Crisis? Capitalism is Doing Very Well. And How is Critical Theory?

Crisis? Capitalism is Doing Very Well. And How is Critical Theory? Albena Azmanova 12 April 2011, The New School, New York (Politics Lecture Series) http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/ events.aspx?id=63308 Coming to speak today, at the New School, about the crisis of capitalism, has a singular significance for me. My commitment to Critical Theory predates my doctoral studies here in the 1990s. It began already under the communist regime in Bulgaria when we were avidly reading Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno, and Habermas, risking detention, or worse (Habermas was particularly dangerous with his idea of a free public sphere). It was my rather successful involvement with the downfall of the communist regime in Bulgaria, and shortly after that my admonition of the post-communist pseudo democracy that replaced it, that brought be me to the New School. There is some striking symmetry in the fact that I find myself discussing the crisis of capitalism, here again at the New School. I should probably make it clear that the purpose of this talk is not to instigate a revolution, but only to offer some prolegomena to the analysis of contemporary capitalism from a Critical Theory perspective. I. Introduction There is no crisis of capitalism, only a crisis of critique: this is what Luc Boltanski and Eve Chapiello claimed, over a decade ago, in the prosperous 1990s, in their book The New Spirit of Capitalism. They had in mind the political failure of the cultural turn in social critique 1which had replaced the Marxian focus on the political economy of exploitation with a focus on the cultural logic of dehumanization. The humanistic angle from which critique in the late 20 the century had proceeded in the name of equal opportunity and inclusion, had given impetus, the authors claimed, to the neo-liberal, flexible, networked capitalism. This charge with impotency of critique is a challenge to all of us, who identify intellectually with Critical Theory of Frankfurt School origin as a particular tradition of social philosophy. And what better time to pick up the gauntlet and accept the challenge than the current global economic meltdown and the social misery it is spreading? If we do not seize this opportunity, we risk bringing Critical Theory from its position of radical irreverence to one of irrelevance. My purpose today is to articulate a critique of contemporary capitalism deliberately situated on the conceptual space chartered by the Critical Theory tradition. To do this, however, I will need to recast some of the parameters of critique. By this I do not imply that Critical Theory is somehow flawed, or that critical theorists have been wrong only that its achievements have, paradoxically, left it unprepared to manage a critique of contemporary capitalism. I will proceed as follows: I will first look at the object of critique I will claim that critical theory should target its analysis not so much towards the alleged crisis of 1

capitalism as to the way capitalism has transformed, already before the recent economic meltdown. We therefore need an analysis of the nature of this post-neoliberal transformation of capitalism in order to focus more sharply on particular forms of generalized social harm that are to be targets of both intellectual critique and policy action. II. On the Crisis of Capitalism First a word on the alleged crisis of capitalism. We have heard plenty of emphatic talk about it recently: from the French President Nikolas Sarkozi to the Marxist intellectual David Harvey. However, what narratives about the current crisis of capitalism tell us is just that the financialization of the economy has created a crisis for capitalism (some difficulties that capitalism overcomes). 1 Yet, these difficulties have not imperiled the operative logic of capitalism (that is, the maximization of profit via the production of surplus value, based on an ever-expanding commodification of land, labor, money, knowledge, and more recently - risk). Neither have these difficulties, and the social misery they have inflicted, triggered a crisis of the legitimacy of the system. If competitive elections are any indicator of prevailing visions of political legitimacy, they confirm that capitalism, especially its neo-liberal version that is supposed to be in crisis now, has considerable popular support. In the midst of the rampant economic crisis, the vote in Europe has gone to the right, and not simply to the conservative or the xenophobic extreme right, but to parties of the economically liberal right who are advocates of the economic model that had caused the crisis. Support to left parties is at a historic low. We are not witnessing the formation of a broad societal, cross-ideological coalition of forces to protect society against the effects of the free market, similar to the one Carl Polanyi had observed taking shape in the early 20th century, as a result of the crisis of the 19th century liberal model of capitalism. At the time, political conservatism and socialism came to a consensus on the need to constrain markets, a consensus on which the post-war welfare states were built. Instead, we now have governments, irrespectively of their ideological allegiance, running to the rescue of financial capital and big business, and implementing austerity programmes to reassure capital markets, while society bears this with equanimity. If there is no crisis of neoliberal capitalism, there is no need for a theory of such crisis -- such a theory would be without an object. Instead, we need a critique of capitalism in terms of: First, the way it has transformed and consolidated recently into a new, post-neoliberal modality. Second: a diagnosis of the generalized social harm that this transformation has generated. Third: related to this diagnosis policy proposals in order to put to practice the emancipatory insights of critique (yes, social critique should not only explain, but also change history). 