This chapter seeks to progress the argument that structural harms are preventable through further articulating and elaborating the idea that these harms result from ‘alterable’ social relations. This argument is forged from a position that there are no ‘natural’ rates of harms within society, and that the experience of harms will vary according to the mode of social organisation that takes hold within a given society. Therefore, if it is possible for nation states to ‘organise out’ or to reduce harms in comparison to other similarly placed societies, one might conclude that harm is not inevitable; rather, it is a product of ‘alterable’ social relations. As a starting point for this discussion, it is argued that the organising features of capitalism are inherently harmful, so that the harms that different nation states produce will only vary in extent but not in their nature – indeed, the eradication of harms resulting from capitalist exploitation, alienation and commodification are only possible through alternative social forms. In part, the variation of harms identified between nation states may be explained by the ‘embedded’ liberal forms that developed in many advanced industrialised nations, following the initial and particularly injurious phases of capitalism, and have served to ameliorate the more harmful aspects of capitalism that result from its ‘purest’ laissez-faire form. Therefore, the variation in the experience and extent of harm between nation states will depend on the ‘embedded’ liberal forms that have developed and the nature of the form that harm reduction systems take. With the advent of a variety of neoliberal projects, it is argued that the generative contexts of harm that neoliberal policies create, as well as the dismantling of harm reduction systems, serve to promote more harmful social forms. It is proposed that the impact of neoliberalism has not been uniform, with some formations more receptive to the reforming strategies of these projects. The chapter concludes by developing a ‘typology’ that seeks to categorise nation states according to the harm reduction characteristics they demonstrate – so that these theoretical arguments may be explored further in the empirical analyses presented in later chapters.

Harmful features of capitalism

A key theme of the book explores varieties of capitalist form and contrasts the harms they produce.