Cometh the hour, cometh the cliché. In the case of Wolfgang Streeck, an influential German sociologist who is emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute in Cologne, that cliché is “the end of capitalism”. Countless intellectuals, including Karl Marx, have forecast the imminent or at least inevitable end of capitalism. Capitalism has always survived. This time, argues Streeck, is different. Capitalism “will for the foreseeable future hang in limbo, dead or about to die from an overdose of itself but still very much around, as nobody will have the power to move its decaying body out of the way”.
每当时机来临，同样的陈词滥调就会卷土重来。对科隆的马克斯•普朗克社会研究所(Max Planck Institute)名誉主任、有影响力的德国社会学家沃尔夫冈•施特雷克(Wolfgang Streeck)而言，这个陈词滥调就是“资本主义的终结”。包括卡尔•马克思(Karl Marx)在内，有无数知识分子预言过资本主义会很快（或者至少将最终不可避免地）终结。资本主义却一直存活下来。然而，施特雷克认为，这一次，情况是不同的。资本主义“将在可预见的未来处于一种混沌不明的状态，或是已死，或是即将死于自身的过度发展、但因为没人有能力将其腐朽的身躯挪开而仍明显活着”。