Disasters as signs of the crisis of capitalism?

Abstract

The article deals with the controversial question: are disasters signs of the crisis of capitalism? Capitalism has gone through multiple stages throughout history and in its last, more global phase, we have neoliberalism which, from the 1980s onwards, developed in response to Keynesianism and the welfare state. But this neoliberalism has expressions and relationships with other facets such as globalization, financial capitalism and continues in transition to what is now called cybernetic capitalism. Thus, the issue of disasters as indicators of crisis demands that we disaggregate the meaning and reality of neoliberalism as a practice. And after that, it is necessary to relate it to the risk factors that emerge in the practice of this particular ideology in terms of economics. And so having the ability to understand how the risk was constructed and, consequently, when that risk reaches the conditions of the given disaster, what is its role and how it indicates its relationship with the crisis of capitalism, based on an understanding of the process of social construction of risk.

Keywords: Capitalism, crisis, systemic disasters, social construction of risk.