Metapragmatics, Hidden Assumptions, and Moral Economy

Abstract

Jakob Mey (Pragmatics: an introduction. Blackwell, Oxford, 1993) differentiates between ‘micropragmatics’ and ‘macropragmatics’, and suggests that the latter can be understood in two ways: ‘an extensional way of simply enlarging the units we’re looking at’ in terms of either co-text or context, or ‘digging down’ to ‘the intensional base of pragmatics, putting emphasis on those factors that, albeit not explicitly expressed in any text, still determine the form of that text in ways that are difficult to analyse, or even see, with the naked eye’. The latter amounts to the ‘eternal question of “whose language” we’re speaking, and why’. It might be called ‘metapragmatics’, meaning ‘reflections on the language users’ use’. He pinpoints as ‘reflections on the user’s use’ the ‘hidden assumptions’ or ‘presuppositions’ of language in, for instance, education, the media, or medicine. I shall discuss the metapragmatic issue of hidden assumptions with particular reference to ‘moral economy’. Sayer (Moral economy. www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/resources/sociology-online-papers/papers/sayer-moral-economy.pdf. Accessed 15 Oct 2015, 2004) refers to a return to the belief shared by Aristotle and Adam Smith that ‘the economic cannot be understood in abstraction from the social and the cultural’. ‘Moral economy’ is ‘the study of how economic activities of all kinds are influenced and structured by moral dispositions and norms’.

Appendix

• Stuart Eizenstat, Remarks, Democratic Leadership Council

• January 19, 1999

Let me first say what a pleasure it is to be here this afternoon. I have great admiration for the Democratic Leadership Council and the Progressive Policy Institute, which have helped generate creative and new policy ideas that have resulted in a number of Clinton Administration initiatives. The leadership of my long-time friend Al From and Will Marshall has been exemplary.

I applaud your intellectual vitality, your ability to move beyond old frameworks and I urge you to continue the process of bringing new paradigms and new thinking to bear on public policy issues. Today, I would like to speak to you about precisely the sort of new approaches that the DLC and PPI advocate, and that have come to define this Administration’s efforts to keep growing the American and the global economies.

For much of the last half century American foreign policy had a single-minded purpose – containing the spread of communism. Today, as we are approaching the dawn of the 21st century, our focus has diametrically reoriented – toward harnessing the forces of globalization in order to sustain international support for democratic, free-market capitalism across the globe.

The unprecedented worldwide flow of private capital, ideas, technology, goods and services known as globalization has changed not only the international economy but also the world as we know it. Each day, well over a trillion dollars in capital flows around the world, exceeding trade flows by a 60- to-1 margin.

The struggle to steer the forces of globalization will be one of the defining foreign policy priorities of the century to come.

By any measure, globalization is a net benefit to the United States and the world. In an increasingly globalized and interdependent economy, the quest for prosperity is the opposite of a zero sum game.

And, America is best positioned to meet these challenges. Our workers are well-trained and adaptable; our labor markets are flexible; our corporations are highly competitive and have a world-wide influence; our innovation and entrepreneurial spirit is unmatched and it puts the United States at the forefront of today’s global economy.

Moreover, globalization increases the pace at which new American innovations are brought to the market and many of our most vibrant corporations receive a significant portion of their profits from their dealings overseas. Worldwide, the opening of once sheltered states and untapped markets has benefited nations and peoples from Seoul to Santiago and from Budapest to Botswana. Despite the current crisis, real incomes in developing countries are still 50 percent higher than they were 15 years ago.

Over the past 20 years in Asia, the poverty rate has been cut in half and more than 350 million Asians have been lifted out of destitution and hopelessness.

In Latin America, economic performance in 1997 was the best in a generation, with real growth of 5 percent and inflation of 11 percent – the lowest in 50 years.

In parts of Africa, we are seeing positive signs of growth as nations discard the failed ideologies and economic policies of the past.

However, today’s current global economic crisis provides compelling evidence that the same global forces transforming nations and peoples are also posing real challenges to the gains we’ve made.

The rapid influx of capital, which helped to spur high growth rates in Asia, reversed when domestic and foreign markets lost confidence, contributing to painful recessions. In Indonesia, real GDP last year was down about 15 percent, in Thailand it fell more than 8 percent and in South Korea it fell 7 percent from 1997 levels.

Many of the countries most gravely affected by the crisis lacked well-developed financial systems, with the legal and regulatory frameworks needed to ensure that capital flowed to its most productive user.

Excessive private short-term borrowing of foreign currencies increased the economies’ vulnerability to shifts in sentiment. Cronyism, corruption, and a lack of financial transparency contributed to a series of bad investments and weakened banks. The crisis exposed weaknesses and changed perceptions of future growth prospects and fed investors’ uncertainty and panic, leading to financial instability and eventually recession.

What began as a currency crisis in Thailand quickly became an economic and political crisis, and the crisis spread to the rest of East Asia and then on to Russia and now Latin America.

