ABSTRACT
If with O’Connor (1987) we view crisis not as an apocalytic breakdown but as an historic ‘turning point’ in the political economy of capitalism, in appraising the present period we are led to consider the practices through which the terrain of politics and economics in the capitalist democracies has been reshaped since the early 1970s. The crisis can be theorized as a series of interconnected transformations in the structures and strategies of capitalist class power, particularly in the characteristic form of the circuit of capital, in the predominant regime of accumulation, and in the hegemonic concept of control in terms of which strategies for political regulation are constituted. The development of a fully transnational finance capital, the deepening crisis of Fordist accumulation, and the collapse of the corporate-liberal synthesis which informed national policies and international relations in the era of Pax Americana are dimensions of a global crisis, evident in varying degrees in all of the capitalist democracies. In this contribution I examine these processes of restructuring as they have occurred in Canada. The recomposition of ‘Canadian’ finance capital, the shift away from an intensive regime of ‘permeable Fordism’, and the rise of a ‘continental neo-liberal’ concept of control mark far-reaching changes which are at once nationally specific and expressive of developments at the global level.
