Valdai Club

Attempts to find one's own path to social harmony and one's own foundations for internal social stability should not ignore or deny the influence of technological and economic development on them. The essence of social sustainability is people and their well-being, which presupposes a certain standard of living that provides opportunities for not only basic but also extended consumption, as well as its intangible components - comfortable living conditions, writes Oksana Sinyavskaya. This article was prepared for the Valdai Club round table “Homo Perplexus: How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Change”, which took place on June 17, 2025 in St. Petersburg.

The concept of social harmony, stated in the title of the round table session, refers us to the ideas of ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy. In modern discourse, the concepts of well-being, quality of life, and sustainable development most closely reflect it. The very concept of harmony presupposes a certain balance between the individual and the collective - the interests of individuals and social groups with the interests of the state; the interrelationship and consistency of various areas of development: economic and technological as well as social and environmental.

A state of social harmony, while certainly attractive, is hardly achievable as a development goal. Rather, it can be considered as a certain vector of development, a dynamic equilibrium that describes the ability of society to avoid serious conflicts in the context of various interests of its constituent groups, the ability of the state to withstand serious shocks and develop in the context of various external challenges and internal restrictions.

Here it is very important to remember the interrelationship of various elements and levels of development. This statement seems trivial, but in recent years we can see many examples where this is forgotten. For example, in different countries, politicians often condemn people who do not take into account the interests of the state and complain about their “wrong” behaviour, forgetting that people are not pawns on a chessboard, and their actions are influenced by many factors of the environment in which they live.

Much of what is causing concern today - the high speed of technological change, economic volatility, the precariousness of employment, growing inequality, instability of marriage and partnership relations and the "pandemic" of loneliness, high consumer standards and people's focus on consumption - was discussed by social philosophers and sociologists back in the late 1980s and 1990s as features and consequences of the modern stage of capitalism. Its characteristic expansion of economic relations and selfish economic interests in all spheres of life, the increased instability and precariousness of employment and life in general, and the individualisation of social problems, have more or less led to the changes in social relations that we are observing. 

What has happened over the past decades - in the sphere of employment, social inequality, and the erosion of social protection, can be, to paraphrase the well-known definition of a revolutionary situation, described as "the upper classes did not want, and the lower classes could not" to change a situation that no longer suited them. The result of the tension accumulating in this connection has been, on the one hand, the growing popularity of right-wing parties, and on the other, attempts to replace domestic problems with foreign policy decisions.

And yet, the events of recent years, at least those related to the sphere of international relations, not only reflect the intensification of the crisis, the signs of which could have been predicted several decades ago, but are also becoming transformative: through the collapse of certain illusions about a common future, they form a break with the social reality of recent decades. In the trajectories of the development of countries, there is less predetermination, more variability, but at the same time - internal tension.

Attempts to find one's own path to social harmony and one's own foundations for internal social stability should not ignore or deny the influence of technological and economic development on them. The essence of social sustainability is people and their well-being, which presupposes a certain standard of living that provides opportunities for not only basic but also extended consumption (that is, the kind associated with recreation, travel, spending on education and health - yours and that of your family members), as well as its intangible components - comfortable living conditions, safety, quality housing, good medicine, and expanding opportunities for development and self-realisation. It is important that social sustainability is not only about the ability to overcome poverty, but also, to a greater extent, about the conditions in the country for the middle class as the most active part of society.

At the same time, discrediting the idea of ​​universality and the linearity of social development, recognising the possibility of coexistence of various historically and culturally determined models of development, undoubtedly opens up new opportunities for finding the foundations of social sustainability. An important factor here is the emergence of social groups whose position in society is determined not so much by their capabilities as consumers, but by their contribution to the security of the society.

The development of solutions that will ultimately contribute to greater social harmony or social sustainability can occur at different levels and under the influence of various forces. For example, in the relatively recent past in Western countries, an important tool for achieving social harmony was the emergence of welfare states or social states. In the extensive literature discussing the factors which allowed for their emergence, there are several competing explanatory models: some say that such states became a response to social problems generated by industrialisation, and were made possible due to successful economic development. The second group draws attention to the important role of political factors: the unification of the efforts of economically disenfranchised strata of society (workers, small farmers), who, through the creation of trade unions and voting for left-wing parties, were able to gain more political power and adopt social programs that guarantee their freedom from the negative influence of the market. The third group insists that the emergence of social programs largely met the interests of capital, allowing for an increase in labour productivity, and the state acted in their interests, ensuring the stability of power, including in the context of constant competition with socialist countries.

How does this relate to the processes that we are witnessing now? Where can we look for sources of possible movement toward social sustainability? Here are three examples.

The first is that solutions to social problems are possible within the context of market mechanisms and technologies: a platform economy that connects the demand for labour across borders, generated by the largest platforms, both global and local (operating within one state), and the supply of labour, which can now be anywhere in the world where there is Internet access (the leaders in the global labour market are India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Russia), is a kind of ultimate embodiment of modern capitalism, allowing us to overcome the boundaries of place and time. Like any other phenomenon, this has a dual nature, but it is more often criticised. Indeed, on the one hand, it takes labour relations out of the space of state regulation, essentially re-commodifying human labour, and this rightly raises concerns among national and international state players. But it is important to note that, on the other hand, it opens up new opportunities for sustainable development. After all, thanks to platforms, access to income is opened up for people who have problems with employment or decent earnings in local labour markets without the need to move or break existing social relations, and mitigates the difficulties associated with the integration of migrants into the population. In fact, technological development, which is often associated with negative social effects, creates a soft way to overcome existing territorial inequality and reduce social tension.

The second example allows us to see signs of the transformation of the grounds for solidarity in the confrontation with the individualisation of life and multiple risks. On the one hand, we are all witnessing the disappearance of class solidarity in its classic industrial version; new groups of the poor and vulnerable, as a rule, do not see the commonality of the reasons for their situation and instead compete for the recognition of their uniqueness and resources. On the other hand, the need for a sense of community and solidarity, immanent in people and intensifying during periods of instability, is manifested in the expansion of situational solidarity. People come together not because of kinship or class solidarity, but because of common problems or shared values, to solve problems in their daily lives together. Social media facilitate this situational solidarity.

The third example is elite paternalism as a way to protect people's well-being and reduce social tension. In recent decades, we have witnessed how many social initiatives are “dressed” in economic clothes: here we have anti-crisis social support as an instrument of counter-cyclical macroeconomic policy, as well as “social investments”, and “social bonds”. Moreover, the countries in which such a construction of social policy developed most actively turned out to be among those that managed to maintain a sufficient level of social spending and prevent failures in the standard of living of the population. Here, too, on the one hand, one can lament the fact that the ideas of justice and support for the “outcasts” have clearly disappeared from the narratives of social policy. But on the other hand, the result is the increased protection of citizens from new risks of modern societies, an increase in their well-being, and this is better than the shifting of responsibility for well-being onto the citizens themselves, which was fashionable to talk about a couple of decades ago.