Wolfgang Streeck Concepts

How Will Capitalism End?

by Wolfgang Streeck · 8 Nov 2016 · 424pp · 115,035 words

How Will Capitalism End? How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System Wolfgang Streeck First published by Verso 2016 © Wolfgang Streeck 2016 Translation of Chapter 5 © Tessa Hauswedell 2016 Translation of Chapter 7 © Rodney Livingstone 2016 A version of Chapter 1 was delivered as the Anglo-

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the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Streeck, Wolfgang, 1946- author. Title: How will capitalism end? : essays on a failing system / Wolfgang Streeck. Description: Brooklyn, New York : Verso, 2016. Identifiers: LCCN 2016018054 | ISBN 9781784784010 (hardback) | ISBN 9781784784034 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Capitalism–History. | Economic policy. | Oligarchy. | Poverty. | Political corruption

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needs to be done by today’s sociology to restore its ability to account for the dynamics of contemporary society and its ongoing critical transformation. Wolfgang Streeck Cologne, 6 April 2016 Introduction CAPITALISM: ITS DEATH AND AFTERLIFE Capitalism has always been an improbable social formation, full of conflicts and contradictions, therefore permanently

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it into their mattress. That, one suspects, might be the final end of capitalist wisdom. 26I have dealt with this subject in more detail in Wolfgang Streeck, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, London and New York: Verso Books 2014. 27Apart, of course, from the replacement, by their united colleagues

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like the U.S. and U.K., where it is hard to see what neoliberal ‘reforms’ still remain to be implemented. 7See Armin Schäfer and Wolfgang Streeck, eds, Politics in the Age of Austerity, Cambridge: Polity 2013. 8Walter Korpi, The Democratic Class Struggle, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1983; and Crouch, Post

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/August 2012, 27–47. 2R. Joseph Monsen and Anthony Downs, ‘Public Goods and Private Status’, National Affairs, vol. 23, Spring 1971, pp. 64–77. 3See Wolfgang Streeck, Industrial Relations in West Germany: The Case of the Car Industry, New York: St. Martin’s Press 1984. 4This was described at the time as

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Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity, New York: Basic Books 1984) or ‘diversified quality production’: see Wolfgang Streeck, ‘On the Institutional Conditions of Diversified Quality Production’. In: Matzner, Egon and Wolfgang Streeck, eds, Beyond Keynesianism: The Socio-Economics of Production and Employment, London: Edward Elgar 1991, pp. 21–61. 5So at

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only at high political risk, at least outside the United States. 14Philipp Genschel and Peter Schwarz, ‘Tax Competition and Fiscal Democracy’. In: Schäfer, Armin and Wolfgang Streeck, eds, Politics in the Age of Austerity, Cambridge: Polity 2013. 15OECD, Addressing Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, Paris: OECD 2013. 16Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis:. 17Figures

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, government debt can be construed as debt incurred by the people themselves, who can therefore be held morally responsible for it (Marion Fourcade, Philippe Steiner, Wolfgang Streeck and Cornelia Woll, ‘Moral Categories in the Financial Crisis’, Socio-Economic Review, vol. 11, no. 4, 2013, pp. 601–627). The probability that public debt

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, vol. 92, no. 4, 2012, pp. 219–222; Fritz W. Scharpf, ‘Monetary Union, Fiscal Crisis, and the Disabling of Democratic Accountability’. In: Schäfer, Armin and Wolfgang Streeck, eds, Politics in the Age of Austerity, Cambridge: Polity 2013, pp. 134–136; and Streeck, Buying Time, pp. 107–9. 37I have described this as

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Cologne 2014. 52Wolfgang Streeck and Daniel Mertens, ‘Politik im Defizit: Austerität als fiskalpolitisches Regime’, Der moderne Staat, vol. 3, no. 1, 2010, pp. 7–29; Wolfgang Streeck and Daniel Mertens, Fiscal Austerity and Public Investment: Is the Possible the Enemy of the Necessary? MPIfG Discussion Paper 11/12, Cologne: Max Planck Institute

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, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books 1997 [1890], Introduction). I owe this reference to a benevolent reader of an early version of this manuscript. 4Jens Beckert and Wolfgang Streeck, Economic Sociology and Political Economy: A Programmatic Perspective, MPIfG Working Paper 08/4, Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies 2008. 5A broader

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, vol. 38, no. 151, 1928, pp. 361–386. 9Wolfgang Streeck, Re-Forming Capitalism: Institutional Change in the German Political Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009; Wolfgang Streeck, ‘Institutions in History: Bringing Capitalism Back In’. In: Campbell, John et al., eds, Handbook of Comparative Institutional Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010, pp. 659

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S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts, New York: Harcourt 1937). 31This section follows closely the argument in Wolfgang Streeck, ‘A Crisis of Democratic Capitalism’, New Left Review, no. 71, 2011, pp. 1–25. 32The principles of justice that constitute a society’s moral economy

