The Five Disorders of Capitalism

Speaker: Wolfgang Streeck

6.15-7.45pm, 8th November 2016

LG02 Professor Stuart Hall Building, Goldsmiths

Eight years after Lehman the crisis of advanced capitalist economies is far from over. Growth is sluggish, debt continues to rise, and social inequality is exploding. As the capitalist global economy is kept alive by unprecedented infusions of central bank money, old questions of the compatibility of capitalism and democracy are returning. The marketization of Polanyi’s three fictitious commodities, labour, nature and money, seems to have hit a limit, and the same may be true for technological innovation. Moreover, persistent public deficits seem to indicate a rising tension between private appropriation and growing needs for collective provision. Five disorders in particular have befallen contemporary capitalism: secular stagnation, oligarchic redistribution, the privatization of the public sphere, corruption, and global anarchy.

Professor Streeck is a renowned economic sociologist and political economist who has written widely about current-day capitalism and the democratic state. His recent books include Buying Time: the Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (2014), Politics in the Age of Austerity (2013, with Armin Schafer), and Re-Forming Capitalism (2010). For this event he will be talking about the ideas that have come out of his new book: How Will Capitalism End: Essays on a Failing System, published by Verso (2016).

All are welcome and no registration is required. For details on how to find Goldsmiths, click here.

 

You can know listen to a podcast of this talk via the link below