The wake of the financial crisis has inspired hopes for dramatic change and stirred visions of capitalism's terminal collapse. Yet capitalism is not on its deathbed, utopia is not in our future, and revolution is not in the cards. In Capitalism on Edge, Albena Azmanova demonstrates that radical progressive change is still attainable, but it must come from an unexpected direction.
Azmanova's new critique of capitalism focuses on the competitive pursuit of profit rather than on forms of ownership and patterns of wealth distribution. She contends that neoliberal capitalism has mutated into a new form-precarity capitalism-marked by the emergence of a precarious multitude. Widespread economic insecurity ails the 99 percent across differences in income, education, and professional occupation; it is the underlying cause of such diverse hardships as work-related stress and chronic unemployment. In response, Azmanova calls for forging a broad alliance of strange bedfellows whose discontent would challenge not only capitalism's unfair outcomes but also the drive for profit at its core. To achieve this synthesis, progressive forces need to go beyond the old ideological certitudes of, on the left, fighting inequality and, on the right, increasing competition. Azmanova details reforms that would enable a dramatic transformation of the current system without a revolutionary break. An iconoclastic critique of left orthodoxy, Capitalism on Edge confronts the intellectual and political impasses of our time to discern a new path of emancipation.
Capitalism on Edge offers a novel diagnosis of the current moment to reveal that the potential for sweeping transformation must come from an unexpected direction. Albena Azmanova demonstrates that capitalism is not on its deathbed, revolution is not in the cards, and utopianism cannot steer us toward a brighter future.
In her ambitious yet transparent and accessible treatise on the nature of present-day capitalism and its demise, Azmanova highlights the dark side of the competitive production of profit. This consists of the lived experience of uncertainty, insecurity, injustice, risk, and fear that affects the vast majority of people in Western societies. For them, capitalism is a game that consists of the blaming of victims, losers, and the structurally disempowered. Rather than invoking the revolutionary action of some strategically privileged class, a terminal crisis of capitalism, or a utopia of 'socialism,' the author explores and advocates for the potential of a radical subversive pragmatism. People simply want to do other things than give in to the pressure to enhance their employability in a treadmill of jobless non-growth. And policies, she demonstrates, can help to achieve such post-capitalist desires. A daring yet encouraging message.