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, among other things, changing economic conditions and social discourses. 33Crouch, ‘Privatised Keynesianism’. 34Kalecki, ‘Political Aspects of Full Employment’, pp. 322–331. 35On the following see Wolfgang Streeck, ‘Flexible Employment, Flexible Families, and the Socialization of Reproduction’. In: Coulmas, Florian and Ralph Lützeler, eds, Imploding Populations in Japan and Germany: A Comparison, Leiden

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possible ‘construction of a new regime of accumulation’ by none other than – the Obama administration. 20Hall and Soskice, ‘An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism’; cf. Wolfgang Streeck, ‘Taking Capitalism Seriously.’ 21On why this is mistaken even at the empirical, not to mention the conceptual level, see Streeck (Re-Forming Capitalism, Ch. 13

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and Beckert, Capitalism as a System of Contingent Expectations. 24Streeck, ‘Taking Capitalism Seriously’. 25Streeck, Re-Forming Capitalism. 26For why and how see Jens Beckert and Wolfgang Streeck, Economic Sociology and Political Economy: A Programmatic Perspective, MPIfG Working Paper 08/4, Cologne: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies 2008. 27Block, ‘Understanding

Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

by Wolfgang Streeck · 1 Jan 2013 · 353pp · 81,436 words

from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Streeck, Wolfgang, 1946– [Gekaufte Zeit. English] Buying time : the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism / Wolfgang Streeck; translated by Patrick Camiller. pages cm ‘First published as Gekaufte Zeit, Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2013.’ ISBN 978-1-78168-549-5 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1

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. 4/1, 2010, pp. 131–56. ———. Republican Liberty and Compulsory Voting, MPIfG Discussion Paper No. 11/17, Cologne: Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung, 2011. ———. and Wolfgang Streeck, ‘Introduction’, in Armin Schäfer et al. (eds), Politics in the Age of Austerity, Cambridge: Polity, 2013. Scharpf, Fritz W., Crisis and Choice in European Social

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, Michael, ‘Die wählen sowieso nicht’, Zeit online, 13 May 2012. Schmitter, Philippe C. and Gerhard Lehmbruch (eds), Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation, London: Sage, 1979. ———. and Wolfgang Streeck, The Organization of Business Interests: Studying the Associative Action of Business in Advanced Industrial Societies, MPIfG Discussion Paper No. 99/1, Cologne: MaxPlanck-Institut für

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Necessary?, MPIfG Discussion Paper No. 11/12, Cologne: Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung, 2011. ———. and Kathleen Thelen, ‘Introduction: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies’, In Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen (eds), Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 1–39. Taibbi, Matt, ‘The Great American

Globalists

by Quinn Slobodian · 16 Mar 2018 · 451pp · 142,662 words

scholars recently rediscovered, in his proposals for federalism, the “reinvention of liberal internationalism” and the implicit—and even explicit—inspiration for European economic integration.60 Wolfgang Streeck writes that Hayek’s work “reads like a blueprint for today’s European Union” in its design for institutions that link “internationalization” and “denationalization” with

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Schröder (SPD), “Mut zum Frieden und zur Veränderung,” March 14, 2003, http://www.documentArchiv.de/brd/2003/rede_schroeder_03-14.html. 3. Quoted in Wolfgang Streeck, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (New York: Verso, 2014), 213. 4. Chakravarthi Raghavan, “Trade: The Empire Strikes Back,” SUNS—South North Development

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University Press, 1995), 208; Manuel Wörsdörfer, “Von Hayek and Ordoliberalism on Justice,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 35, no. 3 (2013): 309. 49. Wolfgang Streeck makes a similar argument: “Today’s post-democratic, or better perhaps: a-democratic, Hayekian capitalism, after the victory, or almost-victory, of neoliberalism, may be

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Crisis of the European Union,” German Law Journal 14, no. 5 (2013): 527–560. 62. For a forceful and eloquent statement of this position, see Wolfgang Streeck, How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System (London: Verso, 2016), chap. 1. 63. Walter Eucken, “Staatliche Strukturwandlungen und die Krisis des Kapitalismus,” Weltwirtschaftliches

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, The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), chap. 5. 61. Wolfgang Streeck, Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (New York: Verso, 2014), 101. 62. “Nobel-Prize Winning Economist,” 46. 63. John Gray, Black Mass: How

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and Economics, ed. F. A. Hayek (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), 83. 16. Danny Nicol, The Constitutional Protection of Capitalism (London: Bloomsbury, 2010). 17. Wolfgang Streeck, “Small-State Nostalgia? The Currency Union, Germany, and Europe: A Reply to Jürgen Habermas,” Constellations 21, no. 2 (2014): 216. 18. Stephen Gill, “New Constitutionalism

Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI

by John Cassidy · 12 May 2025 · 774pp · 238,244 words

-acre compound in Hawaii that reportedly included a blast-proof underground bunker.11 “Nobody believes any more in a moral revival of capitalism,” the sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, the longtime director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, wrote. “The Weberian attempt to prevent it from being confounded

