Labor and social capital: disengaging from social justice?

by Dr. Lou Wilson and Keri Chiveralls


Idea of social capital started from Marx. "For Marx capital is both the accumulation of wealth and a social relation, which leads to the formation of social classes and social power".

Pierre Bourdieu began to publish on the forms of capital in French language journals in the 1960s and 1970s. His work was not accessible to English language audiences until the publication of Many Forms of Capital in 1985. According to him, capital can present itself in three different forms: cultural capital, social capital and economic capital. Critically, Bourdieu (1985: 241-248) suggests social capital has three elements:
1. The social relationship that enables individuals to gain access to resources possessed by their associates.
2. The amount of those resources. 3. The quality of those resources

Bourdieu’’s work was extended by James Coleman (1988), three types of capital are physical, human and social capital. Like Bourdieu, for Coleman, social capital is an endowment of social structure, located in the spaces between and among individuals.

While Coleman (1988) saw social capital in terms of its benefits to individuals or groups, Bourdieu (1985) saw social capital as an explanation of social stratification.

the concept was not popularised until the release of the works of Robert Putnam (et al. 1993, 1995. In this seminal study, Putnam argues that governmental effectiveness in Italy can be tied to levels of social capital in the regions through the rubric of civic engagement. Putnam’’s work suggests that in order to attain economic growth, community development initiatives must consider the importance of civic groups that may seem to have little to do with either politics or economics. An important conceptual shift takes place in Putnam’’s writings as social capital becomes no longer a property residing in relationships between individuals but the property of groups and even nations.

Latham (Australian labor politician)
In his book with Peter Botsman, The Enabling State: People Before Democracy, Latham (2001) argues that we live in a period of relentless insecurity, which threatens the cohesion of our society. The welfare state is said by Latham to have failed to provide certainty in this time of insecurity. The new insecurity is associated with economic prosperity but some people are being left behind and excluded from the benefits of the new order, which is attributed by Latham to the provision of ““passive welfare services”” that encourage welfare dependancy. Passive welfare services are programs that provide social security to citizens without requiring mutuality in the form of work for the dole schemes and similar forms of obligation (Latham 2001).
Latham is often accused by his political opponents of simply lifting his ideas from Tony Blair’’s New Labour and the Clintonian Democrats. Without wishing to unpack politically motivated accusations of plagiarism against Latham, it is clear that Latham’’s ideas on social cohesion and social exclusion are in accord with the so-called ““Third way”” project of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

In broad terms, Latham (1998: 31-36, 126, 165, 223-231) argues that the cost of providing social welfare must be reduced and wage earners made to pay more for their retirement, the education of the children, their health and periods of unemployment because the state can no longer raise taxation from capital as it has in the past. The advent of transnational corporations and the new international mobility of capital means that rather than taxing nationally-based capital, governments are increasingly involved in a bidding war to attract capital investment. Therefore social welfare assistance must be reduced or made to pay for itself.

Conclusion
The concept of social capital is not new, having received theoretical attention from the time of Marx’’s conception of the term as a form of social power related to the formation and reproduction of social stratification and from scholars as diverse as Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam.
Mark Latham clearly prefers Robert Putnam’’s normative reconception of social capital as a virtuous, singular entity. Latham believes social capital in this sense is capable of transforming the Australian social protection system to make it more compatible with neo-liberal economic reforms, which Latham also favours. Unlike his predecessors in the Labor Governments of the 1980s and 1990s, Latham does not advocate redistributive social justice policies to alleviate the impact of neo-liberal economic reform on Labor’’s core supporters. Latham argues that the redistributive welfare state undermines the ““risk positive culture”” that so many cultural theorists hold to be the hallmark of ““late-modern”” society. Instead he favours an expanded ““user pays”” system of social protection and substituting redistribution with relatively inexpensive social capital nurturing programs which will reduce the tax burden on ““risk takers”” and build virtuous cycles of trust, reciprocity and prosperity.