Robert Kurz
The appetite of the Leviathan
Privatization and "lean state" illusion
Two souls are in conflict within the modern man: the soul of money and that state. Homo economicus is both a homo politicus. This structural separation of the individual matches the polarity of the institutional market and state. In pre-modern societies, for as far as we understand, there was no evidence of this separation. Dominated rather than a cultural, a kosmos, which were attached to all the varied social activities. The modern commodity producing system has destroyed the cosmos of the ancient cultures but failed to produce any order culturally based. Instead there was the reversal of the relationship between the economy and social order: the economy is not the function of a culture-encompassing, but rather is "the human society has been reduced to an appendage the economic system "(Karl Polanyi).
This means that men have no relation to each type of social or cultural, regardless of economic activities. They have become" abstract individual "or" isolated units "to unquestionably resembling" free monads windows "of the philosopher Leibniz. Their social connection is determined only by the negative economic competition. Instead of a culturally mediated kosmos took over the money so that the real master of society community is no longer human but reified. Any pack of wolves shows more socially organized than men of the market economy.
Already at the dawn of this absurd system, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) gave a consistent representation of man as being primarily a selfish, solitary by nature, like an animal. The company in a "state of nature" was not so much that a "war of all against all." Hobbes, however, had not realized that he described was not the "nature" of human society tout court, but the result of a historical process in which the first thrust of the modern market economy had begun to dissolve the old community. The new freedom of the individual, chained to the market, it was only the freedom to submit to coercive laws of competition. And so that individuals you do not massacre each other completely Hobbes had postulated a state as coercive power that was to rise above selfish individuals, named after the biblical monster Leviathan. The monsters
characterized by individualism of the market economy had to be kept at bay dall'immane monster Leviathan State. A type of society that leaves little to be desired in terms of spregevolezza!
The Leviathan, like the hunting market, is certainly not a cultural institution and community social. Since the State is not exceeding the full competition, it takes the form of an external power to individuals "without windows" of an apparatus which, of necessity, provides the common framework for the frenzied market players: in this sense is perhaps comparable to the referee of a rugby game. From this perspective little has changed since the days of Hobbes. Today more than individuals, then "free" are treated as being that the market has made it incapable of consent with regard to their social life and therefore must be forced into straitjackets of the monstrous bureaucratic and legal apparatus of the state.
This "best of all worlds" unfortunately has a small cosmetic imperfection. Like all monsters also Mr. Leviathan is pretty greedy, so the question arises of how it can be fed. The mentally handicapped individuals of competition is manifested in the fact that their living conditions, social and natural are not distinguishable from them. It 's the problem of the state. The State is not an "extra-economic factor, as is often believed, because it must be funded (and the money is unquestionably an" economic factor "in all respects) is constituted in a way secondary economy The economy of the common conditions of existence of individuals that compete in the market economy. By definition, subjects in the "state of nature" of competition, not ripped a penny of their own. The giant state must provide the force with its own costs (which are nothing if not the "costs" of the market) so as to prevent by force the liberal individuals massacrino each other to death.
already had to be difficult for the huge Leviathan to be able to impose itself against the little monsters. But, more importantly, the "costs" of the market economy over time grew more and more. The more people become subjects of the individual competition, the greater becomes the need for legal regulation and police of their relations and the more you expand the judiciary and administration. Even the ancient Byzantine Empire can be compared to the bureaucratic Moloch that modern Western democracies have evoked. But that's not all. Because the more competition has led to the highly scientific production and use of technical procedures, the more determined the concentration of large masses of men and citizens in cities, have also increased the more the needs for the logistics and infrastructure. And the more the state must provide for the material prerequisites for the technical and organizational activities of the market economy, from schools and universities to build roads and airports to the funnel and the collection of waste. And therefore the costs are becoming higher: the more people are socially uprooted by the market economy so the higher the transaction costs to the State, and as the natural environment is attacked and devastated dall'ottusa rationality become the company as higher costs incurred by State for the necessary measures for ecological restoration.
Of all these problems involving expensive costs, the stolid economic liberalism that arose in the late 18 th century did not want to know anything. The brilliant cynical Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) argued in his Fable of the Bees that the summation of misguided aspirations towards the private gain would almost automatically provided the welfare of the community. This idea has been to date the most important argument to justify the economic liberalism. Even Adam Smith (1723-1790), the classical theory of political economy has famously embraced by the theory that the "invisible hand" of the market would be able to adjust the overall reproduction of society better than the state. However, the economic liberalism has never contradicted the state philosophy of Hobbes: Leviathan would have to refrain from any economic and social activity, but at the same time fulfill its function as a repressive monster, its significance in the judiciary, police and armed forces to compel victims competition to submit to the laws of the 'market economy'. Political dictatorship and economic liberalism could walk side by side so as Pinochet could well prove.
