Emancipation Paradox DA: The perm strikes a new legitimacy deal for capitalism that depoliticizes the alternative.

Let me now trace the progression of my investigation through the seven chapters of this book. My point of departure, in chapter 1, is the discourse of “crisis of capitalism” that emerged in the aftermath of the 2007– 2008 economic meltdown. I trace the deflation of the narrative of a grand, terminal crisis of capitalism and the rise of one about the unfairness of inequalities, which has spurred calls for redistribution across the left–right political divide. This shift suggests something significant about the nature of the “legitimacy deal” between citizens and public authority—that is, what citizens consider to be valuable services the state can and must perform for society. What is being obscured in the preselection of grievances deemed worthy of political notice is an equally significant part of the legitimacy deal. Why have pressures increased on the state to deliver economic justice by reducing inequality rather than by alleviating poverty or providing stable employment? This invites us to take a closer look at the selective process of politicization—that is, the way society’s afflictions, from unemployment to lack of physical safety and growing economic uncertainty, are or are not being presented as issues demanding political attention and policy action. The theme of politicization will be central to my investigation: namely, which social problems are considered deserving of public attention, and how social anxieties become political problems worthy of policy action.

The unfairness of inequality has become the dominant frame of social protest since the Occupy movement proudly stated, “We are the 99 percent.” I take this indignation, which I address in the first chapter, to be a symptom not of the crisis of capitalism but rather of its unfailing good health. This is the case because remonstrations against inequality present the matter of capitalism’s numerous and grave failures as issues that can be easily tackled with a dose of redistributive policies and strengthened oversight. Thus, what appears to be a radical challenge to neoliberal capitalism is instead a reinforcement of it, as we inevitably validate the model of life into which we seek equal inclusion— what I describe as “the paradox of emancipation.” Public protests thus unwittingly relegitimize the social system they purport to challenge as they seek to diminish the inequalities neoliberalism has engendered without addressing the root causes of the economic and social crisis. (Note that the growth of inequality was an outcome of this crisis, not a cause of it.) Thus, capitalism has continued to prosper despite growing public dissatisfaction. Its economic engine is having considerable difficulties with delivering growth and prosperity for all, yet the legitimacy deal in Western societies has been altered so as to endow it with renewed authority. There is no crisis of capitalism. We inhabit, instead, a crisis of the crisis of capitalism, as I shall suggest.