How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System

Capitalism is in critical condition. Growth is giving way to secular stagnation, inequality is leading to instability, and confidence in the capitalist money economy has all but evaporated. In How Will Capitalism End?, Wolfgang Streeck, an observer of contemporary politics and economics, argues that capitalism’s shotgun marriage with democracy that began in 1945 is breaking up because the regulatory institutions restraining its advance have collapsed. After the final victory of capitalism over its enemies, there is no political agency capable of rebuilding them in sight. The capitalist system is stricken with at least five worsening disorders for which no cure is at hand: declining growth, oligarchy, starvation of the public sphere, corruption, and international anarchy. Wolfgang Streeck asks whether we are witnessing a long and painful period of cumulative decay: of intensifying frictions, of fragility and uncertainty, and of a steady succession of "normal accidents."Introduction Chapter 1 How Will Capitalism End? Chapter 2 The Crises of Democratic Capitalism Chapter 3 Citizens as Customers: Considerations on the New Politics of Consumption Chapter 4 The Rise of the European Consolidation State Chapter 5 Markets and Peoples: Democratic Capitalism and European Integration Chapter 6 Heller, Schmitt and the Euro Chapter 7 Why the Euro Divides Europe Chapter 8 Comment on Wolfgang Merkel, ‘Is Capitalism Compatible with Democracy?’ Chapter 9 How to Study Contemporary Capitalism? Chapter 10 On Fred Block, ‘Varieties of What? Should We Still Be Using the Concept of Capitalism?’ Chapter 11 The Public Mission of Sociology Notes Inde