Capitalist Crises, Capitalist Transitions

Wolfgang Streeck analyzes the dynamics of modern capitalist societies. He begins by outlining the conceptual apparatus needed for a social scientific, rather than economistic, analysis of capitalism: contradiction; social structure; capitalist culture; and crisis sequences. He then deploys these tools to consider the last 40 years of capitalist development and transformation.

Wolfgang Streeck studied sociology in Frankfurt am Main and at Columbia University. He received his Habilitation from the University of Bielefeld in 1986. From 1988 to 1995 he was Professor of Sociology and Industrial Relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and from 1995 to 2014 Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. His research areas are comparative political economy and institutional change in capitalist economies and societies. His books include Democracy at Work: Contract, Status and Post-Industrial Justice (with Ruth Dukes), Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022; How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System, London and New York: Verso Books, 2016; Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, London and New York: Verso Books, 2014; Re-Forming Capitalism: Institutional Change in the German Political Economy, Oxford University Press, 2009.