Abstract
Addressing the crisis of neoliberal capitalism, Albena Azmanova proceeds from the fact that any alternative – any positive utopia or alternative models of social existence – to this dominant socioeconomic model today seems to be fundamentally lacking. Within this condition of “anxious disorientation”, Azmanova seeks the enabling conditions for progressive radicalism, in particular in relation to social and ecological justice in Europe. She contends that the model of “class struggle” centred on the industrial proletariat has become counter-productive for social transformation, and suggests that multifaceted discontent with the new social conditions of an intensely competitive capitalism could better enable its overcoming, in forms that remain largely open to this day.
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Notes
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Francis Bacon, 1620. Novum Organum, book ii, aph. 20.
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The European Green Deal is a policy roadmap aiming at the elimination of emissions of greenhouse gasses in the EU by 2050; it sets out guidelines for EU member-states for comprehensive reforms to their economies, ranging from investment in non-carbon fuels, to farming and transport, together with a pledge to make the transition socially equitable. See “The European Green Deal”, Communication from the Commission, Brussels, 11.12.2019: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1576150542719&uri=COM%3A2019%3A640%3AFIN
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Special Eurobarometer 509, “Social Issues”, Kantar Belgium and DG COMM; Brussels, March 2021: https://www.caleaeuropeana.ro/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Special-Eurobarometer-509-Social-Issues.pdf
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For instance, Germany’s industry association BDI called on the EU to “focus all policy areas on competitiveness” and introduce customary “industrial mainstreaming” to “environmental, climate and consumer policy discussions at an early stage” (reported in POLITICO Brussels Playbook 1 March 2021).
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Nancy Fraser has offered a useful articulation (drawing on Marx) of the “distributive” and “allocative” functions of markets. Under many social formations, markets are a basic tool for distribution of goods for personal consumption. The differentia specifica of capitalist markets is that they are also used for the allocation of societal resources (inputs into production) as well as for the allocation of society’s surplus (Fraser and Jaeggi 2018, 24–28). In this sense, I speak of markets as a primary mechanism of economic governance under capitalism.
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I do not claim that every inequality of resources generates domination; I am suggesting that there are forms of domination that can be traced back to power asymmetries resulting from unequal distribution of resources: the rich may not dominate and the dominators may not be rich.
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For Tomas Piketty’s discussion of this project in the context of Europe, see his interview for Social Europe (podcast 16 Dec. 2020): https://www.socialeurope.eu/podcast
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David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018.
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Azmanova, A. (2024). The Road to the European Social Green Deal: Class Struggle or Counter-Hegemony. In: de Nanteuil, M., Fjeld, A. (eds) Marx and Europe. Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53736-3_2
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