Corey Robin in Sidecar:
Late capitalism is an ambiguous term. Lateness may imply death or an ending, as when we speak of my late grandfather or the late afternoon. When the German social theorist Werner Sombart first used the term in the early twentieth century, late capitalism did mean the end of capitalism. Yet ‘late’ in the superlative also suggests up-to-date or state-of-the-art, pointing not to the demise of something but to its refinement and advance. Surveying the same developments as Sombart, the Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding claimed that the emerging economy of the twentieth century was simply ‘the latest phase of capitalist development’, a phrase echoed by Lenin, who took pains to remind his followers that ‘there is no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation’ for the bourgeoisie.
Despite its popularity in recent years, especially since the 2008 financial crisis and the left-populist insurgencies that followed, late capitalism is not an idea that lends itself to revolution or a vision of progress. It may express a wish to be rid of capitalism. But mostly it works as a theory of turning points that never turn – or worse.
Traditionally, the socialist left has believed that capitalism is prone to crises – not simply the ups and downs of the business cycle but increasingly wrenching dislocations that cannot be resolved within the constraints of the system. With time, these crises must come to an end, ‘either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large’, as the canonical formulation has it, ‘or in the common ruin of the contending classes’. Though hardly a deterministic vision of the future – the ‘common ruin of the contending classes’ is a serious possibility – such a theory of revolution depends on a theory of crisis.
According to Sombart, late capitalism eliminated this crisis tendency.
More here.
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