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Big society and political state

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British Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

The article contextualises the Big Society in the context of neo-liberal thought about the character of society and arguments about the state as the political form of a free economy. It argues that Big Society is first and foremost a critique of the existing social relations. The contrasting term of the Big Society is therefore the small society. It argues further that Big Society amounts to an eminently political practice of government. It contends that the strong state is the political form of the Big Society.

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Notes

  1. Byrne et al (2014) make a similar critique.

  2. Ancil (2012) certainly thinks so, and rightly so. Röpke is a founding thinker of the German ordoliberal tradition, which is seen to have provided the blueprint for the West-German social market economy. See also Norman (2010, p. 178) and Joseph (1975). Bonefeld (2013a) examines the social policy dimension of German neo-liberalism.

  3. The point about the ungovernable welfare state expresses the neo-liberal diagnosis of the failure of so-called Keynesianism in a nutshell. See, for example, King (1976).

  4. Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley (2012) characterise this society as a non-responsible society, one that is unable of self-government. This is a society of the rioting kind (p. 465), entirely unpacified.

  5. This conception of the relationship between political state and depoliticised society is key to Weber’s definition of the state as the monopoly holder of the legitimate use of violence. On the means and ends of the political state in a free labour economy, see Bonefeld (2006).

  6. Bernard Baruch who was a leading Democrat, argued with similar contempt about the welfare seeking poor in his critique of Roosevelt’s New Deal arguing that ‘the crowd has seized the seat of government and is trying to seize the wealth. Respect for law and order has gone’ (quoted in Schlesinger, 1957, p. 202).

  7. On the social constitution of a free labour economy, see Bonefeld (2011).

  8. I have not found a reference to soup-kitchens and food banks in the Big Society literature, which is surprising since these social institutions that recognize depravation in the purpose of their civic association have sprung up across the United Kingdom in great numbers as the government’s big society response to the financial crisis, which refinanced the banks and took money out the pocket of the workers ostensibly in order to balance the budgets but in reality to cheapen labour for enterprise (see Dowling and Harvie, 2014).

  9. On Smith’s conception of social class and political form, see Bonefeld (2013b).

  10. On this, see also the exchange between Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley (2012) and Byrne et al (2014).

  11. Workers live by wages, not capital or land. Wage earners depend on an employment contract that pays a living wage by the owners of capital or land. For an exposition see Clarke (1992).

  12. Brittan and his co-author Riley (1980, p. 1) had earlier argued that the windfall of North Sea Oil revenues should be directed by government to establish the foundations of popular capitalism by creating a marketable capital account for every citizen. Such a policy they opined would ‘take a giant stride towards a genuine people’s capitalism’. On this, see White (2009). See Rogers (2014) for an account of ‘capitalist alternatives’ to capitalism.

  13. Different social characters do however experience this freedom and the way in which the coinage is produced differently. As Marx (1973, pp. 156–57) put, ‘the power which each individual exercises over the activity of others or over social wealth exists in him as the owner of exchange value, of money. The individual carries his social power, as well as his bond with society, in his pocket’.

  14. Oscar Wilde captured the sentiments of the caritas of the responsible brotherhood of the Big Society well when he wrote in The Importance of Being Earnest: ‘if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility’.

  15. I use ‘change’ in reference to Holloway (2002).

  16. I use the phrase ‘planning’ here in reference to Hayek’s (1944, p. 31) dictum that the liberal state is a ‘planner for competition’.

  17. On this, see also Byrne et al (2014).

  18. On the moral restraints on competition, see Smith (1976b).

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Acknowledgements

Particular thanks are due to Emma Dowling, David Harvie, Steven Kettell and Chris Rogers. I am indebted to the external referees who provided most constructive criticism.

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  1. Department of Politics, University of York, Derwent College, York, YO10 5DD

    Werner Bonefeld

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An earlier draft of this article was read as a workshop presentation at the Conference of the Centre for Research in Socio-Cultural Change, Manchester, September 2014. I am grateful to the participants for the many insightful comments that helped to shape the article.

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Bonefeld, W. Big society and political state. Br Polit 10, 413–428 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/bp.2015.14

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