The Crisis of Capitalism and Its Governance Failure – An Interview with German Sociologist Wolfgang Streeck

Editor’s Note: As an economic system, capitalism is committed to the infinite accumulation of capital; interruptions in capital accumulation trigger periodic economic crises. In response to these crises, since the 1970s the capitalist world has carried out extensive neoliberal reforms, and capitalist states have undergone a transformation from the tax state, to the debt state, to the consolidation state (here referring to fiscal consolidation), and then to the central bank state. Particularly since the 2008 international financial and economic crisis, the stagnation of economic globalization and the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have driven the emergence of central bank capitalism and the central bank state. Developed economies increasingly rely on “political” funds provided by central banks to compensate for declining demand and prevent deflation. As a temporary solution to mitigate crises, the transformation of capitalism and its states cannot fundamentally overcome economic crises, yet it has greatly weakened the basic pillars of capitalist democracy, including trade unions and collective bargaining, and has exacerbated wealth and income inequality. The decline of Western capitalism highlights the inherent defects and failures of its governance system. Focusing on the crisis of capitalism, the measures capitalist states take to address the crisis, and the development trends of capitalism, our journal’s reporter Qin Shiya conducted an exclusive interview with Professor Wolfgang Streeck in early 2022.

编者按:作为一种经济制度的资本主义致力于资本的无限积累，资本积累的中断会引发周期性经济危机。为应对危机，20世纪70年代以来，资本主义世界进行了广泛的新自由主义改革，资本主义国家历经了从税收国家(tax state)、债务国家(debt state)、整固国家(consolidation state, 这里指财政整固)到中央银行国家(central bank state)的转型。特别是自2008年国际金融经济危机以来，经济全球化进程的停滞和新冠肺炎疫情的蔓延推动了中央银行资本主义和中央银行国家的产生，发达国家经济体越来越依赖于中央银行提供的“政治”资金，以补偿下降的需求和防止通货紧缩。作为缓和危机的暂时性方案，资本主义及其国家的转型并不能在根本上克服经济危机，却极大削弱了资本主义民主的基本支柱，包括工会和集体谈判等，并加剧了财富和收入的不平等。西方资本主义的衰退凸显了其治理体系的固有缺陷和失效。围绕资本主义危机、资本主义国家应对危机的举措以及资本主义的发展趋向等问题，本刊记者覃诗雅于2022年初对沃尔夫冈·施特雷克教授进行了专访。

Wolfgang Streeck (born 1946) is a renowned German sociologist. He has served as Professor of Sociology and Industrial Relations at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne, and Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, where he continues as a Senior Research Fellow. He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Honorary President of the German Political Science Association, a member of the Academia Europaea, an Honorary Member of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He has long studied economic sociology, industrial relations, the political economy of capitalism, and institutional change, and has published several influential works, including *Re-Forming Capitalism: Institutional Change in the German Political Economy* (2009), *Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism* (2013), *How Will Capitalism End?* (2016), *Critical Encounters: Capitalism, Democracy, Ideas* (2020), and *Between Globalism and Democracy: The Political Economy of the End of Neoliberalism* (2021).

沃尔夫冈·施特雷克(Wolfgang Streeck),生于1946年，德国著名社会学家，曾任美国威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校社会学和劳资关系学教授、德国科隆大学经济和社会科学学院社会学教授、德国科隆马克斯·普朗克社会研究所所长，目前继续担任该研究所高级研究员。他是德国柏林-勃兰登堡科学院成员、德国政治研究协会名誉会长、欧洲科学院院士、社会经济学促进会荣誉会员、英国学术院通讯院士。他长期致力于研究经济社会学、劳资关系、资本主义政治经济学和制度变迁，出版了多部影响广泛的著作，包括《重塑资本主义：德国政治经济中的制度变迁》(2009)、《购买时间：资本主义民主国家如何拖延危机》(2013)、《资本主义将如何终结》(2016)、《批判性遭遇：资本主义、民主和思想》(2020)和《在全球主义与民主之间：新自由主义末期的政治经济学》(2021)等。

I. The Crisis of Capitalism and Its Consequences

一、资本主义的危机与后果

○ (Qin Shiya, hereafter the same): Professor Streeck, hello! Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to accept this interview. You have devoted yourself to studying the crisis of capitalism and its impacts, publishing two works, *Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism* in 2013 and *How Will Capitalism End?* in 2016, which deeply explore the development trends of capitalism. In your view, how should we understand the crisis of capitalism and its consequences today?

