TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY - Review a history book but talk about the present. It is the new column of fattoquotidiano.it. In the third episode (google translate)The anxious triumph, a global history of capitalism, 1860-1914 by Donald Sassoon, a multifaceted historian of international fame, which will be released in Italy in January 2020 for Garzanti
by Massimo Asta | SEPTEMBER 22, 2019
* Massimo Asta is a historian of the University of Cambridge
Twitter: @AstaMassimo
IL FATTO QUOTIDIANO
"Capitalism is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not right, it is not virtuous and it does not produce the necessary goods. In short, we don't like it and we're starting to despise it. But when we ask ourselves what to put in his place, we remain extremely perplexed ”. The famous statement by John Maynard Keynes, written when the effects of the 1929 crisis were still at their peak in Europe, could probably translate the bottom of most people's ideas today. Only a decade earlier, the quote by the liberal-progressive economist of Cambridge, would instead have been ascribed to minority and radical positions in Italy. Far left. The phase of the social-democratic compromise and the post-war economic boom has been filed away, and the belief system that had supported the neoliberal hangover since the 1980s has deteriorated, to the point of going into crisis after having crossed dangerously - and still precariously, like the forecasts of growth for the two-year period 2019-2020 provided by the OECD suggest - the 2008 crisis, the sense of dissatisfaction and lack of confidence in the economy became common sense. Without however generalizing in the form of a push, nor even of an anti-capitalist culture.
Already the figures revealed by the Eurobarometer about the perception that European citizens had of the economic crisis showed widespread discouragement. In 2010, 18% (19% EU average) of the sample of respondents for Italy believed that the crisis had had an important impact on their personal situation, 47% (33% EU average) thought it had an impact quite important. The sample was also asked if the loss of his work or that of his partner had been experienced as a direct cause of the crisis. 8% and 11% had answered affirmatively, respectively in Italy and in the European Union. While in the case of loss of work of an acquaintance the percentage went up to 40%. It is also interesting to note that both in Italy and in Europe, the fear of the crisis had probably crystallized, if not modified, the opinion regarding the economic policy recipes. 38% said they were convinced of the need to adopt public spending policies in order to stimulate the economy, or the opportunity for a greater active role of the State. As a result, he showed little confidence in the ability of the market to resolve its economic and national destiny on its own.
The following year the data drew a worse picture. All the indicators highlighted a more pessimistic view of the economic crisis, both of its global effects and of the impact on everyone's life. 41%, in Italy as in the 27 EU countries, thought that the crisis would last for many years, or that it was a structural crisis. To stand at the Istat index of consumer confidence, after the outbreak of the crisis they had to wait seven years before a certain optimism towards the economy began to revive the morale of the Italians and their propensity to spend.
Meanwhile, a certain departure from the positive if not euphoric perception that had characterized the 1980s and 1990s must have settled after 2008. The unexpected international editorial success of books on history, economics, psychology, anthropology on capitalism and its crises, on the multiplication of inequalities seems to comfort its impression.
The title of the last work by Donald Sassoon, a multi-faceted historian of international fame, and particularly known to the Italian public, The anxious triumph, a global history of capitalism, 1860-1914, risks for this reason to appear out of fashion? Quite the contrary. The analyzed period coincides with the phase in which "capitalism became universally accepted, when most of its opponents recognized that it was inevitable, perhaps even desirable". Investigated, within a stimulating and encyclopedic fresco, are the reactions of the elites to the challenge posed by the emergence of industrial capitalism, and how industrial progress has been accomplished by limiting at the most the dissent through the creation of nations and nationalisms, with wars aimed at the conquest of new territories, or with the intervention of the State in the economy, or through the invention of the rights to Welfare.
Ultimately, it is in the problem of building the legitimacy of capitalism, of the consensus towards an economic system that disrupted the previous architecture of social relations, which is the heart of Sassoon's study. Harold James in the Financial Times called it a book for the present, and for the future. The two capitalisms of the second half of the nineteenth century, and today's capitalism are certainly dissimilar in various aspects. Last but not least, the transition from a predominantly manufacturing economy to a predominantly service and financial one. As the author recalls, Uber, the Internet taxi company, launched in 2009, already in 2015 was worth more than the Ford Motor Car Company. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google were valued at $ 1.5 trillion in 2017, about the same value as the entire Russian economy. In the United States, manicure centers had more employees (68,000) than the coal industry did. Most of the companies that make up the Down Jones index, unlike in the past, today deal with large-scale distribution (Wal-Mart), software (Apple and Microsoft), finance (JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs). Amazon and Google are not part of it simply because they are so large that they would distort the reliability of the index.
However, other factors that intimately structure its functioning have not changed much since the narration of the book stops. And the secular perspective helps to understand it better. As the necessity of the State for the very existence of capitalism. "Economists who argue that there should be no political interference with capitalism do not understand a simple truth: capitalism is not a mere economic system, but a way to organize social relations (p. Xxxi)".
