THE STRUCTURAL CRISIS OF CAPITAL AND SECOND ORDER MEDIATIONS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF ISTVÁN MÉSZÁROS
Capital, Capitalism, Structural Crisis, Second-Order Mediations.
This work aims to analyze some of the theoretical contributions of the Hungarian philosopher István Mészáros regarding the Structural Crisis of Capital and the role of its second-order mediations in the maintenance and perpetuation of the capital system, denying a positive future for humanity. Mészáros demonstrates that the current model of social metabolism is based on the determinations imposed by the capital-relation that is irrational and uncontrollable, putting humanity before a fundamental question: either we take control of sociometabolism in a positive and conscious way, or humanity will follow towards an increasingly catastrophic scenario, leading to human barbarism. The present work is a theoretical-bibliographic research, based on critical social theory, being divided into two sections. In the first section, we seek to understand how the structural crisis of capital is configured and its absolute limits that it demands for historical actuality insurmountable contradictions within the limits of its order. In the second section, we recover the debate carried out by Mészáros (2006) about the theory of alienation, pointing to work as a historical specificity in the era of capital as the causal root of all forms of alienation. Based on this debate, we enter Mészáros' (2006, 2011) postulations about what he calls second-order mediations, configured as alienated mediations that elude and subjugate productive first-order ontological mediations as mediations that effectively contribute to the truly human construction . Therefore, we briefly enter and rescue some second-order mediations and highlight the hierarchical role that each plays over the primary mediations in the circular structure of the capital system, aiming at an increasingly high extraction of surplus value as the main objective. of the worker in an ever-increasing scale of accumulation and expansion, imposing on him an increasingly alienated and alienating reality.
Key words: Capital, Capitalism, Structural Crisis, Alienation and Second-Order Mediations.