The Crisis of the ‘World System’ and the Need for a New Civil Society

The chapter analyzes modernised systems as a mix of lib (free market) and lab (welfare state), that is lib-lab systems. Whenever the market (lib) is insolvent, one resorts to the State (lab); whenever the State (lab) is insolvent, one resorts to the market (lib). This is the game of modern economy, which attained its most accomplished model in the second half of the twentieth century. Our societies are still working on the basis of this framework, looking to stabilise economic cycles and a fairer resource distribution through lib-lab regulations. What is wrong with this societal configuration? On the one hand, it is to be said that the lib-lab set-up has so far offered remarkable advantages, in as much as it has guaranteed freedom and more extensive political and social citizenship rights. In fact, we can say about this set-up what is said about liberal democracies, i.e. that although this system is full of defects, it is the best one human history has produced so far. On the other hand, though, we have to point out that its structural faults are not insignificant, but they concern some mechanisms which produce intrinsically and inevitably recurrent crises. In other words, lib-lab systems are not sustainable as long-term systems. From a sociological point of view, these systems have to resort to a new civil society.