Identificación de Variables que Intervienen en la movilidad

Mainstream economics envisages the market-mechanism as being endowed with a quasi-natural tendency to bring about the social good:

In classical liberal eyes the free market did not produce social conflict, it resolved it. The invisible-hand mechanism of the laws of supply and demand promoted the harmonization of individual life plans. For analogous reasons they advocated free trade between states as the best means for achieving international peace. (Bellamy 1999: 30)

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The problem is avoided through the concept of altruism,i.e. the postponing of one’s own gratification to a future situation due to a recognition of other interests involved. At a closer look, however, altruism is nothing but yet another form of selfishness: Individuals, according to this view, adopt altruistic behavior only for reasons that give advantage to their own group, kin or the survival of their kind. The ultimate individual gain is thereby located on a higher societal and/ or genetic level (see for instance the Hochschule Harz (2004: 5) claiming: “Auch wer altruistische Ziele verfolgt kann sich rational verhalten” [People who do behave altruistically, can do so in a rational [meaning: means-end- calculation] way]).

The metaphor of the invisible hand of the market181 has been criticised from a large variety of theoretical perspectives and angles. Firstly, the scale of application of the term remains rather unclear: Smith thought in terms of small-scale markets as connecting, for instance, butchers and bakers who want their family businesses to be successful and make profit. Competition in these small markets compels providers, the actual owners of their businesses, to perform well and to specialise through a direct link between the product they provide and their income. Mainstream neo-classical economics, although aiming for explanatory authority for macro-economic issues, is thus essentially based on micro-theory

… that is the behaviour and interactions of individuals or households and (by extension) firms. ‘Macro-theory’, the description of a total economy was supposed to be taken care of by the same principles. (Self 1998: 7)

The link between producers and buyers or demand and supply in modern capitalist societies, however, is far from direct:

One of the ironies of the invocation of the invisible-hand thesis in the defence of capitalism […] is that under capitalism the mechanism is distorted by the mediation of commodity production by capital. (Sayer 1995: 119)

As Self (1998: 124) argues

The situation is poles apart from the economic theory of competition and represents a strongly oligopolistic concentration of market power through a wide range of large industries.

The equation of contemporary, highly differentiated and complex capitalist societies with small scale markets disables the viewer to capture comprehensively important characteristics of current economies:

However, perfect competition and the smooth operation of the price

mechanism assumes both that consumers are fully informed about their needs and the services on offer to meet them, and that they are equally able to make

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The discussion about the deficiencies of the neo-classical and neoliberal market conception should not be misunderstood to entail arguments in favor of state socialism. State socialism suffered from advantaging (state) producers allowing them to control production through the timeframe of the so- called 5-year-plan. It underestimated the complexities of demand and supply with the result of being unresponsive to needs and social change (Sayer 1995).

their demands felt. But in reality, the size of markets, the inequitable division of wealth, the control exercised by large corporations and labour organizations over the supply of goods, services and information in particular, all mean that individuals rarely possess such knowledge and can only very imperfectly influence the economy even when they do. Such factors have meant that in practice the market economy has given rise not to a co-operative society of mutually improving individuals, but to a world of conflicting group interests. (Bellamy 1999: 30)

Moreover, Smith assumed “that capital is locally and nationally rooted and its owners are directly involved in its management.” (Korten 2001: 3)182. Current ownership patterns, in particular in large multinational companies, differ significantly from this world and vision: Shareholders, investors or investment institutions with no local or national alliance who are interested in short-term return-on-investment rather than in production, quality or long-term perspectives, have the ultimate saying through the board of global managers about a company’s fate183. The political (!) economist favoured the abolition of only those state interventions that generate or enable the constitution of monopolies and did not fall prey to the idea that laissez-faire and egoism would simply bring about the social good (Priddat 1997: 4). In other words, Smith took into account market failures and argued in favour of a withdrawal of the state from forms of ‘unfair’ policies, favouring, in this case, producers.

Die invisible hand beschreibt eine Form der Marktökonomie, die eine politische Funktion der Herstellung eines sozialen Zweckes übernimmt. (Priddat 1997: 6)

[The invisible hand describes a form of market economy that takes over a political function and is, ultimately, directed to towards a social end.]

