Chen Huiyuan: Self-Diagnosis of Contemporary Crises by Capitalist Countries: An Analysis Based on Mainstream Media in the UK and US
After the end of the Cold War, Western liberal thinkers, represented by Francis Fukuyama and others, optimistically predicted that liberal democracy and the market economy constituted the endpoint of humanity's ideological evolution—the so-called "end of history." At the time, this viewpoint not only established the superiority of the capitalist system but also provided a legitimizing footnote for the subsequent process of neoliberal globalization. However, since entering the 21st century and especially since 2008, this confident grand narrative has encountered unprecedented questioning and negation. From the outbreak of the 2008 international financial crisis to the present, a series of shocks has plunged the Western world into a state of "polycrisis," a term coined by historian Adam Tooze.
Facing this historic change, a noteworthy phenomenon is not the crisis itself, but rather the shift in discourse within the West: Western mainstream academia and media, which once acted as staunch defenders of the system, have in recent years begun to issue intensive "pathology reports" regarding their own institutions. From Martin Wolf's anxieties over the "crisis of democratic capitalism" to the voluminous reports in mainstream European and American media like the Financial Times and The New York Times regarding "governance paralysis" and "social fracturing," a "self-diagnostic" crisis narrative is replacing the triumphalist tone of yesteryear. This discursive shift raises a core question of political sociology: Why do Western, and specifically British and American, mainstream media choose at this moment to publicly acknowledge this systemic crisis through the form of "self-diagnosis"? Is this "anxiety of decline" pervading the political, economic, and cultural spheres an expression of the system’s self-repairing mechanism, or is it a symptom of the structural collapse of neoliberalism?
Regarding research methodology and literature selection, this article takes major British and American media as "discourse samples" reflecting Western public opinion anxiety and the breakdown of consensus. It primarily selects in-depth commentaries from representative mainstream Western media between 2020 and 2025 (such as The Guardian, The New York Times, the Financial Times, and The Economist) as empirical material. This presents theoretical discourses on the crisis from across the political spectrum. Applying Marxist political economy and contemporary critical theories (such as World-Systems Theory and Legitimation Crisis theory), the article attempts to look through the surface-level "phenomenological descriptions" of the media to parse the underlying systemic logic and historical drivers. This attempt strives to overcome the previous confusion between journalistic narrative and academic analysis found in past research, ensuring the scholarly rigor and standardized nature of the argument.
Based on the aforementioned framework, this article contends that the high-frequency topics appearing in major British and American media—such as "political paralysis," "economic stagnation," and "cultural decay"—are not isolated "symptoms" but are rather concentrated projections of the basic contradictions of capitalism in the era of financialization and digitalization. The prevalence of this "crisis narrative" reflects a rupture in the "promise of growth" and "promise of democracy" that sustained the operation of Western society after the Cold War. By sorting through the "self-statements" of major British and American media regarding the failure of political governance, the stagnation of economic accumulation, the disintegration of the social contract, and geostrategic overload in major Western countries, the author attempts to reveal that the current decline of Euro-American capitalist countries remains an expression of the contradiction between the socialization of production and the private ownership of the means of production—a necessary result of the evolution of systemic defects under new historical conditions.
I. Reduced Systemic Resilience, Governance Failure, and Declining Political Identity
In the classic narrative of post-war Western political science, liberal democracy was considered superior because it possessed a set of self-correcting capabilities: the ability to mitigate social conflict through representative mechanisms and prevent governance failure through checks and balances. However, an examination of recent "pathological diagnoses" regarding the Western political ecosystem in major British and American periodicals reveals a clear consensus of anxiety: the systemic "machine" once held in high esteem is moving toward functional "paralysis" due to excessive friction between its internal "components," and the bond connecting state and society—political identity—is undergoing a continuous tearing.
(1) "Vetocracy" and the Decline of Governance Efficacy
The most intuitive manifestation of the contemporary Western political crisis is the decline in state governance efficacy. This stems not from a lack of resources or backward technology, but from a structural "self-locking" mechanism generated within the political system, which Fukuyama summarized as "vetocracy" [1]. In this systemic "pathological change," the pluralistic check-and-balance nodes originally designed to prevent tyranny have, under the catalysis of political polarization and partisan strife, degenerated into tools for various parties to block decision-making and paralyze the national will. This political logic of "opposition for the sake of opposition" has left major Western countries displaying a shocking degree of decision-making lag and executive impotence when facing major strategic challenges and social livelihood issues; the state apparatus has fallen into a state of prolonged idling amidst the strangulation of partisan interests.
As a representative case of Western political crisis, the operation of the American system in recent years has been described by many observers as a "near-death experience"—thrilling rhetoric that reveals the intensity of the crisis. The violent assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not only a physical transgression but a trampling of the "peaceful transfer of power," the baseline norm of liberal democracy. Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf pointed out that this event marked the descent of the American democratic system into an extremely dangerous state, exposing the fragility of systemic rationality in the face of extreme mobilization; even if the system ultimately "survived," its aura of sanctity has been stripped away. However, more destructive to systemic resilience than a one-off violent event is the normalization of governance "paralysis." This "paralysis" is particularly evident at the level of maintaining basic state functions. The repeated maneuvering over budget bills is no longer a rational policy debate based on public interest but has degenerated into a "game of chicken" in partisan mobilization. In October 2025, the U.S. federal government underwent a record-breaking comprehensive shutdown of 43 days due to congressional partisan conflict; this event was widely interpreted by public opinion as a manifestation of systemic dysfunction. Commentaries from Wolf and The Washington Post pointed out that such practices make the public sense an "institutional irresponsibility": in a system with extremely dense veto points, it is easier for various parties to veto one another, yet no one is willing to bear the political cost of compromise. Consequently, any compromise on a budget plan might be viewed by one's own camp as "surrender," dragging the entire state apparatus into long-term suspension. The budget, which should be a technical prerequisite for the state’s operation, is instead used as a bargaining chip in partisan warfare. This practice of "holding the state apparatus hostage" causes the public to generally perceive a "lack of institutional responsibility."
Furthermore, the decline in governance efficacy is accompanied by the arbitrary expansion of executive power and the disintegration of institutional neutrality, exacerbating policy uncertainty and unpredictability. Taking trade policy as an example, the "impulse toward personalized rule" displayed by Trump during his administration transformed the tariff and trade frameworks—which should have been highly predictable and rules-based—into "on-off switches" serving short-term electoral interests and personal will. In April 2025, the White House suddenly announced large-scale "reciprocal tariffs," imposing additional duties on almost all imports, which triggered a massive shock in global financial markets, followed by an enforced "technical pause" due to realistic pressures. Reuters and American commentators generally believe that this style of capricious policy-making effectively converts trade and fiscal policies—which should remain relatively stable and predictable—into electoral tools that can be "switched" at any time for personal political needs, eroding the neutrality and predictability of the system. This deeper erosion of the system is reflected in the political manipulation of "Deep State" discourse. By disparaging the "fake news media," demanding that judicial and law enforcement agencies be "loyal to individuals rather than the system," constantly hinting at "controlling interest rates," and threatening to replace the Chair of the Federal Reserve, "political strongmen" are systematically dismantling the "infrastructure" upon which the liberal democratic system relies for operation. Judicial, financial, and intelligence agencies are forced into partisan whirlpools, and the system's self-correcting capacity continues to diminish.
