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Social individuals, Economic Institutions and SocioEconomic Change: a Conceptual Framework. Massimo De Angelis (University of East London) Paper presented at the "Other Economic Conference", Association for Heterodox Economics, 27 & 28 June 2000.

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Introduction: Social change and economic paradigms._____________________ 1

2.

Social Individuals___________________________________________________ 3 2.1. Social individuals as contradictory beings. __________________________________ 3 2.2. The strategies of the social individual.______________________________________ 5

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Power ___________________________________________________________ 10 3.1. The social individual as product and producer of power _____________________ 10 3.2. Power and organisation ________________________________________________ 13

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Institutions _______________________________________________________ 17

5.

Conclusions ______________________________________________________ 21

References____________________________________________________________ 23

1.

Introduction: Social change and economic paradigms.

Within the realms of their theoretical apparatuses, all major economic paradigms have tremendous difficulties to represent, account for, explain, social change. Yet, social change is not only a self-evident feature of societies, it is also a concern for all preoccupied with how and in what direction social change should occur in order to solve the tremendously serious problems of current human societies. Mainstream economics and social change do not go well together. By focussing on equilibrium, the theoretical apparatus of mainstream economics completely disregard social change. There are of course social, political and ideological reasons for this, although we cannot indulge in these at length here. I have indicated in another place how the theoretical apparatus of mainstream economics is designed so as to be able to capture the forces of social change in such a way as to enable theory to be reformulated to design strategies for the co-optation of these forces (De Angelis 2000). By disregarding social change, mainstream economics enables the formulation of policies to channel social change in directions that are compatible with capitalist accumulation.

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Although Post-Keynesian economics focuses on disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, imperfect information rather than perfect information, animal spirit rather than economic rationality, oligopoly power rather than perfect competition, its conceptual apparatus regards social change as confined within unchangeable meta-norms of socialisation that reproduces capitalist accumulation. Since the mission of post-Keynesian economics is to rescue capitalism from its crises and inevitable disequilibria1, the social change that interest this paradigm is the one that affects expectations of agents, or policies and institutions within a continuum of capitalist relations of production and the principle of growth as the panacea for all distributional (and not only) problems of capitalist production. What may seem a paradoxical statement, also Marxist economics rooted in traditional Marxism have difficulty to conceptualise and relate to social change. By focussing on objective "laws of capitalist development" defined in abstraction from the result of the interplay of social forces, Marxist economics must reconcile its mission of revolutionary transformation of capitalist production by acknowledging the presence of class struggle but leaving it out of its field of investigation. Thus, within this framework, two opposite approaches have developed both sharing the same theoretical weakness to social change. On one hand, social conflict is recognised only on distribution issues (the various profit-squeeze theories) while productivity, capital, and other core categories acquire only a technical and not a social meaning. On the other hand, social conflict does not have anything to do with the "iron laws" of capitalist accumulation which are "proven" to exist through a endless running of econometric regressions, that is an analytical tool incompatible with the representation of social change. Within the Marxist tradition however, there are other approaches such as the Autonomist and Open Marxist traditions2, as well as Marxism-humanism, that emphasise bottom up struggles as the social forces constituting reality vis-à-vis capital's drive for accumulation. Social change in these traditions occurs as a net result of two opposite forces. In this paper I am greatly inspired by these traditions. Finally, the broad and heterogeneous field of institutional economics is perhaps most explicitly preoccupied with social change than any other paradigms. However, although social change is generally believed to be an inherent characteristic of socioeconomic formations, its occurrence is not theoretically grounded in the definition of the units of investigation of this field of enquiry. These fundamental units are institutions, and the latter, by definitions, are "structures", that is givens. Whether in the hands of "old institutionalists"  who define institutions in terms of habits, regularities, ceremonial activities  or in those of the "new institutionalists"  who define them in terms of shared sets of believes  social change can only be conceptualised as coming from outside institutions. But how is this possible, if, as institutionalists tells us, all human actions occurs in institutionalised forms of various nature, and if institutions are the realm 1

"Only an economics critical of capitalism can be a guide to successful policy for capitalism" (Minsky 1986). 2 See for example Cleaver 1979, and Bonefeld at al (1991).

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of regularities rather than change? The paradox we find here, a paradox represented by the large literature on the structure/agency dichotomy, is rooted in this contraposition between institutions and social change, and has recently found manifestation in the juxtaposition and co-habitation of institutional economics (focussing on regularities) and evolutionary economics (focussing on change). In this paper I begin to develop a conceptual framework which enables us to avoid this paradox and embed social change in the definition of institutions. As I explain in the next section, this is done by shifting the central unit of investigation from the category of institutions to that of the social individual, and then moving from this to the definition of institutions. In the process of doing so, various other categories must be explored in this light, namely the category of power and that of discourses and knowledge.

2.

Social Individuals

2.1.

Social individuals as contradictory beings.

The basic feature of methodological individualism which pervades mainstream economics is the conceptualisation of individuals as isolated from the rest of society, as monads3. The metaphor of Robinson Crusue is clearly a well-known case in point that does not need to be further elaborated here.4 On the other hand, it is a well-established contention within large areas of nonmainstream economics and social science that individuals are not monads, but social individuals.5 In general sense by social individuals I mean individuals whose relations constitute both their condition of existence (economic, political, cultural, and biological) and are the products of their making (Lawson 1997). The critics' recognition of individuals as social beings however, often stop short at a sterile polemic with mainstream theory, the latter continuing unperturbed to attract considerable amount of funding for perfecting models (and the policies derived from these) based on the assumptions that individuals are monads. The insistence of mainstream economics of portraying individuals as monads should not be seen as an act of stubborn resistance to recognise the obvious, but a methodological choice that account for at least part of reality. Indeed, it is contention of radical thinking inspired by Marx that the commodification of life unleashed within the capitalist mode of production tends indeed to make, isolation and alienation a reality of the lived experience of concrete individuals. This of course does not mean that individuals stop to be social. Only that their sociality is constituted through the mediation and ruling of things (money for 3

For a review of the theories of individuals as monads from Decard to modern analysis see Burkitt (1991: 1-27). 4 See for example Woodmansee and Osteen (1999) 5 See for example Lawson 1997.

