Social and Material Foundations of Wellbeing: Beyond the Neoliberal Model of Development

ABSTRACT

By unleashing capitalist social relations on a planet-wide scale, the "neoliberal model of development” is destroying the possibility of what the young Marx (Economic and philosophical manuscripts. In K. Marx. Early writings. Penguin in association with New Left Review, 1975) called humanity's "species [well]being” defined as material security, inclusive solidarity and creative autonomy. The first part of the chapter, in opposition to Althusser's anti-humanist dismissal of the early work, builds on young Marx's alienation-based account of how capitalist production relations undermine humanity's wellbeing. The second part demonstrates how capitalism's contemporary neoliberal form further undermines the foundations of human wellbeing. Building critically beyond Marx's nineteenth-century critique, this chapter argues that the competitive, exclusive, precarious, individualistic, ecologically unsustainable, and Sociology, COVID-19 -ridden contemporary neoliberal-led capitalist world is under­mining the social and material foundations of humanity's wellbeing con­sidered as "planetary wellbeing” (Antó et al., Sustainability 133372, 2021). The concluding discussion sketches elements of a democratic socialist alternative to both the neoliberal model of development and to authoritarian socialism that can deliver planetary wellbeing. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2022