On the other side of the Atlantic in Europe, although the loss of governance efficacy differs in form from that of the United States, its "pathological" essence is identical. In Europe, it manifests more as the fragmentation of party politics and the normalization of "short-lived governments," making the construction of a stable governing majority a pipe dream. In France, for instance, the tradition of a "super-presidency" and "stable majority" that the Fifth Republic long prided itself on ceased to exist after the 2022 legislative elections. The presidential camp lost its absolute majority in the National Assembly for the first time, forcing the government into a "lame duck" state of repeated negotiations with multiple opposition forces. This trend worsened further between 2024 and 2025, with multiple prime ministers changing like a revolving lantern; among them, Sébastien Lecornu resigned only 27 days after being appointed Prime Minister because his cabinet formation plan could not secure majority support. His cabinet was described by French and international media as the "shortest-lived government in modern history." Multiple media outlets, including Le Monde and Le Figaro, described this round of the "prime ministerial revolving door" as "institutional instability unprecedented since the founding of the Fifth Republic." They argued that the semi-presidential system, which should provide stability, has experienced "structural failure" against the backdrop of multi-party fragmentation and the rise of extremist forces—specifically, an imbalance between presidential authority and parliamentary representation, which neither forms a strong governing coalition nor maintains a stable majority through deliberative democracy.
The dilemma of party fragmentation and "weak cabinets" is not unique to France but is a widespread political ecosystem in Europe. In the 2024 European Parliament elections, right-wing and far-right parties made significant gains in countries like France, Germany, and Austria. While they did not completely overturn the EU power structure, they significantly squeezed the survival space of traditional center-left and center-right moderate parties, intensifying the fragmented political landscape. In the Netherlands, between 2024 and 2025, the right-wing populist Party for Freedom (PVV) both participated in the government and caused the governing coalition to collapse, triggering the dissolution of the government and new elections. Even after the October 2025 general election, although the centrist liberals narrowly won, they faced a grueling process of cabinet formation within a highly fragmented parliament. Media widespreadly described the Dutch political situation as having "low trust and party fragmentation." This internal political instability has weakened Europe's capacity for action and consistency on the international stage. L'Express and Reuters analyses pointed out that, at the EU level, political instability not only weakens the ability of countries to push forward structural reforms but also dissolves the EU’s consistency on many issues, deepening the external impression of "European political fragmentation." Therefore, whether it is the "veto deadlock" in the United States or the "fragmented politics" of Europe, both point to the same conclusion: Western representative democracy, when faced with the complex and volatile governance demands of the 21st century, is confronting "mechanistic obstruction," and its ability to transform social demands into effective policies is continuously declining. When the political system is preoccupied with power games and the game of vetoes, the issues that truly need resolution—such as the wealth gap, industrial hollowing-out, and the climate crisis—are indefinitely shelved, sowing the seeds for a deeper crisis of political identity.
(2) The Crisis of Political Identity: Populism as a "Pathological Expression"
Behind the decline in governance efficacy lies a crisis of political identity. When the political system cannot effectively respond to social livelihood issues, and when mainstream political parties become megaphones for interest groups and lose touch with the lives of the masses, the trust contract between voters and the system collapses. In this political vacuum, populism is not an accidental political aberration but emerges as a fierce rebellion against the "failure of representation"—a "pathological expression." It marks the generation of an angry force within Western society that cannot be absorbed through the existing institutional framework. This force is reshaping the political landscape, alienating the traditional "Left-Right" struggle into a battle between "elites and the masses" or "the establishment and the anti-establishment."
The 2016 Brexit referendum shocked the world, and in recent years, the rise of far-right forces in Europe has become normalized; this series of events constitutes a clear narrative thread. The Brexit referendum is widely regarded as a public "revolt" by populism against the path of European integration dominated by "elites," revealing a political backlash caused by the extremely unequal distribution of the dividends of globalization. Since then, this sentiment has continued to spread across the European continent, with right-wing populist parties rising successively in countries such as France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. In the 2022–2023 election cycle, a coalition government led by the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy came to power, the National Rally in France saw a massive increase in parliamentary seats, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) reached record-high approval ratings, and a Dutch populist party even won the status of the largest party in parliament in 2023. The expansion of the far-right's voter base stands in sharp contrast to the trend of "hollowing out" among traditional center-left and center-right establishment parties, as voters defect en masse to anti-system emerging forces or political outsiders. A Reuters report pointed out that European far-right parties have exploited public dissatisfaction with issues such as immigration, public security, and the economy, successfully converting votes into political influence and prompting mainstream parties to shift rightward to meet the challenge. This populist wave reflects a profound distrust of existing political institutions among the broad electorate. They generally believe that traditional elites "look down on ordinary people" and are neither able to represent their interests nor provide viable paths for improvement. Consequently, they turn to support self-proclaimed "anti-establishment" charismatic leaders, using their votes as a means to "punish the elites." This behavior is no longer a rational choice based on policy, but an emotional venting—a "revenge" against establishment politicians who sit high above while ignoring the living conditions of ordinary people.
Notably, the populist wave triggered by this rupture in representation does not have only a right-wing face. In large cities where the lower classes and ethnic minorities congregate, a left-wing populism demanding radical redistribution is likewise gathering strength, presenting a completely different political landscape. In the 2025 New York City mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Muslim South Asian political figure, was elected as the youngest and first Muslim mayor in the city's history on a democratic socialist platform. He advocates for freezing rent increases, raising the minimum wage, taxing the wealthy, and strengthening public services. This event triggered heated debate in the U.S. national media. Trump and right-wing media called him "one hundred percent communist." London Mayor Sadiq Khan, meanwhile, praised his victory as an "amazing win," congratulating New Yorkers for choosing "hope over fear." The British newspaper The Guardian summarized this wave of left-wing mobilization as "Heatwave Communism," while Reuters interpreted it as a challenge to the influence of billionaire political donations, reflecting the distrust that grassroots and minority voters feel toward the existing order.
From a Marxist critical perspective, these two seemingly opposite forms of populism both mobilize the "discontented" through fierce anti-elite discourse, yet they differ significantly in their class orientation. Right-wing populism often directs its spearhead at immigrants, international organizations, and "cultural elites," constituting a form of symbolic politics that carries out redistribution while maintaining the prerequisite of capitalist private ownership. Left-wing populism, by contrast, attempts to transform discontent into a structural critique of wealth concentration and capital power. However, within the existing institutional structure, neither right-wing nor left-wing populism finds it easy to form a stable governing majority. This makes "vetocracy" [2] even more polarized: any substantive reform is liable to be vetoed by the opposing camp through procedural means. In discussing the "crisis of democratic capitalism," Martin Wolf summarized this situation as a "doom loop": intensifying inequality and the middle-class crisis weaken trust in the system, driving the rise of populism and anti-establishment forces; meanwhile, polarization and veto politics make it difficult to carry out effective institutional reforms, thereby further exacerbating social discontent and institutional "skepticism." What is formed, therefore, is not merely a reorganization of the party landscape at the electoral level, but a dual crisis of political representation and governance capacity.
