we are talking about. In examining the interactions of subjects within non-governmental organizations, social movements, and other institutions of civil society, within the non-commercial collectives of scholars, artists, and educators (schools, universities, and other institutions of the public sector, etc.), and interactions among people in the course of joint voluntary activity, and so on, a number of foreign authors single out, as the ties described by the category of "social capital," relations of mutual cooperation, solidarity, mutual assistance, and collaboration. Before continuing the analysis, let us recall one of the propositions that should not be forgotten by anyone who wishes to adequately grasp the authors' thought: in the contemporary economy, we practically never encounter pure non-capitalist forms. Today's world is a world of the market and capital. The only thing that can exist in it alongside them are forms that combine features of these relations with the sprouts of a new — post-capitalist — or an old — pre-capitalist — system, and nothing more. We are not now raising the practically pressing question of just how widespread relations of solidarity, collectivism, and the like are in the contemporary economy. We are merely fixing a theoretically significant thesis: non-market relations of solidarity and cooperation do exist in the contemporary economy, and they are significant enough that foreign researchers have been compelled not only to notice them but to designate them as a special kind of capital. For the authors, this circle of relations is of interest for several reasons. First, these relations are, an sich, non-market in character. The main basis for this assertion is that these relations presuppose not the separateness and independence of actors, but cooperation and dialogue among subjects. A consequence of this is the predominantly non-competitive character of these interactions. Within the framework of such relations, solidarity turns out to be a really operating, effective, and practically used way, in the economy, of cooperation among individuals in the course of carrying out joint activity. Second, these relations presuppose and posit the formation of features of a type of personality different from the one characteristic of rational homo economicus — a personality with different values and different motivation, different socio-economic interests. Whereas within market, competitive relations the social interest is realized only post festum, in the final analysis, as a product of the interaction of the opposing interests of the participants in the competitive process, within relations of solidarity the interests of the cooperating subjects are, from the very outset, a priori, unified and basically coincide with the common interest. Thus, the interests of the participants of environmental organizations, or of the subjects of the global ATTAC network, which had been warning of the threat of a global financial crisis since the late 1990s, are fundamentally and a priori unified. At their core, the interests of trade-union members and of partners within business associations are unified as well.1 Moreover, relations of solidarity (or, in less advanced forms "beyond" the market and capital, relations of partnership) can also be characteristic of certain interactions among the participants of the market process: the fact that interactions among businessmen include not only competition but also partnership is well known not only to theorists but also to practitioners of business processes.
1 A number of works by representatives of the Russian group of researchers working predominantly within the paradigm of new institutionalism are devoted to the problem of the development of business associations — in particular, A. A. Auzan and his colleagues at the department of the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University (see, for example: Auzan A. A., Zolotov A. V., Stavinskaya A. A., Tambovtsev V. L. The Political Economy of Russia: The Dynamics of the Social Contract in the 2000s. Selected Works of the Institute of the National Project "Social Contract," 2000–2009. Moscow, 2010; Auzan A. A. Coalitions for Modernization: Possibilities of Emergence and Methodology of Analysis // Voprosy Ekonomiki [Issues of Economics]. 2008. No. 1)
Let us make a qualification: the coincidence of the interests and goals of the subjects of a relation of solidarity may be based on a formal commonality of goals and values imposed from outside, in which case it easily degenerates into a bureaucratic formality, represented by a coordinating body detached from the cooperating subjects. But it may also be a consequence of the mutual complementarity of the interests, needs, and goals of the subjects participating in the dialogue. In the latter case (a typical example here is the cooperation of scholars working out a single problem within a creative collective), a bureaucratic inversion of the shared community of interest turns out to be fundamentally difficult, though not impossible. (As a brief aside, let us note that a similar inversion is possible with any type of economic interaction: thus, under conditions of institutional instability, market competition easily degenerates into criminal turf wars or even outright wars — everyone has their own "ailments"...). Within relations of solidarity, a special type of rivalry is also formed, one that is not simply another name for competition but a fundamentally different mode of self-realization. Let us consider the sphere of science as an example. Here, in the competition among participants in scholarly dialogue, the winner is not the one who is best "protected" from his partners, but the one who is maximally open to dialogue, who constantly gives away his knowledge to others in anticipation of criticism (that is, of a return gift — a new block of knowledge) and strives to outdo his opponents by proving, in open debate, that he is right (by giving them a new block of knowledge). Relations within a creatively working student group are constructed in a broadly similar way, where each of the participants strives to express himself or herself as fully as possible, to prove in dialogue that he (she) is more talented than the others, to win in discussion, receiving the fullest recognition of colleagues and professor — that is, strives for victory through the giving of his or her own knowledge and talents...
