{"id":27741,"date":"2026-08-02T11:47:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T09:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=27741"},"modified":"2026-08-02T12:37:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T10:37:39","slug":"a-protracted-era-of-systemic-breakdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/?p=27741","title":{"rendered":"A protracted era of systemic breakdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wolfgang Streeck<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Before capitalism will be over, there will a long time of crisis, or crises, of frictions between institutions and expectations that no longer fit together, of contested experiments trying to restore the old order or to introduce a new one, under high uncertainty, with support and resistance from unexpected quarters. Also, dismantling a civilization is one thing; replacing it with another, another. We are not talking about an act of social engineering here, to be completed in one generation, but about a long march into an unknown future, a new social settlement after a long intermission without one, or with only the fragments of one. For a West European, the best analogue might be the end of the pagan Roman Empire and the rise of the Christian civilization of the early Middle Ages, which took about 500 years<\/span>, depending on how you count. This time, we may hope, it might go a little faster, but clearly not as fast as some impatient people on the Left expect.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

Warfare Keynesianism may come in the form of an authoritarian regression of liberal democracy under the pretense of a national emergency, justifying democracy being converted into \u201cmilitant democracy\u201d, domestically and internationally. This is what I see to be underway not just in the United States but also in Western Europe.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

The ideological framework after 1990 was globalization, neoliberalism, Washington Consensus, rule-based international order, all codewords in effect for the United States ruling the world through US-dominated international organizations and institutions and, not to forget, capitalist mega-corporations. This worked for a while until it, as it were, outlived itself: the United States government neglected its home country in the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d and with its willful de-industrialization, while inside the New World Order China and Russia prospered until they were considered by the United States to be too powerful to fit into American political hegemony \u2013 just as Germany and Japan were seen by the United States as rivals for industrial hegemony in the 1980s. Now, in what is indeed a \u201ctrue break\u201d, formulas are sought for a multipolar world and the struggle over how its poles will relate to each other, in particular what the place in it will be of the United States, the Great Power of the thirty years of neoliberal Americanism. Among the many things that I find interesting here is that at least in Western Europe, it is not so much on the fringes that new concepts of political economy arise but at the center. There, a new military-industrial complex is thriving based on quite old-fashioned war propaganda \u2013 the designation of existential enemies, like Russia and China \u2013 and on attempts to make domestic opponents appear like a fifth column of foreign enemies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The timespan here to me seems analogous to times for reversing climate breakdown. In simple terms, for the rest of my life, and for the lives of my children, capitalist societies will be failing, as the globe will be warming. Society and climate will break down at an accelerating rate. There will be no replacement for this within my lifetime nor within the lifetimes of my children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wolfgang Streeck: Before capitalism will be over, there will a long time of crisis, or crises, of frictions between institutions and expectations that no longer fit together, of contested experiments trying to restore the old order or to introduce a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27741"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27747,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27741\/revisions\/27747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wehle.by\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}