○(覃诗雅，下同):施特雷克教授您好!非常感谢您在繁忙的工作中抽出宝贵的时间接受采访。您致力于研究资本主义的危机及其影响，在2013年和2016年分别出版了《购买时间：资本主义民主国家如何拖延危机》和《资本主义将如何终结》两部著作，对资本主义的发展趋向进行了深入探讨。那么，在您看来，今天我们应该如何认识资本主义的危机及其后果呢?

● (Wolfgang Streeck, hereafter the same): A fundamental question involved here is “what is capitalism.” We know that today, capitalism takes different scales and characteristics in different countries and regions, and capitalism in each place also differs across periods, changing to some extent in response to, and through competition and cooperation with, other capitalisms, both replicating them and diversifying them. So, what do these different capitalisms have in common across time and space? I define capitalism as an economic system dedicated to the infinite accumulation of private capital, for the sake of accumulating more private capital. Capitalist society thus makes its economic development and political stability dependent on the success of capitalist capital accumulation. From this it follows that the political economy of capitalism is, or is best: it must expand permanently on the horizon of infinite growth, horizontally and vertically into its society, in a process that Rosa Luxemburg called “Landnahme” (land grabbing).

●(沃尔夫冈·施特雷克，下同):这里涉及的一个基本问题是“什么是资本主义”。我们知道，在今天，资本主义在不同的国家和地区具有不同的规模和特征，而且每一个地方的资本主义在不同时期也有所不同，在某种程度上随着对其他资本主义的反应、与其他资本主义的竞争和合作而发生变化，既复制它们，又使之多样化。那么，这些不同的资本主义在时间和空间上具有什么共同点呢?我将资本主义定义为一种经济制度，这种经济制度致力于实现私有资本的无限积累，以便积累更多的私有资本。那么，资本主义社会就使它的经济发展和政治稳定依赖于资本主义资本积累的成功。由此衍生出，资本主义的政治经济是，或最好是：必须在无限增长的地平线上永久地扩张，在罗莎·卢森堡(Rosa Luxemburg)称之为“土地掠夺”(Landnahme)的进程中，横向和纵向地深入它的社会里。

So, when capital accumulation is interrupted, blocked, or stagnates, a capitalist crisis occurs. A capitalist economy must keep growing; a capitalist society needs a constantly growing capitalist economy. Capitalism is inherently dynamic, expansionary, and insatiable, committed to what Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction.” In this context, it is important to recognize that the process of capital accumulation is extremely fragile and always unstable, if only because growth itself is a very difficult proposition to understand. The Marxist tradition holds that capitalism will end under the influence of periodic economic crises, such as due to a falling rate of profit caused by the rising “organic composition” of capital. If the founders of Marxism had lived long enough, they would have seen other causes of capitalist stagnation, such as saturated markets, trade restrictions, strong trade unions, environmental degradation, and the costs of public goods required for advanced capitalist production, such as education, public healthcare systems, and developed physical infrastructure.

那么，当资本积累中断、受阻、停滞时，就会发生资本主义危机。资本主义经济必须保持增长，资本主义社会需要一个不断增长的资本主义经济。资本主义在本质上是动态的、扩张的、永不满足的，致力于约瑟夫·熊彼特(Joseph Schumpeter)所说的“创造性破坏”(creative destruction)。在这一背景下，重要的是认识到，资本积累的过程是极其脆弱的，并且总是不稳定的，即使只是因为增长本身是一个很难理解的命题。马克思主义传统认为资本主义将在周期性经济危机的影响下终结，比如由于资本“有机构成”的增长导致利润率下降。如果马克思主义的创始人活得足够长，他们就会看到还有其他原因会引起资本主义的停滞，比如饱和的市场、贸易限制、强大的工会、环境恶化，以及先进的资本主义生产所需的公共物品的成本，如教育、公共医疗体系和发达的物质基础设施等。