1 In The Enigma of Capital Harvey discusses the crises of capitalism in terms of barriers to growth, blockages. 2

III. Critical Theory: hampered by its success As I intend to now conduct this analysis decidedly on the intellectual territory of Critical Theory, let me first assess the extent to which the dominant strand of critical theory that has consolidated around Habermas s powerful reconstitution of the tradition around his theory of communicative action and discourse ethics, can provide a framework of analysis. The communicative turn in Critical Theory and the models of deliberative politics it engendered, enabled a trenchant analysis of post-wwii bureaucratic, state-managed corporate capitalism as it took shape in the framework of the welfare state. Furthermore, by discerning the emancipatory power of the public sphere of civil society as a contestatory communicative space, it has continually provided the conceptual territory on which the empowerment of subjugated minorities has been pursued by social movements since the 1970s. This placed Critical Theory of Frankfurt School origin in the avant-guard of the struggles for emancipation in an era where state-managed, corporate capitalism disempowered not only disadvantaged minorities, but also the very citizens it supposedly protected. The concept of a free public sphere and active civil society was an inspiration also in our struggles against the oppression of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Nowadays, deliberative democracy has become a paragon of progressive politics and forms of deliberative democracy are being implemented in actual policy-making from the U.S. to China. It is, undoubtedly, due to these significant achievements that Jurgen Habermas was nominated in March for Michail Gorbachev award The Man Who Changed the World a recognition to the whole tradition of social philosophy for which Habermas is now the nestor. However, these achievements have come at a price. Being part of the broader cultural turn in social critique, the communicative turn in Critical Theory effectively directed attention away from the political economy of capitalism, thus disabling analysis of the socio-structural logic of neoliberal capitalism that took shape in the late 20th century. With this, Critical Theory has become unwittingly complicit to the general failure of critique which Boltanski and Chapiello ascertained, thereby contributing to the excellent health of neoliberal capitalism. The exhaustion of the tradition s critical potential was signaled a decade ago, in a puzzling remark Habermas made in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001 in this country, when he defined terrorism as a communicative pathology, that is, as systematic distortions of communication leading to cross-cultural violence. 2 Unless I am misreading this, which is likely, such a view of the nature of terrorism 3 is indicative 2 As conflicts that arise from distortion in communication, from misunderstanding and incomprehension, from insincerity and deception, in an interview about the 9/11 attacks in Borradori 2003:20, 35. 3 This diagnosis is indeed well in line with the theory of discourse ethics, as developed by Habermas. According to it, a just cause can be established in deliberation, that is, through a perfectly free, fully informed, and thoroughly considered judgment in the processes of unlimited discussion. 3

of the way the communicative turn has started to hamper Critical Theory s ability to address the structural sources of contemporary conflicts. Three particular achievements of the communicative turn in Critical Theory combine to inhibit its capacity to offer a critique of contemporary capitalism. 1) A redefinition of the critical enterprise: from critique of capitalism to regulative ideals of critique. First, much of the creative energy of critical theorists, including myself, has been directed at the clarification and justification of the normative basis of social critique. There was a compelling necessity for such an effort. In order to be plausible, democratic theory needed an answer to the question: How can we be sure that norms accepted by the democratic publics are also just? Failure to articulate a normative standard of validity would have meant suspension of judgment and abdication of the critical effort altogether. The tension between the acceptability of norms (as being just) and their acceptance is famously resolved by a recourse to some meta-theoretical devices such as the ideal speech situation, which enables, counterfactually, an access to the moral point of view; the idea is