Crisis Of Capitalism Research Articles

The interpretation of the cyclical history of capitalism. A comparison between the neo-Schumpeterian and social structure of accumulation (SSA) approaches in light of the long wave theory

Long waves research is currently dominated by two main approaches: a “neo-Schumpeterian” and a “social structure of accumulation” paradigm. While the former fits into evolutionary economics, the latter is rooted within Marxian and Keynesian macroeconomics. Although each research school continues with its own approach, without knowing what the other school has learned, a similarity between the two is inevitable, since long wave (or cycles) theory is a common framework for research. This makes both theories well-suited to help in understanding the factors underlying the financial and economic crises of capitalism. The primary purpose of this paper is to compare their respective accounts in this field, from a theoretical and analytical perspective, concluding that, despite the different premises and approaches of both schools, the resulting periodizations of capitalism elaborated by each theory are quite similar.

Fim de Ciclo dos Governos “Pós-neoliberais” na América Latina?

Há menos de duas décadas, a América Latina experimentava um intenso momento de lutas, ilustrando transformações no cenário político regional. A “onda rosa” latino-americana manifesta-se fundamentalmente com o triunfo eleitoral de Chávez na Venezuela em 1998, o fracasso da ALCA, a crise capitalista mundial em 2008 e as lutas por nacionalizações na Bolívia e Equador, seguidas pela ascensão presidencial de Evo Morales e Rafael Correa, respectivamente, que sinalizavam relevantes mudanças na geopolítica latino-americana. São governos que articularam institucionalidade e pautas nacional-populares num projeto de caráter heterogêneo e continental, que reascenderam na dimensão política uma tentativa de ruptura com as estruturas de poder e cultura antidemocrática que minavam a credibilidade das instituições políticas locais, trazendo a substituição das constituições em vigor e renovação dos quadros políticos dirigentes. Este estudo foca no caso boliviano, que vivencia o agravamento das críticas em relação às medidas econômicas baseadas na exportação de commodities, considerando o giro à direita na superestrutura política do subcontinente. Problematizaremos sobre as possibilidades de continuidade do novo bloco no poder inaugurado com o Estado Plurinacional da Bolívia.

From the Demise of Social Democracy to the ‘End of Capitalism’

Abstract Over the past decade, Wolfgang Streeck has emerged as one of the most prominent voices in the debate on the crisis of democratic capitalism. This article provides a critical appraisal of Streeck’s recent writings in light of his wider intellectual trajectory, tracing the evolutions and continuities in his work over time; highlighting its important contributions to our understanding of the present crisis; and presenting a fourfold critique of his latest book on the end of capitalism. The main argument is that Streeck’s work, while very valuable for its elucidation of the dynamics behind the demise of social democracy, ultimately remains plagued by a corporatist residue that keeps him from drawing his increasingly radical critique of capitalism to its logical conclusions. As a result, Streeck’s embrace of an exceedingly catastrophist worldview, devoid of any emancipatory potential, has tempted him to veer dangerously close to the welfare chauvinism of the nationalist right.

On Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Poetic Epistemology

ABSTRACTAs one response to the secular crisis of capitalism, higher education is being proletarianised. Its academics and students are shorn of autonomy beyond the sale of their labour-power. One heuristic for analysing this response is authoritarian neoliberalism, imposed as a means of enacting disciplinary practices in the name of the market with an anti-democratic rationale. This has a distinctly technocratic focus, rooted in techniques of performativity, including audits and assessments of teaching, research and scholarship, grounded in productivity, the management of time and value-creation. However, there are a range of intersectional and geographical responses to such an imposition, through which it is possible to describe alternatives to these architectures of subsumption. In particular, a second heuristic emerges which challenges the restructuring of the University in the Global North, erupting from struggles for decolonisation. Here, Audre Lorde’s invocation to an integrated, poetic existence that situates bodies in places, and respects feelings and emotions as the site of epistemological development and understanding, underpins the possibility for dismantling hegemonic knowledge production. The article examines whether humanist narratives of solidarity, in particular from marginalised voices, might help academics and students to analyse their alienated labour and to imagine that another world is possible.

European integration and the paradoxical answers of national trade unions to the crises of capitalism

ABSTRACT In their introduction to this special issue, the editors mentioned that the commodification of labour is one important feature of capitalism. Hence, the reaction of the principal organizations that represent and defend labour needed to be explored. This article focuses on Belgian and German trade unions’ apprehensions of European integration during the 1970s and sheds lights on two major findings. First, trade unions’ perceptions of European integration were very clearly influenced by the condition and the evolution of capitalism. National trade unions observed that the transformations of capitalism could not be adequately addressed by national polities and industrial relations structures. Hence, trade unions heavily insisted on the necessity of political and trade unionist European cooperation. The latter is considered a necessary intermediary to allow labour to counterbalance the new forms of capital and to regain the influence it lost nationally. The second finding is that there existed a huge paradox between this enduring rhetoric of the necessity of European integration and the willingness of trade unions to give up some of their national prerogatives. The evolving forms of capitalism made it imperative to cooperate more at the supranational level but trade unions remained very much reluctant national institutions.

