ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the key themes of recent social theory relating to the emergence of a form of neoliberal ‘absolute capitalism’ that has emerged and consolidated itself in the first two decades of the twenty-first century; at a meta-theoretical level, the theme of social acceleration is examined relating to the social theory of the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa and others; the social and economic theory of social acceleration is critiqued and problematised throughout this chapter and compared with the various theories of economic ‘secular stagnation’ regarding capital accumulation on a world scale and, on a broader front, social theories of slowing down in an ‘age of limits’ (Schroeder, 2013) and post-social growth (de-growth); the FSRP finds a place somewhere between these two paradigms in an uncertain and indiscernible space but, nonetheless, Rosa’s concept and social theory of resonance finds some correlation and elective affinity with the ideas of Piore and Sabel et al. But, insofar as the FSRP and, more recently, Roberto Mangabeira Unger argue for the use of new technologies and infrastructures to be diffused throughout the socio-economy rather than, as Unger argues in his book, The Knowledge Economy (2022), ‘confined to insular vanguards’, to increase productivity, it can be seen that the accelerationist argument of Rosa, fails to acknowledge that, in fact, productivity and capitalism has been in secular stagnation, flatlining, and slowing rather than accelerating.