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example) which they must take as a given of their social interaction. Mainstream economics therefore portrays a reality made of "isolated" individuals in a context in which the commodifying forces within the capitalist mode of production do in fact tend to isolate people from each other. Rational economic man is the individual whose only conceivable horizon of action and experience is one definable by economic calculus. By building complex models of reality on the basis of this simple assumption, mainstream economics can suggest policies with these individuals in mind, their sense of welfare and prosperity, but not the real concrete individuals. This has an important consequence. By focussing on rational economic man, the world view and policies implemented on the basis of these models proposed could only go in the direction of trying to create rational economic individuals and their isolation. Instead, starting from the social individuals bring about the conflict and contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production. Marx’s analysis of commodity-fetishism is of course central to this understanding (De Angelis 1996). He recognised the social character of individuals (something that we know since at least Aristotle), and, more poignantly, the contradiction between the alienated condition of modern individuals through reification brought about by commodification and the social nature of individuals. It is on the basis of this contradiction, that he develops his revolutionary theory.6 Modern psychoanalysis is perhaps the only one among human and social disciplines, which as been constructed on the contradiction faced by social individuals in today's society. All schools of thought within this field of enquiry must rely on a definition of the individual based on the notion of self, which is constituted by both conscious and unconscious. Yet, most psychoanalysts would agree on the fact that the self can be defined, shaped, created (and the relation between conscious and unconscious can be articulated) only through the "other". The basic conflicts and contradictions of the individual as seen by the psychoanalytic eye, the basic mechanisms of repression, conformity or subversion, however explained and however theorised, are mechanisms that reflect the social nature of our individuality, whether in its causes or in its results. It has been pointed out that this contradiction which is acknowledged within psychoanalytic discourse could have important implications if theorised within social sciences (Elliott 1999). The contradiction between isolated individual Vs social individual is represented within psychoanalysis with the doubleness of what Freud called 6

In a polemical article in 1844, Marx makes the transcendence of isolation the essence of revolution: “Social revolution concentrates on the whole because it is . . . a protest of man against dehumanised life, because its point of departure is the particular, real individual, because it is the protest of the individual against his isolation from the community which is the true community of men, that is the essence of man.” (quoted from Schaff (1970: 50).) As argued by Schaff, against the dogmas of scientific Marxism, the point of departure of Marx has always been the (social) individual, and Marx's appreciation of the role of practice in the transformation of reality “came from Marx’s philosophical inquiry into alienation and into the means of overcoming it, and from the political activity that was pushing him step by step towards radical communism” (Schaff 1970: 73). Thus, in Marx, alienation is never exhausting the real, but it is always accompanied by the struggles to transcend it.

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the libido principle and the reality principle. This doubleness is what all schools of psychoanalysis establish, and this is what all schools of economics implicitly or explicitly deny. To bring this doubleness at the forefront of the economics discourse (that is at the forefront of a discourse on formation of needs and means for their realisation) is to bring at the forefront the contradictions implicit in the definition of needs (libidinal drives) and their realisation within current forms, institutions, norms (reality principle). To bring this doubleness at the forefront of socio-economic investigation is also to question the omnipotence of subsumption and determinism, and allows conceiving social relations as more fluid and open. As Elliot puts it . . .human subjects cannot be wholly `incorporated' or `subjected' to modern social processes. There is the theoretical insistence in Freud's writings that systems of domination, no matter how apparently `total' in character, cannot contain or exhaust the individual subject's unique `mode of being'. Indeed, modes of being  that is, psychical representations and resistances  are the very stuff of an alternative `consciousness' and the source of all counter-discoursive struggles within existing systems of domination and social power. Yet it is this `doubleness' of psychic reality, that subjects are located within the symbolic order [the father is a symbol of authority] while always being potentially capable of alternative action, that many strands of modern social theory either pass over in silence or just blindly ignore. (Elliott 1999: 43-44) What are the implications of the contradictory character of social individuals for an analysis of social change and institutions? After all social individuals are the building blocks of all that is analysed by social sciences and economics, they are the actors that make institutions, they are those who work, exchange, create, conform and rebel. In order to answer the question, we must analyse more in details this contradictory nature of social individuals and the qualities and articulations of these contradictions. 2.2.

The strategies of the social individual.

