Mesle A.
Despite at its visible incipient
stage of growth, capitalism in its Ethiopia’s contexts has already begun to
send its shockwaves across the long established traditions of the people. In Ethiopia,
the fast expansion in all sectors is evident with an adequate sign of a
revolutionary proliferation of the ‘service industry’ ahead of others.
Construction also blossoms itself as a flourishing industry with an expanding
absorption capacity of more than the 35% of the total work force now active
throughout the country.
These developments however were not
without nationwide value meandering. One may remember the experience and
outlook shocks, which the blanket lifting of command economy in the early 1990s
caused mostly in urban Ethiopia. Both the public establishment and the
staggering private sector of the time felt the vibrancy of the shocks equally
but differently. Many public servants and their officials strongly grappled
with the new and strange capitalist oriented- regulatory practices. There were
many who strongly doubted the healthy functioning of the economy in the virtual
absence of government control.
After a couple of decades, it is
true now that capitalism also unfolds with its gloomy side through the
incidences of growth bumps, specifically, inflation, corruption, rent-seeking
behaviors and so on. Until recently, when the Ethiopian government has engaged
in policy interventions in inflationary controls, the widespread belief was
that the private sector aggravated the problem due to the need for unlimited
appetite for profit and wealth.
This came at the very time when
other directly or indirectly related economic upheavals in the developed world
have precipitated many stakeholders to raise fundamental questions. Some of the
most important questions are these: what are the cardinal rules of capitalist
growth that pervasively affect human dispositions to wealth? Is capitalist
growth inherently an outcome of human selfishness? If so, how do newly
developing societies manage and adjust to this growing value against their
egalitarian roots?
It is, at this juncture, that
economists and development scholars reassert what they call ‘self-interest’ as
either the primary, or one of the locomotives of capitalist growth as well as
its bad sides. This argument, in its turn, has provoked divergent views on its
relevance particularly to the initial growth and subsequent challenges of
capitalism in developing states.
As a starter society of capitalistic
growth, these debates squarely apply to Ethiopia and Ethiopians today than ever
before. Thus, what were and are the positions of the late PM, Meles Zenawi, the
chief architect of Ethiopia’s capitalistic growth, as both an economist and a
political leader on this question? How did he respond to the above concerns?
Smith in his famous book of 1765,
‘Wealth of Nations’, underlines what he calls ‘enlightened self-interest’
interchangeably with what he terms the ‘invisible hand.’ Smith arguably
qualifies self-self-interest as ‘enlightened’ to refer succinctly to the
entrepreneurial spirit and skill to discern the signals of free market
operations. For Smith, the inner human impulse to satisfy its ‘self-interest’
out of the free market ignites expansionary growth than the regular government
intervention.
‘Self-interest’ as a worldview of policy
makers and scholars continues as a mainstream western value particularly in the
United States under differing brands. The concept ‘rugged individualism’ with
broadened or changed meanings of ‘self-dependent, reliant, and diligent
personality’ came into use in the Regan era.
‘Self-interest’ comes into mounting
intellectual pressure, however, more by the fastest rise and growth of China
and India very recently. Experiences of these countries kindle renewed
questions and interests particularly on redefining the epistemological and
methodological inconsistency of the ‘self-interest school’ to explain
capitalistic growth and its propelling forces in the context of developing countries.
PM Meles Zenawi intervenes, at the point of the debate, to have come up with
his own arguments against the above liberal ethos of self-interest as follows.
Meles dwells on the question of
‘self-interest’ in the conclusive remarks of his first unfinished Chapter, the
Neo-Liberal Political Economy and Social Capital of his PhD Dissertation. Meles
sets out by dismissing the arguments of the neo-liberal paradigm that tries to
exploit the concept of ‘self-interest’ as a justification for its thesis of the
‘limited government.’ Meles specifically mentions the ‘rational choice theory’,
which is one of the most known neo-liberal pillars of ‘limited government’.
This theory argues that human beings are, in Meles’s words, ‘solely
self-interest-maximizing individuals.’
‘Rational choice’ theory goes on
arguing that human beings are also rational by their very nature with the
exceptional capacity of calculating their costs and benefits in making any
decisions of day-to-day life. This makes the presence of an interventionist
government unwarranted. Meles also mentions the neoliberal argument for
‘competitive market’ as both pervasive and Pareto efficient where government
intervention against this pillars means nothing but ‘socially rent-seeking
activities.’
Meles does not accept the logic and
rationales of this paradigm. Firstly, he underscores that the neo-liberal
argument that human beings are by nature self-maximizing individuals is faulty.
Secondly, he dismisses the argument that understands government created rent as
necessarily socially wasteful as equal to the self-interested nature of the
human individual. Thirdly, Meles attacks the thesis that the capitalist market
is inherently Pareto optimal in that it rationally distributes and allocates
resources among market actors fairly by itself. Generally, this argument for
Meles Zeanwi, is excessively misguided and understandably reductionist. He
particularly rejects rational choice approach in its attempts to equate
‘individual self-interest’ with the growth of capitalism by moving the
government out of game. Starting from the neo-liberal argument on the positive
relations between ‘self-interest and government inefficiency’, Meles’s stresses
his own version as follows: Government created rent does not necessarily have
to be socially wasteful. It becomes wasteful only if solely self-interest
maximizing individuals use it to create wealth at the expense of society and
only if the state is incapable of improving on the market- i.e. there are no
market failures. The theory of solely self-interest maximizing individuals does
not hold water.