Even more severe is that this crisis of political identity is reflected not only in election results but also in political agenda-setting. When mainstream parties are forced to mimic populist discourse to counter populist challenges, the political center of gravity of the entire country shifts. To compete for votes, traditional center-right parties have become increasingly radical on immigration and multicultural issues, while traditional center-left parties have sunk deeper into the quagmire of identity politics. Core issues, such as "how to repair the broken social contract" and "how to reconstruct a fair mode of accumulation," have instead been marginalized. This phenomenon undoubtedly makes Western society susceptible to a diminished capacity for self-innovation in terms of building consensus and mobilizing resources when facing a series of difficult problems. Politics is no longer a transmission belt for aggregating social interests; instead, it has become a site for the solidification of social fractures. Various street protests and electoral chaos have become the main manifestations, serving both as overt symptoms of "decline" and as a prelude to future political order instability. The challenges currently faced by Western capitalist countries have transcended the scope of policy patching and have touched upon the deep logical dilemmas of the political system itself: when democratic systems cannot deliver on their promises, their foundations of legitimacy inevitably begin to shake.
(3) The Social Contract Faces Collapse and a Crisis of Trust
The idle spinning of governance effectiveness and the rupture of political identity have detonated a more fundamental crisis at the level of the social fabric: the "social contract" upon which modern capitalist states rely for maintenance is facing collapse. The implicit agreement in which the public trades political loyalty for economic security and social mobility is facing the risk of disintegration. This is no longer expressed merely as the localized dissatisfaction of specific groups, but has evolved into a trust deficit and an extra-institutional transformation of collective action.
First, "generalized trust," the psychological cornerstone of the social contract, is undergoing a collapse. For a long time, the legitimacy of Western democratic systems has relied on the public's basic trust in public institutions. However, poll data from recent years show that this foundation of trust is shaking. According to a 2025 cross-national survey by the Pew Research Center, in a sample covering major developed economies such as the U.S., France, and Spain, as many as 56% of the public demanded a "complete reconstruction" of the political system; in some countries, this proportion even climbed to 67%. Even more destructive is that the public's characterization of the existing system has undergone a qualitative change: 63% of respondents no longer believe the government is the "guardian" of the public interest, but instead view it as a tool that "substantively serves the financial oligarchy." In the United States, this trust crisis presents a pathologically "mirror-symmetrical" form: Gallup data indicate that public trust in the federal government, mainstream media, and public health agencies are all at low points, with partisan polarization causing opposing camps to have diametrically opposed evaluations of the same institution. A situation where "not a single institution is worthy of the shared trust of the whole society" means that the "spirit of contract" is continuously dissolving, and the self-repair capacity of the social organism is consequently declining sharply.
Second, when the trust mechanisms within the system fail, the collapse of the social contract is externalized as the normalization and radicalization of protest actions. Street politics is no longer a supplement to representative democracy but has become an alternative means of "self-politicization" for marginalized groups. The "Yellow Vest" movement that broke out in France in 2018 was a landmark moment. This protest, initially triggered by a fuel tax, quickly shed traditional labor union mobilization models and left-right ideological labels, evolving into a "revolt" against the erosion of purchasing power, tax injustice, and arrogant political elites. Analyses by Reuters and several European research institutions pointed out that participants were mostly the "squeezed middle class" [3]—those who neither received explicit poverty assistance nor shared in the dividends of globalization, and whose demands went straight to the bottom line of the "social contract": a "decent life."
This protest surrounding the "right to survival" reached a climax during the 2022 energy crisis and the 2023 EU agricultural unrest. From the strike waves in Britain to Dutch and Polish farmers using tractors to block borders, these movements together constitute a clear social thread: the core issues of protest have shifted from abstract political rights to the concrete "wages, rent, and bills." These "cost-of-living protests" reveal a crisis of distributive justice in the context of the green transition—that is, when the costs of ecological transition are asymmetrically shifted onto grassroots producers and consumers while policymakers turn a blind eye to the hardships of people's livelihoods from a moral high ground, the legitimacy of policy vanishes. Meanwhile, the rupture of the intergenerational contract has also exacerbated social fragmentation. The climate movement represented by the Swedish "environmental girl" Greta Thunberg, which accused political elites at the UN Climate Summit of "stealing our dreams and our childhood," pointed intergenerational injustice and institutional inertia directly at the current political elites. In the eyes of many young people, the older generation enjoyed high-carbon prosperity but left ecological risks and fiscal burdens to posterity; while in the eyes of many middle-aged and elderly people and traditional industrial workers, the youth climate movement ignores the pressures of real-world jobs and livelihoods. Thus, climate governance is no longer just a technical and economic issue, but a comprehensive social issue touching on lifestyles, regional equity, and intergenerational justice.
(4) The Institutional Logic from "Class Compromise" to "Legitimacy Implosion"
Beneath these appearances, it is necessary to ask from the theoretical depth of political sociology: why has the Western democratic system, which once demonstrated strong adaptability, fallen into functional decay in the 21st century? This is not a coincidental result of simple political polarization or technocratic error, but rather the inevitable outcome of the evolution of the contradictory complex of "democratic capitalism" at a specific historical stage. Examined from the perspective of critical theory, the cornerstone of Western political stability after World War II was built on a balance of "class compromise"—that is, the state secured mass loyalty to the capitalist system through intervention in the market and welfare distribution (the "purchase" of legitimacy). However, with the deepening of neoliberal globalization and the stagnation of economic growth, this balance was broken. This is the contemporary manifestation of the "legitimacy crisis" logic predicted by Jürgen Habermas: when the state can no longer satisfy both the needs of capital accumulation (profits) and the needs of mass democracy (welfare) through fiscal expansion, the political system falls into an inescapable "double bind."
Specifically, to maintain the global competitiveness of capital, Western countries have gradually alienated from being "people's states" into what the German economist Wolfgang Streeck calls "market states" over the past 40 years [4]. Their policy priorities have irrevocably changed from responding to voter demands as the highest order to pleasing financial markets and creditors. This process has led to the "instrumental rationalization" and "hollowing out" of public power: politics is no longer a field for coagulating social consensus but has regressed into a technocratic management system serving capital valorization. When political decision-making is deeply captured by money politics, and when the legislative process is precisely manipulated by lobbying groups, representative democracy loses its core function as a regulator of social conflict. Thus, we see this current pathological symbiosis: on the one hand, formal democratic procedures (elections, parliamentary debates) still function but can no longer truly touch on issues such as wealth distribution and social justice; on the other hand, to mask the "impotence" of democratic procedures, political elites have to manufacture "culture wars" and identity antagonisms to mobilize voters, leading to the institutional deadlock of "veto politics." Therefore, the current political crisis is essentially a "legitimacy implosion": when the system cannot provide inclusive growth economically, cannot provide effective representation politically, and cannot even provide the illusion of fairness morally, social trust in the existing system dissipates completely. What remains is only naked power gaming and angry anti-establishment resistance, marking a crack or even a rupture in the historic marriage between "democracy" and "capitalism."
II. The Involution of the Accumulation Regime and the Disintegration of the Social Foundation
If the crisis in the political dimension—manifested as the idle spinning of governance effectiveness and the tearing of political identity—is the expression of the capitalist crisis in the realm of the superstructure, then the crisis in the economic dimension touches on the structural mutation of the material foundation for the survival of Western modernity. In the post-WWII period...