To theorise how the definition of social individuals as contradictory beings may help us to reformulate the basis of socio-economic discourse, we must first recognise an important limitation in our sense perceptions. We can experience others' behaviour but not their experience. The only think observable is behaviour, and on this many social disciplines have build their reputation. Yet behaviour does not exhaust the meaning and extents of social action. We observe a worker at work, and we infer she is working according to the rules and norms given to her. We observe a consumer purchasing a commodity, and we infer he is involved in an act of exchange framed within given rules and norms. To a certain extent, this is certainly true, but only to the extent we limit our enquiry on this prima facie phenomenal level. In reality, the individual within this society is an individual who not only operates (behaves) according to the rules of the game defined by a structure of property rights, ceremonial norms, etc., but also that experiences these rules and norms of behaviour within a range of lived experiences. A

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portrayal of the individual simply as a bearer of these rules, leaves out the existential condition of the individual, and in thus doing, it is blind to the very conditions and driving force of social change. By abstracting from living experience we also abstract from the strategies consciously or unconsciously deployed by social individuals to address the unbalances of this lived experience. The condition of the concrete social individual invests the totality of life, rationality and irrationality, passions and interests, conformity to norms and rebellion. It is to the broad definition of this condition that we must now turn, and, in so doing, I will freely build upon R.D. Laing’s seminal work on the divided self. Laing's work set out to analyse the schizoid condition. `Normal’ individuals develop this condition as a defence from a reality that is posing demands on them which are incompatible with their sense of self, of their true being. The `normal' individual, in a situation all can see to be threatening to his being and to offer no real sense of escape, develops a schizoid state in trying to get outside it, if not physically, at least mentally: he becomes a mental observer, who looks on, detached and impassive, at what his body is doing or what is being done to his body (Laing 1969:79). The schizoid condition therefore reveals a contradiction between a detached self whose participation (behaviour) in the world (say the “economy”) is meaningless because it does not offer real alternative, and the longing for participation in the world with the full self. For the schizoids, the world out there in which they are asked to have an active participation and engagement is not a reality, is not real, precisely because is alien to their selfs. Only objects perceived by the self are experienced as real. Thoughts and feelings of which the self is the agent are alive and are felt to have point. Actions to which the self is committed are felt as genuine. (Laing 1969: 80) On the contrary, in the case of the psychotic condition, The direct and immediate transactions between the individual, the other, and the world, even in such basic respects as perceiving and acting, all come to be meaningless, futile, and false. . .If the individual delegates all transactions between himself and the other to a system within his being which is not 'him', then the world is experienced as unreal, and all that belongs to this system is felt to be false, futile, and meaningless. (Laing 1969: 80) The schizoid individuals therefore, experience a “pseudo-duality”. Forced by circumstance and given norms to engage with the world (to work, to look for a job, etc.), instead of

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meeting the world with an integral self-hood, he disavows part of his own being along with the disavowal of immediate attachment to things and people in the world. This can be represented schematically as follows: Instead of (self/body) ↔ other the situation is self ↔ (body-other) The self, therefore, is precluded from having a direct relationship with real things and real people. (Laing 1969: 82) My hypothesis (anticipated in the work of Deleuze and Guattari 1984) is that schizophrenia is a condition of developed capitalism. However, I interpret it not as pathology but as one of the strategies deployed, consciously or unconsciously, by social individuals to attempt escaping the contradictions inherent in human sociality within capitalist mode of production. Building on Marx’s theory of alienation in fact, we live in a society that reproduces the conditions for this schizoid strategy through the reification of social relations brought about by commodification: the daydreaming in class or conference halls to escape the practice of education as factory, the coffee breaks on the assembly lines, the “job shirking”, the videogames playing in office hours, etc. All these are but few examples of micro-strategies which attempt to find an escape while leaving the body at least to be seen to conform to the world out there and its norms (the global economy, the teacher, the boss, etc.). There is another opposite strategy that social individuals adopt in the context of alienation. Although Laing in the work quoted does not refer explicitly to this, we are able to derive some character of this condition from various aspects of his work. I am talking about neurotic strategies, in which the fear of engulfment by the other is substituted by the drive to engulf the other, the preservation of the self through the detachment of the body, is replaced by the protection of the self through full conformity of given norms. In principle, the rule of law in society at large or the respect of proper procedures defined within institutional organisations, all presuppose and aspire to the existence of fully neurotic individuals, who find in conformity and drive to conform others a reason of being, a realisation of their selves. Social interactions confined within the institutional rules of the game, are interactions of this kind, in which people act according to pre-established roles. In this sense, institutional thought can be seen to assume the full realisation of neurotic strategies of social individuals. Table 1 summarises the basic characteristics of the schizoid and neurotic conditions.

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Table 1 The schizoid and the neurotic strategies to deal with alienation Schizoid strategies 1. Alienated withdrawal. 2. Fear of engulfment by the other. 3. Protection of self viz outside norm.

Neurotic strategies 1. Alienated engagement. 2. Drive to engulf the other. 3. Realisation of self through conformity to norms. 4. Releasing body while holding to self. 4. Releasing body and one's fantasies about False self as fantasies. self. False self as operational fantasies. 5. Passive indifference to the other 5. Active indifference to the other (imaginary reification). (operational reification). Source: My elaboration from Laing (1967). I have already discussed the first three characteristics, so let me briefly outline the last two. While the holding to the self in the schizoid strategies, implies the experience of self simply as fantasies, and thus as false self - because the body is released to the rule of the “other”, in the neurotic strategies, fantasies accompany the release of the self and the body. However, in this case, false self takes up the form of operational fantasies, fantasies about the other as engulfable other, and as self as engulfing self. Thus, both schizoid and neurotic conditions are based on the reification of the other. However, while schizoids reify the other in their fantasies by being indifferent to them, neurotics reify the other in their action, through attempting their engulfment.

Figure 1 Schizoid and neurotic strategies of social individuals.

