The article is based upon a round table, in which Colin Crouch, Wolfgang Streeck, and Donatella della Porta participated, organized in the framework of the Marxism(s) in Social Movements Working Group at Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence, May 2015).

The roundtable was the concluding moment of a cycle of conferences aimed at rethinking some of the categories of social movement studies in light of the changes in contemporary capitalism within its global crisis. A central question of the debate is how much capitalism needs democracy. The debate departs from the strengths and weaknesses of neoliberal capitalism, the global economic crisis and the new scenarios that the latter opens.