It is conceivable that capitalism 2.0 will conserve natural resources more than it has done in the centuries since the First Industrial Revolution, and that patriarchy will come to an end. As long as it continues to exist, however, the following will remain, even under these changed conditions: profit maximization, periodic overaccumulation, crises, and wars.
Capitalism 2.0?
by Georg Fülberth
[This article posted on 1/29/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.lunapark21.net/kapitalismus-2-0/.]
When capitalism needs to reorganize itself in order to enter a new phase, there are always people who see its end as imminent. This has been the case again since the outbreak of the global financial and economic crisis of 2007/2008. Those with a good knowledge of history among the proponents of this prediction are at the same time reflectively cautious: yes, they know that this has been predicted time and again in the past, but it could be that this time it really is happening.
The current end-time prophecies are often triggered by dangerous global warming. Some say that it cannot be stopped within capitalism and argue with others who believe that a combination of market forces and technical innovation offers a way out. The flattening of growth rates in OECD countries is also sometimes seen as an ultimately irreversible trend toward gradual decline, accompanied by the expectation that countries lagging behind in development, such as China in particular, will eventually follow suit. In his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942), Joseph A. Schumpeter presented an early model of such reasoning. In her book “The Choice: Capitalism vs. Climate,” Naomi Klein sees an antagonism that can only be overcome by eliminating the currently prevailing mode of production. Ulrike Herrmann proposes replacing the current form of this exploitative order with another. This would be open to discussion if she did not boldly call this transition “the end of capitalism.” That is the title of her book.
Marx saw things differently: “A social order never perishes before all the productive forces for which it is wide enough have developed, and new, higher relations of production never replace it before the material conditions of their existence have been bred in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore, humanity always sets itself only those tasks which it can solve, for on closer inspection it will always be found that the task itself arises only where the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of coming into being.”
The variant in which a social order collapses gloomily into itself is missing here. The “end of capitalism” is certainly no promise. Unless something new emerges. Whether it will be something better remains to be seen. All that is said is that the “material conditions of existence” have already been “incubated in the womb of the old society.”
Anyone looking for them today might come across one or two examples. For example, the commons offered by the internet. However, this can be easily integrated into capitalism and offers large property owners an expanded field of action. Lenin’s view that in a revolution, those at the top must no longer be able to rule and those at the bottom must no longer want to be ruled does not suggest that a radical change is to be expected under the current circumstances. Amazon, Meta, Google, and others are in the hands of private owners and know how to deal with the commons. And as long as their poorer customers can surf the web cheaply, they are not rebellious, at least for the time being. So let’s leave the question of the subjective factor aside for now.
Instead, it is advisable to view the current discord as the fourth of capitalism’s systemic crises, in each of which capitalism has never perished but has been transformed. This distinguishes it from merely cyclical slumps.
This happened for the first time in the Great Depression of the decades from 1873 to 1896. Free market capitalism gave way to organized capitalism and imperialism, whose international conflicts erupted in two world wars. The second turning point was the global economic crisis that began in 1929. It was overcome by a combination of civil and military Keynesianism. Roosevelt’s New Deal was able to curb mass unemployment. But it was not until 1942, after the start of the war with Germany, Italy, and Japan, that it fell below five percent. In the Nazi state, arms investments had a far greater impact on economic development than housing and highway construction. The Reich Labor Service and the introduction of compulsory military service further reduced unemployment. After 1945, a civil welfare Keynesianism unfolded in the West, which was replaced in the second half of the 1970s (after the so-called “mini” global economic crisis of 1975) by a new market radicalism (“neoliberalism”).
The fourth crisis of transformation within capitalism began with the collapse of 2008/2009. It has not yet been overcome and is characterized by the following features:
1. Overaccumulation of capital,
2. Extreme inequality,
3. The biosphere crisis,
4. the threat of war as before 1914, now combined with the danger of the self-annihilation of humanity (or large parts of it) in a nuclear war.
At the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, huge industrial policy projects were announced in the US and the EU to combat man-made global warming. It is conceivable that this could also reduce overaccumulation. Since 2022 at the latest, a new global Keynesianism of armament has emerged, which could overlap or replace the civilian Keynesianism.
There is a danger that the current crisis of transformation will end in a new major war. Even if this can be avoided, capitalism will be different after it than it was before.
Its contours are not yet clearly visible. Predictions are made more difficult by the fact that the current systemic crisis could be overlaid by another, secular (yes, more than that) crisis. It is possible that the type of production that began with industrial capitalism (around 1780) is now coming to an end, but is currently undergoing profound changes. Let’s call it Capitalism 1.0. It was based on the use of fossil fuels and the exploitation of living labor. The declared goal of world climate conferences today is to reduce CO2 emissions by using renewable energy sources instead of carbon-based ones. (The use of nuclear power remains controversial.) Since the First Industrial Revolution, machines have increasingly replaced physical labor. The use of the latter is declining in relative terms, but increasing in absolute terms due to rising demand for it as a result of the rapid spread of capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the history of economic thought, the growing importance of objectified labor in relation to living labor was reflected in the fact that, from around 1870, the labor theory of value of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx was largely replaced by other theories in which physical capital was also regarded as the source of wealth in societies. At the end of the 20th century and in the first quarter of the 21st century, digitalization, including artificial intelligence, also encompassed intellectual work.
Since the beginning of patriarchy and civilization in the Neolithic period, male labor has been regarded as the only productive force in society, superior to female labor. In war, men had a monopoly on armed violence, while women were victims, companions, and caregivers. In the new capitalism, in which the share of work performed by men in the production and circulation of material goods is declining and weapon technology no longer suggests the almost exclusive use of men in war, this binary gender order, which retains the monopoly of female reproductive capacity, is in crisis. The gender discourses of the late 20th and early 21st centuries reflect these transformations.
It is conceivable that capitalism 2.0 will conserve natural resources more than it has done in the centuries since the First Industrial Revolution, and that patriarchy will come to an end. As long as it continues to exist, however, the following will remain, even under these changed conditions: profit maximization, periodic overaccumulation, crises, and wars.
Georg Fülberth is a professor emeritus of political science living in Marburg.