During the "Golden Age," Western capitalism maintained a "productive accumulation" mode—that is, improving real-world productivity through technological innovation, which in turn drove wage growth and mass consumption, forming a virtuous closed loop of "production and consumption." However, a review of the self-diagnoses provided by mainstream British and American media in recent years clearly shows they believe this mode has come to an end. It has been replaced by an involutionary [5] accumulation regime characterized by "secular stagnation," "financial predation," and "digital rent-seeking." Rather than creating inclusive growth, this regime redistributes existing wealth through a "rentier" logic, leading to the continuous erosion of the social foundation, particularly the interests of the middle class and the laboring strata.
(1) The Mutation of Growth Drivers: From "Productive Accumulation" to a "Rentier Economy"
A major manifestation of the problems in the growth drivers of contemporary capitalist economies is "growth exhaustion" hidden beneath the veneer of an "innovation boom." While narratives of Silicon Valley artificial intelligence and high technology reach a fever pitch, macroeconomic data and social reality tell a starkly different story: the engine of the capitalist economy has mutated, shifting from a reliance on real productivity gains to a "rentier economy" dependent on financial bubbles and digital monopoly rents.
First, "secular stagnation" has evolved from a theoretical hypothesis in academia into a widely perceived social reality, forming the backdrop of the "Age of Decadence." Originally proposed by economist Alvin Hansen, the concept was recently reactivated by scholars such as Larry Summers to describe the phenomenon wherein Western economies cannot maintain healthy growth without powerful fiscal stimulus or the support of bubbles. As an established capitalist nation, the United Kingdom is a quintessential sample of this symptom. In assessing the UK's medium-to-long-term prospects, Bloomberg described it as facing a "lost decade that could be worse than Japan's." Under the interplay of multiple factors—including low productivity, insufficient public investment, declining labor participation rates, and the uncertainty brought by Brexit—Britain has entered a death spiral of "low growth, low investment, and low efficiency." The central bank's predicted potential growth rate is less than half of pre-crisis levels, implying that "the income prospects for an entire generation have been downgraded." Across the Atlantic, Ross Douthat, in The Decadent Society, interprets this state theoretically as "sustainable decadence": although smartphones, streaming media, and social network technologies iterate constantly on the surface, they have failed to translate into the "hard innovations" required to drive a leap in the real economy's Total Factor Productivity (TFP). This state of "stagnation without collapse" means that capitalism's ability to alleviate distributional conflicts by growing the pie is continuously diminishing, and society has fallen into a sort of involutionary stagnation packaged in high technology.
Second, the disorderly expansion of financialization has increasingly detached capital accumulation from the production process. The 2008 financial crisis should have been an opportunity to curb excessive financialization. However, under the "too big to fail" logic of bailouts, the massive liquidity injected by central banks via quantitative easing further strengthened the dominance of financial capital over industrial capital. Shadow banking, complex derivatives, and high-leverage structures were not effectively regulated; instead, they continued to serve as tools for extracting social wealth, causing the economic system to oscillate between periodic bubbles and collapses. John Cassidy, in an analysis for The New Yorker, pointed out that finance is no longer the lubricant for the real economy but has evolved into a parasitic accumulation cycle. Corporations push up share prices through stock buybacks rather than investing in R&D, and capital profits through the securitization of future earnings rather than the creation of present value. This mode has caused the economy to "shift from the real to the virtual" (脱实向虚 [6]), making wealth accumulation increasingly dependent on asset-price gambling rather than gains in production efficiency.
An even more hidden and lethal mutation of growth drivers is reflected in the rise of "digital feudalism" and the expansion of the rentier economy. As digital platforms become the infrastructure of contemporary society, the competitive logic of capitalism has undergone a qualitative change. An in-depth analysis published in Le Monde pointed out that a handful of tech giants, through data monopolies, network effects, and opaque algorithmic rules, have established a "fiefdom order" similar to medieval feudal estates. Under this order, platforms no longer compete in the market primarily by launching better products; instead, they rely on controlling market interfaces to extract "digital rent" from the users and dependent enterprises subsisting on the platform. User data and social relations are packaged as assets for continuous extraction, while authentic innovative activities wither under the weight of platform rules and harvesting. This "digital feudalism" is essentially a digital upgrade of accumulation by dispossession: utilizing the private monopoly of key information infrastructure to levy "tolls" on the whole of society. When top talent and capital flock to algorithmic models aimed at "control and extraction" rather than physical technologies aimed at "production and service," the innovation engine of capitalism begins to "idle" (空转 [7]), leaving behind only the immense wealth of a few "digital lords" and the relative poverty of the many "digital serfs."
(2) The Institutionalization of Inequality and the Normalization of "Downward Mobility"
The mutation of the accumulation regime inevitably projects onto the sphere of distribution, leading to the institutionalization of inequality and the reversal of social mobility. If the legitimacy of post-WWII Western capitalism was built on the promise of "a rising tide lifts all boats," then the current era can be said to be built on Thomas Piketty’s formula "$r > g$," where the rate of return on capital is higher than the rate of economic growth.
Wealth concentration is no longer a simple moral issue; it is the product of systematic mechanisms. Martin Wolf, in his Financial Times article "Inequality is Threatening Our Democracy," cited data from the "World Inequality Report" noting that from 1980 to 2016, the richest 1% in North America and Western Europe captured the vast majority of new income growth. This was particularly evident in the United States, where the gains of the top 1% were roughly equivalent to those of the bottom 88%. He summarized this trend as the risk of "pluto-populism": when wealth is highly concentrated and politics is deeply permeated by money, voter discontent is more easily transformed into skepticism toward the system. John Cassidy’s New Yorker article, utilizing Piketty's analytical framework, pointed out that in a macroeconomic environment where the return on capital is consistently higher than the rate of economic growth, wealth has an automatic tendency to aggregate at the top. Lacking effective tax regulation and redistribution mechanisms, this tendency is further amplified in the wave of financialization: the wealthy enjoy the dividends of asset price inflation by holding stocks and real estate, while the middle and lower classes, who rely primarily on labor income, are excluded from wealth generation. This structural differentiation allows money and power to become deeply entwined, causing political efforts to break this inequality to fail repeatedly, thus solidifying inequality as an unshakeable institutional norm.
Between macroeconomic data and microeconomic perception lies a massive "transformation scissor gap" (转型剪刀差 [8]), revealing a sharp increase in the cost of living in contemporary Western capitalist societies. Although countries like the U.S. perform passably in GDP growth and employment data, surveys by The Washington Post and CBS reveal the paradox of "macro brilliance and micro loss": while the nominal income of most families has grown, after deducting inflation and the costs of housing, healthcare, and childcare, real disposable income has fallen rather than risen. This phenomenon is vividly described as being "wealthier on paper, but more anxious in feeling." The housing crisis is particularly acute; as real estate increasingly becomes a financial investment vehicle, the rise in rents and house prices far outstrips wage growth. A report in The Guardian noted that in the UK, "a full-time job is not enough to make ends meet" has become the new normal, with one in six employees forced to cut back on food consumption to survive. This squeeze on the cost of living is, in essence, a secondary dispossession of labor income by rentier capital (landlords, credit institutions, insurance companies), making wages not only the price of labor power but also a channel for capital recovery.
