Suchergebnisse

In the last decade significant changes in capitalism are appearing, it entered a new stage. After the political breakdown of Feudalism in World War 1 a stage of capitalism that aimed at integration of all parts of society was slowly developing. 15 years later the authoritarian regimes of national socialism, Fascism, intermitted the evolution of Integrated Capitalism. Since 1945 it flourished again, though its political governance on a global level in recent decades ran into more and more contradictions. After the deep economic crisis of 2008 a turning point towards authoritarian governance of capitalism – in particular in the USA – is evident. Since this type of new nationalist authoritarian capitalism destroys global integration it is called Disintegrating Capitalism. An immediate consequence of the global contradiction between worldwide interwoven production processes and rivalries between nationalist regimes is a rapidly rising danger of a third World War. The second, more speculative part of the paper explores possible forms, which this WW3 could take on. A conclusion provides some ideas on possibilities to react to war tensions.

In October 2011, in the Center for Comparative Socio-Economic and Socio-Political Studies of IMEMO RAN the meeting of a scientific-theoretical workshop on the subject «"Alternative capitalism" or Alternative to Capitalism?» took place. Problems of conceptual crisis in social sciences and methodology of the modern socio-political changes analysis were in the spotlight. The discussion evolved over two main problems: 1. Knowledge crisis or development crisis? On methodology of the modern socio-political changes analysis and problems of a new social sciences research paradigm development. 2. Capitalism and modernization. Main ideas of presentations by scientists from IMEMO and other scientific institutions are outlined in two issues of the journal (No. 7, 8).

Cover -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- Introduction: On 'Cool' -- 1. The Spirits of Capitalism -- The Old Spirit -- The New Spirit -- Capitalism Transmogrified -- 2. The Great Refusal -- Rebellious Autonomy -- Picasso, Rivera and Kahlo -- Cool Art and Business -- 3. Consumer Culture -- Conspicuous Consumption -- Mass Consumerism -- Cool Seduction -- Commodity Fetishism and Mobile Privatisation -- 4. Market Values -- Neoliberal Discourse -- Enterprise Culture -- Creative Industries -- 5. Working Life -- Emotional Labour -- Individualisation -- Generation Crisis -- 6. Anti-Capitalism Revisited -- Cool Brands and Sweated Labour -- One No and Many Yeses -- Limits to Capitalism -- Notes -- Index.

Cover -- Contents -- Part I - Break -- 1. Break. We want to break. We want to create a different world. Now. Nothing more common, nothing more obvious. Nothing more simple. Nothing more difficult. -- 2. Our method is the method of the crack. -- 3. It is time to learn the new language of a new struggle. -- Part II - Cracks: The Anti-Politics of Dignity -- 4. The cracks begin with a No, from which there grows a dignity, a negation-and-creation. -- 5. A crack is the perfectly ordinary creation of a space or moment in which we assert a different type of doing. -- 6. Cracks break dimensions, break dimensionality. -- 7. Cracks are explorations in an anti-politics of dignity. -- Part III - Cracks on the Edge of Impossibility -- 8. Dignity is our weapon against a world of destruction. -- 9. Cracks clash with the social synthesis of capitalism. -- 10. Cracks exist on the edge of impossibility, but they do exist. Moving they exist: dignity is a fleet-footed dance. -- Part IV - The Dual Character of Labour -- 11. The cracks are the revolt of one form of doing against another: the revolt of doing against labour. -- 12. The abstraction of doing into labour is the weaving of capitalism. -- 13. The abstraction of doing into labour is a historical process of transformation that created the social synthesis of capitalism: primitive accumulation. -- Part V - Abstract Labour: The Great Enclosure -- 14. Abstract labour encloses both our bodies and our minds. -- 15. The abstraction of doing into labour is a process of personification, the creation of character masks, the formation of the working class. -- 16. The abstraction of doing into labour is the creation of the male labourer and the dimorphisation of sexuality. -- 17. The abstraction of doing into labour is the constitution of nature as object.

Cover; Contents; Preface and Acknowledgements; Chapter 1 -- Adventures of Capitalism; Chapter 2 -- The Rise of Soft Capitalism; Chapter 3 -- The Place of Complexity; Chapter 4 -- Virtual Capitalism: The Globalization of Reflexive Business Knowledge; Chapter 5 -- Cultures on the Brink: Re-engineering the Soul of Capitalism on a Global Scale; Chapter 6 -- It's the Romance, Not the Finance, that Makes the Business Worth Pursuing: Disclosing a New Market Culture; Chapter 7 -- Cultures in the New Economy; Chapter 8 -- The Automatic Production of space