Creación de los Comités de prevención jurídica de demandas

Social enterprise is an apparatus that combines the realization of social values as its end and entrepreneurial strategies as its means. The disadvantaged are arranged as employees or consumers of social service commodities in this apparatus. The progressive civil movement organizations and the activists are arranged as social enterprise promotion organizations and

social entrepreneurs respectively. The state is arranged as a total supervisor that controls and facilitates social enterprises and social entrepreneurs behind them. In this sense, social enterprise is the governmental apparatus in which diverse resources and actors are systematically arranged for certain governmental ends. Foucault (2007) demonstrates that the definition of government given by French writer in the sixteenth century La Perrière “the right disposition of things, arranged so as to lead to a convenient end” best encapsulates the essence of the meaning of the government (96). From the perspective of this definition of government, an economist’s statement below, which was presented in the forum organized by the Ministry of Employment and Labor and titled as “Ecosystemic Development together with Social Enterprises,” explicitly reveals the ideal of the governmental rationality that drives social enterprise mechanisms in South Korea.

Social enterprise […] is important because it can be a crucial policy strategy for endogenous growth, by arranging all available resources. Big companies are expanding their economic territories despite the intensifying international competitions. The impoverishment of some classes and localities that cannot engage in this competition, however, keeps on worsening. In order to escape this situation, it is needed to reconnect all resources effectively that were ‘excluded’ from the resource mobilization of ‘the market’ and ‘the government’ or utilized inefficiently. In other words, we must realize a so-called ‘all people economy’ in which ‘all’ Korean citizens, including women, seniors, and the disabled, participate. Social enterprise can function as an important policy strategy for the realization of the ‘all people economy’ (Kim, J. 2011: 7-8).

In this quote, social enterprises are described as a policy strategy that can “arrang[e] all available resources” for the purpose of “the realization of the ‘all people economy.’” What the speaker problematizes here is that the “resources” such as “some classes […] that cannot engage in the competitions” are not “mobilized” by “the market and the government or utilized

inefficiently.” In this context, social enterprise is defined as a policy instrument that “reconnect[s] all resources effectively” such as not only the disadvantaged but also all Korean citizens and civil movement organizations. Leaving aside the totalitarian mentality that underlies the expression of “all people economy,” “all Korean citizens including women, seniors, and the disabled” are defined as “resources” that must be “mobiliz[ed],” “reconnect[ed],” and

“arrange[d]” “effectively.” Additionally, in that quote, the term “exclusion” is not used to refer to a systematic social alienation process of the disadvantaged from the opportunities to access to diverse resources in terms of social justice. Instead, the term “exclusion” refers to a state that the disadvantaged are not “mobiliz[ed]” as “available resources” by the “market and the

government.” Social enterprises used to be called good corporations and represented through humanitarian rhetoric such as community, solidarity, empathy, caring, public good, ethical, human, capitalism with human face, and warm capitalism. In that quote, however, these flowery words are removed and the underlying governmental rationality that guides “the right

arrangement of things for a certain end” is explicitly mentioned. What must be focused on are not these flowery words, but the cold ideals of governmental rationality and the concrete governmental strategies being exercised in social enterprise mechanisms.

. Of course, the state does not approach the problems of unemployment and poverty from

state’s perspective, the existence of the disadvantaged is a risk factor that might generate suicides, crimes, social conflicts, and the growth of welfare expenditure, and thus, endangers the

reproduction of a stable government system. A number of governmental research reports concerning social enterprises point out that the problems of unemployment and poverty cause crimes and social conflicts, and thus, the state should take active actions to solve these problems. For instance, the Ministry of Employment and Labor mentions that “the growth of

unemployment rates not only negatively impacts the economic situation, but also widens the gap between classes […] and generates social pathologies such as crimes and suicide; thus, the problem of unemployment is the most urgent issue for the state to solve” (2005: 1). Defining the current situation of South Korean society as one of “being confronted with the amplification of serious social conflicts derived from the widening polarization of wealth,” it also demonstrates that “social enterprises’ effective and active social value creations will considerably contribute to not only the building of communities but also the continuation and development of South Korean capitalism” (2010b: 4). In this line of thought, the First Basic Plans for Social Enterprise

Promotionby the Ministry of Employment and Labor (2008) presents the vision of social

enterprise promotion as “the contribution to building an active market economy and social

integration through the promotion of third sector-based innovative corporations” (18); The Social Enterprise Promotion Act stipulates that “the purpose of this Act is to contribute to the

integration of society as well as to the enhancement of the quality of the people’s life […] by means of expanding social services […] and creating jobs” (Article 1). The National Vision 2030, which the Roh administration submitted in 2006 as the long-term development strategy of South Korean society and played a critical role in prompting earnest discussions about the

institutionalization of social enterprises, situates the promotion of social enterprises within a preemptive investment in the prevention of the anticipated growth of the social costs that would be caused by increasing social conflicts (The Roh administration 2006).