In this context, the middle class, which once served as a social stabilizer, has fallen into "defensive survival" and the normalization of "downward mobility." Downward mobility is no longer the misfortune of a few, but a widespread social perception. Research shows that compared to their parents' generation, the younger generation in the West has seen a significant decline in income, and the social structure is characterized by "narrowing upward channels and expanding downward risks." To maintain their original class status, middle-class families are forced to adopt "defensive" strategies: delaying childbearing, reducing consumption, and increasing debt leverage. The spike in credit card delinquency rates and high levels of household debt are signals that this "defensive war" is gradually failing. When the belief that "working hard leads to a good life" is shattered by reality, middle-class anxiety transforms into deep resentment toward the system, constituting a socio-psychological source of Western political instability.
(3) The Alienation of Education and Deindustrialization Anxiety: The Rupture of Reproduction Mechanisms
In the narrative of Western modernization, education and industrial employment are the two pillars sustaining social reproduction: the former provides a channel for class ascent, while the latter provides a stable foundation for life. However, as the accumulation regime undergoes involution, these two mechanisms are experiencing profound changes.
The education system is mutating from a "ladder for class ascent" that promotes social equity into a "tool for class solidification" that reinforces intergenerational inequality. As state fiscal investment in public education shrinks relatively, the degree of commodification in higher education continues to deepen. Rising tuition costs have caused education to become a luxury good rather than a public good. In the UK and the US, exorbitant tuition fees force students to shoulder massive debt before even entering the labor market. A Guardian investigation showed that approximately one-quarter of British university students are at risk of dropping out due to financial burdens; this pressure forces them to spend significant time working rather than studying, further eroding the quality of education. For children of low-income families, even if they manage to obtain a degree, the heavy burden of student loans puts them at a disadvantage in terms of home ownership and entrepreneurship. Education is no longer a liberating force; instead, it has become a chain locking young people into a relationship of debt dependency. A 2025 Gallup poll showed that the proportion of adults satisfied with the quality of K-12 public education in the U.S. fell to 35%; a 2023 Pew Research Center survey showed that about half of American adults believe the "general direction" of K-12 public education is wrong, with very few believing it is "on the right track." Evaluations of the role of schools show clear partisan polarization: most Democrats believe public schools have a positive impact on the country's direction, while most Republicans believe their impact is more negative.
The affluent classes ensure their children obtain high-quality resources and social networks by purchasing expensive private education or homes in elite school districts, while bottom-tier public education faces funding shortages and declining quality. This "educational segregation" allows intergenerational advantages to be perfectly replicated within the education system. Foreign studies indicate that the decisive role of family background in an individual’s future income has significantly strengthened over the past several decades. Furthermore, the shift toward the "politicization of the scientific research system" that emerged in the U.S. following Trump’s second term has put further pressure on the public attributes of higher education. Some views summarize this trend as a "culture-war-style strike" on research universities, further eroding the public nature and innovative capacity of education. This policy shift is essentially an erosion of the public nature of education: when the state views education investment as a fiscal burden rather than human capital accumulation, and when knowledge production is forced to submit to the logic of short-term market returns, higher education can no longer serve as a "ladder for social progress."
At the same time, deindustrialization anxiety and the dilemmas of "just transition" are tearing apart the social-geographic map. Europe is facing a double squeeze: it must respond to global competition while advancing an expensive green transition. Using data on manufacturing employment and output, the Financial Times has continuously tracked the decline of Germany’s industrial base, arguing that this formerly...
The "Engine of Europe" is undergoing a "slow-motion economic catastrophe": under the dual shocks of rising energy costs and the restructuring of global supply chains, industrial output has faced long-term stagnation. Reuters' reporting on massive layoffs at Ford provides a micro-level cross-section: multi-national automakers are cutting thousands of jobs in Germany and the UK to reduce costs. This is not merely a corporate strategic adjustment, but a microcosm of the hollowing out of traditional European manufacturing. Leaders of countries such as Italy have repeatedly warned that if the European Union’s green policy path is too narrow and its pace too fast, "it is likely to result in an 'industrial desertification' of Europe," emphasizing that "if only an industrial desert remains, there is no sustainable development to speak of, no matter how green it is." Non-EU European countries, represented by the United Kingdom, present a similar anxiety on a different level. The Guardian points out that over the past decade, the competitiveness of British manufacturing and high-value-added service industries has continued to weaken; beyond the financial sector, there is a lack of new world-class pillar industries. Chronic underinvestment in public infrastructure and R&D has caused "deindustrialization" and "aging infrastructure" to overlap into an irreversible mid-to-long-term constraint. The UK is not only becoming increasingly marginalized in trade and investment but also faces the dual pressure of maintaining its status as a financial center while contending with domestic anti-globalization sentiment.
This industrial transformation has led to regional developmental imbalances in geographic space: metropolises where financial and digital elites gather enjoy the dividends of globalization, while small and medium-sized towns dependent on traditional manufacturing experience job losses and community decay. This opposition between "islands of prosperity" and the "decaying Rust Belt" constitutes the direct geographic foundation for the rise of populism.
(4) The Institutional Logic from "Profit Squeeze" to "Predatory Accumulation"
Through the aforementioned phenomena, it is necessary to ask from the theoretical perspective of Marxist political economy: Why has capitalism shifted from "productive accumulation" to "rentier" and "predatory" accumulation? This is not a mistake in policy choice, but an inevitability under the operation of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Based on Marxist political economic analysis, the long-term decline in the profit rate of the real economy is the fundamental driver of this shift. With global overcapacity, technological diffusion, and the rigidity of labor costs, the profit margins of Western physical industries have been severely compressed. When sufficient surplus value cannot be obtained through normal commodity production and trade, capital—in order to maintain its own valorization—must inevitably seek other paths of accumulation.
"Accumulation by dispossession," proposed by David Harvey, provides a theoretical tool for understanding this process. In contemporary the West, dispossession no longer primarily manifests as the plunder of external colonies, but is internalized as an "inward-looking erosion" of domestic social wealth. First, financial capital no longer serves production; instead, through credit mechanisms, asset bubbles, and debt instruments, it directly extracts wealth from the future income of laborers. Mortgages, student loans, and credit card debt are essentially capital’s advance deduction and dispossession of labor income, compensating for the insufficiency of profits in the sphere of production. Second, as profit rates in competitive sectors dry up, capital turns its gaze toward public spheres that were originally non-commodified. The wave of privatization in education, healthcare, elder care, and infrastructure is, in substance, the conversion of public assets into private capital at low prices, transforming the basic survival needs of the people into a mandatory source of profit. Finally, the monopoly of tech giants is not based on improvements in productive efficiency, but on the private enclosure of public data resources (as products of socialization). This "digital enclosure" [9] allows platform capital to collect rent from the whole of society, which is essentially a form of dispossession.
Therefore, from financial bubbles to the re-impoverishment of the middle class, and from educational debt to industrial hollowing out, the underlying logic is consistent: under the historical constraints of declining profit rates in the real economy, capitalism, in order to survive, has had to shift from "creating wealth" to "plundering wealth." Although this maintains capital’s book returns in the short term (manifested as stock market prosperity and the growth of the wealth of the rich), the price is the exhaustion of the resources of social reproduction, the disintegration of the consumption base, and ultimately the erosion of the institutional foundations of legitimacy. This marks the entry of the capitalist accumulation regime into a destructive phase of self-cannibalization.