The European Commission facing crisis: social, neo-mercantilist and market-oriented approaches (1967–85)

ABSTRACT The European Commission of the European Economic Community (EEC) has occupied a major role in the organization of European economic cooperation, but it has often been overlooked by historians. Drawing on recent literature as well as on an exploration of the Commission’s archives (and the national archives of the three largest member-states), this contribution aims to examine the three visions developed by this institution to tackle the crisis of capitalism between 1967 and 1985. Some commissioners, such as the Dutchman Hendrikus (Henk) Vredeling, fostered a social agenda, aimed at favouring the redistribution of wealth in Europe, and the protection of the weakest. Others, such as the Belgian Etienne Davignon, defended a neo-mercantilist approach in order to maximize European industrial output. And still others, such as the Frenchman Raymond Barre, defended market-based solutions. In 1985, Delors became President of the Commission and put forward a new synthesis of those three approaches. With this threefold structure (social, neo-mercantilist and market-oriented), this article advances three claims. First, it will demonstrate that the Commission was not a monolithic actor, but rather divided along many competing lines. Second, it will show that some prominent commissioners developed their own economic agenda, which was sometimes separate from that of their country’s governments. Third, this article will circumvent the current dominant teleological narrative, which ascribes a neoliberal streak to the entire history of European integration, and accomplish this by showing that the Treaty of Rome may be interpreted in varied ways. The neo-mercantilist category is useful to show that many actors were unconvinced by market-based regulations, without being socialists or social democrats. In sum, this contribution aims to explore the full range of economic solutions envisioned to overcome economic crises.

Savage Inequalities: Capitalist Crisis and Surplus Humanity

ABSTRACTThe escalation of worldwide inequalities reflects a crisis of global capitalism that is as much structural, one of over-accumulation, as it is political, one of hegemony. This article explores the current restructuring of global capitalism and global labor. Capitalist globalization has undermined earlier redistributive arrangements at the level of the nation-state, unleashing unprecedented global social polarization and also aggravating over-accumulation pressures. The transnational capitalist class has turned to several mechanisms to sustain accumulation in the face of stagnation: financial speculation, the pillaging of public finance, and militarized accumulation. Digitalization is driving new world capitalist restructuring that is resulting in increased precariatization and the expansion of surplus labor or surplus humanity. This precariatization includes cognitive workers who are atomized and isolated as the labor process has become individualized, which poses new challenges for working-class consciousness and solidarity among multilayered members of the global working class. The crisis poses a danger of twenty-first century fascism and a global police state but also new possibilities for emancipatory projects. An emancipatory project must bring together surplus humanity and its struggles in the margins and at points of social reproduction with workers inserted into the circuits of global capital under precarious work arrangements.

Crisis, institutional innovation and change management: Thoughts from the Greek case

Abstract. This article explores how the current global crisis and restructuring of global capitalism is related to innovation, in broad terms, and change management. The aim is to understand this relation by first presenting a synopsis of the approaches to the crisis of the Greek socioeconomic system, second focusing on the concept of innovation in institutional terms, and third examining the change management mechanisms that seem useful for the articulation of public economic policy in Stra.Tech.Man terms (synthesis of Strategy-Technology-Management). We suggest that to overcome actual structural crises -such as the Greek socioeconomic crisis- the implementation and valorization of well balanced and effectively implemented sets of institutional innovations is crucial, provided that integrated public policy change management mechanisms are in place. Keywords. Globalization restructuring, Greek crisis, Structural socioeconomic crisis, Institutional innovation, Public policy reform, Change management, Stra.Tech.Man analysis. JEL. O10, B52, O31.

