Social Capitalism or: how reformism was rebranded as radicalism
The recent emergence of “socialism” in American electoral politics is actually social capitalism co-opting radical politics in order to capture those wanting change. The goal is to create a new-new deal that will placate the growing radicalism.
Instead of actual socialism, it’s about Social Capitalism, which can be summarized as “a socially-minded form of capitalism, where the goal is making social improvements, rather than focusing on accumulating capital in the classic capitalist sense. It is a utilitarian form of capitalism with a social purpose.”
The 2016 American election cycle saw the emergence of Bernie Sanders as a national populist figure for the American left. He may have lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton but his influence and popularity persisted into the 2020 election cycle. So popular that other candidates that ran in that cycle had similar policies to him. They were mimicking and hoping to gain traction from his popularity.
Specific Candidates such as Andrew Yang, who didn’t use the socialist label but still committed to redistributive capitalism with his UBI policy. Calling for a “Human-centered capitalism” as opposed to the current “inhuman-capitalism.” The framing was to make wealth inequality and poverty not inherent to capitalism but more so a mismanagement of the system. So his version would introduce a socially centered capitalism that would fix these errors.
Yang would remark on how automation should be allowing people to be working less. This talking point was persuasive to many but since he frames this as not an inherent problem to the system he fundamentally misses the actual problem going on. That the profit motive of capitalism constantly stagnates industrial progress and any social benefits from it in order to maintain profits. Simply giving everyone money and higher wages would not solve the issue of planned obsolescence, artificial scarcity, and other methods business engages into sabotage industries’ potential for social betterment.
Another candidate was Elizabeth Warren, who also didn’t use the socialist label, committed to framing her policies around redistributing capitalism with taxations on the rich to fund certain programs such as universal healthcare. Both of these candidates, even if they didn’t use the socialist label, were still engaging in a means of recuperation. Re-frame the failures of capitalism as not inherent to private ownership but rather the mismanagement of it and that through welfare and other reforms this could be solved.
A number of online influencers have surrounded this movement to help push social capitalism as the alternative to neoliberalism, however, they call it “democratic socialism”, “market socialism” and or “libertarian socialism.” The latter usages are more commonly seen with such figures as Vaush.
(Keep in mind, Being isn’t saying that libertarian socialism is bad but rather these figures use that term to obfuscate the actual system being pushed.)
Using expanded welfarism and cooperative labor to redistribute capital through socially progressive movements. The goal is to not abolish social classes and capital but rejuvenate the middle class. The supposed “Revolution” involved is a rhetorical device to feed into populism. Pose the movement around these reforms and its overall commitment to this reformism as a “revolution” of the “common people” as they “fight the elites with reforms.”
For example, Bernie Sanders called his 2016 book “Our Revolution”. Framing his campaign as a “political revolution to achieve democratic socialism.” Rallying people around this electoral effort from grassroots organizing in hopes of becoming the United States President. If Sanders was indeed elected to this position, the quick reality of global capitalism and its nation-state apparatus would set into his presidency, making him concede too many of his campaign policies. His “revolution” would become at most a mass pacification with the establishment of his new-new deal or at worst a failed attempt at it.
Vaush in particular frames these reforms as a part of a transitional phase, that the new-new deal will help in aiding the growth of socialism and inevitably achieve communism. Although, like many other state socialists, Vaush puts a lot of faith into centralist institutions thinking they will help in creating a heavily decentralized world.
Yes, Vaush is indeed a State Socialist, or at least far more like them than any Anarchist. Anarchism does not advocate for centralized transitionary institutions. This Frankenstein’s socialism that Vaush engages in is due to a lack of political understanding. Mixing and matching social democracy, market socialism, and libertarian socialism, when convenient. All of it for the sake of “pragmatism” and “optics.” Wanting a “Workers State through democratic market socialism achieved from electing democratic politicians.”
If the new-new deal does happen and cooperatives become more common in the United States then expect state intervention, not socialism to happen. Keep in mind that 1 in 3 Americans are already members of a co-op. With 29,000 cooperatives operating in the United States today. Contributing $652 billion in annual sales, and possessing $3 trillion in assets. (So cooperatives are already a part of the capitalist world economy.)
The real goal in mind is not socialism but to reintroduce communitarianism back into capitalism after a perceived “degeneration of it into an oligarchic corporatism by neoliberalism.” A redistribution of capital through the expansion of state intervention is not socialism but rather a social-democratic practice.
The same can be said for the expansion of cooperatives as this is just social corporatism, “economic tripartite corporatism based upon a social partnership between the interests of capital and labor, involving collective bargaining between representatives of employers and of labor mediated by the government at the national level.”
Of course, online influencers like Vaush have framed this as the beginnings of Market Socialism, “an economic system involving the public, cooperative, or social ownership of the means of production in the framework of a market economy.” The maintenance of the profit motive, competition, and other market dynamics persist. As well as the centralist institutions of power will prevent any effective means at lessening dominations, even if workers get to vote on who the centralist leader is every so often.
It seems as if “Market Socialism” is simply just cooperative capitalism in denial. The alienation of your labor is framed as a “democratic decision”, instead of the usual line about meritocracy dictating your value. This conjuration, phantasmagorical abomination in which your wage slavery is seen as a part of “collective action and necessity” through its mimicry, but more like a parody of socialist rhetoric and imagery. While “State-Legislated Market Socialism” maintains multiple layers of government bureaucrats and private businessmen that erode any sense of effective democracy.
“The hell of capitalism is the firm, not the fact that the firm has a boss.” — Amadeo Bordiga
The neoliberal order isn’t shaking in its boots at the prospect of more cooperatives. In fact, it could in a lot of ways help maintain its existence. As it does already, France, Great Britain, Finland, Spain, and Brazil are in the top ten most cooperative countries. More participation and redistributive efforts would help to lessen certain ills. Make people feel more involved in the process and desire its continued existence as they form a communitarian value around it. The hierarchies and global domination persist but radicalism is suppressed and the “capitalist dream” is given an extra boost of life.
Vaush’s “Supercapitalism”, which is to allow more people to participate in private ownership and capital accumulation produces this social effect. Robert Reich’s attempts at rebirthing Stakeholder capitalism, which is “a system in which corporations are oriented to serve the interests of all their stakeholders. Among the key stakeholders are customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and local communities. Under this system, a company’s purpose is to create long-term value and not to maximize profits and enhance shareholder value at the cost of other stakeholder groups.” This has the same line of reasoning, that if we expand participation in a heavily centralizing system that it will fix the problems of capitalism. However, Reich differs from Vaush in that he does not view this as a transitory step to communism.
What makes Vaush, Bernie Sanders, and others like them especially dangerous is that their social capitalism is being sold as something that isn’t capitalism. It’s a means of convincing a restless population to put trust back into capitalism but under the false idea that it’s now become socialism. This is scary because the capitalist world economy now has the means of pacifying radicalism through this dynamic.