If capitalism is so fragile, why does it still exist? Why do we see not its end, but its continuous transformation, from the capitalism of early enclosures and Manchester factories to consumption-driven capitalism, and now to capitalism funded by the central banks of wealthy Western societies? We first observe that successive crises of capitalism, even in hindsight, are by no means mild. Hunger, death, violence, and even war appear—at least so far—as capitalism searches for new forms in which capital accumulation can continue. Indeed, capitalism has so far prevailed, even if in a new form, but this is by no means certain, and it is in any case impossible to predict how capitalism will survive. So far, capitalism has always found ways to get through all these turning points. I think this is due to the lack of effective opposition and the ample resources of the owners and promoters of capital—they can finance the investments needed for the next transformation, and they are supported by the capitalist state. As I have pointed out, the legitimacy and stability of these states depend on the continuity of the capitalist accumulation process.

如果资本主义如此脆弱，为什么它仍然存在?为什么我们看到的不是它的终结，而是它的持续转型，从早期圈地运动和曼彻斯特工厂的资本主义到消费驱动的资本主义，以及现在由富裕西方社会的中央银行资助的资本主义?我们首先观察到，资本主义接连不断的危机，即便在事后看来，也一点不温和。在资本主义寻找资本积累得以持续下去的新形式时，饥饿、死亡、暴力甚至战争出现了，至少目前是这样的。的确，到目前为止，资本主义仍在盛行，即使是以一种新的形式，但这绝不是确定的，而且无论如何不可能预测资本主义将如何存活下去。到目前为止，资本主义总能找到方法来渡过所有这些转折点，我认为，这是由于缺乏有效的反对，以及资本的所有者和推动者拥有充足的资源——他们能够为下一次转型所需的投资提供资金，他们得到了资本主义国家的支持。正如我所指出的，这些国家的合法性和稳定性取决于资本主义积累过程的持续性。

○: Given the high fragility of capitalism, where do you think successive capitalist crises will lead capitalist society and the world? Or, how should we conceive an alternative to capitalism?

○:鉴于资本主义的高度脆弱性，您认为接连不断的资本主义危机将会把资本主义社会和世界带向何处?或者说，我们应该如何构想一个资本主义的替代性方案呢?

●: What will happen if we cannot find effective ways to end the current phase of the capitalist crisis? I foresee a prolonged period of chaos, anomie, and interregnum, as I borrow a concept from the Marxist philosopher and Italian Communist Party leader Antonio Gramsci. According to Gramsci, in the interregnum, “the old order is dying, and the new order has not yet been established.” Gramsci goes on to say that in such a period, terrible and unexpected things—“a great variety of morbid symptoms”—may appear, and they are difficult to explain according to people’s known order. In the interregnum, “everything is in chaos.” Whether this means “things are going well” is another matter.

●:如果我们找不到有效的方法来结束当前阶段的资本主义危机，将会发生什么?我预想到的是一个长期的混乱、失范、空位(interregnum),正如我从马克思主义哲学家、意大利共产党领导人安东尼奥·葛兰西(Antonio Gramsci)那里借用的一个概念所说的那样。根据葛兰西的观点，在空位期，“旧秩序行将灭亡，而新秩序尚未建立”。葛兰西接着说，在这样一个时期里，可怕的意想不到的事情——“各种各样的病态症状”——可能会出现，而且很难按照人们已知的秩序来进行解释。在空位期，“天下万物皆乱”。这是否意味着“情况很好”,可能是另一回事了。

