“The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set maximum hours and minimum wages for most categories of workers…These and other measures protecting workers and the public came to be known as the social “safety net”. In this analogy, the participants in the capitalist system are like acrobats swinging on a trapeze far above the floor of the circus tent. When they lose hold of the trapeze, as is bound to happen from time to time, the safety net catches them before they hit the ground, so that they do not fall to their death. Similarly, the social policies that are established and funded by the government protect workers when the market lets them drop, so that they are not left destitute.

Of the many implications of the “safety net” metaphor, we note just two. First, by this time references to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” have disappeared. The bitter experience of industrialization and the growing control of the capitalists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was ample evidence that the free market does in fact destroy lives and create abuses. A society can either look the other way as individuals and families are crushed by wealthy corporations and individuals, or it can offer workers some protections from the brutal consequences of business competition. The social services provided by the safety net keep people and families alive when market forces would otherwise destroy them.

The second implication of the metaphor is less encouraging, however. Why would governments do nothing more than to construct a safety net? Why would they allow the markets themselves to remain unregulated enough that they can create abuses of this sort? Failing to address the causes of the class system that capitalism creates, governments have often sought only to mitigate a few of the effects of the unrestrained market system on the least fortunate of its workers.

One should find it puzzling that governments, which exist for the good of their citizens, would limit their interventions only to the effects and not to the causes of harm. Imagine that an extremely dangerous section of highway causes multiple accidents, leaving many drivers and passenger dead or wounded. We cannot imagine that leaders would simply keep ambulances waiting at the side of the road to transport the wounded off to hospitals after each accident. We expect them to modify the highway so that it will cause less damage to drivers. Why, in the case of capitalist speculation, would governments choose to help mitigate the negative consequences only after the fact?”

The above passage comes from Phillip Clayton and Justin Heinzekehr’s book Organic Marxism: An Alternative to Capitalism and Ecological Catastrophe.

I think the book is fantastic so far. It’s definitely philosophical but also highly accessible with clear, concise writing. I’m about half-way through it, so I haven’t yet gotten to Clayton’s and Heinzekehr’s practical ideas, guidelines, and suggestions for  moving forward economically (which I’m really looking forward to), but what I’ve appreciated the most thus far is the valuable perspective on the history of capitalism, Marxism, process thought, and contemporary science that the book provides. The above passages are just one example of this.

The phrase social “safety net” is one of those that I had so often heard growing up but, sadly, never really thought much about until I was well into young adulthood. It’s a darn shame that it took me so long to investigate the origin of this weird economic phrase and ask questions like ‘why it originated in the first place?’

To further add to the sadness, I highly doubt that I’m alone in my naivety and ignorance…

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Image above by Steven P. Moreno

Tags:capitalismeconomicsmarxismorganic marxismsocial safety net