New Book

World in Crisis: a global analysis of Marx’s law of profitability

20th Nov 2018

World in Crisis: a global analysis of Marx’s law of profitability

Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi

Haymarket Books

9781608461813

£19.99, $22.95

Available now

World in Crisis has a specific aim: to provide empirical validity to the hypothesis that the cause of recurring and regular 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

***

World in Crisis: a global analysis of Marx’s law of profitability, edited by Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi, is the most comprehensive empirically based defence of Marx’s law of profitability as the cause of capitalist crises.

While mainstream economists view capitalism’s periodic break-downs as nothing more than temporary aberrations in an otherwise unbroken path toward prosperity, and many Marxists today cast doubt on Marx’s law, contributors to this volume seek to re-assert its centrality to understanding capitalism’s recurrent and catastrophic busts.

In bringing together scholars from across the world, this is a groundbreaking collection with a global vision, providing a wealth of data and analysis that any arguing against Marx’s law of profitability will have to reckon with.

To request review copies or for any other queries, contact uk@haymarketbooks.org

Customers in the US can order the book directly from Haymarket’s website at a 30% discount: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1216-world-in-crisis

***

World in Crisis – table of contents:

Preface · Introduction

Part I. The US Economy 

· The Long Roots of the Present Crisis: Keynesians, Austerians, and Marx’s Law, Guglielmo Carchedi & Michael Roberts

· The Old Is Dying but the New Cannot Be Born: On the Exhaustion of Western Capitalism, Guglielmo Carchedi 

· Investment, Profit and Crises: Theories and Evidence, Jose A. Tapia  

Part II. The International Dimension

· The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall since the Nineteenth Century and a World Rate of Profit, Esteban Ezequiel Maito

· Japan’s “lost” Two Decades: A Marxist Analysis of Prolonged Capitalist Stagnation, Takuya Sato

 · The UK Rate of Profit and British Economic History, Michael Roberts

· The Long Depression in the Spanish Economy: Bubble, Profits, and Debt,  Juan Pable Mateo

· Surplus Value, Profit, and Unproductive Labor in the Greek Economy, 1958-2013, Thanasis Maniatis and Costas Passas

· The Profit Rate in Brazil, 1953-2008, Adalmir Marquetti, Eduardo Maldonado Filho and Vladimir Lautert

· The Chinese Economic Crisis: A Marxist Approach, Mylene Gaulard  

Part III. Credit, Fictitious Capital and Crisis 

· Debt Matters, Michael Roberts

· The Neoliberal Financialization of the US Economy, Sergio Camara Izquierdo and Abelardo Marina Flores

· The Roots of the Global Crisis: Marx’s Law of Falling Profitability and the US Economy, 1950-2013, Murray E. G. Smith and Jonah Butovsky

· Derivatives and Capitalist Markets: The Speculative Heart of Capital, Tony Norfield

· High-Frequency Trading: The Unfolding History of Speculative Capital, Steve Nash

Part IV. The Crisis and the Euro 

· From the Crisis in Surplus Value to the Crisis in the Euro, Guglielmo Carchedi

· The Euro Crisis Is a Crisis of Capitalism, Michael Roberts