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”.
每當時機來臨，同樣的陳詞濫調就會捲土重來。對科隆的馬克斯•普朗克社會研究所(Max Planck Institute)名譽主任、有影響力的德國社會學家沃爾夫岡•施特雷克(Wolfgang Streeck)而言，這個陳詞濫調就是「資本主義的終結」。包括卡爾•馬克思(Karl Marx)在內，有無數知識分子預言過資本主義會很快（或者至少將最終不可避免地）終結。資本主義卻一直存活下來。然而，施特雷克認爲，這一次，情況是不同的。資本主義「將在可預見的未來處於一種混沌不明的狀態，或是已死，或是即將死於自身的過度發展、但因爲沒人有能力將其腐朽的身軀挪開而仍明顯活著」。