that properly structured communication freed from the distortions incurred by power, money, and ideology can lead us to a rationally demonstrable universal interest. These important efforts at clarifying the vantage point of critique, however, have redefined the critical enterprise: Critical Theory journeyed from critique of capitalism, as it was originally conceived, to providing regulatory ideals for society: ideals of social forms to which society can aspire. However, the vantage point of unconstrained communication cannot be directly operationalized into an analysis of power dynamics, as the example with diagnosing terrorism as pathology of communication displays. The increased presence of ideal theory is the first path along which, paradoxically, the critical potential of Critical Theory has diminished. With this, Critical Theory has confronted what I call the paradox of judgment in my forthcoming book The Scandal of Reason. 4 This paradox concerns the tension between political realism and normative stringency that haunts social critique. ON the one hand, the more we weaken the stringency of our normative criteria, the more we enhance the political relevance of the model, at the expense of its critical potential; on the other hand, the higher we set our normative standards, the more we lose grip on political reality, at the cost of our capacity to address the urgent issues of the day. By clarifying the normative grounds of critique, and offering powerful regulatory ideals, Critical Theory secured the emancipatory point of view, but this has been achieved at the expense of its conceptual capacity to engage with specific socio-historical critique of capitalism. 4 The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment, Columbia University Press, series New Directions in Critical Theory. 4

2: The marginalization of political economy in social critique The second path along which the critical potential of our tradition has diminished is its disengagement from political economy. With the communicative turn, the model of normative judgment comes to be based on the conviction that individuals freedom is dependent upon the state of communicative relations, not on the state of the political economy, as in the Frankfurt School s original version of critique. The goal of democratic theory, therefore, is to point to ways in which communicative relations constitute a medium of interaction free from domination; while communicative freedom is modeled on intersubjective speech. Although such recasting of Critical Theory has enabled analysis of the way liberal democracy might fall short of its promise of inclusion, this comes at a price. The price is that Critical Theory has moved too far, I think, in the direction of an a-historical, felicitous moral anthropology, disconnecting itself from its original engagement with critique of the political economy of modern societies, and with structurally shaped forms of consciousness (i.e. ideologies) concerns the early Frankfurt School inherited from Karl Marx and Georg Lukács. We might see this continual shift of interest away from political economy in the direction of culture, psychology, and morality as part of what Nancy Frazer has diagnosed as the Postsocialist condition a condition marked by the decoupling of cultural politics from social politics, and the relative eclipse of the latter by the former. However, the malaise goes deeper: it concerns not just the decoupling of cultural and social policies, but the refusal, or incapacity, of social critique to engage with critique of political economy, which has resulted in its inaptitude to problematize the deeper structural dynamics of contemporary capitalism. By directing critical attention almost exclusively towards democratic politics, and away from social harm generated within the political economy of capitalism, emancipatory movements, both in western liberal democracies and in post-communist societies failed to resist the onslaught of neoliberal capitalism. 3. Relational power: necessary but insufficient object of critique The third source for the loss of critical power is that Critical Theory has unduly narrowed its understanding of what qualifies as valid object of critique. In the late 20th century, the critical enterprise was directed (intellectually and politically) against disparities in social status, political voice and access to resources; it has sought to eliminate status hierarchies, economic inequality, and political subordination. Thus, the source of social suffering was seen to be power asymmetries, and their remedy --- the equalization of power relations, in order to ensure equal participation in social life. Emancipation, from this perspective, stands in terms of participatory parity. This is of course a very important perspective of critique. However, as it stresses inequality within a given model of wellbeing, it diverts attention to what might be wrong with the very structure of the model of wellbeing, beyond inequalities in the distribution of power. For instance, while 5