III. Cultural Fissures and the Limits of Geostrategy
In the self-diagnoses of major British and American media, a profound "sense of civilizational fatigue" is interwoven with "strategic overload." Internally, this is expressed as the shattering of a unified community of values within fierce culture wars; externally, it is reflected in a once-insolent hegemonic machine facing the predicament of unsustainable maintenance costs under the pressure of a multipolar world.
(1) From Self-Confidence in "Soft Power" to a Self-Diagnosis of a "Decadent Society"
Parallel to political polarization and economic stagnation, Western media and academia increasingly use terms like "decadent," "burnout," and "enervated" to describe the contemporary cultural state. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat defines contemporary Western society as "economic stagnation, institutional sclerosis, and cultural exhaustion atop a high level of material prosperity and technological development." He emphasizes that cultural production exhibits a clear logic of "repetition-reproduction": the film industry is highly dependent on superheroes and nostalgic intellectual property (IP), while the fields of popular music and fashion continuously consume existing symbols; truly breakthrough "grand narratives" and cutting-edge experiments are instead scarce. This cultural "enervation" is not only reflected in the "nostalgization" and "sequelization" of artistic forms; the "lying flat" [10] trend in demographics and lifestyles is also a significant feature. On one hand, low fertility rates, singleness, and "de-familialization" are reshaping the demographic and emotional structures of Euro-American societies: the United Nations Population Fund’s report The Real Fertility Crisis points out that extremely low fertility rates in high-income countries are accompanied by an increasingly prominent "loneliness epidemic." More and more young people lack both the desire to procreate and the conditions or confidence to form stable, intimate relationships. When discussing the rapidly declining fertility rates in countries like Poland, European media attribute the cause to the fact that "state subsidies cannot compensate for structural loneliness" and "the crisis of relationships in post-communist society," rather than just an economic burden. On the other hand, mass leisure and consumer culture exhibit more obvious escapist characteristics. Research on "digital cocooning" shows that, within the framework of "compensatory internet use," some individuals—when facing real-world pressures such as job instability and interpersonal isolation—use immersive online entertainment, short videos, and games as means of emotional regulation and escape from reality, continuously reducing their investment in offline socialization and public participation. Unlike the psychedelic drugs of the 1960s and 70s that emphasized "consciousness expansion," the current "opioid crisis," "fentanyl crisis," and highly commercialized marijuana consumption in the United States are closer to what Douthat describes as "numbing placebos": they are not for experiencing the world more intensely, but for a temporary escape from real-world frustration. In this cultural climate, reform narratives that require long-term sacrifice and complex coordination find it difficult to gain attention; simple conspiracy theories, narratives of decline, and emotional labels circulate more easily in the fragmented media environment.
(2) "Culture Wars" and Civilizational Pessimism: The Fragmentation of the Community of Values
If the "decadent society" focuses on characterizing an overall enervation, then the "culture wars" unfolding around issues of race, gender, immigration, and religion reveal the tearing apart of the internal community of values.
A "narrative civil war" surrounding identity and history is disintegrating the foundation of national identity. Some scholars argue that this internal conflict has transcended policy disagreements and escalated into a struggle over "what is the West" and "what is justice." Within the "decolonization" movement and the "Black Lives Matter" wave, radical progressivism asserts that Western history is essentially a history of racist and imperialist oppression, which must be addressed through a "historical reckoning" by toppling statues and rewriting curricula. Conservatives, meanwhile, view this as a "suicidal attack on Western civilization." This split in values has given rise to "civilizational pessimism," intensifying social division.
"Civilizational pessimism" reflects a profound internal unease and questioning within Western society regarding its own future. This is both a projection of real-world dilemmas and a discursive reinforcement of the sense of decline. Especially fueled by social media algorithms, tropes like "the doom of the West" spread easily, further shaping public sentiment. At the same time, The Guardian columnist Owen Jones points out that the "decline of the West" in the mouths of right-wing politicians is often blamed on "woke culture" and moral laxity, whereas the crisis felt by ordinary people stems more directly from stagnating living standards, the collapse of public services, and a decreasing sense of security. Thus, "decline" has become a discursive resource for all sides: conservatives attribute it to cultural liberalism and moral change, while liberals and the Left offer critiques based on capitalist failure, imperial overstretch, and ecological crises. Although their explanatory paths are diametrically opposed, they share the premise of "civilizational pessimism."
(3) Strategic Overload and the "Transactional" Mutation of Hegemonic Logic
Under the multipolar pattern, although the Western military hegemony machine remains high in terms of book expenditures, it has fallen into a predicament of "strategic overload" and "resource misallocation" in terms of actual efficacy. Particularly with Trump returning to the White House and implementing the "America First 2.0" strategy, this predicament is no longer expressed as a sense of helplessness in trying to maintain the global order, but is rapidly transforming into a defensive contraction aimed at cutting losses by "shedding burdens" and "collecting protection fees."
First, the pressure of concurrent theaters of war has pierced through the "production baseline" of the Western security system. For a long time, the security strategy of the US and Europe was built on the assumption of "simultaneously winning two regional wars." However, the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022 and the lingering Middle East crisis since 2023 have exposed the vanity of this assumption. Although NATO countries’ military spending hit a post-Cold War high between 2024 and 2025, this massive investment failed to translate into effective battlefield control. Instead, it exposed the serious hollowing out of the Western Defense Industrial Base (DIB). In-depth investigations by The Wall Street Journal and The Economist point out that the bitter fruits of deindustrialization have burst forth collectively in the military sphere: insufficient ammunition production capacity, a shrinking shipbuilding industry, and a shortage of skilled workers have made the "Arsenal of Democracy" appear stretched thin when facing Russia’s wartime economy model. The United States admits its shipbuilding speed can no longer match the rate of decommission. This awkward situation of "having money but no goods" has forced the West to shift from "full-spectrum intervention" to "selective withdrawal" in the geopolitical game.
Second, the "transactional view of allies" under the second Trump administration marks a mutation in the Western mode of hegemonic maintenance. If the Biden administration attempted to share the costs of hegemony by repairing the alliance system, the "Trump 2.0 era" has directly torn off the mask of a "value-based alliance," turning security relations into naked commercial transactions. Facing unsustainable hegemonic costs, the Trump administration has adopted an aggressive strategy of "externalizing costs": demanding that NATO members increase their military spending to 3% or even higher, and openly threatening "non-protection" for "delinquent" allies. Analyses by Reuters and Foreign Affairs point out that this approach is an inevitable and rational choice following the relative decline of American national power; the US is no longer able to bear the costs of global public goods alone and must forcibly transfer the defense burden to Europe, Japan, and South Korea. While this "protection fee model" reduces America's fiscal pressure in the short term, it fundamentally disintegrates the foundation of trust in Western alliances. When security commitments become a negotiable commodity, NATO and the Japan-US alliance lose their sanctity. Major European countries are forced to accelerate their pursuit of "strategic autonomy" or even engage in separate contact with Russia and China, leading to a centrifugal tendency within the Western camp at the strategic level.
