O capítulo 9, "The intellectual crisis of capitalism", do livro de Phil Mullan "Creative Destruction", explora como a mudança na atitude das elites ocidentais contribuiu para aquilo a que o autor chama de "Longa Depressão". Após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, o optimismo em relação ao capitalismo diminuiu à medida que as elites começaram a questionar a sua capacidade de gerar progresso. Esse pessimismo foi agravado pelo colapso da União Soviética, que deixou o capitalismo sem um inimigo claro e exposto às suas próprias falhas.
"The reorientation of state institutions from growth to stabilisation is mostly implicit. Governments continue to pay lip service to the objective of economic growth. Doubtless many establishment politicians would like to have both stability and a bit more growth. However, there is a big gap between this latent attachment to growth and embracing the level of social dislocation needed to bring it about. In practice the policy inclination towards stability is at the expense of sustained growth. Economic dynamism is not restorable except through disruptive destabilisation involving the widespread destruction of old capital values.
The precondition for escaping the Long Depression is to challenge and overturn the conservator activities of the state."
Os governos têm dado prioridade à estabilidade em detrimento do crescimento económico, evitando as políticas disruptivas que seriam necessárias para revitalizar a economia. Este foco conservador limita o progresso e reflecte uma perda de confiança na capacidade humana de liderar transformações significativas.
"Uncertainty is now widely regarded as a constraint on the economy. In fact, the perception of uncertainty is more important for what it says about the intellectual climate than for the economic one.
Viewing uncertainty as detrimental represents a turnabout in social attitudes. For most of the history of capitalism, uncertainty was regarded neutrally or positively: it was sometimes embraced as an opportunity for gain and advancement. Businesses in the past were not deterred by future uncertainty, but accumulated capital to secure increased means to control the future. The classic financial investment advice to 'buy when there's blood in the streets' revelled in periods of acute political uncertainty.' In contrast, it is now a cliché to say that business and markets 'hate uncertainty'.
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Business leaders, as well as many pundits, attribute uncertainty as the reason for putting off investment decisions. A frequent survey finding is that business is not investing because of its lack of confidence in the face of an uncertain future.
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As Mazzucato later put it, echoing his sentiments: 'Without uncertainty there would be no point in even trying to form competitive strategies.'& If everything were predictable there would be a limited possibility of gaining competitive advantage. Uncertainty provides the terrain for individual businesses to make superprofits, when they risk their capital to get ahead of competitors by deploying the latest innovations and cutting prices.
Uncertainty was for a long time recognised as the basis for markets to function. This refutes the assertion that markets 'hate uncertainty': they need uncertainty."
A incerteza, que historicamente era vista como uma oportunidade para inovação e lucro, passou a ser percebida como um obstáculo às decisões económicas. Esta mudança espelha um desconforto generalizado da sociedade com o risco e a transformação.
"Today's greater anxieties about uncertainty are driven by a loss of belief in the benefits of progress and of humanity's ability to make a better world.
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The humanist pursuit of progress is now seen by many across the political spectrum to cause problems and, sometimes, to be downright destructive: socially, environmentally, materially, and morally.
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As a society we have become reluctant to validate and promote the active, positive side of humanity to change things for the better. This represents a turn against a central Enlightenment perspective: seeing man as rationally capable of making a better future. Instead individuals these days are frequently presented as weak, sometimes irrational, and often requiring restraint from above. The humanist essence of Enlightenment thought has lost its appeal. The potential for meaningful, purposeful human intervention is frequently doubted and questioned.
Hence, the disposition for extending regulation, not just of the economy, but of all areas of human life."
A crítica crescente ao empreendedorismo tradicional e à tomada de riscos, frequentemente rotulados como irresponsáveis ou perigosos, reforça a predominância da regulamentação e da gestão de riscos. Estas abordagens sufocam o dinamismo essencial ao crescimento económico.
Culturalmente, há um declínio na crença nos benefícios do progresso, o que reduz as aspirações e alimenta expectativas mais baixas. A sociedade tende a considerar a mudança conduzida por humanos como problemática, incentivando o excesso de regulamentação e uma visão pessimista das capacidades humanas.
Este desconforto com a mudança contradiz a necessidade do capitalismo por "destruição criativa" - o processo de eliminar sistemas obsoletos para abrir espaço à inovação. A resistência das elites e dos decisores políticos às disrupções necessárias perpetua a estagnação económica. Por fim, o receio do desconhecido desincentiva investimentos ousados, reforçando um ciclo de baixo crescimento. O espírito cultural atual privilegia a conservação em vez da transformação, dificultando a revitalização económica.
"The enlightened humanist view of the relationship between the state and the public has become reversed. The state is no longer an institution that needs to be controlled by people. It is now the state's role to judge what is good for people, to raise public awareness, and to socially engineer people to do the right thing'. The earlier emphasis on the importance of human agency has been replaced by an emphasis on human vulnerability and powerlessness. And because people are so powerless and vulnerable this is seen to justify that we need the support of public institutions.
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Just as the ascent of Enlightenment ideas informed the economic advances of industrial capitalism, so the reverse applies with today's slow-drift capitalism. Discomfort with change is antithetical to the business dynamism that the market system relies on to move forward. Cultural uneasiness with disruptive change runs counter to the creative destruction that is essential for capitalist growth and economic progress. This discomfiture informs the mainstream political inclination for stability over disorder."
A incapacidade das elites de articular uma visão positiva para o futuro do capitalismo prejudicou a sua capacidade de implementar as reformas necessárias para restaurar o crescimento económico. Em vez de abraçar a destruição criativa como um motor de progresso, as elites tornaram-se mais avessas ao risco e mais focadas na preservação do status quo.
Em suma, o capítulo 9 argumenta que a crise intelectual do capitalismo é um factor fundamental na perpetuação da Longa Depressão. A falta de fé no capitalismo e o medo da mudança criaram um ambiente onde a estagnação económica se tornou a norma.
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