Late-Stage Capitalism?

3 credits · Undergraduate

"Late-stage capitalism" has become a memefied online reference to the bleak prospects for our collective future. The term raises the big questions of our time: Is Capitalism ending? How long has it been in crisis? Will there be jobs in the future? Why does capitalism seem perpetually able to mutate, at the cost of worsening class divisions and inequalities? In this course, we will examine how and whether capitalism is in its "late stage," how we arrived here, and how its “late stage” shapes resistance, with a focus on capitalist crisis after the 1960s. Topics covered include: precarious employment, AI automation and job replacement, logistics, financial crisis, monopoly capitalism, extractivism, housing scarcity, and climate catastrophe.