…………………. schizoid strategy

………………… neurotic strategy

My hypothesis is that the schizoid and the neurotic strategies thus described define the extremes of a continuum as indicated in figure 1. Thus, to represent the social individual within modern capitalist relations of production is to represent a continuum of existential and behavioural condition. The notion of “normality” is indeed the location of individuals somewhere in the line, or bouncing back and forward between the two extremes according to the situation. Indeed, different contexts of socialisation may correspond for a given individual, to shift in strategies. For example, a male worker who also happens to be a male chauvinist, may deploy a schizoid strategy vis-à-vis his boss at work, and a neurotic strategy vis-à-vis his wife at home. The real individual is located at any point between a schizoid condition and a neurotic condition. To the extreme right and extreme left (at the end of the dotted line), we have the realm of pathological conditions that

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makes the individual in question unable to operate within the social setting. I am not interested in this problem here, as it is the realm of modern psychoanalysis. There is however a third strategy which Laing just mentions but it is important to point out. It is what I call constitutive strategy. This is the conditions in which individuals engage with the other without engulfing the other; protecting the self through building bridges among selves and thus engaging with the other through a constitutive process that change norms; they release the body to the flow of history and in thus doing they make history; they represent the world according to a creative lived experience; they do not reify the other in thought or action, but they constitute the other as part of self through a movement of the ego-boundary and mutual enrichment. This is one strategy in which there is "what one might call a creative relationship with the other, in which there is mutual enrichment of the self and the other (benign circle)" instead of "an interaction . . . which may seem to operate efficiently and smoothly for a while but which has no `life' in its (sterile relationship).” Thus, instead of a “quasi-it-it interaction” which is a “dead process”, we would have “an I-thou relationship”. The individuals experiencing the constitutive condition are, paraphrasing Marx (1844), taking the other as a need for them. This condition is the source of true creation, and is what top-down power must learn to repress and/or harness and co-opt. Thus, we can add a new vertex to figure 1, so as to take into account this constitutive strategy. In a given moment in time and given conditions of power relations, the real concrete social individual can therefore be located anywhere within the triangle in Figure 2. Figure 2 The strategies of the social individual within capitalist relations of production. constitutive strategy

space of social action of the concrete real social individual

…………………. schizoid strategy

………………… neurotic strategy

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In light of figure 2, the divided self is only one contradiction faced by alienated social individuals embedded within capitalist relations of production in the attempt to escape the conditions of alienation. The strategies defined between the schizoid and neurotic polarities are those taken up by individuals qua isolated individuals, conformity to given norms or withdrawal from them come to a variety of degrees, but they are all strategies implemented by social individuals in a context of isolation from each other. Constitutive strategies instead, are founded on the attempt to transcend this isolation.

3.

Power

3.1.

The social individual as product and producer of power

Starting from social individuals and the contradictory character that they embeds allow us first, to understand power as relation and not as substance, second it forces us to consider how the interplay of neurotic, schizoid and constitutive strategies both are affected by and affect this relation. The strategies pursued by social individuals must express themselves in their interplay, in the networks they constitute, in the relations they establish, but they can do so only as power relations. But precisely because social individuals are the bearer of contradictory lived experience and therefore they deploy different strategies to deal with alienation, power is not only a given, is also a result. The social individuals, the contradictory unity between neurotic, schizoid and constitutive forces, are both the product of power, and the producer of power. In the first case, power, following Foucault, creates and makes use of discursive practices which are disciplinary in its own nature (Foucault 1977). Discoursive practices first create the realities and the subjects of which they speak and then, through “dividing practices”, subjects are categorised, divided, confined according to their perceived differences from others. In this way, not only individuals are divided in normal and abnormal, sane and insane, low abiding and criminal, worker and shirker, etc., but are also encouraged to identify themselves in the same way. The acceptance of given norms and the subjects’ action confined within these rules of the game and norms, is the field, as we have seen, of the neurotic strategies of the social individual. Thus, power in this case confronts social individuals as condition of their existence. However, the body colonised by power is not a submissive body. Foucault for example notices that “Power, after investing itself in the body, find itself exposed to a counter-attack in that same body” (Faucault 1980: 56). Deleuse and Guattari (1984) go further and suggest that constitutive flows of desire are primary and that the function of societies is to contain and codify them, but that the huge productive force of capitalism causes such a flow of desires to the point that it becomes impossible to be contained.

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Thus, in their discussion desire becomes a revolutionary force. In either case, we find the need to acknowledge power as a relation, and not a substance invested in the sovereign, and one that recognises bottom-up power as force constituting reality. The introduction of the contradiction posed by the experience of the social individual in the current society, allows us to talk about power in a quite different way from conventional economic literature. Within economics literature, there are two main shortcomings in the definition of power. 1. Power is a thing, something you have or you don’t, and is the "sovereign" who has it. Power in this tradition is not a social relation between living beings, but between one subject who has power and the other who has not, and the latter is silent. For example, the power that large companies have to set prices  a case of monopolistic "power"; the power that multinationals have to shape people's values through advertising campaigns  a case of Lukes (1974) third dimension of power, etc. 2. Because of 1, the power of the "sovereign" is seen as what constitutes reality. Bottom up power, if it recognised at all, it is only as countervailing power (Galbraith 1952). This only limits quantitatively and not qualitatively the power of the sovereign. In reality, the power of the bottom, as we will see, is also constitutive in character. The problem for us is to be able to conceptualise change in socio-economic relations understood as power relations in a way that understand power both as relation (with topdown and bottom up dimensions) and as condition and result of the practice of social individuals as mapped in figure 2. Table 2 Power and the divided self Top-down Power as Condition T1.A Given norms, structured within given social hierarchies, T1.B Attempt to co-opt B2.B.

Power as Result

Bottom-up B1. Rigidities on current norms. Difficulties of smooth implementation of norms and unintended effects. A given culture of insubordination. T2. Restructuring, redefinition B2.A Creation of new rigidities of norms and co-operation of in forms and ways that create labour to outflank B1. by co- spaces within new norms and option or repression. hierarchies. Creation of new culture of insubordination. B2.B Exodus: re-definition of norms and practices incompatible with top-down power.