On this point, I have discussed it in my book *How Will Capitalism End?* Capitalist society is disintegrating. By disintegration, I mean that the capacity of capitalism as an economic system to guarantee social stability has greatly declined. Low growth, extremely unreasonable inequality, and mountains of debt; democracy, as the progressive driving force of postwar capitalism, has failed, replaced by oligarchic neo-feudalism; and systemic disorders, such as contagious corruption in the competition for greater returns on individual success, accompanied by a morally decayed culture and rapidly spreading international anarchy—all these have severely undermined the stability of the postwar capitalist social mode of life, with no signs of recovery. The capitalist social order will manifest itself in the form of disorder or entropy in a historical era of uncertain duration. Therefore, this post-capitalist interregnum I also call "an age of entropy." After the disintegration of capitalist society, there will be a historical period lacking collective political capacity, thus becoming a long, indecisive transitional phase. In this phase, crisis, as the new normal, is neither transformative nor adaptive. Profound changes will occur rapidly and continuously, but these changes are unpredictable and, in any case, uncontrollable. After neoliberal capitalism has cleared away states, governments, borders, trade unions, and other forces that could serve as buffers, due to insufficient governance and poor management, societies in the post-capitalist interregnum may at any time suffer catastrophic blows, such as the implosion of bubbles or violence penetrating from the collapsed periphery to the center.

关于这一点，我在《资本主义将如何终结》一书中进行过讨论。资本主义社会正在解体，我所说的解体是指资本主义作为一种经济体制保障社会稳定的能力已经极大地下降。低增长、极度不合理的不平等和堆积如山的债务；民主作为战后资本主义的进步动力失效，寡头式新封建主义取而代之；以及系统性紊乱，比如在为个人成功争取更大回报的竞争中的传染性腐败，伴随着道德败坏的文化和迅速蔓延的国际无政府状态——所有这些严重破坏了战后资本主义的社会生活方式的稳定性，却丝毫没有恢复稳定的迹象。资本主义社会秩序将以无序或熵的形式出现在一个持续时间不确定的历史时代。因此，这个后资本主义空位期(the post-capitalist interregnum)我也称之为“熵的时代”(an age of entropy)。资本主义社会解体后，将是一个缺乏集体政治能力的历史时期，从而成为一个漫长的、缺乏决断的过渡阶段。在这个阶段里，危机作为新常态，既不是变革性的，也不是适应性的。深刻的变化将会迅速而持续地发生，但这些变化是不可预测的，而且在任何情况下都是不可控的。在新自由主义资本主义清除了国家、政府、边境、工会和其他能起到缓和作用的力量之后，由于治理不足和管理不善，后资本主义空位期的社会随时可能遭受灾难的打击，例如，泡沫内爆或暴力从崩溃的外围渗透到中心。

II. The Nature of Capitalist Debt and the Formation of the Debt State

二、资本主义债务的本质与债务国家的形成

○: You have pointed out that in the neoliberal reforms beginning in the 1970s, capitalist states successively adopted means such as inflation, state debt, and private debt—illusions of wealth growth—to delay crises. What role do you think debt plays in the development and crisis of capitalism?

○:您曾指出，在20世纪70年代开始的新自由主义改革中，资本主义国家相继采用了通货膨胀、国家债务、私人债务等财富增长幻象的手段来延缓危机。您认为债务在资本主义的发展和危机中扮演了什么样的角色?

●: Debt is the origin of capitalism. Once primitive accumulation (such as plundering village land or gold from Central America) can no longer be sustained, capital accumulation requires credit, in other words, debt. Then, debt drives growth, because you must repay the debt and its interest, thereby increasing the value of the lent capital beyond its original amount. As long as there are opportunities for growth, everything is fine. However, if debt cannot be repaid on a large scale, capitalist growth will stop, and the capitalist economy and the society dependent on it will fall into crisis.

●:债务是资本主义的起源。一旦原始积累(比如掠夺村庄土地或中美洲的黄金)不能再维持，资本积累就需要信贷，换言之，债务。然后，债务会推动增长，因为你必须偿还债务及其利息，这样就增加了借出资本的价值，使之超过了借出资本的价值。只要有增长的机会，一切都很美好。但是，如果无法大规模偿还债务，资本主义的增长就会停止，资本主义经济和依赖它的社会就会陷入危机。

Since debt requires repayment, it imposes a work discipline on individuals, companies, and states. Unless you can somehow bear bankruptcy and choose to do so—and thereby also lose the prospect of obtaining new credit in the future—you must work hard to satisfy creditors. For example, in the United States, some companies only hire workers who have mortgage loans to repay, assuming these workers will never go on strike. Moreover, where consumer credit is easily accessible, workers can compensate for low wages through loans, enabling them to work harder and longer even under substandard working conditions.

