can strengthen democracy and advance transformative politics from below. He emphasises the applicability of the constitution in terms of challenging private power, the importance of socio-economic rights for social justice, the role of South Africa’s Chapter 9 constitutional institutions in empowering citizenship, and the constitutional injunctions that commit the state to be responsive and practise ‘good governance’. In his argument, he clarifies the real meaning of the property clause in the constitution to help put an end to any confusion arising from the clause and the dogmatic railing against it.
NOTES
1 Anarchism also shares these weaknesses, as Lilley (2012) points out.
2 This claim is made on the back cover of the new release of Kindleberger’s (2013) classic book.
3 James DeLong and Barry Eichengreen are based at the University of California, Berkeley. Kindleberger’s notion of hegemonic stability has essentially been about a powerful capitalist state having power over others, and serving as a stabilising force by being the consumer and lender of last resort. Eichengreen, influenced by Kindleberger, has built on the idea of ‘hegemonic stability’.
REFERENCES
Amin, S. 1995. Re-reading the Postwar Period: An Intellectual Itinerary. New York: Monthly Review Press.
DeLong, J.B and Eichengreen, B. 2013. ‘Foreword’. In C.P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Accessed 14 September 2015, www.voxeu.org/article/new-preface-charles-kindleberger-world-depression-1929-1939.
Gramsci, A. (1971) 1998. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited by Q. Hoare and G. Smith. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.
IMF (International Monetary Fund). 2014. World Economic Outlook – Recovery Strengthens, Remains Uneven. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund.
Kindleberger, C.P. (1973) 2013. The World in Depression, 1929–1939. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Lilley, S. 2012. ‘Great chaos under heaven: Catastrophism and the Left’. In Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth, edited by S. Lilley, D. McNally, E. Yuen and J. Davis. Oakland: PM Press.
Panitch, L. and Gindin, S. 2010. ‘Capitalist crises and the crisis this time’. In Socialist Register, edited by L. Panitch, G. Albo and V. Chibber. London: Merlin Press.
Wearden, G. 2014. ‘IMF chief Lagarde warns Europe’s crisis isn’t over’. Accessed 12 May 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/12/imf-chief-lagarde-warns-europes-financial-crisis-isnt-over-business-live.
CHAPTER 1: FROM MARX TO THE SYSTEMIC CRISES OF CAPITALIST CIVILISATION
Vishwas Satgar
Over the past two centuries, crisis has been endemic to capitalism. Yet classical and neoclassical economics has tended to treat crisis more as an aberration to ‘the norm’ of a stable self-regulating market. Since the onset of the 2007/08 global crisis, however, this axiomatic truth of capitalist economics has been called into question. The 2007/08 crisis is ongoing and has been compared to the general crisis of the Great Depression (1929–1941). It is now considered one of the worst crises in the history of modern capitalism, having eclipsed the Great Depression. So, how do we characterise the nature of the contemporary capitalist crisis? Are we experiencing a cyclical crisis or a deeper systemic crisis? Are we living through a time of periodic and general crises? Given the scale and depth of the contemporary crisis, which poses major existential threats to planetary life, this chapter argues that we are dealing with an unprecedented civilisational crisis with multiple systemic dimensions: the systemic crises of capitalist civilisation.
I situate the argument in the context of Marx’s conceptions of capitalist crisis. Marx’s understanding of capitalism, as a body of knowledge and with its valuable contribution to modern social thought, has not been surpassed. However, in engaging Marx it is necessary to appreciate that classical theory on capitalist crisis, originating with Marx, is at an impasse in terms of comprehending the contemporary systemic crises of capitalist civilisation. The critical engagement with Marx is not about refuting his corpus, however, but about seeking new openings and ways of thinking about the contemporary capitalist crisis. It is about finding theoretical space in Marx’s understanding of the ‘deep structures of capital’ for the notion of the ‘systemic crisis of capitalist civilisation’ and other conjoined concepts, such as ‘capital as a geological force’. This is grounded in an appreciation that Marx’s work is unfinished and open to development by deploying his own dialectical method of thinking.
Also significant in this search for new openings and ways of thinking about capitalist crisis is the challenge of the level and scale at which we think about this crisis. To merely think about crisis in the abstract, at the level of the ‘deep structures of capital’, is not very useful in itself. Similarly, to think about the crises of capitalism as merely economic crises is wholly inadequate. Therefore, I argue that abstractions and economic reductionism do not help us come to terms with the level and scale of the crises of contemporary capitalist civilisation. This approach relates directly to the challenge of how we periodise historical capitalism to bring out its historical specificity. This chapter therefore advances a perspective on the historical development of capitalist civilisation and its periodisation at a historical level and as a global social system.
Finally, in this chapter I show how the various systemic dimensions of capitalist crisis can be understood in a non-reductionist way. This brings to the fore the role of the US-led bloc and transnational capital in both constituting and reproducing the systemic dimensions of capitalist civilisational crisis. In this regard, attention is given to the making and operations of the following systemic-crisis tendencies: financialised chaos, the climate crisis, peak oil, the food-system crisis and the securitisation of democracy. These dimensions of the systemic crisis relate to the challenge of left agency today and lead to the crucial question: is left politics about catastrophism or about the politics of a transformative moment?
In summary, the notion of the systemic crises of capitalist civilisation is essentially a thesis, which is tested in this chapter in relation to, firstly, Marx’s theoretical understanding of crisis; secondly, the challenge of providing a non-teleological but stages view of capitalism’s history, which captures the scale and depth of the crisis; thirdly, the empirical dimensions of the systemic crises of capitalist civilisation; and, finally, the challenges for left agency. The purpose of this approach is to open up new ways of thinking about capitalist crisis, while thinking about how the crises of capitalist civilisation prompt a rethink of left agency. At the same time, this analysis lays the basis for more in-depth theoretical and analytical work.
MARX’S UNDERSTANDING OF CAPITALIST CRISIS
Marx has provided social thought with a simple but powerful understanding of capitalism: it is a system that is prone to crisis and this crisis is internal to capitalism. However, Marx did not develop a systematic or adequate theory of capitalist crisis. His work contains ideas and concepts that suggest the existence of this crisis tendency. In the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx ([1859] 1999: 21) writes:
At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production
