Shadows of Marx

It has become respectable within polite company to speak, once again, of a crisis of capitalism. Whereas ten years ago only the most orthodox elements of the hard left would speak in such terms - today relatively mainstream commentators, economists and even business people are starting to question whether free market capitalism is any longer sustainable.

The cause of this crisis is not the troubles on the financial markets, which have at regular intervals throughout the last hundred years been taken by many on the left as a sign of capitalism's imminent demise. This has mostly been wishful thinking. The system has shown itself capable of surviving such things - if only on occasion as a result of being rescued by the state.

Nor is the trigger for this crisis the central dialectic that Marx saw as the harbinger of the system's demise - class struggle. Again, contrary to Marx's prophecies, capitalism has proven itself capable of surviving (indeed flourishing) despite enormous inequalities in wealth and power.

Rather the dialectic that seems to put the whole system into question today is the contradiction between capitalism's insatiable drive for growth and wealth accumulation - and the scarce resources of the planet. The system appears - on its current trajectory - to be doomed, simply because it is destroying the planet. An economic model driven by the untrammelled desire to produce and consume more and more of the earth's resources, polluting by ever increasing amounts as it does so, is simply unsustainable.

To qualify - there are of course varieties of capitalism - Scandanavian social democracy is very different from the Anglo-American model. A more planned and regulated form of capitalism, with a strong role for the state, might be capable of rescuing itself - and us.

The question, then, is whether the dominant neo-liberal model of capitalism, one of free markets and with only very limited regulation of economic activity by national and international institutions oriented to the public good, can be compatible with the avoidance of catastrophic climate change? Or would the kind of capitalism that could stand any chance of saving the planet cease to be recognisable to us as the kind of capitalism we live under today? It seems to me that what we are facing is not merely a major problem, that could be overcome through the application of market solutions - but a systemic crisis - one from which the system, on its own terms, is incapable of escaping.