由于债务需要偿还，这对个人、公司和国家施加了工作纪律。除非你能以某种方式承受破产并选择这样做——因此你也将失去未来获得新信贷的前景，否则你必须努力工作来满足债权人。例如，在美国，一些公司只雇佣那些有抵押贷款需要偿清的工人，依此假定这些工人永远不会罢工。此外，在消费信贷容易获取的地方，工人可以通过贷款来补偿低工资，这将使他们即使在不达标的工作条件下也能更努力、更长时间地工作。

○: Besides private debt, public debt has also played a unique role in the maintenance and transformation of the capitalist system. How do you view the relationship between public debt and capitalism?

○:除了私人债务，公共债务在资本主义体系的维系和转型中也发挥了独特作用。您如何看待公共债务与资本主义之间的关系?

●: Yes. Today, public debt is of particular interest. Public debt is the result of the widening gap between the public costs of capitalism and the declining capacity of the state to tax increasingly mobile, internationally integrated capital. The public costs of capitalism refer to expenditures on environmental remediation, healthcare, police, national defense, education, the legal system, scientific research, pensions, and so on. States that cannot raise taxes must borrow money, not merely inflate the economy as in Keynesian economics. Today, this leads to a steady rise in state debt levels. Lending to the state is equivalent to investing in the right to the future labor earnings of the entire nation, expecting the government to make its worker-taxpayers work harder and longer to satisfy the country's creditors.

●:是的。如今，特别令人感兴趣的是公共债务。公共债务是资本主义的公共成本与国家对日益流动的、国际一体化的资本征税能力下降之间的差距不断扩大的结果。资本主义的公共成本指的是环境整治、医疗保健、警察、国防、教育、法律制度、科学研究、养老金等方面的支出。不能增税的国家必须借钱，而不仅仅是像凯恩斯主义经济学那样让经济通货膨胀。如今，这导致国家的债务水平稳步上升。向国家贷款相当于对整个国家的未来劳动收益权进行投资，期望政府能让其劳动者-纳税人更努力、更长时间地工作，以让该国的债权人满意。

○: Is this what you mean by the formation of the debt state under neoliberal reforms? What impact do you think this transformation will have on capitalist society?

○:这是否就是您所说的新自由主义改革下的债务国家的形成?您认为这一转型将给资本主义社会带来什么样的影响呢?

●: Borrowing to pay for the public costs of capitalism is an alternative to taxation. Instead of making the beneficiaries of capital accumulation pay for their costs (considering that the increase in these costs might make further capital accumulation more expensive, perhaps prohibitively so), let future generations pay for them, shifting the public responsibility of private capitalism to the end. Under the debt regime I call the debt state—unlike the tax state described by Schumpeter—capital owners have purchased the right to enjoy the fruits of the labor of future generations. For them, this is an attractive alternative to taxation: the funds needed for the state to support capitalism are borrowed from capital owners, not levied from them. Thus, capital owners retain their capital without having to cede it to the state. Instead of handing their money over to the state, they invest it in the state and typically receive interest from it. More importantly, they can pass the capital invested in the state on to their next generation as inheritance. Therefore, public debt exacerbates structural inequality in wealth distribution and, to some extent, structural inequality in income. Families with capital directly profit from the labor expended for capital accumulation without having to invest capital in factories, etc.

●:举债来支付资本主义的公共成本是税收的替代方案。与其让资本积累的受益者为他们的成本买单(考虑到这些成本的增加会使资本的进一步积累变得更加昂贵，也许代价过高),不如让后代为他们买单，将私人资本主义的公共责任转移到末端。在我称之为债务国家的债务制度下——与熊彼特所说的税收国家不同，资本所有者购买了享有后代劳动成果的权利。对他们来说，这是一个有吸引力的税收替代方案：国家扶持资本主义所需的资金是从资本所有者那里借来的，而不是向他们征收的。因此，资本所有者得以保留他们的资本，而不必将其让与国家。他们不必把钱交给国家，而是把钱投资给国家，并且通常会从中获得利息。更重要的是，他们可以把投资国家的资本作为遗产传给他们的下一代。因此，公共债务加剧了财富分配的结构性不平等，也在一定程度上加剧了收入的结构性不平等。拥有资本的家庭直接从为资本积累所耗费的劳动力中获利，而不必将资本投资于工厂等。

