Alternatives to Capitalism

The worsening social pains of government austerity programs now intensify the vast social suffering caused by the crisis since 2007. Beyond this especially severe business cycle, longer term trends show capitalist mega-corporations moving blue and white collar work to lower wage regions far from the former centers of capitalist production (the USA and Western Europe especially). Profit and competition prompt such relocations. Modern telecommunications enable supervision of far-away factories, offices, and stores almost as easily as those nearby. In the US, what capitalist corporations began decades ago, abandoning urban centers like Detroit, Cleveland, and so on, is now being extended nationally. In response, especially across Western Europe and the US, the last five years have renewed the critical questioning of capitalism as a system. Contemporary social movements such as Occupy Wall Street have been much quicker and more determined to target capitalism explicitly than has been the norm for social movements since the late 1940s. Sales of Marx’s writings have soared. Renewed interest in socialism and socialist parties is widely in evidence. Anarchist rejections of capitalism are in vogue. Public opinion polls show widespread antipathy toward 'capitalism' and equally remarkable positive attitudes toward 'socialism'. Factors enabling criticisms of capitalism in the US include the waning of anti-communism as national paranoia, the end of the Cold War, and the fading of its legacies. Criticism is especially provoked by the global crisis of capitalism since 2007. Clearly, the current crisis emerged from the system’s internal contradictions; it was not caused by any external enemies. Discontent with the social status quo not only fuels but also largely defines most contemporary critiques of capitalism. However, after some time of feeling and showing opposition to the status quo, increasing numbers demand some concrete, feasible alternatives to capitalism. They see the limits of proposed reforms (regulations, laws, monetary and fiscal policies) in the history of capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s. They view that history as proof of the impermanence of such reforms and their inadequacy to prevent crises, deepening inequalities, and most of the other ills long associated with capitalism. They see the need to question and challenge capitalism as a system. However, they also wish at least to complement opposition to capitalism with some positive affirmation of a better alternative. Critiques of capitalism, its crises, and the inadequacy of 'solutions' such as bailouts, more regulations, and austerity have matured significantly across the last five years. They increasingly include explorations and advocacy of transition from capitalism toward systemic alternatives. However, traditional socialism and communism, as exemplified in the USSR, the former Eastern Europe, and the People’s Republic of China, are not widely accepted as desirable alternatives. This reflects partly their actual histories and partly their demonization by the last 70 years of hegemonic 485317 CRS39410.1177/0896920513485317Critical SociologyWolff 2013