Third, the relations that were designated above by the term "solidarity" are non-capitalist in nature. They are based on the concentration of basic property rights in the hands of all members of the cooperative, and in the strict sense are not compatible with relations of capitalist hiring of some participants in a solidary labor process by others. Both the direction of the process (in particular, goal-setting and other management functions), the appropriation of factors of activity, and the use of its results (for example, the refusal to log a forest as a consequence of the activity of an environmental NGO) are directly social in character. Moreover, from the standpoint of property relations, in this case we can also speak of the presence of such an aspect as the gratuitous mutual assistance of participants in solidary activity and their direct (not mediated by principles of equivalence and other forms of alienation) cooperation in the process of realizing concretely universal goals and values (let us recall: all this is a retelling not of texts on the political economy of socialism, but of the above-mentioned Western works on "social capital"). It is another matter that in reality relations of solidarity are always contradictorily combined with relations of private appropriation and commercialization, bureaucratic management and careerism, giving rise to a chase after money and position in the hierarchy in science and pedagogy, the bureaucratization of management, and abuses in NGOs, etc. But then owners of capital also "degenerate": some try to bribe state officials, others turn into "robber barons" (the dominant type of big business in the United States of the second half of the 19th century and in Russia of the late 20th century and beyond), still others create mafia structures under the guise of a private security service... And the degree of degeneration is especially high at the stage of the genesis of the system, so that only nascent relations of solidarity and other post-capitalist relations are simply bound to "sin" all the time with tendencies toward commercialization, bureaucratism, and other "vestiges of the past," owing to the same laws by which capital in the era of primitive accumulation "sinned" with a passion for using not only hired labor but also illegitimate violence and state power for the purposes of enrichment... Let us return to our problem of analyzing relations of solidarity and cooperation, and pose the question: what does their presence testify to — the preservation (revival) of pre-market and pre-capitalist relations, or the genesis of post-market and post-capitalist relations? Here too the authors propose to follow the path, traditional for us, of a historical-logical analysis of the content of these relations. Such an analysis will make it possible to distinguish externally similar but substantively different relations that fall under the name "solidarity." These may be pre-capitalist relations of cooperation, based on a pre-industrial type of technology, manual reproductive labor, and the subordination of the individual to tradition and other forms of personal dependence (the most typical example being the commune). In their most barbaric form, these relations may exist as forced "solidarity" ("collective organization of labor" under conditions of the Gulag), which is essentially a different relation, namely technological cooperation carried out by means of extra-economic coercion. This forced cooperation has nothing in common with the socio-economic relation of solidarity, although the "names" (in the style of Stalin's "collective farms" — kolkhozy) and the absence of competition create the appearance of an external resemblance. But, strange as it may seem, a hedgehog in essence has much more in common with a hare or a hippopotamus than with a floor brush, which, in turn, is substantively much closer to a vacuum cleaner than to a hedgehog. So it is with forced solidarity: although externally, owing to the absence of competition, it resembles a free association, in substance it is closer to the cooperation of hired workers on a capitalist assembly line, where the worker is driven not by love for the stupefyingly monotonous tightening of bolts but by need and the threat of unemployment, i.e., by external compulsion. As in the case of the community of serfs, here too we find dependence and coercion of workers, only the dependence and coercion are economic rather than based on personal subordination. But fundamentally different relations are also possible, ones presupposing predominantly creative content of activity and voluntary, free association of the participants in this process. If joint social creativity underlies their cooperation, we find ourselves in the sphere of activity of social movements and NGOs. If, on the other hand, such cooperation is based on the creative activity of a scientist, an artist, a teacher, an ecologist, a subject of management, etc., then we come closer to