Mir - Ethics and economic theory

In previous chapters we have seen that what undergirds mainstream economic models of behaviour are the structuring assumptions of rationality, self-interest and individuality. Only in recent years has this view been dented somewhat and it admitted that markets are the result of both the interactions of individuals as well as social features of society (trust, goodwill, (moral) norms, culture and institutions). In other words, a flourishing market economy is best understood not simply as a spontaneous order that miraculously emerges from the actions of isolated and amoral rational self-interested individuals. If that is true then economic theory quite obviously has to take sociality and ethics seriously.

For some authors the statements above imply that markets and market behaviour are not necessarily devoid of ethics. For others, though, they just go to reinforce the notion that the success of markets (capitalism) has been dependent on their (its) ability to free-ride on pre-modern social capital and moral values. In other words, the flourishing of market economies is dependent on areas of social and political life that escape the frontiers of the market. Accumulation and economic growth, then, are reliant on the existence of non-commoditized capacities, practices and dispositions such as female labour, ethical behaviour, cognitive abilities and natural resources.

In this chapter we take the latter perspective seriously and examine the implications of such a view. Is it the case, we might ask, that the expansion of market behaviour (purportedly based purely on the interactions between rational, self-interested individuals) leads to a diminishing of social capital and/or ethical values? And if so, does such a process also result in an undermining of the economy itself?

I have already broached these question in the previous chapter but it is a large and unwieldy one. So, in this chapter I will try and look at it from a slightly different and narrower angle by asking whether market ideology, practices, policies and reforms have undermined not just the public sector but the public sector ethos (or the public). I take this ethos to encompass a wide set of attitudes, values, motivations and institutional practices but well come to definitions later.

To try and get a grip on this vitally important question, one that is at the heart of many current policy debates, it is necessary to first introduce what is meant by the public (section 1). From there I look at the rise and decline of the public in a historical context (sections 2 and 3). Can we even talk about the public as a category of experience that transcends empirical and historical realities? In the following two sections (4 and 5) I then turn to briefly look at the impact of the growing pervasiveness of market mechanisms (quasi-market reforms) such as performance related pay on the public ethos. In section 6, I look at the specific example of the university in an era of neoliberalism as a way of understanding how the extension of market practices and mentalities in higher education can crowd out important values. This is just another way of stating the main thesis of this book: unadulterated markets, and the structuring assumptions of an economic theory that supports them, can have important ramifications for the way in which we understand ourselves as well as our relation to other people and objects of value.