The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism

The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism

Zombies, Migrants, and Queers: Race and Crisis Capitalism in Pop Culture

Zombies, Migrants, and Queers: Race and Crisis Capitalism in Pop Culture

Making space for hope

This volume is a special issue with contributions that stem from the collaborations of the 2018 AESOP PhD workshop, held 5-8 July at Tjärö island, Sweden. The overarching aim of the workshop was to establish inclusive spaces for dialogue and collaboration between PhD students across countries and continents on issues that pertained to the AESOP’s 2018 congress theme “Making space for hope”. Furthermore the PhD students got the chance to learn from the invited mentors with long experience from the academic planning field. The theme drew from a recognition of the severe challenges facing the world at present, for example, challenges coupled with the climate crisis, growing social inequalities, rapid population growth in urban regions and de-population trends in peripheral regions. Planning, considered broadly, is an activity that is striving to create better futures. It is an activity for maintaining predictability and stability whilst responding to societal challenges. Yet, it has been pointed out by policy makers as well as by researchers that planning is unable to effectively respond to these challenges with its traditional sets of approaches, calling instead for new and innovative planning methods. But this conference call asks not only for innovative approaches, but also for a more “hopeful research agenda” that challenges the “dystopian” views on the world that is represented in much research, in which cities are “...depicted as dark and dysfunctional places wrecked by endless capitalist crises and social-ecological catastrophes” (Prakas, 2010 in Pow, 2015, p. 464; cf. Torisson, 2015). The AESOP congress local organising committee argued that: “...planning should contribute to making space for hope [and we] need to go beyond mainstream politics, negation and cynicism. Instead planning debates ought to “excavate” the hidden and submerged desires for better future by exploring hope and optimism” (AESOP bid 2015, emphasis added).

Kapitalismuskritik und Krisendiskurs

Ever since the origin of the global economic crisis 2007 ff., the political debate, along with the contemporary analysis of society, centre around an ongoing discourse that is deeply affected by said crisis. It is within this context that the critique of capitalism saw a renaissance in social studies. This paper suggests to not look separately at the economic, ecological and political crises, but rather regard them as a sign that points out the proneness to crisis of capitalism as society’s regulative framework. At first, we will be covering texts that deal with the relation between the capitalistic economy and politics. Afterwards, the topics of financialisation, inequality, (post-)growth and democracy will be discussed. Our aim here is to show that this newly arisen critique of capitalism is, and has to be, the very core of a modern critique of society itself.

From Receding to Reseeding: Industrial Policy, Governance Strategies and Neoliberal Resilience in Post-crisis Britain

ABSTRACTIndustrial policy has been on the agenda of British policy elites since the 2008 financial crisis, particularly since Theresa May became Prime Minister in 2016. This has been seen as a challenge to pre-crisis norms of economic governance associated with neoliberalism. This article explores key aspects of industrial policy development in post-crisis Britain – new forms of vertical support for industry, local government reform, and the public financing of private sector R&D – in order to sketch a new understanding of political and ideological change. It focuses on the institutional mechanisms through which industrial strategy will ostensibly be implemented, including subnational and private spheres of governance. The article argues that recent industrial policy developments do not represent the receding of neoliberalism, but rather have provided opportunities for the reseeding of neoliberal norms in British economic statecraft. The strategy has reinforced forms of state machinery through which pre-crisis elite practice can be maintained and legitimated. By demonstrating that the apparent revival of state intervention in the wake of capitalist crises must not be assumed automatically to challenge pre-crisis economic orders, and highlighting the crucial role of exigent political circumstances, the article makes an important contribution to the literature on neoliberal resilience.

Making Space in Critical Environmental Geography for the Metabolic Rift

Marx’s concept of metabolic rift has emerged as a prominent theoretical framework with which to explain the socioecological crises of capitalism. Yet, despite its relevance to key concerns in critical environmental geography, it has remained marginal within the field. Here we address this by distinguishing between metabolic rift theory and two predominant Marxist approaches in environmental geography: the production-of-nature thesis and posthumanist world ecology. We follow this comparative assessment with a detailed analysis of metabolic rift theory and a brief overview of how the concept relates to key concerns in critical environmental geography. We conclude by discussing how a stronger engagement with the metabolic rift approach could benefit the field. Key Words: Marxism, materialist dialectic, nature–society relationship, production of nature, world ecology hybridism.

Young people and the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of ‘enterprise’: stories from a ‘Rust Belt’ city

ABSTRACTIn the ‘Rust Belt’ city of Geelong in Victoria, Australia, discourses of young people’s enterprise and innovation provide a counter-narrative to the prevailing material and symbolic consequences of industrial decline, job losses, and the growing insecurity of employment and income. GT Magazine is a weekly, large circulation magazine in Geelong with a significant focus on the activities and aspirations of enterprising young people. In this paper, we examine, by utilising techniques of content analysis and discourse analysis, the particular ways in which young people’s innovation and enterprise are framed and enacted in GT Magazine. Our analysis reveals that ‘youth’ and ‘enterprise’ are, in GT Magazine, given an embodied form that is powerfully marked by aestheticised, normalised enactments of gender, class and race. In doing this work, we make productive contributions to three key themes in contemporary youth studies: new work orders and the youthful self as enterprise; the gendered and aesthetic dimensions of affective labour in these new work orders; and the emerging spatial turn to examine young people's embodied, place-based experiences of employment and enterprise. We seek to make problematic the sense that solutions to multiple disruptions and crises in capitalism and the environment are to be found in young people’s enterprise. Particularly when that enterprise is given form in ways that are aestheticised, gendered, classed, individualised and responsibilised.