feminists fought for parity with men within a model of capitalist social relations, few of them questioned the nature of the socio-economic model within which they aspired to parity. Neoliberal flexible capitalism of the late 20th century managed to hijack the emancipatory agendas of the social movements of the late 20th century because this agenda was too narrowly framed in the terms of power asymmetries and conducted emancipation as power-equalization through inclusion, which flexible capitalism conveniently co-opted for the purposes of expanding its sphere of operation. What has escaped our attention meanwhile is that critique of power, in the original Marxist analysis of capitalism, ran along dimensions: which I will describe here as relational and structural dimensions of domination. The relational dimension concerns the unequal distribution of power among actors, namely between capital and wage labor, which enabled exploitation. Injustice, from this perspective, emerges in terms of power asymmetries that allow one group to dominate another, and its remedy would necessitate equalization of power relations. This logic applies to culture- or gender-based forms of discrimination. The political struggle of the Left has predominantly targeted this dimension of domination. However, Marx had also articulated a second dimension of domination. Note that he grounded his critique of exploitation in an analysis of the structural aspects in the organization of power -- the organization of socio-economic relations as, so the speak, the rules of the game of capitalism. Thus, Marx observed that the capitalist does not exploit a worker because he simply has the power to do so, or because he is immoral, but because he is compelled to do so by force of his social role as a capitalist. In other words, the social powers of capitalists (to invest or disinvest capital, to hire and fire, to extract surplus from labor) and their interests (to maximize profits) are a function of the constitutive principles of capitalism as a system of social relations, a function of the social structures in virtue of which they are social agents in the first place. Marx discusses the social injustice that arises as a matter of the structural power of the system to shape the environment within which agents assume their social roles, under the rubric of alienation: alienation of all human beings from their essence as creative beings desirous of freedom. Here social harm concerns the domination of the system over the majority of human beings subjected to the socio-economic system of capitalism (or of communism, we may add). It is this second, structural dimension of domination that has disappeared from the radar of Critical Theory since it focused attention to power asymmetries and conceptualized progressive politics as parity of participation into social life. I combination, the above-discussed three achievements of Critical Theory after the communicative turn, have diminished its sensitivity to forms of domination generated by the political economy of contemporary capitalism. The idea of a vibrant and inclusive public sphere has been very important in a context of policy-making dominated by experts, bureaucracies, and powerful economic interests both in the context of the welfare state in Western liberal democracies and of 6

the sclerotic communist regimes in Eastern Europe. However, the world of social injustice and political conflict has evolved. On the one hand we have flexible capitalism, in which both inclusion and deliberative democracy have become commonplace in some forms; on the other hand, the global political economy is now, again, the most powerful engine of social injustice. Unfortunately, Critical Theory as it consolidated around Habermas theory of discourse ethics, is not well conceptually equipped to confront these new sources of domination. IV. What is to be done? I will now make three points by way of a proposal for recasting Critical Theory in order to enable it refocus on the structural dimensions of domination. 1) Sharpening and limiting the function of deliberative democracy. First, we need not abandon the communicative turn, but we could cast it differently, away from ideal theory (away from reliance on the ideal speech situation). I affect such a pragmatic turn in The Scandal of Reason book. By entirely replacing the idealizing presuppositions of validity with an account of the social hermeneutics of deliberative judgment, I show how public deliberations can nevertheless have a critical political function. This, in turns, means that the status of democratic public deliberations changes: it is narrowed, and sharpened. This function consists in enabling access to what I called the structural dimension of domination, as under certain conditions (which I cannot spell out here) reasoned argumentation among citizens is able to bring to visibility the structural sources of injustice, and not only power asymmetries. Due to these dynamics, which I describe as a process of rendering account of one s position (which is different from, and complementary to the force of the better argument ), the public sphere becomes a space for communicative enacting of social conflicts. It is here that antagonistic positions transform into agonistic relations, rooted in the shared awareness of the way agents are similarly subjected to forms of structural domination. 2. Redefining the normative content of emancipation My second proposal is for redefining the object of critique and reformulate, accordingly, the normative content of emancipation. If critique is to run along the two dimensions of domination (the structural and relational ones) the normative content of emancipation need not be constrained to parity and inclusion. It should be enlarged to include emancipation from structural injustice the injustice of submitting to the rules of the game; domination that is experienced as injustice even by those who are winners from the relational distribution of power. In other words, rather than being concerned with 7

