Capitalism and bargaining power
Capitalism is a system that fulfils two fundamental desires — freedom and equality — for which people have historically fought for millions of years. Capitalism operates on two levels: political capitalism and economic capitalism. Economic capitalism empowers individuals by granting them ownership of free markets, enterprises, and bargaining power within the economic system.
It is a decisive factor in defining the freedom to do business and mobility in economic class. For example, there was a time when all the powers of economies were concentrated in kings, monarchs, or the feudal. This was the era of empire-building and mercantilism. Common people had no say in economic activity. They were merely passive recipient of official economic policies. With time, economic capitalism developed after the Glorious Revolution in Britain.
The transition from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy facilitated reforms that gradually fostered market capitalism. People came to know about their political, economic and social rights. It opened minds and opportunities to do economic reforms.
Bargaining is more than just a term. It refers to people's ability to enhance their economic influence. With the development of capitalism, people's bargaining power increases. Referring to the previous paragraph where we discussed collective empires and concentrated economic capacities, we are moving further to highlight that capitalism introduced decentralised economic bargaining capacities where an ordinary person can decide about their production, outcomes, and inputs. In a capitalist system, from a day-to-day vendor to an industrialist, everyone has the potential to define their products and decide their earning capacity. A vendor in a local market has the freedom to do economic activity, regulate rates, and decide the market value of his product. This marks a pivotal moment in history when an economic model evolves into a decentralised and sustainable system. This is how capitalism empowers individuals, from an ordinary people to the elite, by granting them authority over economic regulation. Overall, it increased the bargaining power of the people in their lives. The transformation of bargaining capacity empowered people about their economic rights.
It is always a historical precedent that improvement in economic conditions improves political space. Economic capitalism increases the likelihood of political progress. Political capitalism is simply defined by the idea that "from an ordinary citizen to the prime minister of any state, all have the power to decide their political representatives." Political capitalism highlights how people are more free, decisive, and autonomous in their rights. It was an idea of economic capitalism which ensured political wisdom in people. As Francis Fukuyama explains in his book The End of History and the Last Man, economic capitalism creates a middle-income class society which eventually demands political space, rights, and authority to decide. Economic capitalism in European and Western societies seeded the idea of political enlightenment. From economic bargaining capacities to political bargaining power, people gained empowerment from the French Revolution to the American Revolution. It is how economic capitalism brought political evolution in society.
Why is capitalism crucial in the 21st century? One key reason is that the rise of authoritarian leadership in this era threatens to centralise economic and political bargaining power. It is the time to uphold those economic and political bargaining rights which we acquired after the struggle of millions of years. There is no doubt that the capitalist system has become a symbol of economic inequality and social polarisation, but there is still a need to rectify the problems for a collective cause. Capitalism has played a crucial role in eliminating absolute poverty, reducing violence, and promoting peace within borders.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Express Tribune
3 days ago
- Express Tribune
The wish guru
Listen to article India today is not ruled by a prime minister but by a wish guru. A leader fuelled less by policy than by image, less by competence than by dominance. At the heart of this phenomenon lie two forces Francis Fukuyama identifies as isothymia and megalothymia: the yearning to be recognised, and the darker craving to dominate. The first is an innocent and universal human impulse. The second is what happens when recognition becomes a zero-sum game. Countries nursing old colonial wounds are particularly vulnerable to this transformation, mistaking raw power for self-respect. India's growing discord, both at home and abroad, is a textbook example of this shift. The pattern is global. Dominance hierarchies are driving debates everywhere, from conspiracy theories to cultural skirmishes like Sydney Sweeney's "good jeans". We live in the age of pop psychology, where one-size-fits-all cures for complex social pathologies sell faster than careful scholarship. Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, with its lobsters and wrens, rehabilitates hierarchy as a survival mechanism, outselling more challenging works like Acemoglu and Robinson's The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty, which connects the thirst for dominance to despotic leviathans. These influences seep into politics, legitimising strongmen who promise self-assertion on a national scale, even at the cost of liberty. Last week, I wrote about India's monsoon session and the widening rift between the Modi government and the RSS. Some readers complained that I glossed over the international blowback against the diaspora and the policies that caused it. The oversight was due to space, but the point deserves elaboration, particularly when the ineptness of Indian discourse leaves these issues unexamined. India is in the eye of a storm. Exogenous shocks and self-inflicted wounds buffet the country, yet its pundits seem blind to the forces shaking their world. This is no accident. In electing Modi over more capable leaders, India chose form over substance. Its media abandoned its role as everyman's watchdog and recast itself as the strongman's cheerleader and dirty tricks department. Journalism was reduced to laundering one man's image, living off state or elite-sponsored hand-me-downs. The so-called alternative media offered only reaction, not depth, sacrificing critical thought at the altar of expediency. Consider this. Last week I noted ex-VP Jagdeep Dhankhar's age (74) as a key reason for his shock resignation being ignored. No one has gone near it with a barge pole since. Likewise, the media gawks at President Trump's tariff policy towards India without understanding the deeper dynamics, or Modi's failure to strike a trade deal with Washington. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Modi used repression to silence farmers' protests. Could he then open agriculture to foreign competition without risking chaos? His supporters blame Congress for forcing his hand in Operation Sindoor. But would this opposition back him in case of trade concessions? Modi rose to power not as a policy craftsman but as a political sorcerer selling wishes. His rhetoric promised miracles: a self-reliant India, instant global respect, prosperity for all. Like a street-side fakir offering talismans for every ailment, he presented dominance as a cure for national insecurity. But wishes are not strategies, and magic cannot substitute governance. The deeper the country's problems grew, the louder the promises became. India was not given a statesman but a wish guru, a leader who thrives on chants of devotion while evading the hard work of building lasting institutions. The Indian diaspora played a crucial part in Modi's rise. It craved an image makeover abroad and better governance at home. After "putting Muslims in their place" during the 2002 riots, he built a doer's reputation as Gujarat's chief minister. Billionaire allies enriched under his rule amplified the myth. Eleven years later, many diaspora members are waking up to the reality that they were duped. For years, the diaspora believed that power abroad would translate into prestige at home, and that Modi was the man to deliver it. They mistook fear for respect, thinking that browbeating minorities, silencing journalists, and projecting brute strength would make India admired on the world stage. But dominance is not dignity. As the cracks appear, H-1B visas under fire, overseas scrutiny rising, far-right links backfiring, the myth of Modi as a global strongman-turned-statesman is collapsing. Wishes, no matter how loudly sold, cannot override the long memory of democracies or the quiet contempt of the powerful. This diaspora had flourished under western multicultural hospitality. Modi's natural allies, however, were not liberal democrats but far-right extremists. His obsessive image projection forced Indians abroad into the spotlight, inviting scrutiny and paranoia, while his minions empowered far-right groups making life abroad harder. Manmohan Singh had mainstreamed Indians overseas. Modi weaponised them. Even coercion was acceptable if it polished his image. Had it not been for the ill-advised visit of far-right EU MEPs to Kashmir to end the post-Article 370 isolation, the world might never have heard of Srivastava Group's operations or India's links with Europe's far right. When Nikki Haley was foisted on Trump's first administration as UN ambassador, it passed without comment. But when she was last to exit the 2024 primaries, despite paltry votes and after a failed attempt on Trump's life, it was too much for his base. Kamala Harris then became his main challenger. The same base that still seethes over Hillary's challenge to their leader began to question the Indian link. Focus shifted to Silicon Valley, feeding into the H-1B visa backlash. Rishi Sunak, similarly pushed to front a failing UK government, led his party to its worst defeat in living memory. Meanwhile, Modi's obsession with image left him surrounded by yes-men. Governance atrophied. His lack of education and limited grasp of key issues left India with little more than a wish guru at the helm. The RSS, under Dr Mohan Bhagwat, had banked early wins under Modi but plays a long game. It now sees the fallout of self-serving blind policies. Listen to Bhagwat's speeches after enduring Modi's diatribes and you are pleasantly surprised. Unlike Modi, talent and genuine intellectual discourse do not make him insecure. Darkness may be Modi's compulsion. The RSS wants to outgrow it and build genuine global outreach. The 2024 election results, state polls in Haryana and Maharashtra, and the Operation Sindoor debacle offer a chance to replace Modi. A hundred-year-old organisation with all the cards is unlikely to let that chance slip. Modi has none left to play.
