Does Capitalism Have a Future

From P2P Foundation
Jump to navigation Jump to search

* Book: Does Capitalism Have a Future? Edited by Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derluguian, and Craig Calhoun. Oxford University Press, 2016

URL = https://global.oup.com/academic/product/does-capitalism-have-a-future-9780199330843?cc=gb&lang=en&

"Five major social scientists engage in sophisticated and fascinating discussion of some of the most vital issues of our time."


=Review:

Michael Roberts:

"Contains contributions by the likes of Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georg Derluguian and Craig Calhoun. As Streeck says, all these scholars agree that capitalism is heading for an ultimate crisis, although each has different reasons why.

Wallerstein reckons that capitalism is at the bottom of a Kondratiev cycle from which it cannot recover (for a multitude of reasons, mainly to do with the decline of the world order under US hegemony). Craig Calhoun, on the other hand, reckons capitalism will give way to state-directed economies that might restore capitalism but in a new ‘non-market’ form. Michael Mann reckons also that US hegemony is over and capitalism will become an unpredictable platform for struggle among various capitalist rivals, while working class struggle is splintered.

The only hope is that social-democratic forces of compromise will triumph. Randall Collins offers the closest to a Marxist perspective, according to Streeck. Capitalism will increasingly resort to dispensing with human labour and replacing it with robots and AI. This will create severe class conflict and underconsumption, because most workers will not have enough income to buy the products of robotisation. Although Collins’ analysis is not Marxist (in my opinion), he does conclude that the only hope is a socialist transformation. Finally, Derluguian argues that the demise and collapse of the Soviet Union suggests that capitalism will not give way to socialism, but instead to a post-capitalist fragmentation." (https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/will-capitalism-end-or-can-it-be-reformed/)