ZAmong the most sophisticated facets of capitalism is how well it functions as a market for anti-capitalist discourse production. It is difficult to say what the extent of this reveals about the state of the system: is the boom in criticism and resistance a sign that the culture industry has the critical potential particularly well under control? Is the suitability of the masses of anti-capitalist slogans a means of devaluing their radical nature? Or are all of these symptoms of an actual crisis in the system?
For the American political scientist Nancy Fraser, who, if such a thing still existed, could be placed on the shelves for Marxist theories without any scruples, there is no doubt that we are dealing with an epochal crisis today, and not only that with an economic, ecological or political, but with a “general crisis of the entire social order”. The very comeback of the term “capitalism” – in a sense taking the discourse at face value – is for Fraser “a clear indication of how deep the current crisis is”. Anyone who is wondering about the comeback she is talking about, when authors from Thomas Piketty to Naomi Klein, from Slavoj Žižek to Ulrike Herrmann have been writing bestsellers critical of capitalism for years, must take a closer look at the genesis of Fraser’s new book.
The root of all wrongs
“The Omnivore” is essentially a collection of essays and lectures that has become a commodity, which – like the finding of the “comeback” – goes back to the year 2014. This makes the text tiresomely redundant in part, because Fraser repeats her most important questions and insights in each chapter, which, however, corresponds to the refrain nature of her thesis. Capitalism, Fraser says, is the “common root” of all contemporary ills, from persistent racism to an inability to halt climate change.
Nancy Fraser in New York
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Image: ddp
However much the critique of capitalism may be in vogue, it is not up to date, says Fraser. “The current boom in capitalism discourse” remains largely “rhetorical in nature”, more “a symptom of the desire for systematic criticism than a substantial contribution to it”. Her book, she promises pompously, will now provide the analytical foundation. It “diagnoses the causes of the disease and names the culprits”. “It broadens our view of capitalism (. . .) and encapsulates all the oppressions, contradictions and conflicts of the contemporary situation within a single analytical framework.” Fraser stretches this framework considerably further than many contemporary left movements that have struggled for the want to combine the interests of specific groups or minorities with the idea of intersectionality. Rather, Fraser reminds us how forms of social inequality are interrelated and that they can only be treated cosmetically at the level that she once famously termed “progressive neoliberalism.”