Wolfgang Streeck – Contradictions of Capitalism: Past and Present

The wellbeing of a capitalist society depends on the endless accumulation of privately owned capital. This requires a replacement of input-minimising by output-maximising rationality. One result is a fiscal crisis of the state, due to increasing needs for public provision accompanied by a declining capacity of the state to tax private capital. Over the past forty years, the fiscal crisis of the state was kept in check with the help of an expanding financial system, as well as by an unlimited creation of fresh money. Both of these crisis management techniques are currently meeting their limits.The wellbeing of a capitalist society depends on the endless accumulation of privately owned capital. This requires a replacement of input-minimising by output-maximising rationality. One result is a fiscal crisis of the state, due to increasing needs for public provision accompanied by a declining capacity of the state to tax private capital. Over the past forty years, the fiscal crisis of the state was kept in check with the help of an expanding financial system, as well as by an unlimited creation of fresh money. Both of these crisis management techniques are currently meeting their limits.