parity within the institutional model of the political economy of capitalism, the new agenda of critique is to be activated by a concern with the model of wellbeing itself. 3. Bringing political economy back into critical theory My third proposal is to bring a critique of political economy back into the focus of Critical Theory. The remainder of my tall will focus on this. I will first mention briefly those tenets of Critical Theory that supply the grounds for accommodating critique of political economy back into normative analysis of capitalism. First: instead of being directed by any ideal of a just society, analysis in the style of what Max Horkheimer defined as critical theory (in contrast to traditional, or positivistic, theory) is to be guided by an emancipatory interest in reducing the scope of domination. Second: analysis focuses on empirical experiences of social injustice as displayed in specific human suffering. Third: analysis is conducted in a technique of inquiry that Theodor Adorno called immanent critique one performed from a perspective internal to those subjected to domination, as opposed to a transcendent critique -- one performed from an imaginary point of reference external to those to whom analysis is addressed. (Rainer Forst discusses this as the participant s perspective of normative critique ). Fourth, a source of social injustice is the particular for a given society institutionalized structure of social relations, including the structure of the political economy within which the process of social reproduction takes place. 5 Fifth, a feature of immanent critique is the critic s interests in those antinomies (tensions, problems, differences) that are part of the very constitution of the object of analysis. I propose a further adjustment of the parameters of Critical Theory by way of clarifying the constitutive link between normative and structural dimensions of the social order. In regard to this, I will make two points: i) The status of political economy To accommodate analysis of political economy back into immanent critique, we need to clarify the normative relevance of political economy; in other words, to elucidate the relationship between ideational (i.e. related to notions of justice) and socio-structural (i.e. related to social practices and their institutional environment) dimensions of the social order that is an object of critique. Although the economy might not be the basic and primary source of suffering and injustice, the generation and distribution of social risk and opportunity resulting from the configuration of state-market relations has a strong 5 For the first generation of Frankfurt School authors political economy was the ultimate object and terrain of the critical enterprise. Attention to political economy and political sociology is also present in Habermas s early works (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Legitimation Crisis, as well as in the work of Claus Offe and Nancy Fraser, both of whose work closely informs my own writing. 8

effect on individuals life-chances. This means that the analysis of the political economy of contemporary capitalism can target the two dimensions of domination: the structural dimension along which the production of social risk and opportunity takes place, and the relational dimension - the distribution of social opportunity and risk among participants. A sharpened attention to the structural features of the socio-economic model would enable criteria of social justice to emerge from the identification of a broad pattern of societal injustice within which minorities suffering is a symptom of structural dynamics affecting negatively also those who appear to be winners within the relational distribution of power. So, in the spirit of Critical Theory, I propose that analysis should seeks to identify those antinomies (contradictions) of contemporary capitalism which foster historically particular, but structurally general experiences of injustice, from which normatively generalizable notions of justice can be derived. ii) The mediating function of political legitimacy Socio-economic activity in the sphere of the political economy inevitably affects the lifechances of individuals, and these effects can indeed be profound. However, not all of these effects, and related to them social conflicts, are politicized. Only those social effects are politicized, and thus enter the sphere of political contestation, which are perceived to be part of the legitimacy relationship between public authority and citizens effects for which citizens expect that public authority has both the responsibility and the capacity to act. Thus, an analysis of capitalism cannot be driven only by social grievances explicitly formulated in the course of political contestation, as sometimes suggested 6, because important injustices, or forms of domination, might not have been politicized and thus, never have entered the public debate. 