대처정부의 ‘대중 자본주의’와 반(反)기업 정서의 극복
‘Popular Capitalism’ and the Overcoming of Anti-business Sentiment under the Thatcher Government
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초록
영국은 인류 역사상 처음으로 자본주의를 발달시키고 산업혁명을 수행한 나라이지만 돈 버는 일이 ‘어쩐지 떳떳하지 못하다’고 믿는 풍조가 18세기 이래 퍼져있었으며 19세기 후반 특히 강한 반(反)기업적인 정서가 감지되었다. 1979년에 집권한 대처정부는, 기업에 대해 적대적 태도를 취하는 국민 대중에게 시장경제의 작동 방법을 제대로 이해시키고 자본주의 발달에 관심을 갖게 하려고 노력했다. 즉, 부자만이 아니라 국민 모두가 자본주의의 결실을 향유할 수 있는 ‘대중 자본주의’가 영국 사회의 이상으로 제시되었다. 특히 공기업의 민영화 정책은 대중의 반기업적 태도를 완화시키고 자본주의를 더욱 인기 있는 것으로 만드는 효과를 낳았다. 대처의 궁극적 목표는 국가와 사회에 의존하는 영국인들의 정신 상태를 개조하여 독립적이고 자기 자신에 책임지는 개인을 만들어낸다고 하는, 빅토리아 시대의 가치를 연상시키는 다소 추상적이고 장기적인 것이었다. 비대해진 국가를 축소하고 개인을 해방시키려 한 대처의 중점 사업은 대중의 확고한 지지를 얻었다. 최근 미국발 경제위기로 인해 자유시장 경제의 종말을 주장하는 의견들이 대두하였지만, 장기적으로 볼 때 대처의 처방은 여전히 유효하다고 생각된다. 가장 효율적으로 경제를 이끌어가는 것은 국가가 아니라 개인이기 때문이다.
Abstract
Britain was the nation that developed capitalism and launched the Industrial Revolution for the first time in human history. Yet the tendency to view making money as ‘not quite nice’ spread since the 18th century, and particularly strong anti-industrial and anti-business sentiments emerged in the late 19th century. The Thatcher government launched in 1979 determined that cultural antipathy to entrepreneurial capitalism was the fundamental explanation for Britain’s poor economic performance. They attributed the anti-business attitude of the British people to their ignorance of the ways in which the capitalist economy operated. The solution was, according to the Government, to change attitude towards the market economy by teaching its merits and by engaging people in it. Margaret Thatcher proposed ‘popular capitalism’ that would benefit not merely a minority of the population but the entire nation. The most popular policy of the Thatcher Government took a form of selling public houses to tenants and making a majority of the population home owners. The second popular policy was privatization of nationalized industries. Its function was two fold: first, making ordinary people motivated stock holders with interest in the capitalist economy, and second, curtailing the functions of government. Privatization of such nationalized firms as the British Telecom received enormous support and indeed contributed to modify the anti-business sentiment. However, the ultimate goal of Margaret Thatcher was a change of heart and soul of the British people, which was moral rather than economic, and long-term and idealistic rather than short-term and mundane. The objective Thatcher had set was to destroy the dependency culture that had dominated British society since 1945 under mixed economy and the welfare state and to restore the British people self-reliance by invoking such Victorian values as self-help. It appears that the British people experiencing the Thatcher period accepted the free market economy and modified their anti-business attitude to a considerable degree. Yet they did not respond to the appeal of ‘going back to the Victorian values’ as enthusiastically as Thatcher would have desired. It is important to emphasize, however, that Thatcher’s effort to minimize the functions of the state left a long-lasting impact. Even if recent economic crisis stemming from the USA has challenged the claims of the free market economy, it is fair to add that Thatcher’s diagnosis on the harm of state intervention in the economy remains valid in the long run. It is, after all, not the state but the individual that runs the economy with the greatest efficiency.
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