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configuration will survive, or what will succeed it. But the system cannot rest. This has been true throughout its history. It will remain true until Wolfgang Streeck or one of his descendants is eventually proved right. Notes Introduction 1. Jeff Stein, “Here’s the Full Text of Bernie Sanders’s Iowa Speech

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Compound,” Wired, December 14, 2023, https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-inside-hawaii-compound. 12. Wolfgang Streeck, “How Will Capitalism End?,” New Left Review, no. 87 (May/June 2014), https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii87/articles/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-capitalism-end. 13. Streeck, “How Will Capitalism End?” 14. Streeck, “How Will Capitalism End

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?

by Thomas Geoghegan · 20 Sep 2011 · 364pp · 104,697 words

just a fluke. Thanks to Americans, many Germans—intellectuals, businessmen—had talked themselves into thinking German-type capitalism wouldn’t work anymore. On the left, Wolfgang Streeck had presented this case in a much-buzzed-about paper: “German Capitalism: Does It Exist? Can It Survive?” He said there were vanishing investment opportunities

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bringing brötchen and I was already in Europe. I pulled out some of my notes from 1997, and I had packed my trusty copy of Wolfgang Streeck’s “German Capitalism: Does It Exist? Can It Survive?” I expected in Berlin people would argue about the German model as they had before. But

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“team.” Take a look at their depositions: there are so many hostile, sullen people. Based on what I’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe Wolfgang Streeck when he makes a standard point about the U.S. and German models. While Streeck was pessimistic about the German model, he still notes its

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of pensions when manufacturers go belly-up. How often has this happened in the U.S. because no Sparkassen were around? It’s just heartbreaking. Wolfgang Streeck thought the German model was doomed because the big old private banks would pull out money from industry. Capital would become global. It would go

The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social

by Steffen Mau · 12 Jun 2017 · 254pp · 69,276 words

advertising environment which simultaneously excludes anything that doesn't ‘match’ our profile. What we are witnessing here is a paradox of expanding and narrowing options. Wolfgang Streeck sees in this the rise of a new form of sociation characterized by increasing fragmentation and tribalization: ‘The expansion of individual choice that comes with

The Social Life of Money

by Nigel Dodd · 14 May 2014 · 700pp · 201,953 words

on these markets) appears as an objectified measure of some sort of underlying moral worth in the eyes of investors” (Fourcade 2013: 22). According to Wolfgang Streeck, this attitude has been especially pronounced during the Eurozone crisis, with Greece cast as the morally dubious debtor: “The moral discourse on Greek public finances

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of public and private debt that defines the parameters of the crisis has torn the democratic integrity of its constituent member states apart. According to Wolfgang Streeck (Streeck 2011), the form of democratic capitalism found in the Eurozone operates according to two conflicting regimes of resource allocation, one based on marginal productivity

A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity and a Shared Earth

by Chris Smaje · 14 Aug 2020 · 375pp · 105,586 words

, especially in the richer countries – makes hopes of long-term prosperity for the majority of people ever more visibly blocked by a minority.124 Sociologist Wolfgang Streeck coined the term ‘consolidation state’ to describe the turning away of the contemporary state from the wider interests of its citizens towards the specific interests

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, farmers of the world who currently seem destined not to find more lucrative jobs within the waged economy might brighten. Indeed, their numbers might swell. Wolfgang Streeck argues that the combination of increasing inequality, debt and political stress with decreasing growth will probably end the era of capitalism – one that lasted longer

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rethinking that’s needed to overcome them. It’s also because the very structure of the modern state itself is part of the problem (see Wolfgang Streeck’s consolidation state argument, Chapter 1, ‘Crisis #9: Political Economy’, page 66). We seem to be living in an age of zombie liberalism. Neither right

What's Wrong With Economics: A Primer for the Perplexed

by Robert Skidelsky · 3 Mar 2020 · 290pp · 76,216 words

economists’ image of a world in which the ‘invisible hand’ of the market guarantees social stability is profoundly opposed to the sociological standpoint. Sociology, writes Wolfgang Streeck, must rediscover political economy.9 The choice between the individual and the social is not straightforward. One strong defence can be offered for methodological individualism

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’ and ruling in the interests of the whole society, is strongly challenged by those in the Marxist tradition. Capitalism and democracy, writes the German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, ‘are both individually as well as in their respective combinations, the outcome of specific configurations of classes and class interests as evolved in a historical

Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace

by Matthew C. Klein · 18 May 2020 · 339pp · 95,270 words

were consuming half of the federal budget. Another 25 percent of the budget went to long-term jobless benefits and the salaries of federal bureaucrats. Wolfgang Streeck, the director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, summarized the situation as one where the “long-term build-up of financial

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-sector/balance-of-payments. 51. Konstantin von Hammerstein and René Pfister, “Merkel’s Dispassionate Approach to the Euro Crisis,” Der Spiegel, December 12, 2012. 52. Wolfgang Streeck, “Endgame? The Fiscal Crisis of the German State,” Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, MPIfG Discussion Paper 07/7. 53. Federal Ministry of