Late capitalism

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The concept of late capitalism (in German: Spätkapitalismus) was first used by the German social scientist Werner Sombart (1863-1941) in 1928, to describe the new capitalist order emerging at that time, claiming that it was the beginning of a new stage in the history of capitalism.^[1] As a young man, Sombart was a socialist who associated with Marxist intellectuals and the German social-democratic party. As a mature academic who became well known for his own sociological writings, Sombart had a sympathetically critical attitude to the ideas of Karl Marx.^[2] Sombart's clearly-written texts and lectures helped to make "capitalism" a household word in Europe, as the name of a socio-economic system with a specific structure and dynamic, a history, a mentality, a dominant morality and a culture.^[3]

The use of the term "late capitalism" to describe the nature of the modern epoch existed for four decades in continental Europe, before it began to be used by academics and journalists in the English-speaking world — via English translations of German-language Critical Theory texts, and especially via Ernest Mandel's 1972 book Late Capitalism published in English in 1975.^[4] For many Western Marxist scholars since that time, the historical epoch of late capitalism starts with the outbreak (or the end) of World War II (1939–1945), and includes the post–World War II economic expansion, the era of neoliberalism and globalization, the 2007–2008 financial crisis and their aftermath in a multipolar world society. Particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, many economic and political analyses of late capitalism were published. From the 1990s onward, the analyses focused more on the culture, sociology and psychology of late capitalism.