In the first half of the 19th century, the implementation policy of liberal dogmas led to real social disaster. Social upheavals occurred, the crime of mass exploded and burst into overcrowded cities epidemics. During the Great Irish Famine (1846-1849) the British government in the name of free trade left to die hungry one million and a half and two and a half million Irish emigrated to America. The doctrinaire liberalism threatened to liquidate completely the human society. At the same time many manufacturers began to turn the economy of State for Infrastructure, since they had experienced that school education, roads, information networks were necessary for further capital accumulation.
It came to a big paradigm shift. A growing number of theorists acknowledged the need for state-owned economy in expansion. In 1867 the German economist Adolph Wagner enunciated the so-called "law of growing state." Rarely a forecast of an economic nature such as this has worked well. This is shown by a glance at the statistics on three major Western countries:
Part of the state share gross domestic product (percentage).
Year .......... 1870 ..... 1960 ..... 1994 ..... 10 ......... 32
Germany ...... ... 50
Sweden ........... 6 ........... 31 ......... 69 ........
USA ..... 4 ........... 27 ......... 32
Source: IMF / Wirtschaftwoche
seems clear that, despite all the differences, the state share has grown substantially over the world. In the U.S. rose by 0.3% even under President Reagan. For a long time, this high-altitude state can still be guaranteed only through a dangerous state debt continues to rise. For this reason, economic liberalism has had a new spring, although the doctrine is already sunk in the 19th century. I repeat the neo-liberal ideas originating in Mandeville and Smith. They argue that the requirement that Wagner does not represent any economic law but only the realization of a political will. Because they believe can reverse this trend. The Leviathan, very fat, should be put on a diet and most of his duties "privatized." About 130 years after the prediction of Wagner's two economists from the IMF, Vito Tanzi and Ludger Schuknecht formulated a counter-prognosis: now the state share would fall far below 30% during a historical process trend.
To clarify the question we must ask the question about the nature of the economic functions of the state. Like all apologists of economic liberalism Tanzi and Schuknecht confuse the private production of goods for the market with the social conditions of existence of the overall market. Liberalism believes that most of the tasks of the State can be undertaken by private, profit-driven, as for the production of cars or hamburgers. First you need to naturally "privatize" social risks of capitalism, that the state must withdraw from social responsibilities increased over the past one hundred years only to fulfill the task of repressive monster. History has already shown that the majority of men because of the lack of income can not support individual social risk and being driven into a dead end. Liberalism as we know prefer to assume the burden for prisons and death squads and those of social assistance for the poor, even if the costs of repression in the long run are higher and more fat Leviathan. The liberal doctrine is proving so evil a form of irrational thinking leads to the absurd and its own criteria.
Even more evident is the absurdity of privatization for other state functions. So for example it is impossible to organize ecological measures for environmental protection in the form of transactions between individuals, because the consumption of a better environment can not be reserved an application with purchasing power. It 's impossible to maintain the quality of climate and air only for the rich neighborhoods. The environment is improved and for society as a whole or for the whole society is disfigured, regardless of the purchasing power of individuals. Therefore, protection of the environment can only ever appear as consumer demand and the state. The sewerage, waste collection ol'approvvigionamento of water can hardly be reserved for private demand. And even hospitals and schools can not be "privatized" without negative consequences for the society on which the new social costs.
Even when the state is performed by private entrepreneurs is illusory to believe that these functions can dissolve in the market. Although these tasks, however, appear as an expense in large part because state must be ordered and consumed by the state. For example, when Mexico was built in a new "sun route" for the long-distance transport of private investors, to be managed according to criteria of private profit, it proved a colossal failure: the major transport companies and private drivers salt could not pay the tolls and traffic returned to flow on highways, overcrowded so scary but exempt from tolls. However, we addressed the question: conditions, conditions and consequences of the market economy are something qualitatively different from the market economy itself. These are problems of society as a whole that can not be resolved privately. In a society of individuals in social competition only Leviathan can assume those liabilities. This is true even for the rest of the state subsidies, which drastically reduced drastically riacutizzerà the global crisis because much of the local economy and in nearly all countries will go to hell without them.
You can summarize the relationship between market and state in the process of modernity in the form of a general law: the more the market was all the more. The relationship between the "windowless monads" blindly in competition and the monstrous Leviathan is the same as between Dr Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. Thus the doctrine of economic liberalism is false because the forecast of economists of the IMF and Tanzi Schluknecht. The market and the state, both hypertrophied, they can only live or die together.
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