A change of perspective: “It's not the economy, stupid – it's society!”

Everybody remembers Bill Clinton's slogan during his successful 1992 presidential campaign, “It's the economy, stupid!” My premise is that today this motto needs slight modernization. An up-to-date version would be: “It's not the economy, stupid – it's society!”

What is my point? We need to learn to make a clear distinction between economy and society and relate them in a sensible way, instead of confusing the two, as is common practice in neoliberal thinking, with its standard recipe for nearly all socio-economic problems: more market and more competition. The economic logic of competitive markets, productivity, and growth cannot be the whole answer to our societal problems, since these problems are simply a part of the success story of economic “liberalization” and “rationalization.” Is it not the inherent purpose of that kind of development to set humans “free” from their workplaces in order to increase labor productivity and economic growth?

One of the core problems today could be that the social organization of our national economies – and of the developing transnational economy – lags behind their steadily rising productivity. What is increasingly needed is an overall reassessment and redesign of the societal relationships between all involved; this could be a prerequisite for an economic development that makes sense with regard to our quality of life.