{"id":36223,"date":"2022-12-09T15:20:54","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T11:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=36223"},"modified":"2022-12-09T15:20:54","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T11:20:54","slug":"we-live-in-a-time-of-late-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/we-live-in-a-time-of-late-capitalism\/","title":{"rendered":"We live in a time of \u2018late capitalism\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

But what does that mean? And what\u2019s so late about it?<\/em><\/span><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

The term \u201clate capitalism\u201d seems to be everywhere as a trending meme \u2013 often used as a kind of shorthand to illustrate the absurdities of certain free market economies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>A worker shovels charcoal at the at Al-Hattab production facility in the Gaza Strip.\u00a0Mohammed Saber\/AP<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On Twitter, you will find the hashtags #latecapitalism (English), #tardocapitalismo (Italian), #capitalismotardio (Spanish), and #sp\u00e4tkapitalismus (German), among others. Typically, they satirise notions such as the idea of endless growth.<\/span><\/p>\n

The term also pops up in a wide range of academic articles and books. There are, for instance, discussions around the populist rise in late capitalism, the increase in financial-related investments in late capitalism, migration conditions in late capitalism, and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what are the origins of this term? And what, exactly, does it mean?<\/span><\/p>\n

The origins<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Karl Marx first analysed the last stage of capitalism in his three-volume magnum opus ‘Capital: A Critique of Political Economy’ (published in 1867, 1885, and 1894), particularly in Volume 3.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Marx, an acceleration in the turnover of capital, concentrating wealth in the hands of the few, would result in a continuous tendency to crises. This, he believed, would ultimately make the system collapse.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Marx did not use the term \u201clate capitalism\u201d. It was coined by Werner Sombart, a controversial German historical economist, almost a century ago in his three-volume magnum opus\u00a0‘Der ModerneKapitalismus’<\/em>\u00a0(published from 1902 through 1927).<\/span><\/p>\n

Sombart\u2019s main contribution was to define three periods of the capitalist economic system: early or proto capitalism, advanced capitalism and late capitalism. In Sombart\u2019s analysis, late capitalism referred specifically to economic, political and social deprivations associated with the aftermath of the first world war.<\/span><\/p>\n

A new epoch<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The term wasn\u2019t taken up widely until Belgian Marxist economist Ernest Mandel\u2019s treatise\u00a0Late Capitalism\u00a0was published in English in 1975.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mandel used the idea to describe the economic expansion after the second world war. This was a time characterised by the emergence of multinational companies, a growth in the global circulation of capital and an increase in corporate profits and the wealth of certain individuals, chiefly in the West.<\/span>
\n
\n<\/a>As Mandel described it, the period of late capitalism did not represent a change in the essence of capitalism, only a new epoch marked by expansion and acceleration in production and exchange. Thus one of the main features of late capitalism is the increasing amounts of capital investments into non-traditional productive areas, such as the expansion of credit.<\/span><\/p>\n

This period of exceptional economic growth, argued Mandel, would reach its limit by the mid 1970s. At this time, the world economy was experiencing an\u00a0oil crisis\u00a0(in 1973, and a second wave in 1979). Britain was also experiencing a banking crisis derived from a fall in property prices and an increase in interest rates.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, since the time of Mandel\u2019s writing such crises have become recurrent.<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, the 1980s were known for the different regional financial crises, such as in Latin America, the US and Japan. In 1997, we saw the Asian\u00a0financial crisis. The 2008 US subprime crisis became the\u00a0Great Recession.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cultural component<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The term \u201clate capitalism\u201d regained relevance in 1991 when Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson published\u00a0Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.<\/span>
\n
\n<\/a>Drawing on Mandel\u2019s idea that capitalism has sped up and gone global, Jameson expanded his analysis to the cultural realm. His argument was that late capitalist societies have lost their connection with history and are defined by a fascination with the present.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Jameson\u2019s account, late capitalism is characterised by a globalised, post-industrial economy, where everything \u2013 not just material resources and products but also immaterial dimensions, such as the arts and lifestyle activities \u2013 becomes commodified and consumable.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this capitalist stage, we see innovation for the sake of innovation, a superficial projected image of self via celebrities or \u201cinfluencers\u201d channelled through social media, and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this time, whatever societal changes that emerge are quickly transformed into products for exchange. Unlike those who celebrate\u00a0postmodernism\u00a0as replete with irony and transgression, Jameson considers it to be a non-threatening feature of the capitalist system in contemporary societies.<\/span><\/p>\n

More recently, Jonathan Crary, in his book\u00a0‘Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep’, argues our current version of 24\/7 capitalism, enabled by intrusive technologies and social media, is eroding basic human needs such as sufficient sleep. It is also eliminating \u201cthe useless time of reflection and contemplation\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Elias Aviles Espinoza<\/span>
\n<\/strong>PhD candidate in Political Economy,
\nUniversity of Sydney<\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 9 December 2022<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But what does that mean? And what\u2019s so late about it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":36224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8348],"tags":[127,7279,6049],"class_list":["post-36223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-conversation","tag-capitalism","tag-karl-marx","tag-thomas-piketty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/capitalism.jpg?fit=1200%2C741&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-9qf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}