Probing the “moralization of capitalism” problem: Democratic experimentalism and the co‐evolution of norms

Abstract

The most fundamental issue raised by any discussion around the ‘moralization of capitalism’ is the puzzle of second‐order morality: How exactly is it possible to pass a moral judgement on our categories of moral judgement? How can our norms of morality be said to be immoral, thus calling for (re‐)moralization? The answer depends on the observation that norms and interaction structures in capitalism have co‐evolved, and hence can be taken neither as autonomous with respect to one another nor as obeying a hidden functionality. This implies that, paradoxically, the moralization problem cannot be solved in moral terms, but calls for a political approach, to make best use of which we need to come to terms with capitalism as a fully fledged cultural system. The ideology inherent in that cultural system can only be attacked from within the system itself, through decentralized processes of democratic decision‐making rather than by mere prophetic denunciation or moral invectives. Because the particular version of the capitalist culture in which we live now is a radically contingent result of history, it makes sense to support a framework of democratic experimentalism which embeds multiple institutional experimentation within a system of experience‐building and experience‐formation analogous to the system of information‐utilisation and information‐dissemination offered by the Hayekian market. Only by thus creating the real and concrete democratic presuppositions for alternative capitalist practices can we begin to make sense of the puzzle inherent in the “moralization of capitalism” problem.