Читать книгу Capitalism’s Crises - Alfredo Saad-Filho - Страница 18

We now turn to testing the thesis of the systemic crises of capitalist civilisation empirically. Ahmed (2010) provides a Marxist-inspired account of the current systemic crisis tendencies confronting capitalism. However, there are three crucial shortcomings in his perspective, which this chapter attempts to rectify. First, Ahmed does not provide a historicised premise for his perspective of capitalism and contemporary capitalist civilisation. Second, he does not break with a reductionist account of the systemic dimensions of capitalist crisis. The role of the US superpower and state is not brought into his account of the making of systemic crisis and its dimensions. Third, class practices, including the role of transnational capital and its ideological articulations of neoliberalism, are not linked closely enough to the systemic dimensions he brings into view. Capital as a geological force prevailing over and destroying planetary life is not clearly demonstrated empirically in that work. In contrast, I want to highlight concrete historical and systemic tendencies coming to the fore that are rooted in the institutional structures, ideologies and class-based practices that buttress the destructive logic of capital as a geological force and as part of transnational techno-financial accumulation. These are systemic tendencies that bring down, limit and constrain various dimensions of global capitalism. Moreover, as these systemic tendencies increasingly interlock, they engulf global capitalism in crises of contemporary capitalist civilisation. Such tendencies need to be recognised as part of the dialectic of concrete history and at more abstract levels of understanding contemporary capitalism.