Critical Encounters: Capitalism, Democracy, Ideas

(Hardback)

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From the acclaimed author of How Will Capitalism End comes an omnibus of critical engagements with leading economists and thinkers. Critical Encounters draws on Wolfgang Streecks inimitable writing for the London Review of Books and New Left Review, among other outlets, and includes pieces originally published in the German press, translated into English for the first time. It opens with a survey of three of the worlds major economies the US, France, Germany and two contrasting historical eras, factory capitalism and financialization. A middle section considers the hollowing out of Western democracies, with a review of Yanis Varoufakiss memoirs of the Eurozone crisis. Streeck then delves into the world of ideas, discussing Perry Andersons The H-Word and Jrgen Habermass The Lure of Technocracy. Finally he zooms out to compare his home discipline of sociology against natural history, giving a remarkable and non-deterministic reading of Charles Darwin. In the Introduction, Streeck reflects on the art (or craft) of book reviewing and the continuing merits of the book form. The book also includes a coda on Brexit and the future of Europe.

Reviews

Synthesises the various strands of left crisis theory into a convincing proposal, as strong psychologically as it is on economics. -- Paul Mason * Guardian, Books of the Year 2016 [on How Will Capitalism End] *
A must-read. * Financial Times, Best Books of 2016 [on How Will Capitalism End] *
Streeck sees a destructive convergence of three fixed trends in late capitalism: a declining rate of economic growth, soaring overall indebtedness, and rising economic inequality in both income and wealth. His work interlocks with recent dark conclusions by Robert J. Gordon, Thomas Piketty, and Wendy Brown, among others. -- Norman Rush * New York Review of Books [on How Will Capitalism End] *
Streeck's sweeping and empirically founded inquiry reminds one of Karl Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. -- Jrgen Habermas [on Buying Time]
A superbly provocative work of political economy. -- Aditya Chakrabortty * Guardian [on Buying Time] *
A compelling and distinctive analysis of the current political moment. -- Hans Kundnani * The World Today *

Author Bio

Wolfgang Streeck is Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. He is a member of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.