Institute for Critical Social Studies presents on the occasion of its 15th anniversary:

The Historical Fate of Modern Capitalism – Debate Between Two Generations

Baby Eve, Dolly - the sheep and the ozone layer insistently require us to be able to reflect on the aftermath of the capitalistic era - i.e. how can we overcome the extra modern capitalism; but after 1989 such thoughts sound shocking for everyone, who is not deprived from good taste. We think that the shocking element is rather the fact that these thoughts are being driven back (according to Freud - it’s only that the therapy here cannot be carried out on the psycho-analyst’s couch). So, the problem is: how can we restrain the unrestraint expansion of formal rationality? Also: is such restraint possible at all, having in mind the glaring/conspicuous failure of Lenin’s experiment? It wouldn’t be surprising if we have to turn to Max Weber again for the resolution of this problem, in particular to his sociology of religion: probably only one new economic ethos, whose stipulation is a new religious moral code, i.e. a religion analogous to the protestant - but set in the opposite direction - ascetism would be able to restrain this expansion.

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