Once a month, The duty challenges philosophy enthusiasts to decipher a current issue based on the theses of a notable thinker.
The acceleration of ecological and social crises encourages us to want to leave capitalism. But towards what? Capitalism presents itself as the source of progress, generated by the natural evolution of the world. However, we clearly see that the power of multinationals and their lobbies over our lives is not natural. Also, capitalism often presents itself as better than its supposed alternative, communism. At the remark “nurses are underpaid”, we are then asked: “Are you a communist?” » Or to those who deplore the ravages of capitalism on the environment, we are told that “communism has done worse”.
There is, however, another path, the “capabilism” of Adam Smith. It aims to enable people to improve their lot. This path is improved today by Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach and the sustainable development goals, promoted since 2015 by the United Nations (UN). For António Guterres, Secretary General of the UN, these are “the goals that the world has set to improve the lot of humanity”. However, on September 18, he deplored the fact that the achievement of these objectives was delayed and that efforts must be redoubled to achieve them. The capabilities approach is also found in the thousands of companies operating in the social and solidarity economy sector (cooperatives, NPOs, associations, etc.), to which are now added hybrid companies, such as B. Corp., mission companies and collective enterprises.
The slow rediscovery of Smith
The fact that the notion of “capabilism” emerged from the work of Adam Smith may come as a surprise. But today, more and more authors insist on the fact that he was not a follower of the minimal State, that he denounced the flaws of selfishness and mercantilism and that he did not found the theory of the invisible hand of the market.
For Glory Liu of Harvard, for example, Adam Smith was reduced to a logo in order to defend neoliberalism and American capitalism. With the influence of the writings of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, it became “the symbol of individual interest, choice and freedom.” Also, with the election of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, Smith was used to differentiate capitalism from communism. The force of this propaganda during the Cold War contributed to distorting his work.
Fortunately, we are no longer in this grip and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) even recently suggested that the promises of neoliberalism have been overrated. Today, in this year of the tercentenary of Adam Smith’s birth, we are beginning to recognize that in his writings he did not use words like “capitalism”, “capitalists”, “laisser-faire” or ” Homo economicus. It is also accepted that Smith did not propose that the sole responsibility of business was to maximize profits, although business schools still teach this doctrine in his name. Finally, there is greater recognition that Adam Smith did not want every nation to become only “a nation of shopkeepers”, having documented the misdeeds of the world’s first multinational, the East India Company, on the British and Indian populations.
The author of The wealth of nations and of Theory of moral sentiments has, in fact, insisted on saying that “ […] wealth does not consist of cash or gold and silver.” For him, a “rich” nation was measured by the productivity of its fields, the number of its jobs, the well-being of its population, access for all to quality education and the refinement of moral sentiments. in the society. In his Enlightenment, Smith defended the autonomy of people and their voluntary cooperation. He hoped that the rise of the industrial revolution would benefit all social classes, first and foremost the working class, because it was more fragile and more populous.
He also praised the emergence of the market economy, while opposing the influence of large manufacturers and merchants. Today, capitalism is often confused with the market economy, but for Smith, the market should allow people to exchange for their mutual benefit and not multinationals to impose their interests. Thus, he defined political economy as having to “make the people capable” of providing for their needs, and the State capable of ensuring its “public service”.
The capabilities approach
This “capabilism” of Adam Smith was improved by Amartya Sen. A native of India, this economist and philosopher received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 for arguing that economics is a moral science. His work introduced the capabilities approach, these real capacities which allow people to achieve what they themselves attribute value to. In this conception, people and companies must not only maximize their profits, considered in traditional economic science as the ultimate end to achieve. For Sen as for Smith, wealth is not just financial and economic growth may not have positive effects on people’s well-being.
In his work, Sen has, for example, demonstrated that the health of a person of color in the United States can be lower than that of a person living in a poor country, even though the GDP per capita in that country is lower than that of a person living in a poor country, even though the GDP per capita in that country is lower than ‘in the USA. For such reasons, Sen and his associates created the Human Development Index (HDI). This index recognizes that while economic reality is important, other capabilities in people’s lives must also be taken into account to assess their well-being. This includes their real access to an efficient public health system or their concrete capacity to be able to learn in a quality education system, even for people with modest incomes. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has been calculating such a composite index for each country since 1990, following the concept that “development is a process by which the real freedoms of people increase”. The fact that in Quebec, the government seeks to create private hospitals and that it refuses to correct the existing disparities between private and public schools seems to go against such a conception.
The founders of the capabilities approach explicitly praised Adam Smith’s capableism. For Amartya Sen, who also noted the contribution of John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, “the capabilities perspective implies to a certain extent a return to an integrated approach in economics and social development, defended in particular by Adam Smith” . Similarly, for Martha Nussbaum, who compared Smith’s work with Aristotle’s ethics, “Adam Smith already used the language of capabilities to describe the material basis of a flourishing human life, and current capability theorists can learn from his rich intuitions.
Sustainable development goals
This same capableist conception is found today in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Promulgated by several United Nations entities since 2015, this model presents 17 development objectives for nations and businesses. The motivation behind these SDGs is not profit maximization. It is to promote the capabilities of all people, on a healthy planet, by allowing them to increase their power to act.
For example, the first seven objectives recall the need for a so-called “sustainable” investment or a “sustainable” government policy to: 1. Reduce poverty; 2. Contribute to the eradication of hunger; 3. Promote health; 4. Facilitate quality education for all; 5. Promote gender equality; 6. Guarantee clean water; and 7. Produce renewable energy at an affordable cost. Other goals target responsible consumption and production as well as cooperation between governments, the private sector and civil society.
The concrete aspect of these objectives allows each person to judge whether an investment, a good, a service, a business or a policy can be considered “sustainable” or not. There is no need here for complicated explanations using a supposedly scientific theory, such as that of “runoff” or the elusive promise of carbon neutrality in 2050.
The SDG model also has the advantage of being accepted internationally. It does not come from any particular nation or political party. It has also been the subject of an established consensus among governments, multinationals and trade unions, both in developed and developing countries.
Recently, António Guterres warned the international community that the achievement of certain goals is falling behind schedule and called for a recovery plan. The UN has also confirmed that the social and solidarity economy sector contributes positively to the SDGs and that it must be encouraged. I present these current approaches, which aim to increase people’s capabilities, in a recent book: Adam Smith, the ultimate antidote to capitalism. His theory of capableism.
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