Origin of The Term
The term "late capitalism" was first used by Werner Sombart in his 1902 magnum opus Der Moderne Kapitalismus; Sombart distinguished between early capitalism, the heyday of capitalism and late capitalism. The term began to be used by socialists in Europe towards the end of the 1930s and in the 1940s, when many economists believed capitalism was doomed and it was used in the 1960s particularly in Germany and Austria, among others by Western Marxists writing in the tradition of the Frankfurt School and Austromarxism. Postwar German sociologists needed a term to describe contemporary society. Theodor Adorno preferred "late capitalism" over "industrial society," which was the theme of the 16th Congress of German Sociologists in 1968. In 1971, Leo Kofler published a book called Technologische Rationalität im Spätkapitalismus (technological rationality in late capitalism). At the end of World War II, many economists including Joseph Schumpeter and Paul Samuelson believed the end of capitalism could well be nigh, in that the economic problems might be insurmountable.
Read more about this topic: Late Capitalism
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or term:
“Someone had literally run to earth
In an old cellar hole in a byroad
The origin of all the family there.
Thence they were sprung, so numerous a tribe
That now not all the houses left in town
Made shift to shelter them without the help
Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... feminism is a political term and it must be recognized as such: it is political in women’s terms. What are these terms? Essentially it means making connections: between personal power and economic power, between domestic oppression and labor exploitation, between plants and chemicals, feelings and theories; it means making connections between our inside worlds and the outside world.”
—Anica Vesel Mander, U.S. author and feminist, and Anne Kent Rush (b. 1945)