ABSTRACT
The philosopher Giorgio Agamben has argued that the enclosure of the future has coincided with a reversal of cause and effect, whereby society is increasingly governed by reactive attempts to address second-order emergencies rather than causal processes. Capitalism is not a timeless fact of nature. It is a world-historical system. Like all historical formations, capitalism has different articulations and many potential futures. Capitalism today confronts an expansive set of structural challenges. Social systems thrive on internal heterogeneity, on a pluralism of organizing principles protecting them from dedicating themselves entirely to a single purpose, crowding out other goals that must also be attended to if the system is to be sustainable. Stagnation, disintegration, transcendence, and acceleration are all distinct possibilities for capitalism in coming decades, leading to unpredictable sociopolitical formations. Crucial variables are the modes of education, learning, and consciousness that will shape the trajectory of capitalism and sociality in the twenty-first century.
