Capitalism Eating Itself

Wolfgang Streeck, How Will Capitalism End

At first glance, there is indeed much that speaks against pronouncing capitalism dead, regardless of all the ominous writing on the historical wall. As far as inequality is concerned, people may get used to it, especially with the help of public entertainment and political repression. Furthermore, examples abound of governments being re-elected that cut social spending and privatize public services [..]. Concerning environmental deterioration, it proceeds only slowly compared to the human lifespan, so one can deny it while learning to live with it. Technological advances with which to buy time, such as fracking, can never be ruled out, and, if there are limits to the pacifying powers of consumerism, we clearly are nowhere near them. Moreover, adapting to more time-consuming and life-consuming, work regimes can be taken as a competitive-challenge, an opportunity for personal achievement. Cultural definitions of the good life have always been highly malleable and might well be stretched further to match the onward march of commodification at least as long as radical or religious challenges to pro-capitalist re-education can be suppressed, ridiculed or otherwise marginalized. Finally, most of today's stagnation theories apply only to the West, or just to the U.S., not to China, Russia,.India or Brazil - countries to which the frontier of economic growth may be about to migrate, with vast virgin,lands waiting to be made available for capitalist progress.

My answer is that having no opposition may actually be more of a liability for capitalism than an asset. Social systems thrive on internal heterogeneity, on a pluralism of organizing principles protecting them from dedicating themselves entirely to a single purpose, crowding out other goals that must also be attended to if the system is to be sustainable. Capitalism as we know it has benefited greatly from the rise of counter-movements against the rule of profit and of the market. Socialism and trade unionism, by putting a brake on commodification; prevented capitalism from destroying its non-capitalist foundations - trust, good faith, altruism, solidarity within families and communities, and [..] where circumstances were favourable, working-class organization even served as a 'productivity whip' by forcing capital to embark on more advanced production concepts.

It is in this sense that Geoffrey Hodgson has argued that capitalism can survive only as long as it is not completely capitalist - as it has not yet rid itself, or the society in which it resides, of 'necessary impurities': Seen this way, capitalism's defeat of its opposition may actually have been a Pyrrhic victory, freeing it from countervailing powers which, while sometimes inconvenient, had in fact supported it.

Yes we need balance. Capitalism is not a religion, it's a tool.

Simplest example: family takes care of education, basic health of its members. Your mother teaches you how to walk, to talk, how to take a shit. Huge amount amount of unpaid "social" work in other words, that supplies a worker to the economy. If capitalism harms this process by creating too much stress in society, it harms the very process that gives it workers. Destroy healthcare, you have no healthy buyers. Etc.