The Speed of Collapse: The Space-Time Dimensions of Capitalism's First Great Crisis of the 21st Century

In: Critical sociology, Band 37, Heft 4, S. 385-402

Abstract

The essay analyses the global economic crisis from a critical perspective on the function of capital accumulation in space-time. It argues that the relative 'speed of collapse' is a historically new phenomenon that has been generated through the neoliberal and ICT driven mode of capitalism that has dominated since the 1970s. The 'speed of collapse', I argue, will be followed by a rapid financially led recovery that signals not that the system is self-stabilizing and durable, but that the system is out of control. This lack of control and the irreconcilable effects of space-time upon a constantly accumulating capital with fewer and fewer profitable outlets mean that a future system crisis is both inevitable and will carry greater destructive resonance.