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In table 2, the social individual is both produced by and producer of power. It is produced by power by entering given norms structured within social hierarchies of whatever nature. These norms are always accompanied by other norms, often unspoken, underground, etc., in other words a given culture of insubordination. The divided self  schizoid Vs neurotic strategies  is therefore reproduced in society at large, as proper procedures (relying on a acceptance of given norms) Vs unproper practices (escaping the engulfment of the procedures).7 Thus, power as condition is a relational concept. Within existing power relations neurotic forces within society (conformity, given set of habit and convention, etc.) are conditions of individuals socialisation both vis-à-vis the individuals in charge and vis-à-vis other individuals who share the same condition. In this latter case, individuals not only enter in relations of co-operation within those given norms, but also always enter a given culture of insubordination, which may vary in time and in place, which may be outspoken or concealed, but still is present in everyday practice. Different societies express this culture in a different way, some more open, others more disguised, some more internalised, and other more externalised. The latter practices of insubordination can be practices that individuals cut out in their isolation, or more open practices that individuals talk about and exercise collectively. In this sense, a collective strike or an individual’s "shirking" does not differ in terms of the quality of mobilisation of schizoid energies Vs the given norms (what is asked from them), but in terms of organisation of these energies (as we will see later).8 Also, just as a given power embedded within norms represent a given condition upon individuals, also a given model of insubordination represent a given condition for implementing those norms. Economics discourse often refers to these as rigidities. In the same way, power is a result of activities of social individuals, from their neurotic, schizoid, and constitutive strategies. Bottom-up power as it is expressed by the rigidities posed on current norms represent power as condition for higher layers of the socio- economic hierarchy. The way the latter deal with what it sees as "rigidities" implies the redefinition of norms or the repression of bottom up power. The process of production restructuring is an example of redefinition of working norms, of how things should be done, of the socio-economic and cultural composition of the work force, etc. Restructuring thus would have managed to deal with some of the rigidities arisen from the old norms, but at the same time is the condition for the emergence of new rigidities (schizoid and constitutive strategies) and a new culture of insubordination. Finally, we also must acknowledge at least some constitutive elements of social interaction cannot be redefined within new norms, or cannot be repressed and which constitute an exodus from

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Since ideas and creation of the new comes by definition from schizoid energies (that is away from given norms) the capitalist societies which are able to unleash schizoid energies as well as co-opt them are the most innovative capitalist societies. 8 The difference also bring about a qualitative difference in terms of the definition of the self. The isolated schizoid energies, the withdrawal which escapes total engulfment, the travelling that escapes routines, enables the self to be safeguarded, nurtured, repaired and (re)constructed. The engagement with the other in the organisation of schizoid energies not only does this, but creates the context, a new context, within which the self live and is re-produced. Active engagement within personal relationships of love and friendship are the everyday laboratory and sphere of action of constitutive strategies under everybody eyes.

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top-down forms of power. These may become the objects of co-optation the extent to which depends on balance of power relations.

3.2.

Power and organisation

Considered as relation thus, the problem of power becomes a problem of organisation and of strategies. This is the tradition that, as Clegg (1989) has pointed out, derives from Machiavelli rather than Hobbes. This is also the tradition within which Mann has provided an important study that I use here as a point of departure. Societies, according to Mann, are not unitary and there are not social systems expressing a totality and that are divided into subsystems, dimensions or levels of such a totality. Instead, “societies are constituted of multiple overlapping and intersecting sociospatial networks of power" (Mann 1986: 1). These overlapping networks of power or social interaction are also “organisations, institutional means of attaining human goals.” (Mann 1986: 2).9 However, we want to add, since organisations are organisations of social individuals, the strength of an organisation, its power to achieve goals or even to set itself on to try to achieve goals, depends on the ability to overcome or subsume the power that individuals have of withdrawing from it. But in order to clarify this, we must discuss few definitions of power. Mann follows Weber (1968) and Parsons (1960) to define two notions of organisational power. The first one is distributive power, the classical Weberian notion of power of A over B, which, to a large extent, we also find in economics. Here “power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance” (Weber 1968: I, 53). Parsons noted that "such a definition restrict power to its distributive aspect, power by A over B. For B to gain power, A must loose some (their relation is a `zero sum game' where a fixed amount of power can be distributed among participants." Thus from Parson, Mann derives the collective aspect of power, "whereby persons in cooperation can enhance their joint power over third parties or over nature (Parsons 1960: 199-225).” The difference between collective and distributive power can be defined in terms of power over Vs power to, of potestas (power-over) and potentia (power to) as in Spinoza. The difference is summarised in table 2.

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Mann, in this context, also proposes a classification of four organisational means of attaining human goals, that he identifies in terms of a IEMP model of the sources of social power (ideological, economic, military, and political). I cannot here discuss this model, but I want just point out that the only source of social power can be the social individual. Perhaps, as Clegg (1989) has pointed out, would be better to talk in terms of circuit of social power.

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Table 3 Distributive and collective power Distributive power (power over) Restricts its meaning to mastery exercised over other people. Power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance (Weber).

Collective power (power to) Whereby persons in cooperation can enhance their joint power over third parties or over nature (Parsons).

