Capitalism on Edge How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia
Capitalism on Edge offers a novel diagnosis of the current moment to reveal that the potential for sweeping transformation must come from an unexpected direction. Albena Azmanova demonstrates that capitalism is not on its deathbed, revolution is not in the cards, and utopianism cannot steer us towar...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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New York
Columbia University Press
2019, ©2020
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| Series: | New directions in critical theory
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| Collection: | DeGruyter MPG Collection - Collection details see MPG.ReNa |
| Summary: | Capitalism on Edge offers a novel diagnosis of the current moment to reveal that the potential for sweeping transformation must come from an unexpected direction. Albena Azmanova demonstrates that capitalism is not on its deathbed, revolution is not in the cards, and utopianism cannot steer us toward a brighter future. Claus Offe, author of Europe Entrapped: In her ambitious yet transparent and accessible treatise on the nature of present-day capitalism and its demise, Azmanova highlights the dark side of the competitive production of profit. This consists of the lived experience of uncertainty, insecurity, injustice, risk, and fear that affects the vast majority of people in Western societies. For them, capitalism is a game that consists of the blaming of victims, losers, and the structurally disempowered. Rather than invoking the revolutionary action of some strategically privileged class, a terminal crisis of capitalism, or a utopia of 'socialism,' the author explores and advocates for the potential of a radical subversive pragmatism. People simply want to do other things than give in to the pressure to enhance their employability in a treadmill of jobless non-growth. And policies, she demonstrates, can help to achieve such post-capitalist desires. A daring yet encouraging message. -- Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, and former U.S. Secretary of Labor: With great insight, Albena Azmanova gives us a new way of understanding modern capitalism: through profit-driven corporations generating endless insecurity. But rather than despair, Azmanova finds reason for hope in a potential political coalition of unlikely partners. Thoroughly researched, powerfully argued. John B. Judis, author of The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization: Typically, critics of capitalism identify its ills primarily with greater inequality, and propose redistributive reforms to alleviate it, but in Capitalism on Edge, Albena Azmanova takes a refreshingly different view. She takes aim at the way today's capitalism, subject to automation and globalization, has created greater insecurity and uncertainty. What she calls 'precarious capitalism' threatens the white-collar office worker as well as blue-collar factory operative. Azmanova, who grew up during the death throes of Eastern European socialism, doesn't see socialism as an alternative, but instead a set of radical measures that would create what she calls a 'political economy of trust.' These reforms would subvert rather than destroy capitalism. With Europe's major parties in disarray and the two American parties at loggerheads, hers is a welcome commentary on how the left and the 99 percent can address the growing concern that many feel about their futures under global, postindustrial capitalism. ... |
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| Physical Description: | 257 Seiten |
| ISBN: | 978-0-231-53060-6 |