7 In view of the elements of critique, articulated above, how should an analysis of contemporary capitalism, with a view to social injustice and emancipation from domination, proceed? It should be guided by the following questions: (1) What are the key dynamics of stratification (i.e. of distribution of life-chances) at work within the political economy of contemporary capitalism? (2) What structural contradictions (antinomies) do these dynamics of stratification generate, in turn (3) triggering the emergence of a historical pattern of structurally generated injustice, experienced by individuals as socially induced suffering? (4) How do these dynamics affect the legitimacy relationship between citizen and public authority: what social conflicts are being politicized and which ones are being omitted and thus excluded from the perceived realm of political responsibility? Let us see how such an analysis might look like. I turn next to an analysis of 6 In the formula social criticism is the educated cousin of common complained (Michael Walzer). 7 I have added this point thanks to a discussion with the students in Ian Shapiro s class on nondomination as a political ideal on 11 April 2011 at Yale University. 9

contemporary capitalism in order to discern the particular types of social injustice that should be an object of intellectual critique, political contestation, and policy action. V. Post-neoliberal, reorganized capitalism Already before the current economic crisis, capitalism had started to transform itself into a new modality, which I have described in a recent article in the journal Constellations as reorganized capitalism, to set it apart from the previous, neoliberal form Claus Offe discussed as disorganized capitalism 8. I will now make only two observations concerning this new model of capitalism. The first feature concerns the matrix of state-society relations, and what I described earlier as the legitimacy relationship between public authority and citizens. In the course of the neoliberal transformation of capitalism that took place by way of liberalization and deregulation of economic activity over the last three decades of the 20th century, public authority (at all levels of governance) has undertaken more policy action in the sphere of economic activity to intensify wealth production, but less and less action in terms of wealth redistribution. Justifying neo-liberal economic policy with the inevitable nature of globalization, public authority has effectively managed to redefine its legitimacy relationship with citizens: market-regulative functions linked to the provision of social rights (redistribution, guaranteed employment) have exited this relationship. A generation of citizens in liberal democracies has been socialized into the institutionalized practices and attendant ideology of individual responsibilization: a style of policy-making that consists in transferring responsibilities for wellbeing from public authority to citizens. As a result, notions of social justice related to guarantees to social rights have exited the legitimacy relationship between public authority and citizens: surveys indicate that individuals do not expect public authority to provide economic and social safety. The set of legitimate and legitimacy- conferring functions of the state (Offe s term) have altered in recent years even to allow the state to actively intervene to save economic actors and to redistribute from taxpayers to businesses (to save select capitalists, rather than capitalism). By force of these new distributive functions of public authority, which developed already well before the economic crisis, we have entered into a new, postneoliberal matrix of state-society relations. This model is marked by a discrepancy of scale between the ever-increasing social effects of economic policy initiated by public authority, on the one hand, and on the other -- the decreasing responsibility public authority takes for incurred effects. This discrepancy is a source of domination. 8 Neither Offe, nor I, see these modalities as perfectly articulated, distinct ones: we have in mind tendencies and dominant features. Reorganized capitalism preserved many of the features of the welfare state, as disorganised capitalism preserves many of the features of the neoliberal form that preceded it. I discuss these peculiarities of disorganized and reorganized capitalism in my recent article in Constellations. 10

Rather than a retrenchment of the power of the state, we have the new phenomenon of increase in the power of governing bodies (and their capacity to inflict social harm), while their responsibility decreases. This has obvious negative consequences for democracy, as the exercise of power becomes ever more autocratic, even if all rituals of democratic politics (including deliberative methods) are meticulously performed. The discrepancy between power and responsibility should be eroding the authority of states (like Richard Sennett has claimed), and could be expected to trigger a legitimation crisis. Yet, no such crisis ensues because, as I noted, the very legitimacy relationship has been altered to exclude issues of social safety from the range of public authority s responsibility. Therefore, one of the struggles to be