Confronting Capitalism: How Will Capitalism End?
Jacobin Radio
Jacobin
4.7 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
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Summary
Socialists have long predicted capitalism’s overthrow and replacement by a better system. But do we have any reason to believe capitalism must come to an end?
On the latest episode of Confronting Capitalism, Melissa Naschek and Vivek Chibber discuss the role of economic and ecological crises in capitalism’s possible demise. Just as it is a mistake to think that capitalism will last forever, it’s also unrealistic to think that it is destined to collapse.
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Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Confronting Capitalism. |
| 0:20.0 | I'm Melissa Nashek, and I'm here, as always, with Vivek Chibber, a professor at NYU |
| 0:25.2 | and the editor of Catalyst, a journal of theory and strategy. |
| 0:29.6 | How's it going, V? |
| 0:30.7 | It's going well, Melissa. |
| 0:32.1 | Classes are over. |
| 0:33.1 | Summer's starting, which means I'm going to have even more work to do now. |
| 0:36.9 | Oh, wow. |
| 0:37.8 | Boo-hoo. |
| 0:38.3 | Woe is me from the academics. |
| 0:40.0 | Yeah, the tough life. |
| 0:40.9 | It's like being in the salt mines, right? |
| 0:42.2 | The academics, the work is just unbearable. |
| 0:45.0 | Well, good luck in the library factory this summer. |
| 0:48.0 | Yeah, sitting down for eight hours a day is really hard. |
| 0:52.8 | So the last two episodes, we've talked about socialist alternatives to capitalism. |
| 0:58.7 | So you and Kael had a chance to talk about market socialism and what that could look like |
| 1:04.7 | and why that is sort of your preferred alternative to capitalism. And then you and I had a conversation about the Soviet |
| 1:13.3 | attempt at economic planning that ultimately didn't work out. So today we're kind of putting a little |
| 1:21.6 | bit of a cap on that series, although from a different angle, we're going back to capitalism and this time looking at what |
| 1:32.1 | theorists have speculated will be the end of capitalism. When I was, you know, coming up on the left, |
| 1:39.4 | there was a lot of talk about people like Francis Fukuyama, who, you know, in the late 90s, |
... |
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