Abstract
Individual autonomy is a good in itself but also a necessary condition for strong communities. In this article, I propose to create a market for experiences of values, which would offer an incentive to exercise functional autonomy, meant as the ability to choose moral, organizational and cultural values independently from one’s social role. This instrument would contribute to shaping a social identity and to strenghtening community. I also argue that the current proposals to « change capitalism » overlook the importance of autonomy, as they largely rely on the role of money.
Beginning of the article
The political and cultural debate has long underlined the need to promote environmental and social sustainability as an unavoidable urgency. Also in the economic sphere, several voices propose to overcome or radically change capitalism. However, beyond the appropriate analyses for instance on the limits of a purely subjective approach to value, these proposals do not capture the basic element that Max Weber and many other social scientists have emphasized for more than a century, namely the dominant role of instrumental rationality in our lives.
Indeed Weber offered an essential analysis of the processes of rationalization in capitalist societies and of its elements: intellectualization, impersonality, bureaucratic control over human lives. And he showed that, while the formal-procedural rationality [Zweckrationalität] is essential in indicating the consequences or results of actions, it is not necessarily consistent with, and may even contradict substantive-value rationality [Wertrationalität], which is rather an expression of ultimate meaning (as argued by Talcott Parsons) and intrinsic value. Weber clearly indicated the risks for freedom and agency which come from the iron cage of a dominant formal rationality, a place which hosts the “last man” for whom it might well be truly said:
Specialist without spirit, sensualist without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of humanity never before achieved
My proposal for a market for moral, organizational and cultural values, described in this article, is based on the idea of fostering value rationality, and it is in service of a better relation between economics and ethics, individual and community, capitalism and democracy…
Keywords
Codes JEL : A12, A13, Z10.