Peter Joseph is a filmmaker & author; host of the podcast Revolution Now! and one can support his open access work through Patreon or support here on Substack.
In the early twentieth century, the German economist and sociologist Werner Sombart coined the term “late capitalism” (Spätkapitalismus) across his multi-volume Der moderne Kapitalismus (1902–1927),1 using it to name the phase of capitalist society emerging from the wreckage of the First World War. Sombart never developed the idea into a systematic theory, and the term went dormant until economist Ernest Mandel revived it in Late Capitalism (1972; English translation 1975)2 to describe the postwar order of multinational corporations, financialization, and global integration. Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991)3 then carried the phrase into cultural theory...and the internet finished the job, turning “late-stage capitalism” into a shorthand for the absurdities of contemporary economic life.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peterjoseph.substack.com/p/understanding-late-stage-capitalism