A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

velopment of all” (Marx/Engels 1848: 482). It would be characteristic of
the socialist production of wealth that each and every individual (I) be
enriched and developed as a human being (I’) in contexts of action that
contribute to the development of others on the basis of solidarity (S).
The “self-augmentation” of capital in the M-C-M’ process, as the dominant
moment and form of development of social wealth, would be replaced
by I-S-I’. The crucial question is how the substance of this general
formula of such a solidarity-based or socialist society might look in practice.
To put it another way: in what ownership and power structures, in
what forms of socialization, in what modes of production and way of life
and, finally, in what civilizational forms can the general formula of socialism
be realized? This implies a complete revolution of the innermost
structure of society (Fig. 4).
The Point of Departure The Goal
Financial capital
Profit-oriented
private economy
Oligarchy
Labour and
consumer society
Sources of raw
ma terials and energy
waste
dumps
Fig. 4: The transition from financial-market-capitalism to a society of solidarity
(socialism)
The problem is how to preserve and even enhance the capacity of modern
societies for development and innovation, as they first arose in capitalist
form, while liberating them from the narrow obsession with profit
maximization and the desire to have ever more, and to usher in a radical
change in the entire structure of civilization. We have to overcome financial
market capitalism, in which a wage-earning and consumer society
is ruled by oligarchies under the ferule of shareholder value, while
the earth is plundered of its ever scarcer raw materials and sources of
energy and turned into a scrap heap in the process. The vision is of a
society for which the physical world is a home (“Heimat”), where social
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Earth’s natural
environment
Social and
cultural life
Participatory
democracy
Solidarity-based
economic
enterprises
Solidarity-based
tax and credit
system