In 2008 the capitalist world was swept by the severest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Mainstream economics neither anticipated nor could account for this disastrous financial crisis, which required massive state intervention throughout the capitalist world. Karl Marx did anticipate this type of financial collapse, arguing that it was derivative from the ‘fetishism of commodities’ inherent in the capitalist mode of production. This book substantiates the foregoing claim by a journey from Marx’s analysis of commodities to the capitalist crisis of the twenty-first century. The book demonstrates that Marx's framework (1) demonstrates that capitalism is but one historical form of class society among many; (2) explains the transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist society; (3) reveals the concrete operation of a capitalist economy; and (4) shows why others would explain the capitalist economy in alternative theoretical frameworks. The central element in his framework from which all else derives is ‘the theory of value’. This book is not an exercise in the history of thought. It is an attempt to analyze the nature of contemporary capitalist society. While Marx’s analysis of capitalism has implications for political action, these need not lead one to embrace revolution in place of reform, though it can and has provided the analytical foundation for both. Marx’s analysis of capitalism is a coherent whole, and meaningful insights cannot be obtained by extracting elements from it. Weeks starts out by looking at the nature of capitalism and an analysis circulation, money and credit unfold from the theory of value. The nature and inherent necessity of competition are demonstrated in chapter eight. A consequence of competition, expressed in the movement of capital, is technical change, the contradictory impact of which is explained in chapter nine. This is brought together with the other elements of value theory (money, credit and competition) in chapter ten, where economic crises are treated in detail. The final chapter applies the theory of crisis to the extreme financial disturbances of the 2000s. This book should be of interest to students and researchers of economics, politics and sociology.

Keynesian economics claimed to have overcome the problem of economic depressions. However, as Mattick argues that crises are inherent within capitalism and that neither the market nor Keynesianism can stop "the steady deterioration of the economy". Written in 1974, Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory is one of Mattick's most valuable contributions to the Marxist critique of political economy and radical theory in general.

Taking a hard look at the crisis afflicting Western economies in recent years, Manuel Castells suggests that the very structures that fostered economic growth since 1945 are the same structures that are now undermining these economics. Pinpointing the new forms of the capitalist mode of production and the contradictory nature of its class relations as the root of the problem, he offers a comprehensive critique of American society and its economy. Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Professor Weeks proposes that the key to Marx's critique of capitalist society is the labor theory of value. A commodity-producing society, he argues, necessarily gives rise to a capitalist society, so that commodity production and the exploitation of labor are inseparably linked. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The work details the emergence, in the post-Napoleonic War period, of a growing popular interest in the critical potentialities of political economy. It considers why this occurred and discusses how the conceptual and analytical tools of political economy were utilised to formulate a critique of early industrial capitalism. The book examines the theories of labour exploitation and capitalist crisis which represented the essence of that critique both as they were elaborated by early-nineteenth-century British anti-capitalist and socialist writers and as they were popularised by writers in the working-class press of the period 1816-34. The book argues that by 1834 in consequence of the efforts of writers such as Hodgskin, Thompson, Gray, Owen and their popularisers the foundations of a distinctively anti-capitalist and socialist political economy had been established and widely disseminated. But these foundations were theoretically flawed. They were flawed by an overconcentration on the sphere of exchange which derived from a particular conception of the determination of exchange value under capitalism; an overconcentration which led on to the suggestion of remedies for the problem of working-class poverty and distress which were necessarily doomed to failure.

The deep economic recession that has occurred in all major sectors of the U.S. and global economy is a manifestation of the underlying contradictions of the capitalist system that has resulted in the accumulation of vast fortunes on one side and impoverishment, debt, and destitution on the other. In short, the crisis of global capitalism is the result of the immense disparities in wealth and income and a consequent widening gap between capital and labor. This ground-breaking book brings together a team of experts on the contemporary global capitalist political economy who are able to shed light on the inner workings of global capitalism and the capitalist globalization process that has led to the growth and development of capitalism from the national to the global level, with all its fundamental internal dynamics and contradictions operating on a world scale. It will make an important contribution to understanding the underlying causes of the current global economic crisis and show the way out of this crisis by way of a powerful critique of the global capitalist system that will ultimately go through a major economic, political, and social transformation. Analysis of the global capitalist crisis raises questions regarding the process of capitalist globalization, especially now that neoliberal economic policies have failed. Does this signal the end of capitalist globalization and the collapse of the global capitalist system? This book will take up these questions and entertain the possibility of a new beginning in the global political economy through an analysis of the next period of post-capitalist developments worldwide that may set the stage for the rise of socialism across the globe.

This book is a compendium of a comprehensive treatise of applied economics published in Italian by Jaca Books in 2007. It includes a number of changes and updates, and a new section on the contradictory relation of capital to nature, intrinsic to the fundamental conflict between capital and labour. The context for the analysis provided of the dynamics of the capitalist development of the forces of production is the global economy, or capitalism as a world system.

In this collection authors from eight different countries, representing a wide variety of academic disciplines and theoretical perspectives, investigate the differing phases of capitalist development. They offer diverse and powerful analyses of the postwar boom, economic crises and globalization within this context.

Winner of the first Paul A. Baran-Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award for an original monograph concerned with the political economy of imperialism, John Smith's Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century is a seminal examination of the relationship between the core capitalist countries and the rest of the world in the age of neoliberal globalization.Deploying a sophisticated Marxist methodology, Smith begins by tracing the production of certain iconic commodities-the T-shirt, the cup of coffee, and the iPhone-and demonstrates how these generate enormous outflows of money from the countries of the Global South to transnational corporations headquartered in the core capitalist nations of the Global North. From there, Smith draws on his empirical findings to powerfully theorize the current shape of imperialism. He argues that the core capitalist countries need no longer rely on military force and colonialism (although these still occur) but increasingly are able to extract profits from workers in the Global South through market mechanisms and, by aggressively favoring places with lower wages, the phenomenon of labor arbitrage. Meticulously researched and forcefully argued, Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century is a major contribution to the theorization and critique of global capitalism.