Join the Department of European and International Studies for a public lecture with Professor Wolfgang Streeck on November 5 2019.

Abstract:

Capitalist development comes with rising demands for pre- and post-production collective goods and services, like communication networks, science and education, and environmental repair. To the extent that these are provided by public institutions, they narrow the corridor for private profit-making, crowding out private in favor of public production. Ceteris paribus this raises the share of the state, or the public sector, in the national economy („Wagner‘s Law“). Beginning in the 1970s, however, capitalist development coincided also with rising mobility and, as a consequence, declining taxability of capital. The resulting fiscal crisis of the state caused governments to privatize ever larger segments of the public economy, to relieve fiscal pressures while creating new opportunities for profitable investment. It also made governments deregulate the financial sector, to enable themselves to borrow at levels unprecedented in time of peace.

Today both remedies to the fiscal crisis of the state appear increasingly unsustainable. Although public indebtedness has grown far beyond what was believed to be possible only a few decades ago, it is clear that it cannot grow forever. As to the no-longer-public infrastructure, its submission to dictates of public austerity-cum-private profitability has widely impaired its quality, in particular for low- and middle-income citizens. Among the most important coming battles between capitalist development and its social countermovements may well be one over the restoration of a re-socialized public economy for a democratic society.