Exploitative

Functional

There are two observations we must make about these definitions. One, which Mann suggests, is that both distributive and collective power “operate simultaneously and are intertwined": Indeed, the relationship between the two [distributive and collective powers] is dialectical. In pursuit of their goals, humans enter into cooperative, collective power relations with one another. But in implementing collective goals, social organization and a division of labor are set up. Organization and division of function carry an inherent tendency to distribute power, deriving from supervision and coordination. For the division of labor is deceptive: Although it involves specialisation of functions at all levels, the top overlook and directs the whole . . . As Mosca noted "the power of any minority is irresistible as against each single individual in the majority, who stands alone before the totality of the organized minority". The few at the top can keep the masses at the bottom compliant, provided their control is institutionalized in the laws and the norms of the social group in which both operate. Institutionalization is necessary to achieve routine collective goals; and thus distributive power, that is, social stratification, also becomes an institutionalized feature of social life. (Mann 1986: 6-7) The second observation is that this dialectic between the two lacks, in Mann, Parson and Weber’s formulation, the complexities brought about the dialectic of the social individual. We can reformulate both definitions of distributive and collective power in this way. Distributive power is the ability to deploy a strategy or sustain norms of behaviour within a social relationship in the hope to carry out his own will vis-à-vis resistance. This allows counterpower to be included in the picture not simply as a residual (as for example in Galbraith’s definition of countervailing power), but as constitutive element of the power relation (as in Foucault for example). This in turns implies the definition of another form of power, one that is built around practices of withdrawal from norms, power of the margins. Power of the margins is defined as the ability to deploy strategies and live practices by social individuals in the attempt to withdraw from performing what is required by them (examples: workers' "shirking" to escape work rhythms; students' day dreaming to escape education as factory;

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viewers’ TV zapping to escape commercials; and so on) in the context of given norms of behaviour. In terms of our analysis of social individuals, power of the margins is the power to display schizoid energies. Any distributive power presupposes prima facie a degree of power of the margins. The prima facie characteristic of power of the margin is its fragmentation, that is lack of organisation, as it occurs within the social space of individuals formally isolated from each other. However, its practices are also produced and the product of various subcultures, which give texture and validates these practices. I called it power of the margin because its practice is seen to be at the margin of society, even if it is part of daily experience of social individuals to a variety of degrees. Thus, we must not confuse power of the margin with marginalised socio-economic subjects. For the purpose of this analysis, power of the margin is the prerogative of all of us inserted within fields of power relations. Also collective power must be redefined in order to take into consideration the social individual. Collective power can be defined as the ability to deploy strategies and sustain norms aimed at mobilising individuals (co-operation) to pursue (joint) goals vis-àvis third parties or nature. This definition once again relativises power in order to take into consideration the collective dimension of the power of the margin. This in two senses. First, collective power find a mirror image in constitutive power, that is the power to build bridges between isolated but social individuals and produce social relations of new kind, and thus turning the fragmented power of the margin (isolated individuals) into organic power of the social individual. This constitutive power is the power that reflects the constitutive strategies defined in section 2. It differs from the schizoid strategies only organisationally, but this is a crucial difference. While the schizoid strategies rely on the disengagement from the other for the protection of the self, constitutive strategies engage with the other, and thus displace the definition of the self from fantasies to concrete social interaction. In this sense, constitutive power is an emergent property of societies. Second, it problematises the definition of the goal as "joint" goal. Indeed, by taking into consideration the various aspects of social individuals as described, aim of the strategies of collective power in a field of distributive power relations also include the cooptation of the schizoid energies of the individual in the attempt to turning them into neurotic forces (compliance and identification with the goals). For example, the collective power of a firm in an increasingly competing environment also depends on the extent to which it is able to co-opt the schizoid energies of its workers and turn them into neurotic forces (identification with the rule of the competitive game). We have thus two polarities: distributive power Vs power of the margin and collective Vs constitutive power. The relation between distributive power/power of the margins and collective/constitutive power can be illustrated as in figure 2. From these, it is evident that each sociospatial area of collective power is at the same time a node of distributive power (vis-à-vis third parties, other sociospatial area of collective power).

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Thus, each node of collective power is at the same time a node of power of the margins and constitutive power. Figure 3. A graphical representation of collective and distributive power.

A

C

B Collective power and constitutive power

Distributive power and power of the margins

Individual nodes Power relations

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4.

Institutions

In this section, I build on the previous ones to redefine the concept of institutions. In institutional economics, there are two definitions of institutions currently in use. The first, grounded in Veblen (1919) and today belonging to the box of tools of what is called "old institutionalism" (Hodgson 1989), generally regards institutions as set of common habits, settled patterns of action and thought embedded in the custom of a group of people. New institutionalism and post-Weberian sociology on the other hand, takes "habits" away from the definition of institutions that instead are regarded as "rules of the game" or a "regularity" of social behaviour agreed by the participants. Although these definitions are distinct (Hodgson 1989), they share, for the perspective of our analysis, an important common limitation. Whether institutions are agreed rules of the game or patterns of habit, they express regularities, and within the definitional realm of this regularity, there is no space for the emergence of the "new", the novel, the anticipating seed of potential social change, of the establishment of qualitatively different ceremonial regularities. This is of course not to say that institutional thought does not recognise social change, on the contrary, this is one of the strengths of this tradition. Rather, that definition of the central unit of analysis  institutions  does not embed change and its potential. If all human actions are articulated through institutions and if institutions are exclusively the realm of regularities (whether habit or agreed rules of the game), how can there be social change? The question can be addressed by defining institutions not simply in terms of regularities, but also in terms of their disruption, not only in terms of their articulation, but also in terms of their disarticulation, not only in terms of normality, but also in terms of abnormality, not only in terms of the spoken agreements, but also in terms of the unspoken disagreements. In other words, institutions' apparent regularities are but the façade of a much more complex reality. This reality entails the articulation of power relations that, as we have seen, include both top-down power and bottom-up power, distributive power and power of the margins, collective power and constitutive power. So, I define institutions as crystallised forms of social power (where the degree of crystallisation depends on various circumstances and various contexts, but quite seldom can be imagined to be 100%) expressing a field of power relations. This definition needs some discussion, which I outline in terms of four points. First, institutions are forms of collective power. This is nothing but reasserting in a different way one established tenet in institutionalist thinking and other social sciences. For example, take the institution of money. One of the many functions of money in our society is to act as means of exchange. That is, it is a particular form through which humans exchange the products of their labour, and therefore interact with each other qua humans vis-à-vis the externalised environment. Anthropologists and institutionalists have

