The Global Structural Crisis of Capital

 

I believe that it is not given to us to speak in terms of future centuries…we have no time to waste; the challenge is to save the conditions of life on this planet, to save the human species, to change the course of history, to change the world. —Hugo Chávez

John Bellamy Foster

The notion of a “global structural crisis of capital” defining our times was first introduced by István Mészáros in the third edition of his Marx’s Theory of Alienation in 1971, and in his Isaac Deutscher Memorial Lecture, “The Necessity of Social Control” that same year. In 1995 in Beyond Capital, Mészáros distinguished the emerging, epochal structural crisis of capital from the cyclical and conjunctural crises that are “capital’s natural mode of existence.” Today’s structural crisis, he explained, has four characteristics that distinguish it historically, focusing here primarily on its economic dimensions.

All of this signifies that the current mode of production is approaching the absolute limits of its mode of social metabolic reproduction, evident not simply in its growing economic contradictions—since production, consumption, and circulation define its internal structure—but also in every aspect of material reality. A structural crisis comes into play when not simply the “immediate limits” of the system but also its “ultimate limits” are in question, since this affects “the totality of a social complex.” This is particularly evident in the environmental realm, which capital, in its pursuit of endless accumulation, treats as consisting of mere barriers that need to be overcome or dumping grounds for its waste, rather than adhering to planetary boundaries and natural laws.

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