Express Tribune
21-03-2025
- Express Tribune
Sociology of dissonance
Listen to article Warning: This piece delves into big idea debates. If you are distracted or fasting, leave it for now. Come back to it with a stimulated mind and a full stomach. We live in an age of cognitive dissonance. That strong bond between people's thoughts, opinions, values and actions is long gone. In other words: do as I say, not as I do. But what caused it? Technology? At a time when schools and workplaces go out of their way to encourage people to participate in mindfulness exercises, the first suspicion naturally falls on smartphones, screens and social media. But the erosion of moral clarity predates not just social media, smartphones or even the internet. The other potential culprit could be the decline of state institutions. Notice how, despite Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE, no less — waging war on the American federal bureaucracy, there is no spontaneous groundswell of sympathy for the axed departments or employees. In fact, an AP report titled "Thrust into unemployment, axed federal workers face relatives who celebrate their firing" is enough to tell you about the zeitgeist. But politics is the process of making and unmaking. Institutions rise, decline and fade away. Since power knows no vacuum, they are replaced by new, durable ones. So, blaming institutional decline, including the alleged erosion of democratic values, runs the risk of putting the cart before the horse — or of confusing causes with effects. My view on this matter will require patience, as I have to show you how I reached that conclusion. But I promise we will get there soon enough. I was reviewing my old pieces, and one article stunned me. In 1998, I published a piece using Hegelian dialectics, as they were all the rage back then due to Dr Francis Fukuyama's work. The piece was about the consequences of the collapse of the communist sphere of influence. My argument was that during the Cold War, capitalism and communism acted as natural thesis and antithesis. Instead of taking us to the logical synthesis that could emerge as a compromise between the two visions, the sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc left us with the uncanny situation of an unevolved thesis - without competition or resolution. Because this happened without much forethought, fascism was stepping up to fill the gap. You saw what happened after that. Dr Fukuyama declared the end of history. Elsewhere, domain experts proclaimed the arrival of a new unipolar world order. And then began the cutthroat competition of inventing a new enemy. Why? Because the emphasis on globalisation in this unipolar world seemed to lead to the inextricable decline of nation-states. How could nation-states tolerate that? So, the institutions and organisations meant for the Cold War were repurposed for new fights. And you cannot have new fights without new enemies. Hence began the new quest of inventing enemies. Who should the enemy be? Islam? China? Russia? Terrorism? Or the existential challenge posed by technological and climate change? The last one should have been the main focus. But here's the rub: an existential challenge to human civilisation would have required new institutions - not the old ones. That would have dramatically reoriented the state infrastructure and rendered massive military hardware useless. So, Islam, China, and maybe Russia were all fair game. There was only one problem with this approach: none of these identities were in a shape fit to contest. To present a threat as credible, you have to make it real. Hence, big guns were brought in. Dr Samuel Huntington used some of the oldest tricks in the priming book to invent a threat. Tell some of the identified depressed identities that they were important enough to pose a threat to Western primacy. Tell Muslims that they had a distinct civilisation that could not coexist with the West. Why? Because there were enough disaffected and recently disowned jihadi Western proxies in the Muslim world - used against the Soviet Union and then dumped - that could be conditioned to pose an immediate threat in the shape of terrorism. Then China. And so on. In hardening various identities, he was laying the foundation of extremism and fascism at home and abroad. Look at the following clever bit from an obscure novel by Michael Dibdin titled Dead Lagoon, which he quoted in his book: "There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly be forgiven." Within a decade, both these bogeymen were ready for deployment. And for a heartbeat, it felt like it worked. The aftermath of 9/11 unified the world behind the US. But within years, the country's political and financial elite had driven this goodwill into the ground. The 2003 Iraq invasion and the 2008 financial crisis of greed fractured our world and eroded people's faith in institutions. When repeated attempts to reset the system did not work, they voted for Trump in 2016. You saw how the existing system reacted to his first term in office. In this way, Western media also ended up eroding its credibility. But the death knell was yet to come. The sudden emergence of the Covid crisis made many already suspicious of the proverbial deep state believe that this "weapon" was launched to defeat Donald Trump. Remember, paranoia flourishes the quickest in the presence of trauma. And it was an unprecedented trauma, where millions died, and billions were forced to stay indoors against their will. Hence began the erosion of faith in reality itself. What followed was a total and irrevocable tribalism. If you cannot trust reality, you can at least trust your beloved leaders, right? So, cognitive dissonance became an acceptable price for survival. But what about the need for bipolarity as the oversight mechanism of overenthusiasm? There is no chance of the resurrection of communism. However, the democratic socialism that emerged as the repudiation of Donald Trump's platform in 2016 under the leadership of Bernie Sanders — which was snubbed by establishment politics — is resurfacing. AOC and Sanders have joined hands under the banner of "fighting oligarchy". That means we are in for two intermittent cycles — one libertarian conservative, and the other socialist. The middle ground is all but gone. Centrists like us will drift between the two extremes. However, this tribalism may eventually result in a better synthesis than the one we witnessed at the end of the Cold War.