relations of co-creation in the process of the activity of the creative class. Finally, intermediate variants are also possible, in which predominantly reproductive industrial labor of hired workers is organized on the basis of relations of solidarity through the use of relations of the formal liberation of labor (the authors wrote about this transitional form back in the 1980s1). Sprouts of these relations existed (although genetically burdened with bureaucratic deformations2) in the USSR, where they received the name "enthusiasm" and "socialist competition," and in theory, the basic production relation of a new mode of production, which we have already mentioned. What has been said allows us to theoretically qualify relations based on extra-economic coercion, having only the appearance of solidarity, as pre-capitalist, since they are based on relations that are less socially developed and yield a smaller humanitarian effect than capitalist ones. Relations of solidarity, on the other hand, based on creative activity (including social creativity) and the free association of participants, we consider it legitimate to qualify as post-capitalist (and, correspondingly, post-market). And this thesis needs to be argued. First, they are based on creative, post-industrial labor in their content, which allows us to assess them as, at the very least, no less progressive than capitalist relations in terms of technological basis. Second, they presuppose the removal of capitalist forms of alienation. They lie "on the far side" of hired labor, where the worker sells his labor power and, consequently, alienates his abilities and performs, in the labor process, functions dictated by capital: capital sets the goals, technology, etc. of such activity. Moreover, they presuppose overcoming the alienation of the worker from management functions, from the appropriation of the results of activity, etc., as well as such a form of alienation as competition. Finally, third, they set the free development of human qualities, or similar tasks, as the immediate goals of activity and, as a rule, ensure high results in achieving them (indirect confirmation of this is the fact that countries that make wide use of these forms of organization — which we designated above as social-democratic — have the highest rankings on the Human Development Index, outstripping, on this indicator, countries with a liberal orientation of the economy that are similar in level of technological development).
And now, having theoretically formulated the criteria that make it possible to identify the sprouts of post-capitalist relations, we can complete our spiral, which began with the systematization of the empirical features of "social capital" recorded by Western researchers, and turn once again to practice. Enriched by theoretical conclusions, this turn will allow us to show precisely where and how, in the practice of contemporary late capitalism, the relations manifest themselves that we have designated as post-capitalist and that in the Western literature are classed among the phenomena called "social capital."
Let us build a classification of these post-capitalist relations, empirically observable under conditions of late capitalism and manifesting themselves as "social capital," on the basis of the conclusions of the brief study conducted above, namely, according to the principle of a descending measure of development of post-capitalist beginnings in the empirically given transitional relations and institutions of late capitalism. The first block is the set of relations and processes in which these beginnings are developed to the greatest degree possible under conditions of capitalism. These are phenomena where (1) labor has significant creative components, (2) the main goals of the activity are directly social, humanitarian, ecological, etc., while monetary motivation of the subjects plays a subordinate role, and (3) the relations par excellence bear the character of free voluntary cooperation (the alienation of workers from the means and results of activity, and from management, if present at all, is not dominant). On these foundations today rests the activity of many social movements and NGOs, collectives of scientists engaged predominantly in fundamental research, a significant part of teachers in primary, secondary, and higher education (as a rule, in the public sector), social workers, employees of non-profit organizations in the sphere of culture and human interaction with nature, and people of art not oriented toward commercial results. These layers of practice are quite rarely mentioned in studies of "social capital," and even more rarely recalled by mainstream economists, but from our point of view they are fundamentally important. They are important because these are post-industrial spheres of the economy that are the most significant for progress in the 21st century, for they form the creative qualities of the human being — the main resource for the development