Capitalism unwrapped

In a compelling paper that appeared in 2007, Slavoj Zizek recounted the following anecdote, funny and disconcerting at the same time: Italian leftist journalist Marco Cicala had confessed him that after having submitted an article featuring the word ‘capitalism’, the editor had asked him whether using that term was actually his only choice: in case it wasn’t, why not replacing it with a synonymous, like ‘economy’? Although the Great Crisis that hit the world that same year partially undermined the solidity of this equation, it still takes an act of resistance to the mainstream discursive regime for explicitly disentangling what is capitalistic in the economy from what is economic in capitalism. This is why David Coates’ ‘Capitalism: the basics’ is so essential: it breaks the aura of ‘inevitability’ which has for a long time surrounded the concept (especially in the academy) and, by unwrapping it, opens up new space for critical scrutiny. In fact, the key starting point of chapter 1 (‘What is capitalism?’) is the following: ‘in the full span of human time, capitalism is an extremely new phenomenon, one that is still even now only in the process of full formation’ (5). Thus, having emerged historically through a contingent succession of disparate events, capitalism is transient: it had an origin, it will have an end (how far are we from that closing is obviously a matter of contention).