The End of Capitalism – Streeck

[alanjjohnstone]

This is a very lengthy article by Wolfgang Streeck (wiki entry in German so no help there but seems to be director of some aademic think-tank) with plenty of graphs and statistics to digest but suggesting something like a return to the 20/30s prediction that Capitalism will collapse because of its economic contradictions and this recession being its death throes.

As i say,a long technical article which will require greater mind than my own to analyse hence its own thread rather than tag on to the existing Piketty although very much related in that both make predictions but i seen a few red light statements in this article that makes that gut feeling of doubt and scepticism return. Will have to re-read a few times. 

Quote:

In summary, capitalism, as a social order held together by a promise of boundless collective progress, is in critical condition. Growth is giving way to secular stagnation; what economic progress remains is less and less shared; and confidence in the capitalist money economy is leveraged on a rising mountain of promises that are ever less likely to be kept. Since the 1970s, the capitalist centre has undergone three successive crises, of inflation, public finances and private debt. Today, in an uneasy phase of transition, its survival depends on central banks providing it with unlimited synthetic liquidity. Step by step, capitalism’s shotgun marriage with democracy since 1945 is breaking up. On the three frontiers of commodification—labour, nature and money—regulatory institutions restraining the advance of capitalism for its own good have collapsed, and after the final victory of capitalism over its enemies no political agency capable of rebuilding them is in sight. The capitalist system is at present stricken with at least five worsening disorders for which no cure is at hand: declining growth, oligarchy, starvation of the public sphere, corruption and international anarchy. What is to be expected, on the basis of capitalism’s recent historical record, is a long and painful period of cumulative decay: of intensifying frictions, of fragility and uncertainty, and of a steady succession of ‘normal accidents’—not necessarily but quite possibly on the scale of the global breakdown of the 1930s.

OOPS…THE LINK

http://newleftreview.org/II/87/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-capitalism-end

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