ABSTRACT
The neo-liberal political and economic reforms that have been instituted more or less comprehensively in the European model welfare states over the past thirty years continue to prevail. The consequences of socially uncontrolled capitalism portend a worsening crisis of governance. A broadening political recognition of the magnitude of the social crisis may improve the chances of imaginative social innovation after neo-liberalism. The task of renewing social imagination and civic action includes bringing new attention to the civil crises in work and education. Emancipatory and participatory political action of a socially oriented
nature, beyond protestation and unrest, now appears severely constrained or practically ineffective in a world dominated by economic and technological elites and the social forms – including workplaces and universities – they have demanded and instituted. Aspirations of advancing social justice and emancipation within the world of work as well as beyond it, although by no means exhausted, have manifestly diminished scope to support their realization. An apparent resignation to there being no alternative to market liberalism and socially weak institutions may suggest a normative acquiescence. The countersocial irresponsibility of elites, corporate firms and governments complicit in the current crisis of liberal capitalism presents societies and polities with immense challenges of legitimacy and governance. These concerns preoccupy the attention of many seasoned scholars and analysts. Many are inclined to concur that we can see myriad problems and few persuasive arguments for progressive steps forward. In this concluding chapter I explore some efforts of response. Unleashed capitalism is unlikely to yield to renewed efforts of constraint
typical of twentieth century institutions from which it broke free in the past few decades. As much as a renewal and revitalization of trade unions remain a vital agenda, only limited demands can realistically be made of labour institutions. Certainly, a desistance of admonishment of workers for their skills deficits and of unions for their localism, conservatism and capitulation to elites would be an immediate progressive step. As well, a more precise naming
of the interests and agents of neo-liberal capitalism and exposition of their deliberate skills deficits: their wilful ignorance and cynical disregard for the disproportionately burdened and marginalized that liberalized, hyper-marketized capitalism predictably generated would be useful. In the interests of society, an engaged, ethical sociological critique enables the search for innovative and just social practices pro populo. The rapacious character of capitalism that has permeated contemporary
economic institutions and normalized a public subservience to the logic and power of market action is precisely the reason we cannot expect too much genuine reform-mindedness from those institutions. Popular business claims that “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) can fill the breach must be recognized for their a priori interestedness and limits. Corporate social responsibility is a defence of capitalism on the part of elites. It is irrevocably tainted from decades of escalating corporate irresponsibility that is now exposed. The neo-liberal hegemony has set a cultural subordination of organized labour and of the public sphere. It has effected, too, and less explicably, a brazen capitulation of university institutions to the demands of liberalized corporate firms and their implicated policy-makers. Universities, seduced or coerced, by ideologies of economically liberal change, technological and market dynamism, and of the superiority of the techno-scientific episteme have conceded an emancipatory and civilizing cultural vision which, in the mid-twentieth century, was promising a wide social reach. Policy-makers urge, at best, a pursuit of social cohesion forged through
welfare deprivation and frightening people into wilfully degraded jobs or intensified competition for the chance of good jobs. Those better jobs which do utilize and reward higher education and skills are evidently supported by sectors of work which do not. Further pressures are placed on universities to modernize and increase skills generation and astonishingly little pressure is placed on firms to improve the quality of poor jobs and recognize the rights and civil dignity of citizen-workers in the workplace. Sober recognition of the severity of the accumulated degradations incurred in the “creative destruction” of liberal capitalism, which Schumpeter observed, is the most pressing social task. It seems we are, collectively, in much need of reminding of Marx’s oncefamous recognition of capitalism’s “uninterrupted disruption of all social conditions,” its “everlasting uncertainty and agitation” and its ensuing social destructiveness. Weber’s observation of the “irrational rationality of capitalism” and its evident requirement of social governance are similarly remarkably neglected. Our early twenty-first century “learning society” has forgotten some crucial learnings of our not-so-distant past. The social question returns. European welfare states strive to revitalize their social models; their leaders
speak again of the “big society” and, invoking Durkheim’s classical concerns, they speak of social cohesion, citizenship and solidarity. In regard to the social matters of this book, a crucial question arises: can work and education be restored to potentiality beyond their degradation by capitalist appetite? How can social institutions capable of manoeuvre and social construction against
monolithic economic reason be newly imagined, and newly effective? Can they be effective in highly market-rationalized work and education? In response to these questions I propose to draw into discussion explorations
of new conceptualizations and forms of citizenship and civil society. Current philosophical attention to citizenship sparks much possibility. Can workers, invoking innovative conceptions and renovated practices of citizenship, mobilize anew for just rights, roles, duties and egalitarian reciprocities in the work spaces of society? What are the roles and responsibilities of education, especially the university, in the practice and dissemination of these and other capacities of citizenship? Despite the university’s subordination and adaptation to market imperatives, and the excoriative criticism many are tempted to proffer, its assimilation is not complete. In view of the severe weaknesses of liberalized economic and political institutions and the elevated role of the university in current conditions, much greater social and cultural demands may again be placed on the university. The demand of higher education’s revitalized role begins with an interruption of its latter-day role as engine-room for labour market skills production and laboratory of techno-scientific, entrepreneurial knowledge. It is a demand for a reformed and re-civilized role for the university in pursuit of diverse and higher social and cultural knowledge. The university, having embarked on paths of entrepreneurial expansion and adopting business firm models of organization and management and seeking, on a generous view, to serve a wider public at least in the provision of labour market skills, nonetheless retains a cultural heritage of non-economic value and raison d’être. The university, drawing on its rich cultural heritage and social capital,
possesses unique capacities to contribute to renewed social institutions and dynamic, self-reflective societies. A new attention to notions of social citizenship, in contemporary transnational and cosmopolitan forms, offers rich potential. The principal aim of the discussions below is to consider the potential of current discourse on citizenship and society and a renewed sociocultural understanding of education. These non-market interests may offer scope for sources of protecting society and citizens from markets and firms, and advancing social, and planetary, interests. They may inform governments still in the sway of corporate firm interests of the demands and interests of citizens which can never be reduced to markets, trade and consumption. Discussion begins with some remarks on the problem of economic authoritarianism and “corporate social responsibility” (CSR).