These statements imply that the state approaches social enterprises and the problems of

unemployment and poverty in terms of risk management. Then, the remaining question becomes how power can manage the risks to the continuation of its system that would be generated by increasing unemployment and poverty. The management of the risks involved is a complex process that is composed of various sets of principles of governmental rationality and governmental strategies. Among these, particularly the unquestioned belief that market is

efficient and competent while the state is inefficient and incompetent, and thereby all non-market domains should be regarded as markets and reorganized into market domains is crucial.

From the earliest stage of Public Work and Self-sufficiency Work programs, the state has

blamed the state-driven social welfare system as a wasteful and immoral model, because it cannot motivate recipients’ will for self-help and rather encourages the moral hazard of irresponsible dependence on the state. As an alternative to the past state-driven social welfare programs, the state adopted and began to enhance the workfare model (work-based-welfare model) in which the disadvantaged can obtain welfare benefits in as long as they work. This model was called “productive welfare” in South Korea. The rhetoric of productive welfare is a conservative discursive strategy that was devised to attacks the past state-driven social welfare model as wasteful. One of the central factors that pushed the shift of government policies from the Public Work Program and Self-sufficiency Work Program to the Social Enterprise Promotion was the criticism that the former had not completely broken off from the state-driven social

welfare paradigm, and thus, the former operate ineffectively while causing a waste of government’s financial resources.

The promotion of social enterprises is also an extension of the workfare model in that it

was designed to increase the wellbeing of the disadvantaged by providing jobs for them. The idea of linking welfare and work together is based on the understanding that unemployment and poverty are rooted in individuals’ lack of work ethic related to idleness or indolence, and that only their consistent hard work can bring wealth to them. This belief is based on a myth in that it obscures the following realities: Most people in poverty are poor because they are employed in lower-income occupations despite their long hours of work, rather than being lazy; the wealth of the upper class is mainly created from capital income rather than from labor income; and social structural factors are more determinant factors generating poverty on a large-scale than

individual ones. In this fundamental sense, social enterprise mechanisms are influenced by the myth of work—the typical capitalist worldview—that regards state-driven social welfare as a wasteful and immoral system and approaches problem of poverty in terms of individual dimensions, rather than social structural dimensions.

What is interesting is that the ideology blaming the state-driven social welfare system as

wasteful and immoral has been disseminated in the South Korean society as if it were based on an unquestionable truth, because the state-driven social welfare system has also been replaced by the new model of workfare in the advanced countries such as the U.K and the U.S. That is, the dissemination of this ideology was not carried out on the sole basis of self-reflection from within South Korean society. While pursuing the strategy of “growth-first and welfare-later” for several decades, unlike European social welfare countries, South Korea has never established what can

be called a state-driven social welfare system. Furthermore, South Koreans have internalized strong labor norms and discipline in the process of rapid economic growth more than many other nations. Unlike in some advanced countries in which certain lower classes reproduce culture of poverty with their abandonment of hope of upward mobility, South Korea has much less experience with this (Cho 2012). For instance, it is a universal and strong cultural attitude in South Korea that people do their best to educate their children to escape from poverty, even though they may be poor and not educated. In this sense, it is an irony that the discourses of the workfare model were spread with the criticism of the state-driven social welfare system in South Korea where the state-driven social welfare system was not sufficiently prepared; this irony is partially a result of the truth regime of “the cases of the advanced countries,” which are regarded as carrying within their experiences unquestionable universal truths and ideal models for South Korea as a developing country.

To reorganize all non-market domains into market domains, while regarding the former

as the latter and contrasting the inefficiency of the state with the efficiency of market, was another principle of governmental rationality that penetrated the processes of the emergence and promotion of social enterprises. Traditionally, the promotion of citizens’ well-being has been the core responsibility of the state. Particularly, under the governmentality of Keynesianism whose fundamental principle is economic growth through the state’s artificial creation of demands, the main state policy instruments for this goal were maintaining full employment, the expansion of universal welfare, and the provision of free integral social services such as health care and education (Fulcher and Scott 2011: 570). To the contrary, the neoliberal South Korean state adopted the strategy of minimizing the state’s welfare expenditure while leading market

organizations to provide jobs and welfare services for the disadvantaged. For the effective exercise of the strategy, the state pursued forming the material base required for the operation of social enterprises by reorganizing the non-market family welfare domains, such as education, child rearing, and health care of patients and seniors, into new market domains of the social service industry. The faith that even welfare and public good can be realized more effectively by the market than the state and the faith that all social domains should be regarded as markets underlie these strategies of the state.

To sum up, these strategies of state policy about the promotion of social enterprises are

guided by a complex set of principles: the management of risk to the continuation of the government system through social integration of the disadvantaged; the workfare paradigm based on the faith that poverty is a problem of personal responsibility to be solved through hard work; the contrast between the inefficiency of the state and the efficiency of market; the

orientation toward the small state and big society; the principle of regarding all non-market domains as market domains; and the faith that even social goals or social problems can be more effectively realized and addressed by market than the state. These principles constitute the governmental rationality that guides the mechanisms of social enterprise promotion.