A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

thoritarian order where elites retreat to protected enclaves, leaving impoverished
masses outside. In our troubled times, Fortress World
seems the true business-as-usual scenario to many. In this dark vision,
a global archipelago of connected fortresses seeks to control a damaged
environment and restive population. Authorities employ geo-engineering
techniques to stabilize the global climate, while dispatching peace-keeping
militia to multiple hotspots in an attempt to quell social conflict and
mass migration. But the results are mixed: emergency measures and
spotty infrastructure investment cannot keep pace with habitat loss and
climate change, nor provide adequate food and water to desperate billions.
In this kind of future, sustainable development is not in the cards,
a half-remembered dream of a more hopeful time” (Raskin et al. 2010:
2630). Under conditions of weapons of mass destruction, failed states
and ecological disasters, this path of development can also lead to a
complete collapse of civilization and open barbarism, a collapse of the
kind that loomed during the Second World War or threatened during the
nuclear arms race between the USA and the Soviet Union.
A third path of development could arise as a result of crises, social struggles
and new political arrangements – the path of development of a
socio-ecological transformation towards a sustained post-capitalist
modernity. This would be the second great transformation in the modern
era. If the first transformation created modernity in its bourgeois-capitalist
form, the second transformation would complete the transition to
a modern mode of development (Reissig 2007: 14) that would be made
to last.
Dimensions of transformational politics
When at the height of the global financial crisis, financial-market capitalism
began to reel, when for a brief historical moment even the inner circle
of power-holders saw themselves on the brink of the abyss, as the
market ideology was discredited and the rulers confronted with a crisis
of acceptance, the left reacted with a plethora of separate, justified demands
for bringing the banks under control and saving the bulk of the
population from having to bear the brunt of the crisis.
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