Fascism and communism meant radical escalations unleashed by the cataclysmic experiences of the First World War in the two rival political currents of the nineteenth century, nationalism and socialism. Both ferociously fought each other for the overlapping mass constituencies in the rising lower classes of society: clerks, junior officers, intellectuals, workers, peasants. Both movements offered to their followers vastly enhanced self-prestige, empowerment, and the prospect of unprecedented promotions through the ranks of party, state bureaucracy, and the military. The two movements were breaking the taboos of old aristocratic regimes and advancing whomever they defined as their common men.
It is an uncomfortable realization that the modern ideal of justice and political rights for the common people, in theory and in practice, could have not one but two antagonistic expressions. Justice as social equality and unity of humanity was usually called socialism. It is, of course, the original Enlightenment ideal that enjoys a great intellectual tradition and enduring attraction. But at the level of politics this program was never easily sustained because it cuts across the social cleavages of group status, locality, religion, race, and gender. Justice in less universal terms, as privileging only a particular group against other groups, typically translates into the politics of nationalism, sexism, racism, religious fundamentalism, or whatever their contingent mixture. The intellectual tradition of such ideas is much cruder. But they often proved more effective in the age of mass politics. Nationalism over the last two centuries has animated a great many passionate or downright virulent political mobilizations. In fact, it is still the most effective of all political programs today.
Communism was not a genetic twin of fascism. They were ideological opposites and mortal enemies emerging from the imperialist industrial warfare of the early twentieth century. Neither communism nor fascism can reemerge in their familiar forms because, fortunately, their geopolitical and ideological preconditions have been eliminated. It does not mean that another major crisis in the future will not provoke strong reactions from the opposite sides of political spectrum. In fact, such antagonistic reactions will become likely as the conventional political mainstream loses coherence. But if my co-authors in this volume are right in their future predictions, as they proved in the past, then we might also make several further predictions.
The crisis of capitalism in the 21st century will be unfolding primarily in the world economy rather than in geopolitics. Its consequences will look more like class struggle, broadly construed to include the educated specialists, than world wars among coalitions of states. Moreover, the struggles will involve primarily the core capitalist areas where democratic politics have strong institutions and the enduring traditions of social movements. At stake will be public control over the private economic corporations rather than state armies or ideological paramilitaries. The nasty xenophobic reactions will be still prominent on one side because class struggles in a global world full of migrants inescapably will acquire the aspects of race, religion, and ethnicity. Extreme nationalisms will likely attempt to direct the powers of modern states into extreme coercion and policing resembling the erstwhile totalitarian practices, perhaps taken to a new technological level. Here is a big danger. But on the other side we will see political coalitions mobilizing around the liberal-leftist program of universal justice that has been ascendant in the modern world since at least the epoch of Enlightenment. Both capitalist classes and social movements, learning their lessons after 1945, cumulatively did a lot to make far less likely the wars between states and the internal civil wars. If warfare could be avoided, then violent revolution and dictatorships of both far left and the far right might be also avoided in the twenty-first century.
If this analysis is correct, then the Bolshevik 1917, fortunately, is not very relevant in predicting what the end of capitalism will look like. It could be rather the mass civic mobilizations like the 1968 Prague Spring and the Soviet perestroika at its height in 1989. In both instances the ruling elites reacted with more panic than outright violence. But the insurgent movements even more shamefully failed to exploit the momentous disorganization in the ranks of dominant classes. The outcomes were unhappy. Therefore thinking boldly and responsibly about the future should imply considering the political and economic programs as well as the possible coalitions and tradeoffs in order to minimize the uncertainties of transitions in the face of major crisis. Ultimately, this could be the most useful lesson of communism.
5
WHAT THREATENS CAPITALISM NOW?
Craig Calhoun
Capitalism appears to be surviving the worst financial and economic crisis since the Great Depression. Though its lows were not as low, in the world’s rich countries this has brought a longer period of depressed or absent growth than the Depression itself. Moreover, the current crisis comes on the heels of a damaging era of lopsided financialization, neoliberal weakening of social institutions, and intensified inequality. This exacerbates problems, undercuts capacity to deal with them, and reduces the buffers that protect ordinary people from the effects of economics upheaval. Investors are still making money; no states have completely collapsed. Yet the future looks precarious.
However, this and most talk of collapse reflects views from the old core countries of the capitalist world-system as they lose their privileged and profitable position. The views are different from many places in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The current crisis both reveals and accelerates a shift of economic momentum away from long-standing core economies in Europe and North America toward newly developing regions. A key question for the future of capitalism is whether this momentum can be sustained. Capitalism is being transformed through this West to East and North to South shift, perhaps in ways that restore its vitality. But the rapidly growing economies also face challenges. And renewed capitalist growth in the old “core” economies also depends on transformation, particularly in the relationship of capitalism to political power and social institutions. Crucially, capitalism is vulnerable not just to market upheavals, excessive risk-taking, or poorly managed banks but also to wars, environmental degradation and climate change, and crises of social solidarity and welfare.
To think well about how capitalism may face decline, or be renewed, or be transformed, we need to recognize that it is not a perfectly self-contained system. One may abstract from more complex historical conditions to examine a putatively pure capitalist system. But the lived reality of capitalism always involves articulation with noncapitalist economic activity and with political, social, and cultural factors; it is a legal and institutional as well as an economic system. And many of the deepest threats capitalism faces come from its dependence on factors beyond the purely economic.
I will argue against the notion that capitalist collapse is imminent, and suggest that if capitalism were to lose its dominant place in global economic affairs this would more likely come about through protracted transformation and the rise of other kinds of economic organization alongside continuing capitalist activity. But this doesn’t mean capitalism’s long-term future is assured.