This is in fact the first truly global economic crisis of the post-Cold War era, in which politics and economics converge. As the crisis gathered steam, it spread through Asia, sweeping from power leaders in Thailand, Japan and later Russia. Even President Suharto of Indonesia, who had ruled his nation for more than 30 years was toppled – in just a matter of weeks. Economic trauma is also raising serious challenges to Russia’s transition to a market economy and is even giving rise to worrisome social problems, including a disturbing increase in anti-Semitism.

In Latin America the gains made after “the lost decade” of the 1980s are being threatened by economic instability. After 5 percent growth in 1997, regional growth in Latin America fell to 2 percent in 1998 and is expected to be at zero this year.

America has not been immune either. Events in Asia have been also felt across our country from aircraft manufacturers on the West Coast to wheat farmers in the Midwest. Even stock markets reacted with volatility to the financial crisis in Russia, and now to Brazil.

The problems experienced by our steel industry – facing a significant import surge – is another example. Certainly, while we must continue the movement toward liberalized trade – and not go down the alternate path of capital controls and trade restrictions – we must also be willing to address the issue of unfair trade and retain the domestic consensus underpinning our trade liberalization efforts.

In short, the financial crisis has exacerbated fears in developing countries and could fuel a backlash against globalization. Indeed, the optimistic notion only 2 years ago that the world was adopting dramatic economic liberalization as a model for economic and political development is under challenge.

Nowhere does this provide a greater risk than among the middle classes of some developing countries, which have served as the backbone for democratic movements and economic reforms from the Philippines and Taiwan to Korea and much of Latin America.

If their confidence in economic liberalization is irrevocably shaken it could have very dangerous and destabilizing impacts on the global economy of the 21st century.

The future of the global economy lies in developing nations. They will be the markets for many of our goods and services. More important, they may be our partners in addressing global problems from non-proliferation to combating climate change.

We must prevent these nations from becoming marginalized in the global economy. This could lead to greater political instability and exacerbated inequality between the haves and have-nots of the world. By some measures, the income ratio inequality between the world’s richest 20 percent and the poorest 20 percent roughly doubled between 1960 and 1990.

Already we are seeing a worrying backlash in some countries from the events of the past year and a half – from some Brazilian state governors and legislators resisting necessary fiscal and budgetary discipline to Malaysia’s recent efforts to excessively control global capital flows and its anti-Western rhetoric. Industrialized nations have not been immune from the political fallout. Despite being the unequaled beneficiary of globalization, the United States has experienced a backlash as well, which has threatened to undermine our historic bipartisan consensus on free trade and open markets.

The failure of Fast Track legislation in 1997 and the difficulties in passing funding for the International Monetary Fund last year are just two examples. In addition, efforts to negotiate a Multilateral Agreement on Investment have stalled in the OECD over unfounded fears – particularly in France – that such an agreement will compromise labor and environmental standards.

In the coming year, the difficult conditions in many developing economies will only serve to heighten concerns about globalization.

The world must neither resort to protectionist measures in a fruitless attempt to stop globalization nor should we ignore its undeniable risks. The question today is how do we deal with this new and complex set of issues.

The Clinton Administration is devising and implementing a new paradigm – namely supporting economic openness and liberalization, which are decades-old principles of U.S. policy, while working to minimize its harshest elements. Let me highlight several key elements of this strategy.

Our goals are fivefold:

• Restore faith in the global financial system.

• Ensure that countries have social safety nets in place that help people weather the disruptions caused by globalization.

• Improve capacity building in both the social and economic realm, among developing nations.

• Work to improve transparency, good governance and anti-corruption efforts.

• And, stay the course on economic reform and trade liberalization.

Implementation of all these steps is critical if we are to successfully deal with both the short and long-term implications of the financial crisis and the disruptions caused by globalization.

First, we must help countries hurt by the economic crisis to achieve stabilization as quickly as possible and implement the difficult structural reforms needed for economic recovery and growth. Only then can we restore confidence in the positive benefits of globalization. In large part, that means that both recovering and wavering nations must remain committed to a program of economic liberalization.

It is imperative that we look at new ways of reforming the global financial architecture, particularly at this year’s G-7 summit – in order to prevent recurrence of what President Clinton called the “boom or bust” cycle.

Secretary of Treasury Rubin is leading the Administration’s efforts to examine every reasonable option in dealing with the long-term implications of the crisis. It will be critical, however, that as we develop these international reforms we engage developing nations including through the G-22 process. They must feel an equity interest in the reforms that could be made.

This spring G-7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors will consult with a wide range of countries to develop proposals for the G-7 Summit, expanding the process of bringing more voices to the debate.

Second, we must support the continuing efforts of developing nations to invest in their peoples and institutions, so that they can more broadly share the fruits of that growth and maintain open and accountable political systems.

We should not discount the difficulties faced by young democracies and markets. To be willing to continue supporting economic liberalization, citizens must have some confidence that a social safety net is in place that will help them weather the economic disruptions caused by global change.

