Alternatives in the midst of ruination: Capitalism, Heterogeneity, Fractures (original) (raw)
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Capitalism. A Conversation in Critical Theory (Contents, Preface, Introduction)
Polity Press, 2018
Edited by Brian Milstein. In this important new book, Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi take a fresh look at the big questions surrounding the peculiar social form known as “capitalism,” upending many of our commonly held assumptions about what capitalism is and how to subject it to critique. They show how, throughout its history, various regimes of capitalism have relied on a series of institutional separations between economy and polity, production and social reproduction, and human and non-human nature, periodically readjusting the boundaries between these domains in response to crises and upheavals. They consider how these “boundary struggles” offer a key to understanding capitalism’s contradictions and the multiple forms of conflict to which it gives rise. What emerges is a renewed crisis critique of capitalism which puts our present conjuncture into broader perspective, along with sharp diagnoses of the recent resurgence of right-wing populism and what would be required of a viable Left alternative. This major new book by two leading critical theorists will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the nature and future of capitalism and with the key questions of progressive politics today.
“Capitalism Under Scrutiny: from Concept to Critique”
Capitalism on Edge (Columbia University Press), 2020
• This Chapter of Capitalism on Edge develops the first comprehensive methodology for critical social theory; • it articulates a three-dimensional model of domination and attendant notions of emancipatory practice and radical politics; • offers a theory of the internal transformation of capitalism, later applied in an account of the historical forms of capitalism from the 19th-century liberal form to our contemporary post-neoliberal, 'precarity capitalism'.
Embodying Alternatives to Capitalism in the 21st Century
Karl Marx @ 200: Debating Capitalism & Perspectives for the Future of Radical Theory , 2018
The goal of this article is twofold. First, to illustrate how in the last decade a growing number of critical and Marxist thinkers committed to discussing and developing theories of change have started to broaden their focus by including social movements and grassroots initiatives that are " interstitial " , i.e. initiatives that are developing within capitalism and are striving to prefigure a post-capitalist society in the here and now without engaging in contentious, violent and revolutionary actions and activities. To achieve this, I mainly focus on the work of four authors: Erik Olin Wright, John Holloway, Ana C. Dinerstein, and Luke Martell. The second goal of this article is to understand why these interstitial movements are getting so much attention from critical scholars and to argue that the time is ripe for establishing a theory of (and for) prefigurative social movements. The article closes with some brief reflections on the future of radical thinking that includes an invitation, directed mostly at the young generation of critical and Marxist scholars, to begin a dialogue with theories of change developed within other disciplines , to engage with activists, and to experiment with participatory methods and techniques.
Capitalism: A conversation in critical theory
Contemporary Political Theory, 2019
This book aims to bring the study of capitalism back to the forefront of critical theory. In doing so, Nancy Fraser and Rahel Jaeggi lay out a bold agenda for a theoretical approach that, in their view, has become almost indistinguishable from liberalism (pp. 5-6). There are three main aspects of earlier iterations of critical theory that the authors reprise in this work. First, both thinkers engage in unabashed grand theorizing of capitalist society, whether the latter is understood as an 'institutionalized social order' (Fraser) or as a 'form of life' (Jaeggi). The picture of capitalism that emerges eschews its reduction to a purely economic system, and instead encompasses its social, political, and natural background conditions and entanglements. Second, as Benhabib (2018) has recently argued, a critical theory of society that builds on the legacy of the Frankfurt School needs to focus on crisis. Fraser and Jaeggi offer just such an analysis, beginning from the observation of a 'pervasive sense that we are caught in the throes of a very deep crisis-a severe systemic crisis' (p. 2), but also analyzing the more 'objective' crisis tendencies and contradictions of capitalism. Finally, deploying a phrase from Marx that is repeated throughout the book, the authors argue that critical theory aims to provide 'self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age' (p. 11). In light of the 'widespread agreement that capitalism is (again) a problem' (p. 2), and of the rise of right-and left-wing populist movements and parties around the world which signals the crumbling of neoliberalism's legitimacy (p. 222), critical theory at its best can help social actors develop a clearer understanding of the conjuncture, including its latent emancipatory possibilities. To describe such a project as ambitious would be an understatement, but Fraser and Jaeggi's execution displays the clarity, insight, and rigor that one would expect from two thinkers at the peak of their abilities. While talk of crisis has become ubiquitous-financial and sovereign debt crises, ecological crisis, the crisis of care, the crisis of democracy-Fraser's ambition is to 'disclose the structural grounds of multiple crisis tendencies in one and the same social totality: capitalist society' (p. 10). The first two chapters showcase her
Introducing Capitalism: Current Crisis and Cultural Critique
Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2014