III. Neoliberal Reforms and the Crisis of Capitalist Democracy

三、新自由主义改革与资本主义民主危机

○: In your analysis, major capitalist countries after World War II, in response to economic crises, underwent a transformation from the tax state to the debt state and then to the consolidation state. During these transformations, the relationship between capitalism and democracy also moved from "marriage" to disintegration. Do you believe there is an inevitable connection between the capitalist economic crisis since the 1970s and the democratic crisis? If so, is this connection partial or global?

○:在您的分析中，第二次世界大战后主要资本主义国家为了应对经济危机，经历了从税收国家、债务国家到整固国家的转型，而在这些转型过程中资本主义和民主的关系也从“联姻”走向了解体。您是否认为20世纪70年代以来的资本主义经济危机和民主危机之间存在某种必然的联系?如果是，这种联系是局部的，还是全球性的?

●: The tax state transformed into the debt state in the late 1970s, and the debt state transformed into the consolidation state in the mid-1990s. The postwar marriage of capitalism and democracy began to disintegrate during the transition to neoliberalism, a process accelerated by the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and China's rise as the "world's factory." Neoliberalism was seen as a solution to the growth problems of democratic capitalism, which manifested by the 1980s at the latest and later became known as the "secular stagnation" of capitalism. To make the neoliberal remedy possible, the fundamental pillars of capitalist democracy had to be weakened, including independent trade unions and free collective bargaining. Their demise coincided with the accelerated internationalization or "globalization" of Western economies, which forced them to adapt to the conditions of international markets rather than the needs of workers and other citizens. In Europe, the European Monetary Union (EMU) took charge of monetary policy, thereby removing monetary policy decisions from the scope of national democratic politics. One result is that economically weaker countries can no longer choose to devalue their currencies to buffer the social impact of international competition. Yes, the economic crisis and the democratic crisis are related. As mobile capital and competitive international markets control a country's economy, the influence of mass parties and trade unions inevitably declines.

●:税收国家在20世纪70年代后期转变为债务国家，而债务国家在20世纪90年代中期转变为整固国家。战后资本主义和民主的结合在向新自由主义的过渡中开始解体，这一进程在20世纪90年代初的苏联解体和中国崛起为“世界工厂”中加速了。新自由主义被认为是民主资本主义的增长问题的解决方案，这些问题最晚在20世纪80年代表现出来，后来被称为资本主义的“长期停滞”。为了使新自由主义疗法成为可能，必须削弱资本主义民主的基本支柱，其中包括独立的工会和自由的集体谈判等。它们的消亡恰逢西方国家经济的加速国际化或“全球化”,这迫使它们适应国际市场的条件，而不是工人和其他公民的需求。在欧洲，欧洲货币联盟(EMU)负责货币政策，因此使货币政策的决策不在国家民主政治的范围之内。一个结果是，经济实力较弱的国家不再可以选择让本国的货币贬值，以缓冲国际竞争对其社会的影响。是的，经济危机和民主危机是相关的。随着流动资本和竞争性国际市场控制着一个国家的经济，群众性政党和工会的影响力必然会下降。

○: Against this backdrop, do you hold a rather pessimistic view of the collective action of workers, trade unions, and left-wing parties in capitalist countries?

○:在此背景下，您是否对资本主义国家中工人、工会、左翼政党的集体行动持有较为悲观的态度?

●: Yes, but also no. In the neoliberal era, many left-wing organizations were destroyed, either deliberately undermined or eliminated because they failed to offer convincing answers to the various crises suffered by capitalist states. Nevertheless, overall, I am optimistic that, given today’s rapid changes and the pressure to adjust and adapt, people will not silently accept whatever demands the state and capital may impose on them indefinitely. People are patient, but not forever; they are not stupid: they create methods of resistance, no matter how much you try to prevent them. Nor are they isolated: they come here to live in groups, and these groups formulate their own norms and methods to defend themselves and survive accordingly. In other words, people can organize, and they will always organize, because their survival depends on it.

●:是，但又不是。在新自由主义时代，许多左翼组织被摧毁，要么是被刻意破坏的，要么是因为对资本主义国家遭受的各种危机没有提出令人信服的答案而被淘汰的。然而，总的来说，我乐观地认为，鉴于当今的快速变化以及调整和适应的压力，人们不会一直默然接受国家和资本可能对他们提出的任何要求。人们是有耐心的，但不是永远这样，他们不愚蠢：他们创造了抵抗的方法，不管你如何阻止他们这么做。他们也不是孤立的：他们成群结队地来到这里生活，这些群体制定自己的准则和方法来捍卫自身，并依此生存。换句话说，人们可以组织起来，而且他们总是会组织起来，因为他们的生存离不开组织。

IV. Central Bank Capitalism in the Crisis of Globalization

四、全球化危机下的中央银行资本主义

○: Against the current backdrop, especially the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, do you believe the crisis of capitalism has taken on new changes or new characteristics? Correspondingly, have capitalist countries adopted any new measures to address the current crisis?

○:在当前特别是新冠肺炎疫情全球蔓延的背景下，您认为资本主义危机有无新变化和新特征?相应地，资本主义国家有没有采取什么新的举措来应对当下的危机?

●: Basically, I do not think the current crisis of capitalism has taken on new changes; but this may be the case to a slight degree or in phenomenological terms. Some key trends that have been effective for a period have accelerated, such as the accumulation of public debt. Since the 2008 international financial and economic crisis, economic globalization has stagnated; global trade volumes and capital flows have ceased to increase, or have even shrunk. Now, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing new disruptions in international value chains, accompanied by a recognition among countries of the need to secure the delivery of essential goods against uncertainties. This will further weaken economic globalization.

●:基本上，我不认为当前的资本主义危机出现了新的变化；但在轻微程度或现象学上可能是如此。一些在一段时间内有效的关键趋势已经加速，比如公共债务的堆积。自2008年国际金融经济危机以来，经济全球化停滞不前，全球贸易额和资金流动量不再增加，甚至缩减。现在，由于新冠肺炎疫情，我们看到国际价值链出现了新的中断，这伴随着各国意识到需要确保基本商品的交付免受不确定因素的影响。这将进一步削弱经济全球化。

The COVID-19 crisis has also accelerated a process whereby we may now see another phase in the development of contemporary capitalism, as the consolidating state may be replaced by a form I tentatively call the central bank state. Since 2008, developed economies have increasingly been financed by central banks, injecting large amounts of new “political” money into the real economy to compensate for declining demand and prevent deflation, especially so-called debt deflation (“quantitative easing,” or QE). In my view, the stagnation of demand is primarily a result of the increase in income inequality since the 1980s, a product of neoliberal reforms. With investable capital concentrated in the hands of a few, demand in mass markets has thus decreased, and investment opportunities have also diminished. However, maintaining capital accumulation is an inherent property of capitalist economies and societies. To sustain capital accumulation, central banks have begun to purchase debt, shielding it from default, thereby injecting money created “out of thin air” into the economy in unprecedented quantities. At the same time, interest rates remain low, so credit is easily accessible if collateral is available, and collateral is a result of the boom in asset markets. Under central bank capitalism, borrowed money purchases assets that appreciate due to artificially stimulated demand. Likewise, as asset prices rise, the rich become richer, and wealth inequality continues to intensify; yet capital accumulation achieves continuous growth, and that is what truly matters.

新冠病毒危机也加速了这样一个进程，我们现在可能会看到当代资本主义发展的另一个阶段，因为整固国家可能会被我尝试性命名为中央银行国家的形态所取代。自2008年以来，发达国家经济体越来越多地由中央银行提供资金，向实体经济注入大量新的“政治”资金，以补偿下降的需求和防止通货紧缩，特别是所谓的债务通缩(“量化宽松”,或QE)。在我看来，需求停滞首先是20世纪80年代以来收入不平等加剧的结果，是新自由主义改革的产物。由于可投资资本集中在少数人手中，大众市场的需求因此减少了，投资机会也减少了。然而，维持资本积累是资本主义经济和社会的内在属性。为了维持资本积累，中央银行已经开始购买债务，使其免于违约，从而将“凭空”创造的资金以前所未有的数量注入经济中。同时，利率保持在低位，因此，如果有抵押品，就很容易获得信贷，而有抵押品是资产市场繁荣的结果。在中央银行资本主义(the central bank capitalism)下，借来的钱购买了由于人为刺激需求而实现增值的资产。同样，随着资产价格的上涨，富人变得更加富有，财富的不平等不断加剧；然而，资本积累实现不断的增长，这才是真正重要的。

