ABSTRACT
This chapter deepens the analysis of capitalist creative destruction opened in the second section of Chapter 8, and it will show that capitalist growth, similar to the globalisation of markets, is prone to built-in vicious circles. A dynamic multi-level model of capitalist entrepreneurship is proposed, which distinguishes between structural conditions of entrepreneurship and the actor perspective of entrepreneurs as the key force promoting capitalist growth. The analysis proceeds in three steps: (1) a reconstruction of the capitalist class structure as a social precondition for entrepreneurship; (2) an interpretation of innovative entrepreneurial action responding to that structure; and (3) an analysis of the aggregation of innovative actions and its intended and unintended consequences. As I will show, it is just the collective success of entrepreneurs manifesting itself in temporary high rates of economic growth and an upward shift in social stratification that result in the unintended deterioration of the chances for subsequent entrepreneurial climbers and in the increasingly ‘financialised’ structure of capitalist accumulation. This model can help us understand the present-day crisis of financialised capitalism from a sociological point of view.
