The book, published in 2016, that I will quote from is written by Wolfgang Streeck, a German sociologist who I believe has some important insights about the capitalist system that I would like to share with you and for your consideration. This doesn't mean that I endorse everything he writes in the book. After all, his educational experience has been somewhat contaminated by capitalist authorities that oversee all institutions within the US-led capitalist Empire. (Note: I've taken the liberty to re-format the paragraphs to make them more suitable for online reading.)
The image I have of the end of capitalism--an end that I believe is already under way--is one of a social system in chronic disrepair, for reasons of its own and regardless of the absence of a viable alternative. While we cannot know when and how capitalism will disappear and what will succeed it, what matters is that no force is on hand that could be expected to reverse the ... downward trends in economic growth, social equality,and financial stability and end their mutual reinforcement.
In contrast to the 1930s, there is today no political-economic formula on the horizon, Left or Right, that might provide capitalist societies with a coherent new regime of regulation.... Social integration as well as system integration seem irreversibly damaged and set to deteriorate further. What is most likely to happen as time passes is a continuous accumulation of small and not-so-small dysfunctions; none necessarily deadly as such, but most beyond repair ....
Conceiving of the end of capitalism as a process rather than an event raises the of how to define capitalism. Societies are complex entities that do not die in the organisms do: with the rare exception of total extinction, discontinuity is always embedded in some continuity. If we say that a society has ended, we mean that certain features of its organization that we consider essential to it have disappeared; others may well have survived.
I propose that to determine if capital is alive, dying or dead, we define it as a modern society that secures its collective reproduction as an unintended side-effect of individually rational, competitive profit maximization in pursuit of capital accumulation, through a 'labour process' combining privately owned capital with commodified labour power, fulfilling the ... promise of private vices turning into public benefits. It is this promise, I maintain, that contemporary capitalism can no long keep--ending its historical existence as a self-reproducing, sustainable, predictable and legitimate social order.
.... One might think that a long-lasting crisis of this sort would open up more than a few windows of opportunity for reformist or revolutionary agency. It seems, however, that disorganized capitalism is disorganizing not only itself but its opposition as well, depriving it of the capacity either to defeat capitalism or to rescue it. For capitalism to end, then, it must provide for its own destruction--which, I would argue, is exactly what we are witnessing today.
But why should capitalism, whatever its deficiencies, be in crisis at all if it no longer has any opposition worthy of the name? When Communism [i.e. the Soviet Union] imploded in 1989, this was widely viewed as capitalism's final triumph, as the 'end of history'. Even today, after 2008, the Old Left remains on the brink of extinction everywhere, while a New Left has, until now, failed to appear. The masses, the poor and powerless as much as the relatively well-to-do, seem firmly in the grip of consumerism, with collective goods, collective action and collective organization thoroughly out of fashion. As the only game in town, why should capitalism not carry on, by default if for no other reason?
At first glance, there is indeed much that speaks against pronouncing capitalism dead, regardless of all the ominous writing on the historical wall. As far as inequality is concerned, people may get used to it, especially with the help of public entertainment and political repression. Furthermore, examples abound of governments being re-elected that cut social spending and privatize public services, in pursuit of sound money for the owners of money. Concerning environmental deterioration, it proceeds so slowly compared to the hum lifespan, so one can deny it while learning to live with it. Technological advances with which to buy time, such as fracking, can never be ruled out, and if there are limits to the pacifying power of consumerism, we clearly are nowhere near them.
Moreover, adapting to more time-consuming and life-consuming work regimes can be taken as a competitive challenge, an opportunity for personal achievement. Cultural definitions of the good life have always been highly malleable and might well be stretched further to match the onward march of commodification, at least as long as racial or religious challenges to pro-capitalist re-education can be suppressed, ridiculed or otherwise marginalized.
Finally, most of today's stagnation theories apply only to the West, or just to the U.S., not to China, Russia, India or Brazil--countries to which the frontier of economic growth may be about to migrate, with vast virgin lands waiting to be made available for capitalist progress.
My answer is that having no opposition may actually be more of a liability for capitalism than an asset. Social systems thrive on internal heterogeneity, on a pluralism of organizing principles protecting them from dedicating themselves entirely to a single purpose, crowding out other goals that must also be attended to if the system is be sustainable. Capitalism as we know it has benefited greatly from the rise of counter-movements against the rule of profit and of the market. Socialism and trade unionism, by putting a brake on commodification, prevented capitalism from destroying its non-capitalist foundations--trust, good faith, altruism, solidarity within families and communities, and the like. Under Keynesianism and Fordism, capitalism's more or less loyal opposition secured and helped stabilize aggregate demand, especially in recessions. Where circumstance were favourable, working-class organization even served as a 'productivity whip', by forcing capital to embark on more advanced production concepts.
... capitalism can survive only as long as it is not completely capitalist--as it has not yet rid of itself, or the society in which it resides, of 'necessary impurities". Seen this way , capitalism's defeat of its opposition may actually have been a Pyrrhic victory, free it from countervailing powers which, while sometimes inconvenient, had in fact supported it. Could it be that victorious capitalism has become its own worst enemy?
