Buying Time

Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Wolfgang Streeck, translated by Patrick Camiller, 189 pages

In this short book, adapted from the author's 2012 Adorno Lectures, Wolfgang Streeck asserts that the Marxist analysis of the crisis threatening capitalist democracy in the 1970s was fundamentally correct, only the crisis was delayed by factors the analysts had not considered.  In his view, the critics correctly understood that the pending crisis involved the legitimacy of capitalism and its cultural contradictions with a democratic society, but what they had not grasped was the extent to which it would be the forces of capital which challenged democracy, eroding the postwar welfare state in favor of neoliberal free markets.  This was accompanied by an explosion of consumerism driven by easy credit, with private debt supplementing the  of public debt.  This, in turn, has lead to the rise of a globalized creditor class - what Streeck calls the Marktvolk - whose interests differ markedly from those of the ordinary citizens - the Staatsvolk.

In Streeck's view, the economic crisis which began in 2008 exposed the manifold ways in which capitalism has subverted democracy.  Insisting on the distinction between market justice and social justice, Streeck demonstrates how neoliberalism has managed to promote the former over and against the latter, primarily by the delegation of authority to international bodies, especially the European Union, which serve to shield the market from popular political pressure.  A correction, if it is to come, must therefore take the form derided by the elites as populism - an assertion of national sovereignty placing the needs of the Staatsvolk over those of the Marktvolk.

Buying Time is a short book that necessarily presents a simplified view of a complicated matter - although this simplification has the virtue of clarity.  Streeck's Marxist background causes him to treat the Marktvolk as a self-conscious body, and his analysis overestimates their commitment to laissez faire by treating it as an ideological matter rather than one of practical convenience.  He also underestimates the extent to which today's workers are themselves capitalists, especially through their pension plans.  Finally, and most obviously, there is the difficulty of the once-failed prophet assuring his listeners that this time he's right.  At the same time, whether or not the cultural contradictions of capitalism are now approaching their climax, it would be foolish to disagree with Streeck's thesis that they are more glaring now than ever before.