Weighing against such scenarios is a larger process: the structural crisis of capitalism is a universal tendency. Even if local hitches occur, the advance of computerization and displacement of all kinds of work will continue everywhere. No one can remain the capitalist hegemon under these conditions for long. Postcapitalist regimes, with better redistribution, may be able to generate consumer demand and get their economies back into a growth mode, pulling ahead of recalcitrant capitalist states who will be stuck in their own crises.
Muddying capitalist crisis with other dimensions of contention. In a multidimensional world, many different conflicts go on at the same time. The future showdown of capitalist crisis will be mixed with other issues; and these often have emotional and dramatic qualities that put them in the forefront of public attention.
To mention only a few: Religion—at present, contention most vehemently between militant Islamists and their opponents (Christians; Hindus; secularists of the post-Christian West; the post-Communist successor states, etc.); not ruling out the possibility of other axes of religious conflict in the future. Race/ethnicity/national identity—conflicts ranging among struggles over distribution of the spoils of office, quotas and government regulation of ethnic access to resources (affirmative action, etc.), policing borders against immigration, exclusion of immigrants, territorial disputes, and ethnic wars. But also movements to promote interethnic harmony or integration, which may be opposed in turn by movements seeking the particularistic ends listed in the previous sentence. There are also a host of transient issues that take up most of the political attention space most of the time. These involve scandals, corruption charges, personalities, atrocities, moralistic issues sometimes elevated to the status of “culture wars.” But what makes structural crises more important is that they are indeed structural; they concern inescapable conflicts in the institutional arrangements that affect the material and organizational basis of ongoing social life. Unlike scandals, structural issues do not blow over; they can be ignored for a while but they continue to produce their effects.
Overlaying by particularistic issues is inevitable. Conflicts over ethnicity, religion, gender, lifestyle, etc., can either reinforce the capitalist crisis, or muddy it enough to retard or prevent a revolutionary transformation to postcapitalism. Such conflicts could also reinforce the crisis and the transformation, if large numbers of people are mobilized via their identities as suppressed and injured ethnic groups, religions, gender, etc., and perceive their grievances as coinciding with their interests in opposing the capitalist system. Overlay of particularistic identities upon class mobilization has often happened in past revolutions, and seems likely in the future. On the other hand, the overlaying most of the time diverts attention from economic issues, and has often served as the mobilizing base for reactionary movements, opposing reform of the system because of ethnic, religious, or other hostilities to the reformers. Again we should invoke the depth of the future capitalist crisis. If it is as deep as the theory indicates, there will be no way out of it, except a postcapitalist transition. All the ethnic, religious, lifestyle, and other conflicts will only be so much noise, stringing along the crisis until finally an alignment of mobilized political forces comes about that solves the problem by postcapitalist transition. The long-term result is not whether the transition will occur, but how long it will take.
War. The capitalist crisis envisioned for the mid-21st century might well be connected with wars. Anticapitalist revolution in one state could lead to subsequent wars, as the result of outside intervention to restore a procapitalist regime; or internal civil war exacerbated and sustained by outside aid and intervention; or by another path, an aggressive post-revolutionary state promoting export of revolution, thereby generating wars elsewhere. This is not inevitable; there are pathways by which a revolution (particularly a peaceful political transition) would not be followed by wars. Rather than trying to predict the contingent variety of the future, let us ask the overarching question: would wars save capitalism, or add to its crisis? Wars on the whole promote revolutions, especially on the losing side; but also sometimes on the winning side, through war expense contributing to fiscal crisis of the state. Would a war victory by a state attempting to uphold capitalism, in a world where anticapitalist movements are strong, be able to sustain capitalism by force? It might be able to do so for a period of time. But a deep crisis of massive technological displacement of work could not be solved in this way. Even this war scenario only retards the postcapitalist transformation.
Ecological crisis. Long-term climate change, destruction of natural resources and other results of human activity are producing massive consequences and endangering life and livelihood in the future. The question is: will the ecological crisis generate shifts in capitalism, such that the capitalist crisis will be overcome (the solution to the ecological crisis solving the capitalist crisis)? Or will the crises combine, making each other worse, and thereby motivating a joint solution, or a joint failure of solution?
Ecological crisis could mesh with capitalist crisis; the other prong of the alternatives, that ecological crisis would help capitalism survive, seems remote. Green industries will not generate enough employment to offset technological displacement, especially since green industries are likely to take the high-tech path of further computerization and automation. The disastrous effects of ecological crisis, although horrific to contemplate in terms of human suffering, would hit some regions of the world earlier than others. Ecological change will create new advantages and opportunities for some regions. Some low-lying parts of the world will be inundated. Other places will become relatively uninhabitable, because of drought, heat, pollution, etc. At the same time, some cold regions will become more habitable; melting ice caps will open new oceans, for instance, favoring Russia, Canada, and other regimes adjacent to these frontiers. The combination will bring about massive pressures for migration. There also could be huge population losses, amounting to a humanitarian disaster, perhaps killing hundreds of millions of people. Nevertheless, the cold eye of history centuries from now will report that even if 10% of world population were lost (or some such figure), much of the human world did survive and adjust.
Now bring the ecological crisis into juxtaposition with the crisis of capitalism generated by high-tech displacement of middle-class work. The massive flux of refugees from the ecologically devastated areas into the habitable regions would add more competition to an already crowded labor market. Cheap, expendable labor, which already drives down the life-chances of the majority made superfluous by automation, would further exacerbate the economic crisis. Some new employment would open up, in migrant ethnic enclaves, and on the geographical frontiers where the earth will become more habitable. But ecological crisis seems unlikely to break the overall trend of the technological displacement crisis. Displaced populations, fleeing from places no longer inhabitable, and the antimigrant movements that would likely follow, might add a further muddying or retarding effect on the solution of capitalist crisis. On the humanitarian side of the scale, compassion within the part of the world that welcomed such survivors could further channel emotional energy to the movement for a transition beyond capitalism and its problems. On the whole, ecological crisis seems likely to further enhance the likelihood of the anticapitalist scenario.