Permanent crisis – capitalism in panic mode

Overfished, overvalued, overcommunicated, overloaded with brands, overaesthetized, overmedicated, monitored, overvirtualized, overmediaized” (Arthur Kroker and David Cook, 1989): Today it is particularly speculative capitalization that – inextricably linked to the rise of networked computers – is in The result of ecstatic excesses of increase has led to over: too much capital, but also too many images and too many symbols that deny everyone neutralize historical meaning and exercise white censorship through excess.

According to Jean Baudrillard, this type of simulation through excessive reality overload results in a new escalation of obesity, which ultimately becomes visible in all kinds of waste: nuclear waste, chemical waste and industrial waste, but also the excess of opinions, laws and texts that are like carcasses in the stream of ruin and corruption. World capitalism seems to have passed into a paradoxical, accelerating and at the same time exhausting panic mode, in which the ecstasy of the “over” as over-accumulation and over-speculation meets the destructive activities of capital, especially with regard to the capitalization of nature and the creation of a global one Surplus population.

The current economic, social and geopolitical conflicts, for which the term “polycrisis” (Adam Tooze) is circulating in the media, could, in their interaction, develop a catastrophic dynamic in the near future: speculative capital and its bubble formations; a surge in inflation forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy; pandemics and brutal economic inequality; the corporate debt crisis as interest rates on loans rise; a real estate bubble that bursts; the increasing risk of global stagflation or recession.

In a polycrisis, the various shocks that permeate the economic, political and social areas are differentiated and of different intensity, but they interact and mix so that the result is that the (open) whole is driven even more into crisis than if it were the crisis would simply be the result of a sum of partial crises. The crucial point is that various shocks and crises interact, overlap and mix, resulting in a polycentrifugal crisis that is more catastrophic than any crisis that results from only the sum of partial crises.

The catastrophe amounts to an ongoing and worsening polycrisis, in which collapses are taking place in all areas and a return to normality is a long way off. Things are accelerated and at the same time stopped before they end, so as to keep them in the tension of their appearance for an indefinite period of time. The catastrophe never completes, but more than that, because by never completing itself, it becomes real, reality as a simulation of itself.

There is widespread agreement among Marxists that the financial crisis of 2008 marked the beginning of a structural crisis in world capitalism. In contrast to medicine, in which the crisis is supposed to trigger healing and thus disappear, the current polycrisis does not seem to be going away, rather it seems to be constantly delirious, with no way out, no alternative like capitalism itself.

The catastrophe never completes, it becomes reality as a simulation of itself.

The (crisis-like) excess of speculative capital now dominates – the acceleration of the creation of constantly new assets, a process that occasionally leads to financial collapse and large parts of the population, especially in the global south, to ever new misery, impoverishment and financial uncertainty falls. However, it is not the real economy that drives the financial economy, but conversely it is the financial economy that structures the real economy. It is always important to take into account that the “value” of a financial investment is not subordinate to the capitalist production process, but precedes it. It exists not because surplus value has been produced, but because financial capital is confident that the realization of returns will occur in the future.

Global monetary capital is now less parked in industrial or technology companies or actively managed through specific hedge funds and banks, but rather managed (and passively managed) by large asset management groups such as BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, which became important in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse have become a faction of transnational capital and are taking on new investment and control functions on a global level. These asset management firms are increasingly passively following stock indices with their diversified portfolios rather than actively trading stocks, bonds or derivatives; they act more as financial intermediaries when they assume the shareholder role in public companies and provide financial channels in which wealthy elites invest.

Probably the biggest non-event of the neoliberal era of capitalism is the stagnation of the economy in the phase of the fourth “industrial revolution,” which has not yet been overcome by digital automation and the associated productivity advances. The paradox is that manufacturing productivity growth rates collapsed just when they were supposed to be increasing rapidly due to automation.

The weak economic growth in the capitalist global economy has been accompanied by unexpected inflation in energy, raw material and food prices since 2022. While supply and demand in traditional markets play some role in the dramatic fluctuations, the far more significant cause of the rise in high prices (and their subsequent crash) lies in the financial markets.

For low- and middle-income households, the rise in energy prices has a direct impact on consumer behavior. They are forced to make savings and suffer real income losses. The state compensation payments are like a drop in the ocean for the lower classes. Social policy is now like politics itself. It is administered to the masses in a homeopathic dose, diluted to such an extent that it becomes negligible in relation to the overall solution and leaves only a trace that is so tiny that it is hardly any more perceived, but ultimately survives as a simulation (as a policy of well-intentioned advice on how to save).

The first industrial revolution was, among other things, about implementing technology based on fossil fuels, a fruit of history that is still poisoned today, says Andreas Malm. The current climate is a product of persistent CO₂-Emissions in the past. The emission of one ton of CO₂ wouldn’t be so dangerous if trillions of tons of CO2 hadn’t already accumulated₂ were in the atmosphere; So it is the total accumulation that causes temperatures to rise, and the more CO₂ is emitted, the less chance there is of being able to slow down the increase that is taking place. Today the globe has become a dumping ground for manufacturing plants and hypermarket consumer processors. Regarding the globe’s long-standing devastation, Jason Moore speaks of a “general law of over-pollution.”

The debate about stimulus versus austerity, which haunts all media, from left to right, from neoclassical to post-Keynesianism, undauntedly attests that states have the potential to still solve crises – but this has long since been exhausted. Profit rates in industry are stagnating, while the ecstatic growth of speculative capital is constantly widening the gap between orbitally circulating money capital and the surplus value created by the exploitation of labor power. According to the philosopher Fabio Vighi, one can speak of an illiberal meta-emergency world system that characterizes the new normal. If, according to Walter Benjamin, the catastrophe is that things continue like this, then in the future we can expect a drastic normality that is becoming increasingly unreasonable for large parts of the world’s population, the catastrophic moment of which can hardly be disguised.

Several books by Szepanski have been published by Laika Verlag, including “Capitalization” (two volumes), “Capital and Power in the 21st Century” and “Non-Marxism”.