Presentation short abstract

Applying Veblen’s institutional theory to Korean food system, this paper addresses the structuration and long-term crisis of the capitalist food system. It posits basic income as a short-term self-organising trigger, valid only if linked to his radical theory looking beyond such capitalistic system.

Presentation long abstract

In contemporary-capitalism, deepening various socioeconomic inequalities, it is inevitable to make major adaptations. The fundamental challenge must be institutional: the established-institutions are inadequate, so a greater period-of-experimentation like basic-income is necessary. This is why we should look at the basics of institutional theory especially of Marxist traditions, outside the ruling neoliberal-consensus. However, this literature has weakly connected to radical-theory, particularly of Veblen, on the issue: whether can a basic-income truly act as a trigger to self-organise a new resilient system of food community? This question leads to sub-questions: (1) how the capitalist food-system gets to organisation-structuration in real-world (objectivity); (2) what is its ‘truly deeper-originator’ of crisis; (3) how (whether) can a basic-income (truly) act as a trigger to self-organise, in philosophical-value (i.e. justice) and history; (4) if untruly, what the normative-solutions are, between reformism-vs-radicalism. This paper, defining ‘self-organisation’ as an ‘institutional-process-of-change-with-struggles to reorganise-reconstitute-restructurate an order-out-of-disorder,’ aims to critically-reflect on these questions with the institutional-matrix of self-organisation structurated: market vs. non-market; pro-capital vs. anti-capital, through the application of a deeper-understanding of radical-theory of Veblen into an empirical-case-study (with quantitative-data-analysis) on Korea’s food-system during the last-decade. By doing so, this paper argues: beyond the superficial-issues of market-vs-State, and Keynesianism-vs-neoliberalism, there are deeper-issues ‘structuration’ within capitalist food-system in Korea while a basic-income can act as a trigger to self-organisation which most institutional theory in Marxist traditions have well-addressed. However, these are in turn valid only when truly-connected to radical-theory, particularly of Veblen, which connects ‘basic-income’ with long-term vision, looking beyond such capitalistic-system.