Marxian Global Analysis of Capitalist Crisis: Does the Tendency of The Rate of Profit to Fall Work?

Marx claimed that the basis for capitalist crisis was the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Not all Marxists agree that this is the best mechanism for explaining the crisis.  In addition Marx applied his theory pretty much to 19th century England. In this new book edited by Michael Roberts, Marxian scholars test the tendency of the rate of profit to fall from all different countries. The table of contents alone is worth the price of admission.

The contents list:

Part I. The US Economy
1. The Long Roots of the Present Crisis: Keynesians,
Austerians, and Marx’s Law 13
Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts
2. The Old Is Dying but the New Cannot Be Born: On the
Exhaustion of Western Capitalism 36
Guglielmo Carchedi
3. Investment, Profit and Crises: Theories and Evidence 78
José A. Tapia
Part II. The International Dimension
4. The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall since the
Nineteenth Century and a World Rate of Profit 129
Esteban Ezequiel Maito
5. Japan’s “Lost” Two Decades: A Marxist Analysis of
Prolonged Capitalist Stagnation 157
Takuya Sato
6. The UK Rate of Profit and British Economic History 183
Michael Roberts
7. The Long Depression in the Spanish Economy: Bubble,
Profits, and Debt 201
Juan Pablo Mateo
8. Surplus Value, Profit, and Unproductive Labor in the
Greek Economy, 1958–2013 228
Thanasis Maniatis and Costas Passas
9. The Profit Rate in Brazil, 1953–2008 253
Adalmir Marquetti, Eduardo Maldonado Filho
and Vladimir Lautert
10. The Chinese Economic Crisis: A Marxist Approach 279
Mylène Gaulard
Part III. Credit, Fictitious Capital and Crises
11. Debt Matters 297
Michael Roberts
12. The Neoliberal Financialization of the US Economy 318
Sergio Cámara Izquierdo and Abelardo Mariña Flores
13. The Roots of the Global Crisis: Marx’s Law of Falling
Profitability and the US Economy, 1950–2013 329
Murray E. G. Smith and Jonah Butovsky
14. Derivatives and Capitalist Markets: The Speculative
Heart of Capital 363
Tony Norfield
15. High-Frequency Trading: The Unfolding History of
Speculative Capital 390
Steve Nash
Part IV. The Crisis and the Euro
16. From the Crisis in Surplus Value to the Crisis in the Euro 419
Guglielmo Carchedi
17. The Euro Crisis Is a Crisis of Capitalism 435
Michael Roberts

World in Crisis: Marxist Perspectives on Crash & Crisis Paperback – Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi – October 1, 2018

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Image from marxismocritico.com