Reforming the World: George Soros, Global Capitalism and the Philanthropic Management of the Social Sciences1

Philanthropic practices allow the dominant classes to generate knowledge about society and regulatory prescriptions, in particular by promoting the development of the social sciences. The 19th century industrialists had often invested their resources in the definition and treatment of relevant social issues, in order to institutionalize the new form of capitalism they represented. In the late 20th century, the new transnationalized social strata representing the hegemony of financial capital, whose power depends on their capacity to perpetuate the new socioeconomic order, used similar strategies. Philanthropy offers a privileged strategy for generating new forms of “policy knowledge” convergent with the interests of their promoters. Focusing on the Central European University founded by the financier George Soros, the paper argues that, far from seeking to curb the excesses of economic globalization, such efforts are actually institutionalizing it by laying the foundations of its own regulatory order.