Meles admits that society consists
of both interested and non-interested individuals. He poses history, common
everyday observation and theoretical analysis for justifying the presence of non-self-interested
individuals as many as those who are self-interested. Thus, even the limited
government of neo-liberal scholars, which Meles calls the ‘night watchman
state’, could be a creation of both of these divergently interested
individuals. Otherwise, if the entire government is a creation of solely
self-interested individuals, that state for Meles is a dangerously corrupt
institution existing and functioning only for the advantages of the leaders and
decision makers.
At the same time, Meles suggests
that the blend of these individuals could create a government that intervenes
in the market for the benefit of the larger society.
Meles reasons out as follows:
….. An economy based on complex
economic interaction such as a market economy requires a blend of
self-interested and non-self-interested behavior: a blend of social and
individual norms that maximize survival potential within an appropriate social
context. In the absence of such norms, the state, if it can exist as a coherent
corporate entity for any period of time, becomes predatory. A properly behaved
night watchman state populated by solely interest maximizing individuals is
thus a practical and theoretical impossibility.
For Meles, as for Hobbes, whether a
human individual within a broader community setting and governance is
self-interested or non-self-interested is an outcome of social training and
societal influence through social values and norms. This is the function of
language and communication bordering human nature from the animal world.
Secondly, Meles holds that these values and norms are never always static and
rigid inheritances.
They can be created, recreated,
shaped and reshaped by human beings themselves in their struggle to live up to
dynamic factors. Thus, thinking human nature out of the rules of social values
and their dynamic nature is erroneous. Thirdly, Meles succinctly underlines
that once communities create and set up these blends of social norms, values
and rules they pass them to the wider community membership and future
generations. Fourthly, Meles nails down that growth and development are
therefore primarily social values and norms before they change into any form of
material wealth and benefits.
What is the process of creating,
disseminating and maintaining these growth-friendly social values and norms?
Meles has an answer:
Creating the proper blend of norms,
values and rules to reduce uncertainty and transaction costs is a critical
factor in accelerated growth and development. The creation of such social values
and norms is called social development or social capital accumulation. Social
development is thus not only an essential element of development but also a
critical instrument of accelerated economic growth. The accumulation of social
capital, which plays such a critical role in accelerating economic growth, is a
public good, which has increasing returns to scale.
Meles labels these
development-motivating social values, rules and norms as ‘public good’
apparently for three definitional underpinnings. First, social values are
generalized beliefs, principles and guidelines of an accelerated growth among
the majority of the population. They include such positive values like strong
love and habit of work, firm disposition toward self-confidence, self-reliance,
continuous self-improvements, innovativeness, willingness to learn from others
and to share ones experiences with other needy ones, saving, and so on. Second,
social rules, on the other hand set standards and governing procedures in the
struggle for accelerated growth like punctuality, planned engagements,
commitments to the rules of do’s and undo’s agreed by the community, compliance
with public laws and requirements, anti-corruption duties and restraints from
ethically harmful activities and others. Third, by social norms, Meles must
have meant the rules of restrictions and sanctions on members of the community
and goverment who tend to break these rules and agreed standards of accelerated
growth.
Meles Zenawi emphasizes again on the
development of these positive social values for five practical reasons:
firstly, the rules of these values are social infrastructures serving as a
basic input for accelerated development as much decisive as roads, electricity
telecommunications and so on. Secondly, once they grow, as the outlook of the
majority, political systems and the relations between citizens and the
government shall become adequately predictable, purposeful and trust building.
Thirdly, positive social values and norms of development naturally have the
lowest transaction cost as compared to other growth investments like technology
and capital accumulation, which are structurally scarce for a starter economy.
Fourthly, these values guarantee the sustainability of growth, as they are
pervasive and permissive across the larger community. Fifthly, they serve both
as necessary and sufficient conditions in a country to start growth from ground
zero.
What one should ask here is how
these social values develop in a society, which formerly severely lacked them?
How could a community that was fighting bloody civil wars, suffering from
ignorance, viewing poverty as a given condition and having little capital and
resource adapt itself to these social values? Meles supplies the answers as
follows:
It is, hence, undersupplied by the
market and is subject to vicious and virtuous cycles. It is created by social
activity by civic engagement in the context of horizontal and dense networks
and inculcated and sustained through modeling, socialization and sanctions. The
state plays a critical role in social capital accumulation through undermining
patronage networks and promotion of fairness and equity, through the promotion
of participation and democracy, and through appropriate sanctions and efforts
at socialization.
According to Meles, the neo-liberal
paradigm, which suggests a non-activist and non-interventionist state, a night
watchman state, is structurally limited to undertake these grand projects in
developing societies. The neoliberal paradigm fails to achieve these goals
because its own outlook bends its attentions out of direction from the human
side to the material side of growth. It practically leaves these communities to
adapt themselves to serving self-interests in a non-existent free market.
Meles uses differing phrases to
represent the kind of government and society ruled solely by self-interested
individuals. He, for example, uses ‘rent-collecting state, predatory
government, system of patronage, patrimonial state’ and so on. All these, one
way or another, refer to ‘kleptocractic rule’ or government by thieves. Meles’s
explanations agree with modern thoughts of ethical philosophy in many different
ways. Government theft’, for example, does manifest itself not only in abusing
public authority for the fulfillment of ‘individual self-interest’ but also in
undermining the spirits of non-self-interested individuals, coalitions and
officials in the name of law, free media, democracy and so on--cynicism. It is
also consistent with Meles’s generalized idea that while non
self-interestedness the rule of self by the individual from within—intrinsic
control, self-interestedness is a rule by extrinsic appetites like material
temptations. .
The remaining task, therefore, for
the post-Meles generation of government officials across the entire public
sector, the ranks of the ruling party, and even opposition parties is to answer
the question boldly for oneself: ‘where am I standing?’
Reference
Habtamu Alebachew, Ethiopia: Meles
Zenawi’s Version of ‘Self-interest’ and Capitalist Development
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