launched against social injustice would be that for the responsibilization of public authority for dynamics taking place in the political economy. Strategies of passive or active resistance, or even obstruction (as recent anarchist actions in Europe) are not sufficient. Yet, what should this responsibilization entail more specifically? To answer this question we need to identify the structural sources of injustice from participants perspective (as a form of immanent critique) in view of the key antinomy of contemporary capitalism (the second feature of the new modality of capitalism). This is what I turn to next. How does the social question in the early 21st century stand? Trans-national economic integration (globalization), to which the transformation of capitalism in the late 20th century is often imputed, has expanded and intensified the dynamic features of capitalism, increasing both economic opportunity and risk. The new economy of open borders and technological innovation has become an important source of opportunities for wealth creation, but also for more personal autonomy due to diversification of sources of income and job tenure. This has increased the labor de-commodification resource of societies as individuals become less dependent, at least in principle, on permanent participation in the process of economic production for satisfying their needs. At the same time, the rising importance of issues of work-life balance, and generally of the value of discretionary time (as registered in surveys), signals that the value of decommodification is tangibly on the rise in advanced industrial democracies. Thus, one of the most notable characteristics of contemporary capitalism is the coincidence between the growing de-commodification resource of societies (capacity for exit from the labor market) and the rising value of decommodification as an instrument for authorship of one s life in a formula of socially embedded autonomy combining work, care, and leisure (or play, as I prefer). However, due to increased competition, commodification pressures have also increased (from expansion of working hours and working lives, pressure for retraining to remain employable, to the invasion of work into domestic life, as well as the prioritization of employment-related, over knowledge-related, considerations in pursuing higher education). This parallel increase of the de-commodification resource of modern societies and 11

the increase of commodification pressure constitutes the key antinomy (internal contradiction) of contemporary capitalism. This, in turn, affects the parameters in which the distribution of life-chances and related to it forms of social injustice emerge. In the new constellation, the dynamics of stratification concern the patterned uneven distribution of society s de-commodification resources and commodification pressures. In this context, access to the labor market has become a key factor in the distribution of social opportunity and risk. The sharp focus I place on labor-market access as a source of social stratification is not a matter of a principled believe in the priority of economic factors; such a focus is due, to borrow Carl Polanyi s expression, to the singularity of the subject matter: the growing importance of labor-market access is a function of the particular nature of stateeconomy relations in the late 20th century. Let me trace the logic by force of which this is the case. The incapacity of the volatile global economy to provide for full and long-term employment, as well as the incapacity, or the unwillingness, of public authority to maintain robust redistributive policies means that a person s capacity to enter the labor market has become an increasingly important parameter in the distribution of life chances. However, in view of the central antinomy of capitalism articulated above (concerning the distribution of the commodification resource and commodification pressures), dynamics of social stratification occur not simply in terms of access to the labor market, but also in terms of capacity for exit from it. The distribution of lifechances begins to be strongly predicated on personal control over the entry into, and exit from, the labor market. This capacity (or lack of it) demarcates between voluntary job flexibility (an opportunity), which neither jeopardizes access to income sources nor one s access to discretionary time), and involuntary flexibility (a hazard), which is a serious threat to income security but also to personal freedom as the search for employment erodes discretionary time and, therefore, is a form of commodification. In other words, it is a person s capacity for voluntary entry into, and exit from the labor market that determines a person s position within the stratified distribution of society s decommodification resource and commodification pressures. Thus, while employment flexibility has become a leading feature of disorganized capitalism, the difference between voluntary and involuntary flexibility (temporary or part-time employment) becomes a vital social distinction. This means that labor market entry and exit is no longer an element of economic policy (as in the classic welfare state policy paradigm of economic growth and employment), it is a good to be distributed an element of social policy. Thus, the highly stratified distribution of (institutionalized) risk and opportunity through secure exit from, and entry into, the labor market has become the apex of the social question. From this diagnosis of the social question, relevant experiences of injustice (socially induced suffering) emerge along three lines. First, with the incapacity of national economies to ensure full employment, the secure labor contract that had once been an instrument for safeguarding social rights has become a source of social 12

