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Outside Powers: The Moral Economy of Anti-Financial Movements 1870-1930 and Today
Fremde Mächte: die Moralökonomie von Anti-Finanzbewegungen 1870 bis 1930 und heute
[journal article]
Abstract This article discusses if European societies witness a "new Polanyian moment," in which a period of austerity and currency turmoil will be answered by conservative or authoritarian counter-movements, as happened in the first half of the 20th century. In order to analyze when and how critique that ai... view more
This article discusses if European societies witness a "new Polanyian moment," in which a period of austerity and currency turmoil will be answered by conservative or authoritarian counter-movements, as happened in the first half of the 20th century. In order to analyze when and how critique that aims at social change is rooted in anti-liberal ideology, we analyze the moral economy of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and compare it to anti-financial protest in the late 19th and early 20th century in Germany and the UK. We argue that public statements by OWS groups and their supporters reproduce two major elements of 19th century moral economy of financial protest: First, a description of finance as something external and hostile to the traditional socio-cultural community of production. Second, the image that financial interests are likely to capture political power. Beyond these continuities, we argue that today the dichotomy between "cosmopolitan finance" and the "productive national community" is much less clearly connected to sectoral, socio-economic, or ethnic cleavages. Instead, financial outsiders are perceived as having removed themselves voluntarily from the community in order to gain profits. Still, we conclude that because of the semantic similarities between past and recent anti-finance protest, right-wing populism in Europe may not necessarily be weakened by popular anti-austerity protests.... view less
Keywords
populism; social movement; capitalism; financial market; economic method; profit maximization; collective identity; criticism of globalization; protest movement; financial crisis; legitimacy; austerity policy
Classification
Social History, Historical Social Research
Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture
Sociology of Economics
Free Keywords
Moral economy; history of political thought
Document language
English
Publication Year
2017
Page/Pages
p. 123-146
Journal
Historical Social Research, 42 (2017) 3
Issue topic
Critique and Social Change: Historical, Cultural, and Institutional Perspectives
DOI
https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.42.2017.3.123-146
ISSN
0172-6404
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed