J.K. Gibson-Graham, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, [1996] 2006, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Pbk $28.
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Some books are more important for the position they take than for the arguments they make to support it. The End of Capitalism is a classic example. Writing pretty much at the height of post-1990 triumphalism among pro-capitalist states and institutions, typified by TINA (There Is No Alternative), JK Gibson-Graham rejected the idea that capitalism was irresistibly dominant. If it appeared to be so, the primary reason was the prevalence of a discourse that presented it as such, relegating deliberate attempts to develop non-capitalist practices and institutions to the margins:
‘The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) problematizes "capitalism" as an economic and social descriptor. Scrutinizing what might be seen as throwaway uses of the term - passing references, for example, to the capitalist system or to global capitalism - as well as systematic and deliberate attempts to represent capitalism as a central and organizing feature of modern social experience, the book selectively traces the discursive origins of a widespread understanding: that capitalism is the hegemonic, or even the only, present form of economy and that it will continue to be so in the proximate future’ (2).
But in making this argument, they did not have TINA in mind. Rather, it was the way in which capitalism was represented by Marx and the broader Marxist tradition that was 'a formidable obstacle to theorizing and envisioning economic (and specifically class) difference' (21).
‘The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) problematizes "capitalism" as an economic and social descriptor. Scrutinizing what might be seen as throwaway uses of the term - passing references, for example, to the capitalist system or to global capitalism - as well as systematic and deliberate attempts to represent capitalism as a central and organizing feature of modern social experience, the book selectively traces the discursive origins of a widespread understanding: that capitalism is the hegemonic, or even the only, present form of economy and that it will continue to be so in the proximate future’ (2).
But in making this argument, they did not have TINA in mind. Rather, it was the way in which capitalism was represented by Marx and the broader Marxist tradition that was 'a formidable obstacle to theorizing and envisioning economic (and specifically class) difference' (21).