exclusion, as it leaves large groups without a chance to enter the labor market (the insiders-outsides conflict). The social question here emerges in terms of the poor chances of some citizens to enter the labor market. Second, intensified competition has increased the commodification pressures for the insiders of the labor market over the past two decades, as well as for those holding high-quality jobs. For this group, the experience of social injustice is related to pressures for deepened commodification for instance, accepting lower wages and longer hours for the sake of job security. 14 For this group, perceptions of economic insecurity act as a disincentive for voluntary labor-market exit even when such an exit is an option. The third line along which experiences of socially induced injustice emerge is the location of a group on the margins of the labor market: workers on involuntary temporary employment, especially in sectors exposed to globalization. Employment in these sectors is marked by precarious and poorly paid jobs for unskilled labor. Such workers are disadvantaged twice: first, in terms of employment stability, and second, in terms of access to adequate social benefits and active labor market support. This means that socially induced suffering (injustice) of common structural genesis is experienced by three broad groups: (1) labor-market insiders; (2) labor-market outsides: (3) those functioning on the margins of the labor-market. It is from this general pattern of domination that a normatively generalizable concept of justice is to be derived, according to the formula of immanent critique I espoused here. A just society (in terms of social and economic rights, rather than political and civil ones) would therefore have a political economy designed in a way to ensure the equal distribution of earning opportunity and capacity for decommodification via voluntary labor-market exit and entry, voluntary employment flexibility. Such a conceptualization of social justice would lead away from the futile choice between entrepreneurial freedom and economic equality as dimensions of social justice, as voluntary employment flexibility implies freedom in a double sense: freedom of economic enterprise (labourmarket participation) and freedom from the demands of the market (decommodification). Conclusion: I observed that there is no critique of the crisis of capitalism, because there is no crisis of capitalism. Capitalism, is in fact, doing very well. While we have anticipated its peril, it has undergone a metamorphosis and consolidated into a new modality. This new modality is characterised by a generalised and deepened form of social suffering, originating along the structural and relational vectors of domination. Therefore, I proposed that Critical Theory renew its engagement with the political economy of capitalism in order to be able to address the socio-structural origin of social injustice in 13

our age. 9 This style of critique deliberately shifts the focus from patterns of power inequality to broader structural pattern in the production of social risk. By directing attention to the key structural dynamics of contemporary capitalism, such a form of immanent critique provides an internal point of view that relates ideational and structural dimensions (that is, notions of justice and features of the political economy) via the mediating concept of structurally produced social injustice. This led me to identify the production of social risk under growing commodification pressures, in a context in which the decommodification potential of societies has also increased, as the heart of the social question in the 21st century. Such a diagnosis singled out voluntary employment flexibility a person s capacity to enter and exit the labor-marked at will, to emerge as an important institutional condition for reducing domination. This is just one proposal, among many that can emanate from the critique of structural domination I adumbrated above. Such a take on social justice and normative critique of capitalism is neither at odds with the old Marxian Left s concern with exploitation, nor with the New Left s stress on dehumanization. Set out to target the dehumanizing nature of the generalized labor commodification typical of contemporary capitalism, it presents, in fact, a synthesis of both. COMMENTS WELCOME AT: A.Azmanova@kent.ac.uk 9 While this is intended as a programmatic appeal to critical theorists, I do not imply that we should all embark on a critique of political economy. There has always been division of labour among the people working within this tradition, and my appeal is only for renewing attention to the structural dimension of domination: this could be done in various ways, and the proposed here analysis is meant only as a tentative step in this direction. 14