Getting political: Marxism and social entrepreneurship
Marxism is back in the public eye, although mostly serving to highlight how much we’ve forgotten about it. This is probably intentional, as it wasn’t exactly the most popular kid in school for much of the last century. Indeed, a recent survey found that most people don’t want a return to the pre-2008 political economy, but rather than some Left or Right-wing alternative, they mostly want better education, better infrastructure, better banks and a more socially responsible business culture. History is bunk, or so it seems.
The apparent demise of ideology seems like a great opportunity for social entrepreneurs — the masses want pragmatic solutions and as the next recession probably won’t be for another 15 years, now is as good a time as any. But a key challenge for social entrepreneurs in rising to the challenge is that it requires scale and political backing. While it is true (as I’ve reported here) that politicians of all persuasions support the idea of social enterprise and entrepreneurship in principle, they do not yet see it as being a significant enough area to justify substantial policy interest. Arguably this is not just because it lacks scale in terms of its operations, but also because social entrepreneurship as whole appears rather fragmented from the outside. Lots of people doing good stuff but with no common ask (like Occupy in slow motion?).
But if the pro-piracy movement can get its act together to get real political representation in multiple countries, surely social entrepreneurs and their supporters could do the same? Further to this, can social entrepreneurship be mobilised to provide a real critique and/or credible alternative to the political economy status quo?
A brief note on Marxism
It may seem counterintuitive to the discussion so far, but Marxism, with its incorporation of the economic, political and social, offers up one lens through which we might assess the potential of, and limits to, social entrepreneurship in affecting system change. I’ve personally hardly ever heard it discussed in relation to social entrepreneurship, so thought I’d take a look at it over the next few pages (be sure to click through at the bottom of each). This article therefore refers to Marxism in its form as a political and economic critique. It is not about promoting socialism or Communism, although I understand why people might conflate these.
The new international
Social entrepreneurship — uniting the social values of the Left with the market logics of the Right, and evading attempts to define them, offers attractive options to all political parties. Yet one of the key challenges for social entrepreneurship in trying to effect systemic change, is an absence or (at best) a poor understanding of how it actually links to politics. Without a better understanding of how the emergence of social entrepreneurship is related to the political climates of the countries in which it is situated, it will be difficult to fully mobilise the movement as a whole in order to hold the status quo to account, if indeed that is even an intention. For instance, in my Twitter feed I’ll often see excited exclamations about social entrepreneurship in China followed by another story of social entrepreneurship in the USA. But why is it that we think it is the same thing happening in neo-liberal America as in Communist China?
The absence of consensus
Bringing up the definition debate about social entrepreneurship always draws sighs across the sector. Yet as Nick O’Donohoe of Big Society Capital recently highlighted, it has an indirect effect upon the success and legitimacy of the whole sector. From a political angle, the issue seems particularly pertinent.
Theorists such as Jurgen Habermas argue that political and social action relies upon consensus being reached between various parties. Consensus of meaning has to be argued for and agreed to, and the ‘truth’ is something people agree on. One reason there’s been little consensus in the debate so far may be that everyone is actually talking about different forms of social entrepreneurial activity, yet thinking they’re the same. The inability of a whole lot of people to reach consensus around what it is they actually do potentially creates a long-term problem, as some people are in a better position to reinforce their validity claims than others, and consequently make them ‘true’.
Various attempts have been made to represent social entrepreneurship as a spectrum of activity, although most of these attempts are grounded in the economic, rather than the political. Examples such as below highlight this, whereby activity is defined in relation to financial sustainability.
The issue with this is that it weakens attempts to appear to be (and act as) a social movement. For example, I’ve often overheard people being dismissive of charities almost solely on the basis of this arbitrary distinction, despite the fact that they are almost certainly always trying to achieve similar things. Numerous academics in this area have argued that the economic emphasis stems from an attempt by social entrepreneurs to appear ‘legitimate’, resulting in social enterprise and entrepreneurship being defined in ‘narrow commercial and revenue-generation terms’.
Social entrepreneurship as a product of capitalism?
There are plenty of us within this field of work who have adopted the behaviours and language of others in order to gain credibility and to access resources. For example, I personally have had to improve my financial literacy in order participate in, and contribute to, many conversations within the sector. When I first came to social entrepreneurship, the financial language that is increasingly characteristic of it was mostly alien to me. Others will also wear suits when engaging in such conversations, all with the aim of appearing more credible. But Marxist-inspired thinkers such as Roland Barthes would argue that the use of such language and symbols from the pre-2008 financial world does nothing to challenge traditional power dynamics, and in facts maintains them.