○: According to your view, since the outbreak of the 2008 international financial and economic crisis, capitalist countries have increasingly relied on central banks to massively overissue currency to mitigate the crisis. Will this lead to inflation, thereby triggering a new round of crisis?

○:根据您的观点，2008年国际金融经济危机爆发以来，资本主义国家越来越多地通过中央银行大量超发货币来缓和危机，这是否会导致通货膨胀，从而引发下一轮新的危机呢?

●: So far, outside asset markets, the massive issuance of currency by central banks has not led to inflation. Supporters of quantitative easing used to reassure themselves and others by pointing to the fact that neoliberal reforms had destroyed trade unions, so wage settlements exceeding productivity growth might not be regarded as a cause of inflation. But this may no longer be sufficient. It seems that after a long period of stability in consumer prices, inflation has returned, this time triggered by the crisis of globalization and the consequent disruption of trade flows, in addition to being a product of the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is that shortages push up prices. In response, citizens have begun to demand compensation, especially for rising energy prices, and at some point workers may awaken and demand higher wages. This could be the next nightmare or crisis of contemporary capitalism, leading to the end of the era of easy money under central bank capitalism. The old question returns: will there be a new trick to bring capitalism into another, perhaps equally temporary, future—another quasi-solution to the next crisis, as makeshift and fragile as earlier solutions?

●:到目前为止，在资产市场之外，中央银行超量发行货币并没有导致通货膨胀。支持量化宽松的人们过去常常通过指出新自由主义改革破坏了工会这一事实来安抚自己和他人，因此，工资结算超过生产率增长可能不被视为通货膨胀的原因。但这可能已经不够好了。似乎在消费价格长期稳定之后，通货膨胀又回来了，这一次是由全球化危机和随之而来的贸易流动中断引起的，此外也是新冠肺炎疫情的产物。结果是，短缺推高了价格。作为回应，公民们开始要求赔偿，尤其是对于不断上涨的能源价格，并且在某个时刻工人们可能会觉醒并要求更高的工资。这可能是当代资本主义的下一个噩梦或危机，导致中央银行资本主义下宽松货币时代的终结。老问题又回来了：会不会出现一种新的伎俩，将资本主义带入另一个可能又是短暂的未来，带入下一次危机的另一种准解决方案，就像早期的解决方案那样临时而脆弱?

○: At the end of this interview, could you briefly introduce the areas you have recently focused on and researched?

○:在访谈的最后，您能否简要介绍一下您最近关注和研究的领域?

●: My current research area is crises and changes in complex societies, particularly in today’s global capitalism, and this research will likely continue until the end of my life. In my book *How Will Capitalism End?*, I explain why people resist the globalization of capitalism and support decentralized autonomy. Ruling solely through repression, free markets, or technocratic authority cannot guarantee stability. On the contrary, each mode of capitalist governance has specific defects that lead people to resist it.

●:我现在的研究领域是复杂社会中的危机和变化，特别是当今全球资本主义中的危机和变化，这一研究很可能延续到我生命的尽头。我在《资本主义将如何终结》一书中解释了为什么人们抵制资本主义的全球化，支持去中心化的自治。只靠镇压、自由市场或技术官僚权威来统治并不能保证稳定性。相反，每一种资本主义治理模式都存在特定的缺陷，使人们对其进行抵制。

(Qin Shiya, a journalist for this journal and an assistant researcher at the Institute of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, conducted, compiled, and translated this interview.)

（覃诗雅，系本刊记者，中国社会科学院马克思主义研究院助理研究员，采访、整理并翻译本文）