World in Crisis

Description

Most mainstream economists view capitalism’s periodic breakdowns as nothing more than temporary aberrations from an otherwise unbroken path toward prosperity. For Marxists, this fundamental flaw has long been acknowledged as a central feature of the free-market system. This groundbreaking volume brings together Marxist scholars from around the world to offer an empirically grounded defense of Marx’s law of profitability and its central role in explaining capitalist crises. “World in Crisis has a specific aim: to provide empirical validity to the hypothesis that the cause of recurring economic crises or slumps in output, investment, and employment in modern economies can be found in Marx’s law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. Marx believed, and we agree, that this is ‘the most important law in political economy.’” —from the preface. This eBook is licensed to Michel HUSSON, [email protected] on 11/12/2018......Page 0 Contents......Page 3 Preface......Page 7 Introduction......Page 9 Part I. The US Economy......Page 20 1. The Long Roots of the Present Crisis: Keynesians, Austerians, and Marx’s Law......Page 21 2. The Old Is Dying but the New Cannot Be Born: On the Exhaustion of Western Capitalism......Page 44 3. Investment, Profit and Crises: Theories and Evidence......Page 85 Part II. The International Dimension......Page 139 4. The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall since the Nineteenth Century and a World Rate of Profit......Page 140 5. Japan’s “Lost” Two Decades: A Marxist Analysis of Prolonged Capitalist Stagnation......Page 168 6. The UK Rate of Profit and British Economic History......Page 193 7. The Long Depression in the Spanish Economy: Bubble, Profits, and Debt......Page 213 8. Surplus Value, Profit, and Unproductive Labor in the Greek Economy, 1958–2013......Page 242 9. The Profit Rate in Brazil, 1953–2008......Page 270 10. The Chinese Economic Crisis: A Marxist Approach......Page 301 Part III. Credit, Fictitious Capital and Crises......Page 319 11. Debt Matters......Page 320 12. The Neoliberal Financialization of the US Economy......Page 342 13. The Roots of the Global Crisis: Marx’s Law of Falling Profitability and the US Economy, 1950–2013......Page 355 14. Derivatives and Capitalist Markets: The Speculative Heart of Capital......Page 392 15. High-Frequency Trading: The Unfolding History of Speculative Capital......Page 423 Part IV. The Crisis and the Euro......Page 451 16. From the Crisis in Surplus Value to the Crisis in the Euro......Page 452 17. The Euro Crisis Is a Crisis of Capitalism......Page 469