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of course argued and provided large amount of evidence that human interaction through money is but one of the possibilities to exercise collective power.10 Second, as forms of collective power, institutions embed power of the margins and constitutive power, thus institutions show various degrees of crystallisation. This is of course a metaphor, but one that intends to convey meaning. The entire sphere of social action can be defined as a web of social relations and of course institutions cannot escape this general characterisation. Yet, the peculiarity of social relations in institutional form is that they have patterns of rules, of ceremonial activities, of habits and conventions. In this sense social relations are subjected to a certain degree of crystallisation. That is to say, in institutions-crystals, certain patterns of social interaction are more or less recognisable than others, while others are more hidden, and remain apparently invisible. It is for this crystal character of institutions that scholars have referred to them as recurrent habits (as in old institutionalism) or agreed rules of the game (as in new institutionalism). Not only the theoretical maximum degree of christallisation is when the norm, the ceremonial activity, the rules, the habits reproduce themsleves endlessly and with regularity, but when the underlying power of the margins and constitutive power is completely obliterated. This case presupposes a social individual which fully conform to these given norms, one that has not a divided self, and whose only strategy of socialisation is a neurotic strategy. But if institutions are defined in such a way, social change, or social “evolution”, can never be accounted for. For social change to occur within capitalist production, the theoretical maximum degree of crystallisation is in fact never actualised. If we conceptualise institutions in this way, we have only looked at the outer manifestation of these institutions-crystals, at what they are supposed to be for. In other words, what has been traditionally pointed out is the norm, the ceremonial, not the concealed abnormality, the concealed patterns of counterceremonial activity inherent in institutions that are the seed of change. It is for this reason that we have the third element of institutions in our definition. Third, institutions are a field of power relations. I am using the term "field" in contrast to the common use of "structure". The latter conveys the meaning of a rigid frame while the former may be seen as the site of dynamic interplay of forces with various degrees of intensity and direction, namely the forces defined by the interplay of schizoid, neurotic and constitutive strategies. Therefore, institutions are the meta-"other" that social individuals all face. The "other" that social individuals experience qua thing to which thay relinquish their bodies qua thing (while pursuing schizoid strategies); or relinquish both body and self while identifying in them (neurotic strategies); or engage with each-other to bring about an organised transcendence of the given norms embedded in institutions (constitutive strategies). Or, finally and more likely, a combination of all these strategies in a context of given power relations. Therefore, although "social relations . . . appears as what they are . . . as social relations between things" (Marx 1867:

10

For classical statements on this respect see Polanyi (1944) and Sahlins (1972).

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166), the relations between concrete social individuals is also the site of perennial strategies of escape from thing-hood. Fourth, as field of power relations, institutions are manifestation of an organisational reach of collective power and therefore distributive power. The organisational reach of power can be authoritative or diffused. Again, Mann has offered some useful insights here. Authoritative power "is actually willed by groups and institutions. It comprises definite commands and conscious obedience” (Mann 1986: 8). Economic institutions of these kind are for example a firm, or the configuration of power relations embedded in the law. The reach of authoritative power is measured by logistics, "the military science of moving men and supplies while campaigning. How are commands actually and physically moved and implemented? What control, by what power group of what type is erratically or routinely possible given existing logistical infrastructures?" (Mann 1986: 8). Instead, “Diffused power, spreads in a more spontaneous, unconscious, decentered way throughout a population, resulting in similar social practices that embody power relations but are not explicitly commanded. It typically comprises, not command and obedience, but an understanding that these practices are natural or moral or result from self-evident common interest" (Mann 1986: 8). Here we can recognise the realm of market relations once enclosures have taken shape. Given norms and values, a configuration of law etc., are kernels upon which diffused power rests. The reach of diffused power “tends to vary together with authoritative power and is affected by its logistics. But it also spread relatively slowly, spontaneously, and `universally' throughout populations, without going through particular authoritative organisations. Such universalism also has a measurable technological development. It depends on enabling facilities like markets, literacy, coinage, or the development of class and national (instead of locality or lineage) culture. Markets, and class and national consciousness, emerged slowly throughout history, dependent on their own diffused infrastructures" (Mann 1986: 8). In both cases, the organisational reach of collective power embeds within itself neurotic, schizoid and constitutive strategies of social individuals. It is possible therefore to depict the circle of mutual interdependence between various forms of power, once power of the margins and constitutive power are acknowledged (figure 3). For example, authoritative power is necessary to constitute the diffuse power of the market (enclosures, educational campaigns, morals and norms enforcement, and so on). However, this is possible only by going through various forms of resistance (of the power of the margins and constitutive), repressing and/or co-opting it, etc. The end result is a diffused power whose qualities and determinations embed not only the will of the authoritative power, but also the stratification of resistance. Again, because diffused power is power within a field of social relations between individual nodes (whose emerging needs and aspirations may contradict the existing "universals" of diffused power), then it is the context from which new power of the margins and constitutive power emerge, and which may well pose a threat to viability of authoritative power. Note the arrows that move from

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constitutive power outward away from the circle. These arrows point at the exodus from the spiral of power given the existing context. The black long lines connecting the exodus points with authoritative and diffused power represent the power of co-optation or repression of constitutive power and power of the margin. Note, in order not to loose a sense of perspective, that each of these power is an expression of a networks of social individuals. Figure 3. Social change and power.

