The last struggles of capitalism

"Capitalism has always cannibalized itself. But now capitalism is in an epochal crisis, writes Nancy Fraser in her book "The Omnivores". It ranges from the destruction of the environment to the erosion of democracy.

One of the most sophisticated facets of capitalism is how well it also functions as a market for anti-capitalist discourse production. It is difficult to say what the extent of this reveals about the state of the system: is the boom in criticism and resistance a sign that the culture industry has the critical potential particularly well under control? Is the suitability of the masses of anti-capitalist slogans a means of devaluing their radical nature? Or are all of these symptoms of an actual crisis in the system?

For the American political scientist Nancy Fraser, who, if such a thing still existed, could be placed on the shelves for Marxist theories without any scruples, there is no doubt that we are dealing with an epochal crisis today, and not only that with an economic, ecological or political, but with a "general crisis of the entire social order". The very comeback of the term "capitalism" - in a sense taking the discourse at face value - is for Fraser "a clear indication of how deep the current crisis is". Anyone who is wondering about the comeback she is talking about, when authors from Thomas Piketty to Naomi Klein, from Slavoj Žižek to Ulrike Herrmann have been writing bestsellers critical of capitalism for years, must take a closer look at the genesis of Fraser's new book.

The root of all wrongs

"The Omnivore" is essentially a collection of essays and lectures that has become a commodity, which - like the finding of the "Comeback" - goes back to the year 2014. This makes the text tiresomely redundant in part, because Fraser repeats her most important questions and insights in each chapter, which, however, corresponds to the refrain nature of her thesis.

  Capitalism, Fraser says, is the "common root" of all contemporary ills, from persistent racism to the inability to halt climate change.

However much the critique of capitalism may be in vogue, it is not up to date, says Fraser. "The current boom in capitalism discourse" remains largely "rhetorical in nature", more "a symptom of the desire for systematic criticism than a substantial contribution to it". Her book, she promises pompously, will now provide the analytical foundation. It "diagnoses the causes of the disease and names the culprits". “It broadens our view of capitalism (. . .) and encapsulates all the oppressions, contradictions and conflicts of the contemporary situation within a single analytical framework.” Fraser stretches this framework considerably further than many contemporary left movements that have struggled for the want to combine the interests of specific groups or minorities with the idea of intersectionality. Rather, Fraser reminds us how forms of social inequality are interrelated and that they can only be treated cosmetically at the level that she once famously termed "progressive neoliberalism."

What capitalism hides

"Cannibalistic capitalism" is the name of her concept (and the original title of the book), and as striking as this metaphor is, it is just as plausible in Fraser's portrayal. In any case, despite the pompous overture, her book is mostly characterized by a cool perspective and the absence of moralizations. Even with the image of “cannibalism”, Fraser is not concerned with being drastic, but with describing as precisely as possible a dynamic of the system that she considers essential.

In its drive towards ceaseless accumulation and expansion, she writes, capitalism repeatedly destabilizes or destroys the conditions that make it possible in the first place, its social, ecological and political prerequisites.

For Fraser, capitalism is not just an economic system, but a social order characterized by treating all relationships “as if they were economic” while “not taking into account” its dependence on this social credit, and thus veiled.

David Graeber already vividly described in his book "Indebtedness" how much every hyper-capitalist society is based on an "essential communism", as he calls it, on social interaction and solidarity beyond the market.

But in capitalizing all “non-economic” realms – from the family to “nature” – capitalism is like the ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail.

tendency to self-destruction

This tendency toward self-destruction, says Fraser, is by no means new, but common part to the “DNA of capitalism”. Throughout its history, capitalism has always been characterized by reacting to the conflicts at the borders of economic interests and communities with transformations. Fraser describes how such "border struggles" at different epochs have led to concessions and reforms on the one hand, and to shifts and the search for new fields of exploitation on the other, to ever new "regimes of accumulation", from the mercantile-capitalist of the 16th century to that of the contemporary finance capitalism. She plays through this development in four areas of society in which "epochal" crises can currently be diagnosed. Crises, all of which she sees as intertwined: in the area of the family (with conflicts about "social reproduction"), in the area of "race, migration and empire", in the threat of climate change and in what is often referred to as the "crisis of the Democracy” describes the power struggles between large corporations, nation states and transnational institutions.

How insightful Fraser's system is can be seen, for example, when she tries to prove that the discrimination against people along the so-called color line is not just an empirical constant. She argues that "the violent and continuous appropriation of the wealth of the oppressed and minorized peoples" is an expression of expropriation, which she understands as a "hidden necessity" of capitalist exploitation processes ("exploitation"). This mechanism finds its expression not only in open violence such as colonialist land grabs, but today above all in the instrument of debt, with the help of which farmers or entire states in the Global South are expropriated as well as disproportionately “racialized” sub-prime borrowers in the US.”

Nancy Fraser: „Der Allesfresser. Wie der Kapitalismus seine eigenen Grundlagen verschlingt“. Aus dem Englischen von Andreas Wirthensohn. Suhrkamp, 282 Seiten, 20 Euro. : Bild: Suhrkamp Verlag