The difficult economic transition that reform often engenders cannot succeed if the most vulnerable people in a society are forced to bear the brunt of change. Indeed, as the DLC and PPI have long advocated, industrial and developing countries must also continue to invest in human infrastructure.

Promoting universal primary education, broader public access to information about global markets, cost-effective public transportation and utilities sectors, high labor and environmental standards, and a robust engagement in policy-making by all sectors of society are just some of the steps that must be taken. Our AID programs help support these programs.

In particular, we welcome the support of the World Bank and the IMF to help countries better integrate social safety net and financial stabilization programs so there is a more prompt alleviation of the pain associated with financial crises.

Initiatives to accelerate the pace of corporate and financial restructuring, improve development assistance through both bilateral and multilateral institutions, and increase trade and investment opportunities for developing nations are also of critical importance and must be at the top of the international community’s agenda. Third, developing nations need greater assistance in strengthening their institutional capacity to benefit from the enormous flows of the capital that travel around the globe in search of higher returns and efficient economic systems.

Together with appropriate fiscal and monetary policies, the key for many of these nations is to improve the prudential regulation and supervision of financial institutions, to increase transparency and disclosure, and to improve corporate governance so that large-scale capital flows can be utilized productively.

This will involve adherence to high standards for banking supervision, capital adequacy, and corporate governance; greater international business participation in emerging markets to increase exposure to world-class practices; prohibitions on “non-arm’s length” lending; and greater disclosure of international data on a comparable basis.

Our assistance must be geared toward specific programs that improve the ability of developing nations to cope with the exigencies that these huge capital flows can cause.

These include such priorities as improved regulatory standards, more prudent debt management, national standards of financial market practice, disclosure of foreign exchange reserves and the creation of bankruptcy regimes.

If implemented appropriately these programs can go a long way toward building confidence among international investors while helping nations weather the enormous capital inflows and outflows that are such an essential element of today’s global economy.

Four, we must launch a global campaign for compliance with internationally accepted standards of good governance. Government corruption, wherever it occurs, has a debilitating affect on economic liberalization, because it undermines support for government institutions, democracy, and broad-based economic reform.

Thanks to U.S. leadership, the recently ratified OECD anti-bribery convention has established important, new, enforceable standards for criminalizing bribes paid in order to obtain international business, i.e., the “supply side” of transnational bribery. It is also critical that efforts be made to address the “demand side”, particularly in developing nations.

We must support the efforts of emerging markets to adapt and implement “good governance” and regulatory reforms, develop strong and independent judiciaries and take the necessary steps to make government more open and transparent and hence less subject ‘to corruption. AID is putting increased emphasis on supporting these institution building programs. There are enormous challenges to ending corruption in the developing world and transition societies because institutional capacities are weak, government officials are poorly paid, and independent regulators are lacking. In this regard, it is my hope that the Senate will soon ratify the OAS anti-corruption convention, which provides for a number of measures to combat fraud and corruption in Latin America.

Finally and most important, all nations in both the developed and the developing world must maintain a solidly pro-growth, trade liberalization and free-market orientation. The current crisis did not occur because of these policies and we must do more to convince developing and transition economies that they must stay the course.

Now more than ever, in the era of economic globalization, the relatively free flow of goods and services remains the most prudent and wisest course of action for promoting future economic growth.

Here at home we must do more to educate all Americans that the remarkable economic performance of the past six years – under the Clinton-Gore Administration – is the result America’s embrace of open markets and globalization. Trade in general is some 25 percent of Gross Domestic Product and responsible for one-third of the remarkable job growth we’ve achieved in recent years.

But, if the President is to be successful in continuing to open markets for U.S. exports then he must have all the tools necessary – such as fast track authority. Support for other trade liberalization measures such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the Caribbean Basin Initiative, deepening of ties with APEC and the launch of a New Economic Partnership with Africa is also critical.

In addition, the President’s emphasis on lifetime training is also critically important if we are to help our workers adapt to rapid changes in the workplace caused by globalization.

Globalization is an inevitable element of our lives. We cannot stop it anymore than we can stop the waves from crashing on the shore. The arguments in support of trade liberalization and open markets are strong ones – they have been made by many of you and we must not be afraid to engage those with whom we respectfully disagree.

We must demonstrate that open markets and high standards go hand in hand. Opening the global economy is not an end it is a means to increased opportunity and prosperity. The evidence is clear: as nations see improvements in their economic performance it creates important new domestic pressures for increased and sustained environmental protection, high labor standards, decent wages and greater democracy.

Finally, we should work to establish an ongoing dialogue with all constituencies including labor and environmental groups, to better involve them in the policy process.

We must be sensitive to, and willing to address genuine domestic fears about the impact of globalization. We would ignore at our peril the economic and political disruptions as well as popular backlashes caused by free trade and open markets. As we work our way out of the current financial crisis, mitigating these hardships while ensuring that all peoples share in globalization’s benefits must be our abiding and motivating goal.

Thank you.