Confronting such crises is the basis of FALC. Capitalism, at least as we know it, is about to end. What matters is what comes next.
The claim that capitalism will end, is, for capitalist realism, like saying a triangle doesn’t have three sides or that the law of gravity no longer applies while an apple falls from a tree. Rather than understanding the present as one historical period among many, like Victorian England or the Roman Republic, to be alive at the end of history means presuming our social systems to be as unchanging as the physical laws that govern the universe.
And yet the truth is capitalist realism is already coming apart. The fact you are reading these words at all is proof.
Despite the observations of Francis Fukuyama and his disciples, history returned on 15 September 2008 when the global financial system crashed. Within weeks the world’s leading economic powers, previous zealots for minimal state interference, were left with no alternative but to bail out their domestic banks, with some even being nationalised. That exposed their previous free market fervour for the lie it was: this was socialism for the rich and market capitalism for the rest. The critics had always said as much, now nobody could deny it.
But as well as revealing what had passed as common sense for the political project it was, that moment also ended a phase of global expansion that had powered financial services and real estate – most notably in Britain and the United States – to the forefront of economic life. Over the preceding two decades it was these areas which had underpinned growth, tax receipts and forms of asset ownership which were at least moderately distributed. After 2008 that decisively changed, meaning that in many countries poverty has increased, wages have stagnated and growth – in any significant sense – has vanished.
The Great Disorder
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