Modern academics such as Alex Nicholls (not a Marxist) have argued that the diversity of definitions and lack of consensus in the sector actually represents ‘the internal logics of a broad range of influential, resource holding actors [such as Ashoka or Skoll]who are actively involved in shaping the field, rather than any attempts at capturing the ‘reality’ of the field itself’. This is the type of observation also common to Marxism, though also the type of observation that puts many people off, as it sounds almost conspiratory.
Yet it intrinsically references what Karl Marx himself called ‘the social production process’, which “produces and reproduces [the capitalist] relations of production themselves, and with them the bearers of this process, their material conditions of existence, and their mutual relationships”. Capitalism, as an economic system and production process, defines social relations, and power and authority rest with those who have the most capital. Essentially, the argument is that even social entrepreneurship is being ‘reproduced’ by the global elite. I’ve previously written more about this when looking at the work of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci.
This line of argument raises an important question, as to whether or not social entrepreneurship is a genuine challenge to or reformation of capitalism, or in fact just a product of the capitalist production process. Louis Althusser, another French Marxist, would most likely have argued the latter, as social entrepreneurship has formed largely within capitalist economies (not societies, so to some extent includes China). Capitalism is characterised as much by what it includes as it excludes, he argued, and will never pose or answer questions that may take it beyond its own boundaries. So in its current form, social entrepreneurship is part of capitalism and the existing order, rather than a new alternative outside of it.
Social entrepreneurship as reformer of capitalism?
The argument that social entrepreneurship is not a fully formed alternative to capitalism will probably be met with indifference by those doing it and who advocate it. Many on the ground will rightly dispute that their work is replicating existing power structures (and with it inequalities), and would point to examples they believe provide a real alternative. Cooperatives are a commonly used example, contributing £35.6 billion to the economy using democratic ownership of the means of production.
Others may be more ambivalent, arguing social entrepreneurship is not about replacing capitalism, but reforming it. In essence, creating the more socially responsible business culture the masses seem to want. There are great examples of this too, with social entrepreneurs such as Muhammad Yunus dramatically altering the way capital works through microfinance, so that it helps people out of poverty. Then there’s the growth of credit unions as an alternative to payday lenders, as well as the emergence of alternative currencies such as Bitcoin, which do away with financial intermediaries all together. Such practices and innovations potentially transfer capital (and with it power) to the hands of many, rather than the few.
Within the sector there are also signs that social entrepreneurs and others are reconfiguring power relations between themselves and financiers. Only earlier this year this thinkpiece emerged in response to what it saw as Big Society Capital and others ‘hijacking’ the conversation around social finance, with the argument being that they were pushing financial products better suited to the needs of investors than social entrepreneurs. Yet in challenging an ‘influential, resource holding actor’ such as Big Society Capital, this paper and its authors not only held them to account, but influenced their thinking. In their recent compendium, Big Society Capital have acknowledged and incorporated the arguments that the sector is short on ‘small deals without quality security or track record’, and it is likely that they too will now become advocates for improving this situation in future. They may even have already been leaning this way, but it serves to illustrate the different dynamics at work in this space.
The diffusion and heterogeneity of practices that is social entrepreneurship prevents it from appearing as a homogenous movement with a united front, yet the common ethos underlying many of these practices may in fact be having the opposite effect, acting as a ‘fifth column’ by influencing from within the system. More and more people are aware of both supporting social causes with their purchases and through the way they do business — recent research suggests the next generation of entrepreneurs will increasingly be motivated by social and environmental causes. This can only be a good thing.
What all this says is that rather than waiting for others to make the change or tell us what to do, it is up to all of us to actively change the way we collectively think about the society and economy we live in. There are signs that this is happening, though there is a note of caution to be made about repeating too many of the practices and customs from the old economic order. And consortia such as the Social Economy Alliance represent the first meaningful attempt to present all of this as a social movement which can engage with, and influence, the political economy status quo. So even though I’m not a bona fide social entrepreneur myself, I look forward to the day when I explain to my Mum what I do for a living and she actually gets it.
Originally published at slowsocial.wordpress.com on October 7, 2013.
