on "social capital"

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2003-05-25 14:50 -0700, Michael wrote:
> The idea of social capital is intriguing.  Why in the world does anything that
> supposedly has a positive effect have to be a form of capital? human capital?
> Does that mean that humans become capital or that capital becomes human?

Your questions remind me that some years back I was struck by a picture of
demnstrators with placards saying "we are capital".

(It was not a fully scientific statement - of course they should have said
"we are variable capital", but that would be a propagandist argument, and
perhaps the placards are permissible as an agitational statement.)

I do not think the use of the term "social capital" means that capital has
become human, but that there is a human dimension alongside finance
capital. Indeed that out of all the commodities which which capital busies
itself, labour power is unique.

Yes it "social capital" an idea adapted from the ideology of the ruling
classes, as occurs in every society. But by examining it, even by making
the use of the word "capital" explicit, it opens up certain concepts to
discussion and potentially unravels the mystification behind the ideology
of the present economic system.

Ian is concise and to the point about the ideology at its crudest. But Adam
Smith assumed the existence of civil society, for the operation of his
invisible hand.

Ben Fine conceptualises this as marking a shift from the Washington
Consensus to a post Washington consensus.

And although it is not Marx's usage - I take the references to Marx arguing
that capital is social - it is not necessarily incompatible with Marxism.
Marx referred, did he not, to the cultural level of the working class?
Marxists tend to forget that Marx's expositions were ones of abstraction.
It is one sided to read his critique of capitalist political economy
without understanding that for him this mode of production has become
dominant in a society with other modes of production, and reproduction.

Modern capitalism now needs in the imperialist heartlands and in the
subimperialist states tens of millions of workers who are familiar with
computers and the internet. Probably now hundres of millions.

Indeed this list, and its sister lists, have accumulated in a sense a lot
of social capital themselves.

It is conceivably possible but not probable that the social capital of this
list could be turned into finance capital.

Indeed Left Words Books which published John Harriss's critique of Social
Capital  was financed by subscriptions of people who are readers of the
publications of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Another irony is that the CPM together with the CPI has done much to foster
social capital in Indian states such as Bengal and Kerala. It is not
revolutionary, but I would hesitate before dismissing it as a valuable form
of resistance to the oppression of the Indian people by imperialism.

Chris Burford

London

PS It always seems to me surprising that some marxists should find
postmodernism so threatening. I certainly haven't bothered to read Bordieu
on social capital but unless you believe that post modernists generate
ideas out of pure air like mathematical elaborations on string theory as
the explanation for the universe, it is likely that their ideas too to a
small degree reflect actually existing reality.

When there is a question of possible dogmatism it is always worth actually
reading Marx. A quick Google search on "Marx capital social" takes you to
Capital Vol 3 Chap 38 and this argument:

> The manufacturer who operates with steam also employs natural forces which
> cost him nothing yet make the labour more productive and increase the
> surplus-value and thereby the profit, inasmuch as they thus cheapen the
> manufacture of the means of subsistence required for the labourers. These
> natural forces are thus quite as much monopolised by capital as the social
> natural forces of labour arising from co-operation, division of labour, etc.


Is it possible that the impurely expressed concept of "social capital" is
none other than what Marx described here as the "social natural forces of
labour"?

And there is Lenin on the Development of Capitalism in Russia -

Isn't this the same argument as the World Bank, with "cultural level"
taking the place of "social capital"

 "Particularly noteworthy in this connection is the fact of the higher
cultural level of the population of such non-agricultural centres. A higher
degree of literacy, a considerably higher standard of requirements and
life, vigorous dissociation from the "rawness" of "native village soil" --
such are the usual distinguishing features of the inhabitants of such
centres.[6]  One can understand the enormous significance of this fact,
which clearly demonstrates the progressive historical role of capitalism ....."

Of course I am not saying politically we should support the World Bank but
no one who aspires to some sort of historical materialism should be blind
to the possible contradictory nature of its analysis.


Or here "cultural level" is used by Lenin as relevant for revolutionary change

> GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS
>
> Comrades, the news we have been receiving from the Hungarian Soviet
> leaders fills us with enthusiasm and pleasure. Soviet government has been
> in existence in Hungary for only a little over two months, yet as regards
> organisation the Hungarian proletariat already seems to have excelled us.
> That is understandable, for in Hungary the general cultural level of the
> population is higher; further more....


So in the Gramscian battle for ideological hegemony the concept of "social
capital" may be contested ground, which Marxists leave uncontested to the
enemy if they merely content themselves with dogmatic sarcastic utterances.