of a knowledge-based economy. They are also valuable because herein lies the key to answering the question posed at the beginning of this section: what is "social capital"? This question can be figuratively reformulated as follows: is "social capital" the binding tissue of contemporary capitalist society, or is it the explosive charge at its foundation? The second block. Elements of post-capitalist relations in the individual behavior of economic actors of late capitalism, oriented toward the development of human and social "capital." This block has been studied and described almost most fully, so let us allow ourselves merely to recall some well-known propositions. We would formulate them as follows: to the extent that an individual (1) acts (as worker, consumer, owner) proceeding from values and motives of developing human qualities, social cooperation, maximizing public goods, etc., as priorities relative to the goals of maximizing (private) monetary income; (2) is included in relations of solidarity rather than competition; and (3) carries out his activity freely, rather than as a hired worker or a function (personification) of private property (in its developed form — capital) — to that extent he is included in post-capitalist relations and forms "social capital" (as well as his own "human capital") as a system of relations that are post-capitalist in their essence. These three parameters today are, in no small measure, characteristic in particular of representatives of the "rank-and-file" intelligentsia, persons employed in the solidarity economy, and so on, and, consequently, this block substantially overlaps with the first. The third block. Elements of relations of solidarity, mutual assistance, etc., in the organization of personnel activity in contemporary creative firms, firms employing the doctrine of "human relations" and other mechanisms of non-alienated social interaction and motivation. This block of relations and mechanisms is described in fairly considerable detail in the foreign literature devoted, however, predominantly to problems of management rather than of "social capital." Naturally, in these sources there is almost never any talk not only of post-capitalist forms of organizing labor, management, and other types of socio-economic interaction, but even of "social capital." Works on management devoted to these questions have, over the course of almost a century now, again and again been "discovering" that the individual is not only a rational economic man maximizing monetary income and minimizing costs (of his own labor and other resources), but also a personality with a complex system of interests and needs, values and motives. For us, the most interesting components here are the following, which manifest themselves to the greatest degree in the individuals described above in the characterization of the second block:
• the transformation of creative labor from a burden into a value and a stimulus, which makes it possible to develop forms of stimulating labor... by labor that has creative content;
• the transformation of leisure time into free time (time for the development of human qualities, including time for creative activity)1, which makes it possible to develop forms of stimulating labor and activity by means of free time;
• the striving to be included in relations of solidarity rather than competition in the course of labor activity, including within the small work team (the development of forms of collective organization of labor, "teamwork," etc.);
• the formation of a long-term non-commercial interest (of commercial interest — profit-sharing and the like — enough has already been said) in the results of the activity of the macro-collective: the firm, the organization, and, in the case of socially responsible business, of the citizens of the country as a whole or even of humanity (working for a firm that strictly observes environmental norms is, in countries that make wide use of the model of socially responsible business, one of the important stimuli motivating responsible, high-quality, creative work by personnel);
• the development of forms of non-commercial competition oriented toward the maximal realization of personal qualities and the self-realization of the individual, individual prestige within the collective, as well as socio-humanitarian stimulation of personnel (up to and including forms strikingly reminiscent of the "moral incentives" of participants in socialist competition in the USSR);
• the formation of a climate of non-alienated social relations and practices of mutual assistance within the collective (in particular, the doctrine of the "firm as family"), and much else besides.
1 One of the most interesting characterizations of free time as wealth, value, and stimulus, developing the ideas of K. Marx, is to be found in the works of Pobisk Kuznetsov (see: Beyond Alienation (a collection of political-economic hypotheses). Moscow: Moscow State University Press, 1990).