Express Tribune
27-02-2025
- Express Tribune
The new world order moves from unipolar moment to multipolar reality
A multipolar world emerges as US dominance faces challenges from China, Russia, and rising global alliances. In 1992, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, in his political philosophy 'end of history' proclaimed prevalence of Western liberal democracy and triumph of capitalism over communism, and expressed optimism that the unipolar world would be more peaceful and prosperous. However, over two decades of unipolarity witnessed increased geopolitical confrontations and military conflicts around the globe, leading to growing disillusionment with the anticipated optimism of global peace. Brown University's Watson Institute for Public and International Affairs has estimated that the USA incurred USD 8 trillion and resulted in 940,000 military and civilian deaths in its post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and others besides 3.6-3.8 million indirect deaths caused by famine, food insecurity, malnutrition and spread of diseases. In the European theatre, NATO and Russia have so far, suffered extensive military and economic losses (over one million deaths and USD one trillion), with no immediate solution in sight. In the Middle East, Israel, has been unleashing brutal state power and committing genocide and war crimes against unarmed civilians in Gaza. Arab News has reported that by end 2024, the war had resulted in colossal death and destruction involving over 46,500 deaths (most of whom were women and children) besides billions of USDs infrastructural losses. Presenting an alarming account of global insecurity, SIPRI Yearbook 2024 on Armament, Disarmament and International Security stated that during the 2023, 52 countries experienced armed conflicts across the globe. Among these, four were classified as major armed conflicts (10,000 or more fatalities in one year), while 20 were categorized as high-intensity armed conflicts (1,000–9,999 fatalities). Total number of conflict-related fatalities worldwide stood at 170,700 in 2023. Western global financial system is also anchored around carrot-and-stick approach to pursue geopolitical objectives. Weaponization of Dollar and International Financial Institutions (IFIs) emerged as the principal tools to either rewarding likeminded countries or constricting geopolitical space for the non-compliant states, thus undermining the principles of equity, fairness, shared interests and global consensus. Imposition of sanctions and trade barriers, and misuse of forums like FATF for geopolitical arm twisting are few of the examples in this regard. Currently, USA is in love-hate relationship with China having inherent dichotomies. On one hand, USA has declared China as the main competitor in its National Security Strategy 2017 and orchestrated military alliances such as QUAD, AUKUS and Squad to encircle China, however on the other hand, it had a bilateral trade of USD 583 billion during 2024. Similarly, the USA has designated India as the 'net security provider' against China in its Indo-Pacific Strategy-2022 and extended number of nuclear, technological, military and economic favors to India. However, on realistic grounds, India not only falls short of the required capabilities commensuration to its designated role but also expressed its unwillingness to side USA in case of confrontation. Interestingly, India also enjoyed bilateral trade with China of over USD 118 billion during 2024. China, on the other hand, has been translating its unprecedented economic growth to attract global acceptance by pursuing cooperation instead of competition and inviting mutually shared prosperity. China's global projects including Belt and Road Initiative (BRI-2013), Global Development Initiative (GDI-2021), Global Security Initiative (GSI-2022), and the Global AI Governance Initiative (GAIGI- 2023) seem to have gained traction. China has so far, signed over 200 cooperation agreements with more than 150 countries and 30 international organizations across Asia, Africa, Europe and South America. China is utilizing its huge economic space to lead in research and development in military, space, cyber space, AI and emerging technologies. According to Critical Technology Tracker of Australia Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), China topped 57 out of 64 technology areas (90%) for producing research papers released between 2019 and 2023. Owing to its growing clout and credibility, China has also emerged as the global peace maker to settle direct and proxy military conflicts across Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa. In a significant development, post Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to China in May 2024, a joint communique was issued which predominantly conveyed the beginning of a 'new era' and pledged to 'promote an equal and orderly multipolar world, the democratization of international relations and to gather strength to build a just and reasonable multipolar world'. The joint statement also highlighted that the multipolar world order will be principled on two rules. One, a new world order with 'no neo-colonialism and hegemonism of any kind'. Two, an order 'based on the UN Charter'. China and Russia have also promoted and strengthened multilateral forums such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which represents almost half of the world's population, hosts four nuclear weapon states and constitutes 60% of global economy. Remarkably, the SCO Summit in Astana in July 2024, recognized the shift in global power structure from a unipolar world order to a multipolar one. BRICS is another example, comprising a bloc of emerging economies of the world representing 36 percent of world's GPD. With the inclusion of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, BRICS now produces about 44 percent of global crude oil. In 2023, the BRICS economies overtook those of the G7 based on their share of world GDP in purchasing power parity terms. There has also been a discourse regarding the potential of BRICS countries to trade in local currencies aimed at de-dollarization. In this regard, China has already encouraged countries to settle trade in local currency. According to a report by People's Daily Online, China's trade in Yuan accounted for 25% of its total trade in 2023. The USA's unipolar moment is being challenged and under threat from two intensely interwoven realities. One, from American own pressure emerging out of unilateralism, military interventionism, unwavering support to the Israeli genocide, ever increasing insecurity amongst allies, expansion of NATO, arming Ukraine against Russia, containing China and designating countries like India as the 'net security provider', rapidly losing technological race and economic pressures. Secondly, resurgent Russia alongside peacefully rising China are spearheading an alternative global order grounded on the principles of shared interests and mutual prosperity with a promise of 'no neo-colonialism and hegemonism of any kind' and an order 'based on the UN Charter'. President Trump's recent hands-off initiatives not only promise a path towards global peace and security but also raise questions about the future of prevalent global security architecture.