Third, the "moral deficit" caused by "double standards" has led to a "bankruptcy of trust" for Western geopolitical influence in the Global South. The maintenance of hegemony relies not only on "aircraft carriers" but also on rules and order. However, while the West held high the banner of "sacrosanct sovereignty" on the Ukraine issue, it remained silent or even permissive regarding the excessive violence of its ally in the Gaza conflict and subsequent Middle East turmoil. This obvious double standard has triggered a collective aversion in the "Global South." A commentary in The New York Times points out that this is a watershed moment in Western diplomatic history: emerging powers like Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia are no longer willing to "choose sides" but are actively promoting the expansion of BRICS and the "de-dollarization" process. The West’s ability to dominate the global agenda through the G7 is declining, replaced by a "post-Western world" in which Western discourse power is continuously diluted.
Fourth, the strategic tools—
The "generalized weaponization" has backfired, eroding the economic foundations of hegemony. To compensate for insufficient military deterrence, the West has increasingly "weaponized economic relations." From expelling Russia from the SWIFT system and implementing the "small yard, high fence" [11] chip blockade against China, to the "universal tariff" cudgel wielded by the Trump administration—these measures have strategically accelerated the "de-Westernization" of global finance and supply chains. Central banks are accelerating gold hoarding to replace U.S. Treasuries, while multinational corporations restructure supply chains to evade long-arm jurisdiction. Martin Wolf warned that this practice of privatizing the global economic commons and using them as geopolitical weapons is "destroying one's own Great Wall" [12]: although it may preserve hegemony in the short term, in the long run, it destroys the open international order, pushing the cost of hegemony to unacceptably high levels.
The crisis of the West in the geostatist realm is essentially the widening gap between the "ambitions of a universal empire" and the "capabilities of a nation-state." Whether it is Trump’s isolationist contraction or the establishment’s strained efforts to maintain the status quo, neither can change one fundamental fact: the West is no longer able to maintain a unipolar liberal international order at a low cost.
(4) From "Hegemonic Consensus" to the Involutionary Logic of a "Defensive Empire"
Behind these surface phenomena, one must ask from the macro-perspective of international relations theory and the philosophy of history: Why has the Western "combination punch" of "soft and hard power," in which it once took such pride, degraded into a "negative asset" viewed as a burden even by its allies? This is not merely a tactical misallocation of resources, but rather a structural involution [13] of its civilization paradigm after encountering historical boundaries.
Examining this through the lens of Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, true hegemony is not built solely on military coercion; it must also obtain the "voluntary consent" of the governed through a universal value narrative, particularly by securing moral and cultural leadership. The post-Cold War West was able to maintain a unipolar order at a relatively low cost precisely because it successfully packaged "liberal democracy" as the ultimate destination for all of humanity. However, with the fragmentation of the value community caused by internal "culture wars" and the moral bankruptcy triggered by external "double standards," the West has lost its capacity to produce a universal consensus.
Constrained by the exhaustion of this "voluntary consent" mechanism, Western geostrategy has been forced to shift: from an "expansive hegemony" aimed at providing global public goods (such as free trade and open technology) to a "defensive empire" aimed at maintaining vested interests through coercive force. To forcibly preserve its wobbling position in a multipolar world, the West has not hesitated to transform the global financial system, supply chains, and technical standards into geopolitical weapons (such as chip blockades and long-arm jurisdiction). Although this approach demonstrates a residual advantage in hard power in the short term, its essence is the swallowing of "value rationality" by "instrumental rationality": it marks the West’s abandonment of its constructive role as the "architect" of the global order, turning instead into the "gatekeeper" or even the "saboteur" of that order. Therefore, the current crisis of the West in the dimensions of culture and national strength is essentially an eruption of the tension between its "universalist narrative" and its "geopolitical self-interest." When a civilization can no longer provide an inclusive imagination for the future of humanity and can only rely on "building walls" and sanctions to maintain its sense of superiority over the "jungle," the core of its hegemonic legitimacy has undergone an irreversible inner collapse, and the pendulum of history naturally swings toward the "post-Western" era.
IV. Tracing the "Pathological" Origins of the Self-Diagnosis of Capitalist States
The failure of political governance, stagnation of economic growth, disintegration of cultural consensus, and geostrategic overload in capitalist states are often attributed in Western mainstream discourse to singular policy errors, external shocks, or the moral hazards of political agents. However, viewed from the perspective of Marxist political economy and historical materialism, these phenomena are not discrete slices of social pathology, but manifestations of the inherent limits of the capitalist modernization development model. The "self-diagnosis" trend rising in Western public opinion is essentially the "self-anxiety" produced by this institutional system when it faces structural contradictions that it cannot overcome through its own mechanisms. The roots of this crisis are buried deep within the internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, regime of accumulation, and civilizational paradigm.
(1) The Logic of Digital Capital Appropriation and the "Re-solidification" of Private Property
The reason "self-diagnoses" of capitalist crisis have appeared intensely in recent years is that the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production have undergone a structural upgrade under digital conditions. Driven by platformization, datafication, and networking, the socialization of production has been pushed to new heights, while the forms of appropriation have become more exclusive and closed under the reinforcement of platform monopolies and intellectual property systems. The contradiction between the socialization of production and the private appropriation of the means of production, as revealed by Marxism, has not disappeared in the digital economy. Instead, it has been institutionalized in a more expansive way, which explains the many symptoms discussed earlier regarding stagnant growth, unfair distribution, and class anxiety.
Digital technology incorporates dispersed labor, division of labor and cooperation, and consumer behavior into the same information infrastructure, making the social reproduction process manifest technical characteristics of a "total factory" [14] that is highly computable, trackable, and dispatchable. However, the "total" nature of this factory does not equate to public ownership. By controlling data, algorithms, computing power, and interfaces, platform enterprises transform network externalities and the fruits of social cooperation—which should have public good attributes—into calculable quasi-property rights. Through the power to set rules, they translate market competition into "ecosystem access." In this process, the source of profit undergoes a structural shift: a portion of surplus returns no longer primarily comes from efficiency gains brought by improved production organization, but more from holding portals, standards, and information flows; from taking commissions from upstream and downstream participants; from charging "tolls" to third parties; and from the continuous occupation of user attention and behavior. This form of return is less an industrial profit in the classical sense and closer to an institutionalized "rent extraction" of digital public space—behind which lies the "re-solidification" of private property under new technical conditions.
Thus, so-called "secular stagnation" should not be understood merely as a result of macro-policy failure or demographic changes, but as an inherent inhibition of accumulation dynamics by digital platform monopolies. When capital is more inclined to solidify its advantages on existing network effects and maintain its "moat" through mergers and blockades, innovation may degrade from a mechanism for "improving productive forces" into a tool for "maintaining monopoly rents." When capital returns come more from capitalization and rent-seeking, investment flows more easily toward controllable monopoly nodes rather than uncertain productive expansion. This weakens the social diffusion effect brought by increasing total factor productivity. Against a backdrop of rising asset prices and sluggish wage growth, this forms a distribution pattern characterized by "prosperity at the asset end, pressure at the labor end," exacerbating class stratification and hindering intergenerational mobility. This also explains why mainstream media and economic commentary in the UK and US, when discussing inequality, increasingly shift their focus from simple tax redistribution toward concerns over platform power, data systems, and digital monopolies. The focus is not moral condemnation, but a judgment that the accumulation mechanism has "shifted from production to appropriation."