Capitalism is today again the focus of critical discourse. The virally spreading waves of financial crisis have lent renewed urgency to the critique of capitalism's specific historical way of organising modern societies. New movements and leading economists share a growing doubt about the sustainability of the capitalist mode of production. This has simultaneously given rise to a wider interest in Karl Marx's economy critique as a major inspiration. One key theme of this current critical discourse of capitalism concerns the interface between economy and culture: how economy critique may inform cultural studies and other branches of cultural research, but also how cultural perspectives may qualify the understanding of contemporary capitalism. Under the heading 'Capitalism: Current Crisis and Cultural Critique', this theme section of Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research presents a set of articles that in various ways approach this discussion from a cultural perspective. The revitalised economy critique of today has a strong cultural component acknowledging symbolic and communicative aspects on several levels. Since the publication of Marx's Capital, capitalism has grown and expanded, but also developed facets that were not equally visible at that time. In the last century, there has been a series of cultural turns in many research fields reacting to a corresponding culturalisation of social life, politics and the economy itself. Serious efforts have therefore been made to develop the cultural dimensions of economy critique, including the 1930s Frankfurt school of critical theory, the 1960s and 1970s central and east European reconstruction movement of 'capital logic' (Kapitallogik) and the contemporary new wave of literature in the wake of financial and ecological crises. 1 There are lots of good reasons to read Marx today. In a sharp and oftenentertaining style of writing, his work offers uniquely influential political critique, social commentary and economic theory that resonate with the frustrated reactions to the recent series of financial crises. His philosophical argumentation is equally influential, with important concepts such as fetishism, ideology, real abstractions and the dialectical method of immanent critique, all of which point to the key role of symbolic meaning-making, i.e. of culture, to the reproduction of capitalism. Many of those who today eagerly return to Marx seem to look for solutions to the present day's deep economic and political crisis, asking what can be done to create a better society. For this purpose, Marx will not suffice in spite of his insightful ideas about post-capitalist potentials. I will return to this towards the end.
Post-capitalistic politics in the making: The imaginary and praxis of alternative economies
In June 2015, we launched the call for articles for this special issue in an attempt to catalyze the rising awareness, both within the critically oriented and the broader organization studies community , that we are today witnessing epochal changes, which are fundamentally redefining the social, economic, political, and environmental realities we live in in unforeseen and unimaginable ways. For many of us, the financial crisis of 2008 had crystallized the notion that capitalism in its very nature is in continuous crisis, as shown by four decades of persistent decline in economic growth rate and rise in overall indebtedness and economic inequality (Streeck, 2014, 2016). Yet the political debacle of party politics in the United Kingdom and the United States together with the rampant populism in various European countries have highlighted that this is not just another installment of a crisis-prone economic system. These 'electoral mutinies' suggest that what is under crisis is the governance system of neoliberalism itself (Fraser, 2017). The responses to this crisis have been proved severely wanting, leading to the weakening of all social and political institutions that offer a semblance of protection to the vulnerable (Wahl, 2017).
Rethinking Capitalism, Stabilizing the Critique
Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica, 2022
This paper offers a critique of Nancy Fraser's expanded conception of capitalism as an institutional social order. Fraser builds a social-theoretical basis for thinking about "non-economic" struggles over social reproduction, the degradation of nature, and state power as central to a progressive, anti-capitalist political agenda. Rather than only challenging capital at the point of production, as the classical Marxist tradition was wont to do, Fraser wants anti-capitalism without economic reductionism. Fraser's is also a crisis theory of capitalism, which generates a theory of social change as well as a normative critique. The main question is methodological and can be summed up as, "Is less perhaps more?" On this basis, it argues that stability may be a better starting point than crisis, which raises more fundamental normative problems with the system than the ones that Fraser captures.
Rethinking Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century: The Tasks of Radical Critique
Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica
I address the return of Socialist dogma as an element of the “crisis of the crisis-of-capitalism,” and question the ability of progressive social critique’s toolkit to illuminate the sources of social harm in the current historical juncture. To hone its conceptual vigor, radical critique, I suggest, needs to dereify “structure” and shift its focus from structural to systemic dimensions in the operation of capitalism. This will allow us to discern precarity (the social and economic vulnerability related to insecure livelihoods), rather than inequality and exploitation (as produced within a class relation), as the landmark feature of social injustice in the early twenty-first century.
Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Politica , 2022
I address the return of Socialist dogma as an element of the "crisis of the crisis-of-capitalism, " and question the ability of progressive social critique's toolkit to illuminate the sources of social harm in the current historical juncture. To hone its conceptual vigor, radical critique, I suggest, needs to dereify "structure" and shift its focus from structural to systemic dimensions in the operation of capitalism. This will allow us to discern precarity (the social and economic vulnerability related to insecure livelihoods), rather than inequality and exploitation (as produced within a class relation), as the landmark feature of social injustice in the early twenty-first century.