Rescuing social capital from social democracy - John Meadowcroft

Many of those on the left of the political debate regard social capital as the 'magic bullet', arguing that intervention to provide social capital will allow socialist policies to succeed. Their argument is comprehensively undermined in this Hobart Paper, which shows that social capital itself is a product of the market and cannot be created by politicians. Attempts by politicians to create social capital through 'cultural planning' are subject to exactly the same problems that lead their interventions in economic systems to fail. In order for democratic systems to work, they must be limited to co-ordinating certain core political functions. Markets will generate attributes such as trust and non-discrimination, which are necessary to oil the wheels of both commercial and political society.