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What can I hope for (from politics)? 1129
It is true that the self-regulation of the market is one of the
fundamental principles of a free society, but we know that this principle
has never become exclusive. On the contrary, in parallel with the
dominance of market-type relations, the state extends its own control
over ever more areas of society to counter-balance the unbearable
consequences of profit-seeking competition and to maintain the ordered
cooperation and security of the participants. The prevailing of a third
principle is likewise a logical consequence of the system of freedom. It
is the independence of local, workplace, professional, religious, cultural,
etc. communities based on free association among citizens, legally
protected from the state and market. ‘The joint prevalence and incessant
struggle of these three — bureaucratic administration, the autonomy of
communities and market relations (which is simultaneously competition
and cooperation) — ensure the functioning of modern society.
“Capitalism”, i.e., the profit-seeking, accumulative and therefore growth¬
oriented version of market economy is only one of these principles.
To simplify the situation: while the state controls the operation of
the market (or does not), the market ensures (or does not) that the
citizens possess a living independent of the state. For their part, the
citizens exercise control (or do not) over those who govern the state.
Whenever an attempt is made to eliminate any part of this system, the
result is always the total vulnerability of the individual and the
immoderate waste of resources. It appears that legal security, private
property, democracy and the market are inseparable from each other.
Not for nothing does an attempt to separate them produce a crisis. The
relation between the constitutional state, capital and civil society does
not usually tend to be balanced, however. It is by no means peaceful; it
is rather a ceaseless war between opposing interests. The aim of the
market participants is to free themselves of the control of local society
(citizens + public institutions). But when they succeed — first in the era
of laissez-faire capitalism in the 19" century, more recently within the
framework of economic globalism — they thereby unleash an avalanche
of social and natural catastrophes upon the world, which, one way or
another, must be followed by the correction (or collapse) of the system.
For the interests of the owners of capital is to realise their profits as
investments on the one hand and to decrease their costs on the other.
The former drives them to constantly increase the volume of
reproduction and the latter to pass on the natural, social and cultural
costs of growth to others, if possible. The usual conclusion from this is
that capitalism is incompatible with ecological sustainability. Based on