The fourth block. "Social capital" as a component of partnership relations in business and of social partnership. As we have already noted above, relations between personified capitals (firms, entrepreneurs) also include not only relations of competition but also of partnership. The latter cannot, in the strict sense, be considered a variety of relations of solidarity or mutual assistance, since the goal-setting, motivation, and position of the actors in this relation characterize it as fundamentally market-based, moreover, capitalist. At the same time, the presence of common (non-competitive) goals among the participants in business associations or partnerships (whether explicit or hidden), the promotion of the development of each of the participants in the association (partnership) rather than the striving to ruin a competitor, the proactive elaboration of certain common "rules of the game" (including in interaction with third parties), voluntary limitations on commercial goals (up to and including agreements not to exceed certain pre-established levels of the rate of profit), and the like, testify to the presence, within the framework of such agreements, of elements of post-market, non-competitive relations as well. We would qualify relations of social partnership between capital and hired workers, in particular, tripartite agreements among trade unions, the state, and business associations, as more advanced on the scale of socialization than pure business partnership, since in such contractual relations properly humanitarian, social goals play a somewhat greater role. At the same time, the authors are not inclined to overstate the post-market elements in the relations that were conditionally assigned to the fourth block. They exist, but here predominantly market, capitalist parameters dominate. As a special block of relations that does not fit directly into the classification given above, let us single out relations of trust. Known since as far back as the 18th century as one of the cornerstones of market relations, and glorified in a mass of works praising the honesty of merchants and the firmness of a businessman's word already at the dawn of the capitalist era, the phenomenon of trust has in the new century become perhaps the most frequently mentioned component of "social capital" (and for such a leading figure as F. Fukuyama, as we noted above, virtually the only one). This phenomenon is interesting in that it combines a complex set of relations belonging to intersecting but heterogeneous layers of social organization. Indeed, trust is (and this is well known) one of the institutions that ensures the preconditions for the functioning of the market and of capital, similar to other institutional conditions. Thus, in the sphere of law, the market and capitalism are impossible outside of guarantees of the inviolability of private property and the observance of contracts. Such guarantees must also exist, and do exist, in the moral sphere. Let us recall just one aspect: of the 10 commandments of Christ, in bourgeois society the best known and most often cited are precisely those that protect the right of private property and of contracts: thou shalt not covet another's property, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not kill (i.e., do not use extra-economic methods of influence on counterparties). The first four commandments, which state that the only master of man is God, most people do not even know1. Trust is one of such "commandments" — a moral guarantor of the observance of contracts and obligations. However, like all the other moral commandments, this one too has an extra-market2, universally human meaning and basis, which testifies to the special place of trust and allows us to assign it to those basic human values and relations (similar to the family, etc.) that the market capitalist system transforms into "social capital." Like all such relations, "trust" is not exhausted by its status as one of the preconditions of the market and of capital, but also includes an extra-historical moral meaning — an attitude toward another person as a subject who observes established norms, above all moral ones. And this aspect allows us to qualify "trust" as a phenomenon that has more than just market content.
1 We consider it important to give them here in full, as they are set out in the Old Testament (according to the Synodal translation of the Bible):
"1. I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and
rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it" (Exodus 20:2-11). You will agree, it is hard to call this a set of universal, common human ethical principles.
Only after these come the requirements — honor thy father and thy mother, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, etc.