And anxiety. The feeling of anxiety is not an accident in the path of capitalism produced by crises, it is not an external, conjunctural factor, but is inherent in the phenomenon and its anarchic nature, permanently creative and destructive, and essentially unstable. How unstable can be the consent of which it feeds. The book, which will be released in Italy in January for Garzanti, ends by evoking the ecological question, an apparently insoluble problem and, therefore, a generator of new anxieties: how will the political class explain to its citizens and voters that the consumption of the majority must be compressed radically to face the ecological calamity, when capitalism built its most recent form of legitimacy on consumer society?
translated by google translate
"Capitalism is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not right, it is not virtuous and it does not produce the necessary goods. In short, we don't like it and we're starting to despise it. But when we ask ourselves what to put in his place, we remain extremely perplexed ”. The famous statement by John Maynard Keynes, written when the effects of the 1929 crisis were still at their peak in Europe, could probably translate the bottom of most people's ideas today. Only a decade earlier, the quote by the liberal-progressive economist of Cambridge, would instead have been ascribed to minority and radical positions in Italy. Far left. The phase of the social-democratic compromise and the post-war economic boom has been filed away, and the belief system that had supported the neoliberal hangover since the 1980s has deteriorated, to the point of going into crisis after having crossed dangerously - and still precariously, like the forecasts of growth for the two-year period 2019-2020 provided by the OECD suggest - the 2008 crisis, the sense of dissatisfaction and lack of confidence in the economy became common sense. Without however generalizing in the form of a push, nor even of an anti-capitalist culture.
Already the figures revealed by the Eurobarometer about the perception that European citizens had of the economic crisis showed widespread discouragement. In 2010, 18% (19% EU average) of the sample of respondents for Italy believed that the crisis had had an important impact on their personal situation, 47% (33% EU average) thought it had an impact quite important. The sample was also asked if the loss of his work or that of his partner had been experienced as a direct cause of the crisis. 8% and 11% had answered affirmatively, respectively in Italy and in the European Union. While in the case of loss of work of an acquaintance the percentage went up to 40%. It is also interesting to note that both in Italy and in Europe, the fear of the crisis had probably crystallized, if not modified, the opinion regarding the economic policy recipes. 38% said they were convinced of the need to adopt public spending policies in order to stimulate the economy, or the opportunity for a greater active role of the State. As a result, he showed little confidence in the ability of the market to resolve its economic and national destiny on its own.
The following year the data drew a worse picture. All the indicators highlighted a more pessimistic view of the economic crisis, both of its global effects and of the impact on everyone's life. 41%, in Italy as in the 27 EU countries, thought that the crisis would last for many years, or that it was a structural crisis. To stand at the Istat index of consumer confidence, after the outbreak of the crisis they had to wait seven years before a certain optimism towards the economy began to revive the morale of the Italians and their propensity to spend.
Meanwhile, a certain departure from the positive if not euphoric perception that had characterized the 1980s and 1990s must have settled after 2008. The unexpected international editorial success of books on history, economics, psychology, anthropology on capitalism and its crises, on the multiplication of inequalities seems to comfort its impression.
The title of the last work by Donald Sassoon, a multi-faceted historian of international fame, and particularly known to the Italian public, The anxious triumph, a global history of capitalism, 1860-1914, risks for this reason to appear out of fashion? Quite the contrary. The analyzed period coincides with the phase in which "capitalism became universally accepted, when most of its opponents recognized that it was inevitable, perhaps even desirable". Investigated, within a stimulating and encyclopedic fresco, are the reactions of the elites to the challenge posed by the emergence of industrial capitalism, and how industrial progress has been accomplished by limiting at the most the dissent through the creation of nations and nationalisms, with wars aimed at the conquest of new territories, or with the intervention of the State in the economy, or through the invention of the rights to Welfare.
Ultimately, it is in the problem of building the legitimacy of capitalism, of the consensus towards an economic system that disrupted the previous architecture of social relations, which is the heart of Sassoon's study. Harold James in the Financial Times called it a book for the present, and for the future. The two capitalisms of the second half of the nineteenth century, and today's capitalism are certainly dissimilar in various aspects. Last but not least, the transition from a predominantly manufacturing economy to a predominantly service and financial one. As the author recalls, Uber, the Internet taxi company, launched in 2009, already in 2015 was worth more than the Ford Motor Car Company. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google were valued at $ 1.5 trillion in 2017, about the same value as the entire Russian economy. In the United States, manicure centers had more employees (68,000) than the coal industry did. Most of the companies that make up the Down Jones index, unlike in the past, today deal with large-scale distribution (Wal-Mart), software (Apple and Microsoft), finance (JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs). Amazon and Google are not part of it simply because they are so large that they would distort the reliability of the index.
However, other factors that intimately structure its functioning have not changed much since the narration of the book stops. And the secular perspective helps to understand it better. As the necessity of the State for the very existence of capitalism. "Economists who argue that there should be no political interference with capitalism do not understand a simple truth: capitalism is not a mere economic system, but a way to organize social relations (p. Xxxi)".
And anxiety. The feeling of anxiety is not an accident in the path of capitalism produced by crises, it is not an external, conjunctural factor, but is inherent in the phenomenon and its anarchic nature, permanently creative and destructive, and essentially unstable. How unstable can be the consent of which it feeds. The book, which will be released in Italy in January for Garzanti, ends by evoking the ecological question, an apparently insoluble problem and, therefore, a generator of new anxieties: how will the political class explain to its citizens and voters that the consumption of the majority must be compressed radically to face the ecological calamity, when capitalism built its most recent form of legitimacy on consumer society?
translated by google translate