Power of the margins

Constitutive Power

Collective power

Authoritative Power

Diffused Power Distributive power

Constitutive Power Power of the margins

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5.

Conclusions

In the process of reconstructing a theoretical framework able to capture socioeconomic change, we have started from social individuals as embedding the contradictions between structure and agency, between the given and the new. This contradiction, far from being resolvable, is in fact the engine of change. However, the dichotomy between structure and agency within social individuals in the capitalist mode of production, must take into consideration the fact that, following Marx, social individuals live, to a variety of degrees, an alienated existence. In the process of attempting to overcome alienation, social individuals deploy a variety of conscious or unconscious strategies, some reinforcing alienating social forces (neurotic strategies), some carving up a space which disengage from what structure requires by them (schizoid strategies), some other which constitute new norms and social relations (constitutive strategies). We have seen that human action in capitalist social context is made of a combination of all these strategies, and that the latter are both product and creator of power. I have thus argued that the analysis of power must open up to take into account the contradictory nature of social individuals and therefore power cannot be considered as a thing, as power of the sovereign. Instead, power is always a relation, and top down power (in its distributive and collective form embedding neurotic strategies) is always matched, to a variety of degrees, by bottom up power (as power of the margins and constitutive power embedding schizoid and constitutive strategies). Finally, I suggest that institutions must be conceptualised as to take into consideration the strategic and contradictory dimensions of social individuals. Institutions therefore are not only the site of regularity and ceremonial activities, but also of the forces for their disruption as well as those aiming at co-opting them. The present analysis, which by all means is at a preliminary stage, opens up fundamental questions on the role of social science and, in particular, of economics. By bringing together social individuals, their strategies and power relations, this analysis aimed at making visible what, in more conventional treatments, is invisible. Schizoid and constitutive strategies in fact are generally left out of conventional models of the economy, and, in so doing, the process of socio-economic change cannot be accounted for. In this sense, economic discourse can be charged of normalising reality, that is accounting only for the neurotic forces that takes norms of socialisation as given constraints which not only cannot be transcended, but that social subjects in their daily conscious and unconscious practice only accept as given. Leaving schizoid and constitutive strategies out of the pictures implies the definition of normality and the definition and reproduction of norms is at the same time the reproduction of structural hierarchies and conformity. However, norms are always equivocal in a social context of human agents who attempt to escape norms. Paraphrasing Laing's contention of the ambiguities embedded in definition of normality in the

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psychoanalytic discourse11, we can recognise the ambiguities embedded in the economic discourse. For example, a man who says that he does not want a job is a scrounger. A man who says that thousands of job-loss is the price to stay competitive, is a great entrepreneur. A woman who urges debt cancellation for a third world country because servicing debt does not make any sense when resources are needed to save lives, is a troublemaker. A woman who says that rationality is the guiding action of economic activity may be a great economist. A man who says that human life could be improved if the structure of property rights is changed, is a subversive loony-left. A man who says that taking everything as given we cannot really say anything about anything, and yet he keeps getting social funding to keep saying the same thing, may be a great econometrician. The demands of conformity that Freud and Laing are talking about are reproduced and promoted by the discourses and worldviews of these "normal" men and women. By making schizoid and constitutive strategies visible, the contradictory nature of given practices of socialisation such as institutions are exposed, and thus is their finite character announced. By recognising only neurotic strategies, economic discourse can only help reproduce the given norms of socio-economic interaction which is build on the given normative configuration of property rights. Economics therefore, as Foucault would say, is a discoursive practice, a discipline that by defining reality aims at creating it in its own image. Ultimately, therefore, is a question of ways of seeing. For a progressive paradigm to have teeth, it is not sufficient to shift the analytical ground from the isolated individual of mainstream analysis to institutions. We must stop seeing individuals operating within these institutions as things, and human agency simply as conscious practice in harmony with given norms or conscious strategies to change norms. To fully grasp social individuals is to see their interactions not simply in their functional role within the given parameters of socio-economic systems, but also as attempting to break away from those parameters. A radical and progressive paradigm therefore should address the realm of the "invisible" and of the "marginal" and bring its articulation with what is visible to the centre of its investigation.

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"In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, and all our frames of references are ambiguous and equivocal. A man who prefers to be dead rather than Red is normal. A man who says he has lost his soul is mad. A man who says that men are machines may be a great scientist. A man who says he is a machine is `depersonalised' in psychiatric jargon. A man that says that Negroes are an inferior race may be widely respected. A man who says his whiteness is a form of cancer is certifiable." (Laing 1969: 11-12)

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Marx, Karl. [1844] 1975. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. In, Early Writings. New York: Vintage Book. Marx, Karl. 1867. Capital. Volume 1. New York: Penguin Books. 1976. Minsky, H.P. 1986. Stabilizing an Unstable Economy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Parsons, T. 1960. The distribution of power of power in American society. In Structure and Process in Modern Societies. New York: Free Press. Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of our Time. Boston: Beacon Press Sahlins, Marshall. 1972. Stone Age Economics. New York: Aldine De Gruyter. Schaff, Adam. 1970. Marxism and the Human Individual. New York: McGraw-Hill Veblen, Thorstein (1919). The Place of science in modern civilisation and other essays, New York: Huebsch. Weber, Max. 1968. Economy and Society. New York: Bedmister Press. Woodmansee, Martha and Mark Osteen. 1999. The New Economic Criticism. New York: Routledge.

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