2 See: Gumargaliev K. E., "Trust" as a Phenomenon of Post-Market Relations // Alternatives. 2009, No. 1.
a market norm which, precisely for this reason and quite non-accidentally, is classed under "social capital" rather than simply as one of the institutional preconditions of the market. Alongside the components of "social capital" that are studied, more or less often, as elements of this phenomenon, there also exist social relations that we likewise qualify as post-capitalist but that are usually not included in the "orbit" of "social capital." In particular, these are relations of: • voluntary giving (the gift economy), including both the long-known donations and contributions of citizens to the development of non-governmental organizations and social movements, charity, etc., and, especially rapidly progressing under conditions of the development of information technologies, new forms of co-creation as gift-giving (wikinomics, anarchonomics, etc.); • social transfers and other legitimate forms of the gratuitous redistribution of goods through the state and NGOs (they make up tens of percent of the GDP of developed countries); • voluntary, unpaid activity (volunteering), which is typical of very different social strata in countries with a socially oriented development model (from the middle class of Western Europe to the precariat of Latin America), and others. The non-inclusion of these forms in the sphere of "social capital" is no accident: as a rule, they cannot be used as a factor increasing the profitability of investment that would allow one to obtain a market effect. But their broad distribution indicates the presence, in the contemporary economy, of socio-economic processes and relations that yield not a market effect but a social one. This layer of phenomena, in our view, can also be called post-capitalist on the same grounds as the elements of social capital examined above. Let us add one more argument to those already given: these relations arise, as a rule, as a consequence of compensating for market failures, that is, precisely where market and capital relations cannot provide an answer to the challenges of the new reality. And a final remark in connection with the analysis of post-capitalist relations as the specific foundations of "social capital." For the most part, these relations make it possible to compensate for the failures not only of the market but also of the state. Lying at the basis of "social capital" and of such institutions as NGOs, social movements, scientific, pedagogical, environmental, and similar associations are relations of solidarity, socio-humanitarian values and motives, i.e., relations and forms of free voluntary association of citizens that by their nature lie "on the far side" not only of the market and capital but also of the state, with its bureaucratism, hierarchy, career and power ambitions, etc. And now the long-overdue question: what, then, makes these relations and human connections, which are by their nature extra-market, into capital? Even if only in appearance, but capital nonetheless? The answer to this question has already been given above: it is the fact that, in most cases, the relations and processes summarized above can, under conditions of the contemporary economy, be used as one of the means for increasing profit, as one of the multipliers of the process of capital accumulation. Correspondingly, the answer to the question of why this is merely a simulacrum of capital, capital as it were, has likewise been given above: there is here no essence of the capitalist relation, in which there is present not only the process of the self-expansion of value (let us emphasize: precisely of value, whose adequate universal form is money, not just any wealth), but also the interaction of a personally free wage worker possessing no capital with an owner of capital (we deliberately refrain from speaking here of exploitation, so as to remain within an axiomatic framework acceptable to neoclassical theory as well). If in the language of postmodernism this state of affairs is designated as a simulacrum, then in Marxism the category used for this is "appearance" [видимость] and "inverted form." Appearance, as is well known, arises on the surface of phenomena and is detached from essence, concealing it. The reproduction of these phenomena of appearance leads to the emergence of inverted forms — forms that create the appearance of a content of some process different from its actual content. This is precisely what happens in the case of social capital. The reproduction of the relations of late capitalism, the total hegemony of capital, results in the fact that this force, having become total, transforms both basic human bonds and the sprouts of post-capitalist relations engendered by the "decline" of capitalism into capital, as it were, creating an inverted form that has received the name "social capital." However, all this pertains directly only to those forms of "social capital" that yield a market effect for its agents. Far less clear is why not only these relations but also relations that yield no private market effect are likewise called "social capital." We personally see only one basis for such a qualification: they are productive, though not in a market, private sense. They are effective only as a social phenomenon, yielding, first and foremost, a properly social (humanitarian, ecological, etc.) effect. But, as has already been noted earlier, such an approach makes it possible to qualify as capital all the measures of NGOs, social movements, and other left forces aimed at limiting the market and capital, which, in our view, makes such a use of the term "capital" simply absurd... Moreover, given that social transfers and analogous social phenomena often cause a reduction in the profits of private corporations and the incomes of their owners, we would call this class of phenomena "social anti-capital," as distinct from the classes of phenomena described above, which can rightfully be called the appearance (or, more precisely, the simulacrum) of "social capital."
In our view, the study carried out above allows us to draw the following conclusions and recommendations. First, the conclusion that the discovery, over the last few decades, of a whole host of various new "capitals" (we have already listed them: human, social, natural, cultural...) allows us to speak of the unfolding, within the framework of late capitalism, of new social relations and processes that do not fit into the "classics" of capitalism and the theories that describe it. These relations (in particular, "social capital") are not capital in their content; they merely create simulacra of capital, inverted forms of basic social and post-capitalist relations. Correspondingly, the presence of the latter and their ever-growing spread constitute the first conclusion. Second, the relations concealed under the name of social and other "capitals," being in their essence the opposite of capital, are in the concrete conditions of the contemporary economy used in many cases to the greater benefit of the latter, serving to strengthen it, transforming non-capitalist forms into "capital-like" ones and integrating them into the system. At the same time, the progress of the post-capitalist foundations of social and other "capitals," especially in their most adequate forms, having crossed a certain threshold, is capable of undermining the foundations of late capitalism. Global capital, as a subject interested in preserving its own foundations, formulates this, through the mouths of theorists reflecting its interests, in a way adequate to itself: from their point of view, the new forms developing up to a certain measure are merely special varieties of the market and of capital, and beyond that measure they should not be developed further, since this would be inefficient. And that is all. No embryos of post-capitalist relations whatsoever.