(2) The Atrophy of the Capacity to Externalize Crisis: The Failure of Spatial Fixes and the Normalization of "Inward Dispossession"
Historically, capitalism has repeatedly found outlets for surplus capital and falling rates of profit by opening new markets, transferring industries, exporting capital, and reshaping the international division of labor. However, the mechanisms of crisis externalization and temporal deferral upon which it depends are failing, causing the crisis to flow back from the outside in—from the periphery to the core—and manifesting as an "inward implosion" in the form of political polarization, social tearing, and governance paralysis. David Harvey’s theory of the "spatial fix" is essentially a historical mechanism that postpones the concentrated eruption of contradictions through geographical expansion and spatial reorganization. When this mechanism is effective, core states can use external surplus returns to provide a material basis for internal class compromise; they can also use narratives of external order to shape internal identity and integrate political resources, delaying the crisis caused by profit rate pressure and insufficient demand. After the Cold War, outward expansion supported by neoliberal globalization provided the conditions for this "fix" for a considerable period: cheap labor, global supply chains, financial liberalization, and the dollar system together formed the institutional channels for externalizing the crisis.
However, since entering the 21st century and particularly since 2010, the "spatial fix" has encountered double constraints. First, multipolarity and geopolitical conflict have significantly raised the cost of external expansion; capital outflow and institutional export no longer enjoy the low-friction political conditions of the unipolar era. Second, the restructuring of global industrial chains and the strengthening of security narratives have segmented the space for cross-border accumulation, making it difficult for capital to continuously rely on external markets and external institutional dividends of the same scale. After external channels became blocked, capitalism—in order to maintain self-valorization—became more dependent on internal capitalization and financialization: commodifying the public sphere, indebting the future income of families and individuals, and redistributing social risks in institutional forms to laborers and other marginalized groups. This is the contemporary expression of what Harvey calls "accumulation by dispossession": when the space for productive profit is squeezed, capital is more inclined to transform resources that originally belonged to the public or the community into assets that can be held by a few through privatization, financial predation, the enclosure of rights, and institutional arrangements.
This "inward dispossession" does not only produce a gap between the rich and the poor; more crucially, it changes the structure of political conflict. This is because those who are dispossessed are no longer facing a temporary hardship within a cyclical recession, but rather the institutionalization of shrinking mobility, degrading public services, and the collapse of life security. Meanwhile, the beneficiaries are often highly coupled with capital markets, monopoly sectors, and policy lobbying systems. When inequality becomes a long-term trend characterized by "top-level capture" [15] and self-reinforces through a mechanism where the rate of return on assets is consistently higher than the rate of growth, politics more easily enters a trajectory of dissipating legitimacy. While formal democracy continues to operate, the capacity for substantive policy response declines, leading to "anti-establishment" mobilization, the "veto-ization" [16] of politics, and the normalization of social confrontation. Thus, the current political tearing in the West is not caused merely by the noise of cultural issues, but is more deeply rooted in the involution of the accumulation regime: when capital cannot effectively transfer contradictions outward, it tends to compress the cost of social reproduction inward, externalizing class contradictions into the public sphere in the form of identity politics, geographical antagonism, and value wars, ultimately eroding the operational conditions of the governance system.
From the historical perspective of the world-system, this process also explains why "self-diagnosis" has become urgent in the mainstream media of core countries. When crises no longer occur in the "periphery" but directly manifest as budget deadlocks, declining public service capacity, normalized protest movements, and decaying state capacity within the core countries, elite discourse must produce a narrative that can name the crisis to maintain its power of interpretation and its imagination of order. The reason "poly-crisis" has gained traction in public discussion is precisely because it points to a reality: various shocks are amplified through the coupled relationships of finance, industry, the state, and public opinion, making institutional repairs increasingly difficult to achieve in a single dimension.
(3) The Exhaustion of Legitimacy and Meaning: The Expansion of Instrumental Rationality and the Collapse of Hegemonic Consensus
Even if one acknowledges the structural constraints of economic and systemic conditions, one must still ask: why, under conditions where institutional procedures are still functioning and technical governance is becoming increasingly sophisticated, do feelings of "decline," "hopelessness," and "civilizational exhaustion" spread so widely? In Max Weber's view, modern capitalism, driven by formal and instrumental rationality, constructed a high-efficiency institutional machine, but this machine traps the individual in an "iron cage," causing the lifeworld to be dominated by institutional logic, which in turn triggers a poverty of meaning and the hollowing out of values. When this rationalization is further strengthened in digital governance and algorithmic management, social coordination relies increasingly on quantifiable indicators, risk models, and technical discipline. Public life more easily degrades into "performance, competition, and elimination." When economic growth stagnates and social mobility is blocked, the exchange relationship of "trading efficiency for prosperity" promised by instrumental rationality can no longer be fulfilled, and the crisis of meaning shifts from a latent state to an explicit eruption.
In Habermas'...
From the perspective of "legitimation crisis" [17] and the "colonization of the lifeworld," late capitalist states often need to expand the intervention of administrative and technical systems into society to stabilize the economic system. However, when systemic rationality invades domains that should be maintained by communicative rationality and value consensus, social integration encounters difficulties. Legitimacy is then forced to rely on increasingly fragile demonstrations of performance and symbolic manipulation. When the provision of public services declines, distributional injustice intensifies, and political consultation degenerates into a "veto game," the contract of trust between the state and society undergoes irreversible attrition. Within a mediatized and platformized structure of public opinion, this attrition is further amplified by algorithms into continuous emotional polarization, causing the space for public rational discussion to be eroded and making it harder for value conflicts to be transformed into institutional compromises.
Furthermore, the concentrated expression of the crisis at the ideological level is the disintegration of hegemonic consensus. Hegemony in the Gramscian sense is not merely coercion; it relies more heavily on the "voluntary consent" of the governed to the order and on a value narrative capable of universalizing the interests of a specific class. The narrative of the "End of History" [18] following the Cold War served this function for a considerable period: by depicting the combination of markets and democracy as the ultimate form of human politics, it provided moral legitimacy and historical necessity for neoliberal globalization. However, as the promises of growth and democracy fail, elite discourse can no longer describe the existing order as the realization of the universal interest. On the contrary, it increasingly needs to maintain its interpretive power through "naming the crisis" and "institutional introspection," which in itself exposes the decay of its capacity for consensus production.
Therefore, the so-called "culture wars" are not merely a conflict of ideas, but an alternative mobilization following the failure of the mechanisms of meaning production. In a society dominated by instrumental rationality where the lifeworld is squeezed, identities, morality, and historical narratives more easily become resources for mobilization. Against a backdrop of degrading social security and class stratification, the moral imaginary of "meritocracy" also more easily inverts into a universal sense of humiliation and abandonment, thereby providing an emotional foundation for anti-establishment politics. When institutions can no longer provide a predictable path for improvement, politics easily slides toward symbolic confrontation and the demarcation of "friend and foe." Consequently, the proliferation of "self-diagnosis" constitutes a part of the crisis itself: it is both a description of reality and an admission of the disintegration of legitimacy, signaling that old modes of ideological integration are failing while new integrative mechanisms have yet to form.