Suchergebnisse

Capitalist growth regimes are analysed drawing on Marx's insights into the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, regulation theoretical arguments about the five basic structural forms of accumulation regimes and their modes of regulation, historical geographical materialism's emphasis on spatio-temporal fixes, and state-theoretical accounts of the 'government + governance' of capitalist social formations in the shadow of hierarchy. This framework is then applied to four specific growth regimes and their crisis tendencies. These regimes are Atlantic Fordism, two (among many) alternative post-Fordist trajectories – the knowledge-based economy and finance-dominated capitalism – and a radical 'no-growth' variant of the 'Green New Deal'. The article highlights the crisis tendencies of the first three and assesses whether the Green New Deal represents an alternative route out of crisis or the capture of an eco-social project by the forces that brought us finance-dominated accumulation. It concludes with a future research agenda.

"This chapter explores the improbability of capital accumulation and, more generally, of the continued reproduction of 'present society'. It assumes that crisis is an ever-present but abstract possibility in the capital relation and, hence, in its instantiation in capitalist social formations. Whether crises are actualized and, if so, their timing, forms of appearance and effects depend on many other factors, forces, and contingencies. There are well-known counter-tendencies to many crisis-tendencies. In addition, social forces continually experiment with ways to mobilize these counteracting forces and/or to handle crisis-tendencies and actual crises in other ways. These opening remarks fit well with the theme of the present volume: fragile stability, stable fragility. Indeed, I will develop two arguments below. First, given the inherent possibility of crisis in capitalism, any contingent stability of capital accumulation and capitalist societalization is necessarily fragile. And, second, despite this necessary fragility, it is nonetheless possible for specific, but always partial, selective and fragile, institutional and spatiotemporal fixes to create zones of stability here-now at the intended or unintended cost of creating zones of instability elsewhere and/or sowing the seeds of later instability. Combining these arguments, then, where these fixes succeed we find fragile stability and, in so far as the breakdown of one complementary set of fixes is followed, sooner or later, by another set, we can speak of stable fragility." (contract)

Spätestens seitdem sich Handel auf freien Märkten und eine rational ausgerichtete kapitalistische Produktionsweise gegenüber dem Feudalismus durchsetzen konnten, lässt sich auch ein großes Interesse an der Varianz und Diversität kapitalistischer Regime erkennen. Noch heute werden die Zusammenhänge von zahlreichen InstitutionenökonomInnen erforscht, was unter Einschluss einiger weiterer SozialwissenschaftlerInnen vor allem in den letzen Jahrzehnten zu einer Erneuerung von Theoretisierungsbemühungen geführt hat. Der Beitrag widmet sich einem dieser neueren Ansätze, nämlich dem weit verbreiteten "Spielarten des Kapitalismus"-Ansatz (VoC) und verortet diesen im umfassenden Forschungsfeld zu kapitalistischer Diversität. Im Anschluss daran wird ein alternativer, durch die Marx'sche Kritik der politischen Ökonomie inspirierter Ansatz vorgestellt und dazu herangezogen, entscheidende Grenzen der VoC-Studien aufzuzeigen. Den Abschluss bilden entsprechende Empfehlungen zum Studium von Komplementaritäten und Diversitäten im Kapitalismus. (ICA2)

This article explores the obstacles to the development and operation of a world state that are rooted in functional differentiation of modern societies, the ecological dominance of the broadly capitalist world market, and the inherent tendencies of all forms of governance to fail. It also highlights the challenges to the temporal as well as territorial sovereignty of states, whatever their scale of operation, due to the acceleration as well as globalization of social relations. Combining insights from Niklas Luhmann and Karl Marx, the article develops some novel arguments about multi-spatial metagovernance as an alternative approach to the problems posed by a world state as the guarantor of global social order.