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Does Capitalism Have a Future? (Paperback)
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Does Capitalism Have a Future? (Paperback)
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The Great Recession has prompted a reassessment of the specific
mode of capitalist accumulation that achieved dominance in the era
of globalization. Yet just about all of this literature has focused
on one of two issues: why things went wrong, and what we need to do
in order to return the system to stability. Outside of a contingent
of radical socialists on the fringes of the debate, virtually no
one questioned whether capitalism could continue. In Does
Capitalism Have a Future?, the prominent theorist Georgi Derleugian
has gathered together a quintet of eminent macrosociologists to
assess whether the capitalist system can survive. The prevalent
common wisdom, for all its current gloom, nevertheless safely
assumes that capitalism cannot break down permanently because there
is no alternative. The authors shatter this assumption, arguing
that this generalization is not supported by theory but is rather
an outgrowth of the optimistic nineteenth-century claim that human
history ascends through stages to an enlightened equilibrium of
liberal capitalism. Yet as they point out, just about all major
historical systems have broken down in the end (e.g., the Roman
empire). In the modern epoch there have been several cataclysmic
events-notably the French revolution, World War I, and the collapse
of the Soviet bloc-that came to pass mainly because contemporary
political elites had spectacularly failed to calculate the
consequences of the processes they presumed to govern. At present,
none of our governing elites and very few of our intellectuals can
fathom an ending to our current reigning system. Considering
whether a collapse is possible is the task that the
quintet-Derleugian, Michael Mann, Randall Collins, Craig Calhoun,
and Immanuel Wallerstein-sets out to explore. While all of the
contributors arrive at different conclusions, they are in constant
dialogue with each other and therefore able to construct relatively
seamless-if open-ended-whole. For instance, Wallerstein (who
accurately predicted the collapse of the Soviet system in 1979) and
Collins, identify fatal structural faults in twenty-first century
capitalism. Mann, on the other hand, does not think that there is
any serious alternative to the market dynamic, but he does identify
other serious threats to the system, including environmental
degradation. Calhoun and Derluguian are more circumspect and focus
on the role of politics in steering the system toward either
revival or collapse. This most ambitious of books, written by the
highest caliber of sociologists, asks the biggest of questions: are
we on the cusp of a radical world historical shift or not?
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