In Chapter 13, Chris Deeming considers the prospects for improved social governance at the global level, as humanity moves towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production, and a more socially responsible, equitable, inclusive and just world. In particular, the chapter critically examines the emerging social policies being articulated by the OECD in order to reform global capitalism. This international organization is made up of rich nation states and is in the process of repositioning itself as the international institution responsible for promoting ‘global social justice’, a highly challenging endeavour. Nevertheless, the OECD is clearly influencing global social governance debates in an effort to build a new consensus against growing social inequality. There are many challenges ahead in securing a new social governance architecture for inclusive economic growth. Yet something of a paradox remains. On one hand, the OECD claims to want to move beyond growth, but on the other it is promoting growth strategies to end poverty and address extreme inequality (forming part of the SDGs). In other words, the ‘growth paradigm’ is being maintained here, while the opportunities for greater redistribution of resources within and among countries gets crowded out by the dominant discourse sustaining global capitalism, based on the idea that (GDP) growth is always better.
In Chapter 14 (aptly titled ‘For better or worse?’), Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point to something of an irony in the age of extreme inequality. In part, represented by the growing worldwide effort to devise new and better measures charting human wellbeing and social progress, a growing academic industry is now devoted to this task. At the same time, however, Wilkinson and Pickett point to the general lack of policy making based on or informed by the knowledge of the social determinants of health and wellbeing (indeed, Richard Wilkinson has made a formative contribution to this field). Moreover, even when governments like New Zealand and Scotland have adopted measures of wellbeing in governmental policy, that does not necessarily mean that wellbeing will increase. Nor should substituting or complementing GDP with a dashboard of wellbeing indicators imply that we are necessarily moving beyond GDP or material growth. While higher material standards are clearly needed in low-income countries, where many do not yet have access to necessities, in the rich countries there are sharply diminishing returns to wellbeing associated with endless economic growth. Further improvements in the quality of life for all will therefore depend on major encompassing societal changes. Firstly, there is a pressing need to escape excessive consumerism. Societies need to switch their focus from material throughput and economic output associated with consumerism in order to transition towards social and environmental sustainability. Secondly, and related, the authors maintain that societies really need to address inequality in order to improve population wellbeing overall. If we are serious about the transition to sustainability, then we must reduce the inequality which ramps up status competition and consumerism. Only then might we think about the long-term possibility of substantial social progress.
The concluding chapter, Chapter 15, by Chris Deeming, draws together some of the lessons from the volume as a whole, for thinking through the conceptual ‘lynchpin’ of the ‘social’ and the seismic shifts in social policy over time and space. Here we return to the different conceptualizations of the ‘social’ of social policy discussed in earlier chapters, and reflect on social progress in the first half of the 21st century.
Notes
1The international financial institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, are considered to be UN agencies, but they have mandates to act independently on economic grounds, in order to maintain global economic stability.
2The policy approach at the IMF is now claimed to be about ‘Forging a Stronger Social Contract’; thus, ‘social spending is not just an expense’, as Christine Lagarde, Managing Director at the IMF, maintains, ‘but rather the wisest of investments in the well-being of our societies’: www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2019/06/14/sp061419-md-social-spending.
3The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2019) reports current negative trends in biodiversity and ecosystems that will undermine Agenda 2030 and progress towards the SDGs, particularly relating to poverty, hunger, health, water, cities, climate, oceans and land (SDGs 1, 2, 3, 6, 11, 13, 14 and 15). Loss of biodiversity is not only an environmental issue, but also a developmental, economic, security, social and moral issue, if we are to preserve human life and the life of other species on earth, according to the IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2019), the intergovernmental body of the UN.
4For Marxist thinkers like David Harvey (2014) such crises are not altogether surprising, but to be expected, since capitalism is inherently unstable and prone to crises. Crises are essential to the reproduction and reconstitution of capitalism, Harvey maintains, but they also strengthen the case for anti-capitalist politics in the Marxist tradition. For the international institutions (the WTO, the IMF, World Bank and the OECD) and international forums like the G20 the crises appear unexpected: ‘the global financial and economic crisis came as a surprise for many international organizations’ (one of many such claims appearing in aftermath of the global financial crises, in the UN flagship report, Report on the World Social Situation (RWSS), UN DESA, 2011: 2). Nevertheless, they do point to deficiencies in the capitalist system that need to be overcome in order to preserve or strengthen international capitalism and the world economy; ‘inclusive growth’ arguably represents the latest paradigmatic response from the international institutions for the remaking of the global capitalist economy (see Chapter 13 in this volume).
5See Jubilee Debt Campaign, ‘Coronavirus: Cancel the Debts of Countries in the Global South’, https://jubileedebt.org.uk/actions/stop-coronavirus-debt-disaster; also the statement from over 100 global civil society organizations calling on G20 governments, the IMF and World Bank to immediately cancel debt payments in 2020, https://jubileedebt.org.uk/press-release/call-for-immediate-cancellation-of-developing-country-debt-payments.
6See Stamp Out Poverty proposals for a ‘Climate Damages Tax’, www.stampoutpoverty.org/; also the campaign for a ‘Robin Hood Tax’ on trades by banks and other big speculators, so the finance sector meets the cost of its own crises and makes a fairer contribution to society.
7See also WEF, ‘Coronavirus: A Pandemic in the Age of Inequality, www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-inequality-among-workers/;