Coercion or privatization? Crisis and planned economies in the debates of the early Frankfurt School

  • The 1930s–1940s underwent profound structural economic and political turmoil following the collapse of the nineteenth century liberal market economies. The intellectual debates of the time were dominated by the question of whether Marx’s theory of the tendency of rate of profit to fall was true, or what consequence could be imagined in the survival of capitalist societies. Placed in the middle of such debates was also the reorganization of national productions into war economies. By means of reconstructive analysis, the paper provides a critical overview of the debates that took place within the circle of the Frankfurt School during those years. It also advances an interpretive thesis suggesting that remedies to capitalist crises of the time turned state powers into privatized, illiberal coercive entities. Coercion and privatization reinforced each other. This general tendency is well illustrated by the famous Pollock-Neumann debate. These intellectuals expressed views not only intended to shed light on the historical period of time, but also to formulate long-term considerations on the authoritarian trends embedded in our contemporary democracies. Through historical reconstruction, the paper’s aim is to identify a long-term structural thread of transformation starting from the transformation of the German economy in 1930s and touching upon post Second World War problems of states’ restructuring along privatization/coercion divides.

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Metadaten
Author:Claudio CorradettiORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-841173
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s42439-023-00081-0
ISSN:2524-3985
Parent Title (English):Jus cogens
Publisher:Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Place of publication:[Cham]
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2023/10/26
Date of first Publication:2023/10/26
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2024/06/11
Tag:Crisis; Frankfurt School; Monopoly; Planned economy; Privatization
Volume:6.2024
Issue:1
Page Number:22
First Page:7
Last Page:28
HeBIS-PPN:520875818
Institutes:Gesellschaftswissenschaften / Gesellschaftswissenschaften
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International