A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Two world wars, the Great Depression
of 1929 – which brought capitalism to the brink of collapse –
fascism and the Holocaust were the results. The state socialist etatism
and communism that arose as counter-movements degenerated for
decades into the Stalinist Terror and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
After the Second World War, a solution seemed to have been found
which would reconcile capitalism and democracy and end the self-destruction
of modern capitalism. Capitalism, the welfare state and democracy
entered into a state of symbiosis (Marshall 1992). A permanently
high growth rate lasting almost three decades enabled the Western
world to reach the so-called Fordist distribution compromise between
employers and wage earners, the development of the welfare state, and
a consolidation of representative democracy – not least as a result of
concessions made to the workers out of fear of the competing system.
The slackening of economic growth in the 1970s caused the short-lived
“dream of everlasting prosperity” (Burckhardt Lutz) to burst. The overaccumulation
of capital made a comeback. New capital investments
brought in ever lower returns, or turned out to be completely unprofitable.
The domination of capital ran up against the very same limits
drawn by the welfare state and democracy: a strong working class; an
expanded social sector; demands for democratic co-determination at
the workplace, in the enterprise, in community and society; the call for
self-determination at work and in the individual’s own life. The “old” social
movements became radicalized, while “new” ones arose.
Society was faced with a choice: either there would be a further repulse
of the domination of capital and increasing democratization of the economy
and of enterprises, as well as a shortening of working hours and
the creation of individual leisure opportunities going beyond mere consumption,
or else new sources of accumulation would have to be created
by unleashing capitalism and deregulating the financial, capital,
commodity and labour markets in the course of “globalization”. The latter
included expropriation through privatization of facilities built by and
for the public, or the reduction of social assets, rights and achievements
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