From our point of view, it is precisely this boundary that points to the most interesting problems — the problems of the limits of capital and of the formation of elements of a new social system within its bowels. Third, the study of "social capital" allows us to draw certain conclusions of interest from the standpoint of business as well: the development of non-market, non-capitalist forms, including those that are extremely "cheap" (if not altogether free) for capital, can yield a significant capitalist effect, ensuring not only greater stability of the system but also making it possible to raise the market efficiency of its agents by developing the activity of its subjects, including hired workers, creating for them incentives, not paid for by capital, to work more productively, creatively, and meaningfully. At first glance, this conclusion "plays into the hands of capitalism": the authors are pointing to new ways of increasing not only the efficiency of capital but also — to put it in the language of Marxism — of exploitation. And this is indeed so. But this is only one side of the coin. The opposite side consists in the fact that, by transforming hired workers into subjects of human, social, and other "capital," late capitalism develops the foundations of its own self-negation. In place of the formally and really subordinated, partial hired worker of classical capitalism there comes the Human Being, an active subject of social relations, for whom the fullness of personal development and of social ties becomes an important value and stimulus. And such a Human Being undermines the very foundations of capital, becoming a potential subject of the creation of new socio-economic relations and institutions. Capital senses this threat "in its gut" and therefore proceeds with great caution to develop the transitional forms of interaction with workers and of organizing their labor described above, even where this promises a tangible commercial effect. However, there is also room for compromise here: the models mentioned above of the social state, of socially responsible business, of non-capitalistically organized forms of economic activity (the "solidarity economy," etc.) show a possible historical compromise. It is another matter that this compromise is advantageous to capital only within very limited bounds, for any sufficiently serious advance along the path of developing these new transitional forms creates powerful preconditions and impulses for a transition to a different, post-capitalist social system. And one last point. Above we noted that "social capital" is at present often regarded as a kind of "glue," a social binding tissue joining together the disparate and in many ways mutually contradictory fragments of society. And this is indeed so: all the transitional forms we have described allow, when effectively used, to remove to some extent (in the Hegelian sense — negation with the retention of the positive) the key antagonisms of the market and of capital — egoism, competition, the confrontation of hired labor and capital, and other forms of alienation — thereby fostering cooperation and the stability of social ties. But there is also a dialectically opposite side here: all these positive results, connected with the development of "social capital," are in most cases connected with the progress of non-capitalist and, moreover, post-capitalist relations, i.e., relations that undermine the foundations of the currently dominant system.
Q. 10.1. What do representatives of the mainstream current in economic theory mean by "human capital"?
Q. 10.2. What is the fundamental difference between the creative qualities of a human being (which, under capitalism, are capable of yielding additional income) and capital as a relation of production?
Q. 10.3. Why do human qualities take on, under capitalism, the form of "human capital"?
Q. 10.4. What is the fundamental difference between the social connections of people (which can contribute to obtaining additional income) and capital as a relation of production?
Q. 10.5. Why do the social connections of people take on, under capitalism, the form of "human capital"?
Q. 10.6. What post-capitalist relations does contemporary capitalism give rise to?
Q. 10.7. In what way can basic social relations of people, and even post-capitalist relations, take on, under capitalism, the form of capital?
Часть 1 Chapter 10. Man and Society as Functions of Capital and as Its Limit: Toward a
Часть 2 10.2.3. The relations and processes hidden behind the concept of
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