Capital Controls and Currency Crises Revisited: A Political Economy Analysis

Recent empirical studies have reached mixed results on the effects of capital controls and currency crises. We argue that this relationship is likely to depend both on whether controls are primarily on capital inflows or outflows and on the stability of the government. Using the disaggregated data on capital controls using the newly developed disaggregated data on capital controls for a sample of 56 countries for a sample of 56 countries over the period 1995–2015, we discover some interesting patterns on capital controls and political stability that there is a vanishing middle in terms of the extent of controls and that the use of controls is positively associated with government stability. We also find strong support for the proposition that controls on outflows are positively associated with the probability of currency crises especially under less stable governments, while controls on capital inflows reduce the risks of currency crises, especially for more stable governments.

The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis of Capitalism

Es posible pensar la crisis económica actual como el resultado de una matriz multidimensional de causas sistémicas que operan de acuerdo con un número finito de dinámicas estructurales y de variables geoeconómicas y geopolíticas cuyas lógicas definen la reproducción de la estructura social de acuerdo con las pautas de comportamiento generadas por el capitalismo histórico o tan solo debemos interpretarla como el desajuste parcial de un sistema económico que carece de historia y racionalidad sistémica y cuya lógica únicamente puede reconstruirse de acuerdo con el concepto neoclásico y neoliberal de mercado y con el modelo de elección racional del homo economicus? ¿Es la crisis que arranca de 2008-2009 una crisis antropológica y ética, una crisis del mercado y de sus modos de organización de la competencia, una crisis de los modelos de regulación y de governance inspirados por el frame neoliberal impuesto durante las últimas décadas o estamos ante una crisis del capitalismo concebido como sistema de reproducción social y de los equilibrios de su último ciclo sistémico de acumulación estadounidense así como de las relaciones de fuerza existentes entre los sujetos colectivos que se involucran en los procesos de producción y de reproducción social y en la traducción política de sus necesidades en los ámbitos nacionales, regionales y globales? ¿Es posible ofrecer una interpretación de la crisis de acuerdo con el concepto estándar de racionalidad económica que inspira los paradigmas interpretativos predominantes en las ciencias sociales y humanas contemporáneas o es preciso recurrir simultáneamente a una teoría coherente del capitalismo como sistema social e histórico y a una teoría del poder inherente al mismo que nos ofrezcan herramientas para comprender el ciclo integral de la dominación y la explotación social, política, económica y cultural que definen los contornos de un momento histórico determinado?

Life Stories of the Economic Recession: Biographical Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) and the Lived Experience of Disability in Times of Austerity

In 2008, Ireland was impacted by global economic recession. Recession in Ireland was exceptionally severe and contrasted starkly to extraordinary prosperity immediately before. A comprehensive field of statistical data has since emerged indicating that children were particularly socio-economically impacted. Within this, children with disability and their families were shown to have been at heightened risk. This paper presents research findings of a Biographical Narrative Interpretative Method that addressed the lack of qualitative research on the lived experience of disability in Ireland during recession. It presents three life stories of a young person with intellectual disability, his mother, and a social worker in their affiliated disability service. A theoretical reading of the cases through an affirmative non-tragedy lens and then from within an overarching critical disability studies perspective follows. Among the conclusions is that better measures to safeguard the lived experience of disability in future capitalist crises are obligatory.

Dealing with Undeniable Differences in Thessaloniki’s Solidarity Economy of Food

In the context of capitalist crisis, a re-emergence of reciprocal economic relationships has been praised by postcapitalist researchers. Self-organised solidarity food economies have indeed brought promise of democratic change. However, this article draws on two years of fieldwork in Thessaloniki to develop Iris Young’s Politics of Difference in order to challenge the view of solidarity economy as wholly a process of collaboration. Thus, the article overturns prevalent myths regarding the cultural ineptitude of Greek actors. In doing so, it highlights the need for food movements to acknowledge the inevitable tensions that arise from structural inequalities. The article argues that overcoming these tensions requires challenging difference-blindness in grassroots democracy. It concludes that an acknowledgement of shifting structural inequalities, exaggerated by the economic crisis, must be incorporated into an initiative’s democratic processes alongside mechanisms for dealing with disharmony.

Fascism's Road to Power (1929–1939)

The idea of Nazism as an act of madness is closely linked to the revisionism of the 1950s, to the social pact, which sought to dissociate it from the crisis of capitalism, from the explicit support of the German bourgeoisie for the Nazi expansionist project—and the inability of both the West and the USSR to prevent the war. Nazism resulted from the militant support of the German industrial and financial sector to the Nazi project; the absence of support by the USSR and social democracy for the revolutionary projects of the 1930s; and the inaction, if not active complicity, of social democracy and its alliances with semi-Bonapartist powers before Hitler's rise to power.