Capitalism is having a bad 21st century. The East Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 heralded it, the stock market crash of 2000 inaugurated it, and the 2008 financial crisis nearly destroyed it. However, capitalist classes retained political power and neoliberal financialised capitalism, the result of the still-unresolved Long Downturn dating back to the 1970s, malingered on. While neoliberalism ideology continued celebrating capitalism, it clocked ever-lower growth, generated ever-greater inequality, and inflicted ever- more ecological damage. Millions of young people began striking school to demand governments and corporations act to halt the climate emergency, only to be interrupted by another disastrous result of capitalism’s dysfunctional relation to nature, the 2020 novel coronavirus pandemic.The concatenation of public health, economic, financial and ecological crises that accompanied it threatens complete social and political breakdown.
