by: François Flahault | Visit article original @ Le Monde
Are politicians thinking about the common good when they talk about "moralizing capitalism?" Undoubtedly, they are primarily thinking that they must calm discontent to maintain their credibility: a democratic state is supposed to fulfill the function of third party between the powerful and the weak. Yet now, even in the United States, which, through skillful electoral marketing, had long succeeded in making the poor vote for the rich (a success that has created imitators), the crisis has just reminded everyone that a gap exists between those two groups. Must the search for the common good translate itself into a "moralization of capitalism?" All things considered, that would be a rather advantageous compromise for economic actors. Since everyone is painting themselves over in green (as ecology makes compulsory), why not also "communicate" the ethical character of companies, as long as a few concessions are being made anyway?
To the extent that it underestimates the balance of power, moral discourse plays its role, however involuntarily, in concealing those power relationships, that is, in the staging of rationality. The big economic and financial groups are powers, forces. We need to extend Montesquieu's great idea about the limitation of powers to the relations between politics and the economy. Since every power naturally tends to exert and extend itself, none self-limits of its own volition. Only one force can limit another force. In these last few months many economists have said what must be done to reform capitalism. Now, it remains to gather together the forces that would allow it to be done: a thing all the more difficult to do, given that one of the great victories of economic power has been to convert politicians to a doctrine which facilitates the supremacy of economic power.
Economic science generally and the free market doctrine in particular can be seen as a staging of rationality. Justifiable and convincing in many respects, that staging only makes it all the easier to forget power relations and the desire for power.
As we have seen, the faith in self-regulation applied to financial markets is altogether illusory. But if the role attributed to it in economic theory is questionable, there's another role it plays that the theory does not discuss, but which it fulfills particularly well: convincing economic actors (especially the most powerful ones), and, where possible, politicians, that it is useless to concern themselves with the common good, useless to worry about the long term. One need only leave it to the invisible hand: natural providence which all by itself achieves the common good. Under the appearance of rationality, the lack of accountability that is encouraged this way leaves the field wide open to the strongest.
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