The invisible hand is not regarded as being efficient under all circumstances. In fact, the theory depends on a “Brückentheorie“, “die die ‘promotion of one person’s own

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According to Lubasz (1992: 42), this has to be understood as a normative claim: “In contrast to modern economists who hold that society benefits no matter how private capital is invested – as long as it is profitably invested – Smith is quite clear and specific as to how private capital must be invested if it is to promote the interest of the society: “The most advantageous employment of any capital to the country to which it belongs, is that which maintains there the greatest quantity of productive labour, and increases the most the annual product of the land and labour of that country”. ”

ends’ mit den Zwecken der Gesellschaft konvergieren läßt.“ [it depends on a theory that bridges the ‘promotion of one person’s own ends’ with the goals of society] (Priddat 1997: 7), for the same argument see also de Rivera 1998: 98). This becomes obvious if the two metaphors are viewed in the context of Smith’s other and main writings

… die nun allerdings weit mehr als eine Politik der Nicht-Politik, sondern im Gegenteil eine Politik konzeptualisieren, die zwar einen Ordnungsrahmen schafft, um diskretionäre Interventionen zu minimieren, die aber stets institutionelle Arrangements zu enwickeln und gegebenenfalls

weiterzuentwickeln hat, um z.B. die Selbstaufhebung des Wettbewerbsmarktes zu verhindern und die Akteure in solche Anreiz-Sanktions-Mechanismen zu stellen, die sie zwingen, im ‘klugen’ (‘prudent’, eben nicht ‘selfish’) Verfolgen ihrer Interessen auch das ‘publick interest’ mitzuverfolgen. (Elsner 1997: 15) [… which conceptualizes a politics that creates a legal framework in order to minimize discretionary interventions instead of a non-politics. This envisaged kind of politics would always develop institutional arrangements in order to avoid market failures and try to position actors into mechanisms of

gratification and sanction that force them to pursue their own interests in an ‘intelligent’ (‘prudent’, precisely not ‘selfish’) way, taking into account the ‘publick interest’.]

The bridging theory in Smith’s work was his conceptualisation of the human being as naturally inclined to and morally formed through society, seeking not only profit but also security, ease, stability and independence (Lubasz 1992: 42):

The point is this: In Smith’s vision the self-interested individuals do not pursue in any and all directions whatever happens to be most profitable; they are led by their natural inclinations to channel their investments so as to do the country as a whole the most good (ibid).

Smith feared not only, in the words of Bassiry and Jones (1993: 622), market failures but also the emergence of privileges and monopolies. He was, according to the same authors well aware that an equitable economic distribution was favourable to a democratic political system:

Smith was particularly scathing with regard to the political powers exercised by economic interests. (ibid: 623)

In the real world - that does not at least resemble neo-classical theory – where we do not find perfect competition, full, publicly available and transparent information and an equitable distribution of a variety of interlinked resources (including, discursive resources, access to networks, money, influence, power etc.) causing economic actors to start from highly differentiated positions and have, consequently, different

prospects of success and economic as well as political influence. The important impetus of Smith’s work lies in his advocacy of a political economy “based on maximizing consumer/ citizen choice in both economic and political spheres” (Elsner 1997: 14). In order to gain more competition between economic actors and reach a more equitable distribution of resources, the economy has to be regulated by some institution external to the market itself. Amongst the conditions for an ideal market are the

… absence of external costs and benefits and of public goods, and the presence of perfect competition, including perfect ‘information’. Any failure of such

conditions to obtain implies that the market will fail to be efficient. Since in the ‘real’ world such failures may often occur, it may then be necessary for non- market procedures to be employed – including those involving intervention by the state – if efficiency is to be achieved. (Keat 1999: 103)

Whereas Smith did not even think in dichotomous terms of the state versus the market, the important point of a balance-check between the economy and politics is completely unconsidered by the neoclassical orthodoxy184. It is assumed that the function of the state is solely to facilitate the workings of the market, neither to intervene nor to correct. The fact that in reality, no economy is unregulated or free makes the claims put forth by neo-classicists at least dubious:

Die Rede von individueller Freiheit in Zusammenhang mit Wettbewerb impliziert demnach reine Willkürfreiheit und nicht einmal so etwas wie ‘Marktfreiheit’, denn diese ist immer schon rechtlich vermittelt und als solche eine spezifische Rechtsfreiheit. Da erst im Rechtsraum die ins Chaos

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gerichteten Krafte purer Willkur ‘nach einem allgemeinen Gesetz der Freiheit’ gebannt sind, sollte jede Wettbewerbsapotheose auf Skepsis stossen. (Brune, Boehler and Steda 1995: 35)

[The discourse of individual freedom in relation to competition means, therefore, nothing but pure freedom of will and not even ‘market freedom’, because something like market freedom would always already be mediated legally and is, hence, a specific freedom embedded in a system of law. Any apotheosis of competition is, therefore, doubtful since the powers of free will directed towards chaos can only be constrained in and through a legal context and, hence, comply with a ‘general law of freedom’.]

3.4. THE CONCEPT OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AS APPLIED