Value and Crisis brings together selected essays written by Alfredo Saad-Filho, one of the most prominent Marxist political economists today. This book examines the labour theory of value from a rich and innovative perspective, from which fresh insights and new perspectives are derived, with applications for the nature of neoliberalism, financialisation, inflation, monetary policy, and the contradictions, limitations and crises of contemporary capitalism.

This book constitutes an overview of recent developments in political economy in general, and Marxist value theory in particular. The implications of value theory for bank credit, inflation and deflation are fully explored.

Every Economics textbook today teaches that questions of values and morality lie outside of, are in fact excluded from, the field of Economics and its proper domain of study, "the economy." Yet the dominant cultural and media narrative in response to major economic crisis is almost always one of moral outrage. How do we reconcile this tension or explain this paradox by which Economics seems to have both everything and nothing to do with values? The discipline of modern economics hypostatizes and continually reifies a domain it calls "the economy"; only this epistemic practice makes it possible to falsely separate the question of value from the broader inquiry into the economic. And only if we have first eliminated value from the domain of economics can we then transform stories of financial crisis or massive corporate corruption into simple tales of ethics. But if economic forces establish, transform, and maintain relations of value then it proves impossible to separate economics from questions of value, because value relations only come to be in the world by way of economic logics. This means that the "positive economics" spoken of so fondly in the textbooks is nothing more than a contradiction in terms, and as this book demonstrates, there's no such thing as "the economy." To grasp the basic logic of capital is to bring into view the unbreakable link between economics and value.

An ideal introduction for all activists to the most pressing problems of our times.

In Marx’s Laboratory. Critical Interpretations of the Grundrisse provides a critical analysis of the Grundrisse as a crucial stage in the development of Marx’s critique of political economy. Stressing both the achievements and limitations of this much-debated text, and drawing upon recent philological advances, this volume attempts to re-read Marx’s 1857-58 manuscripts against the background of Capital, as a ‘laboratory’ in which Marx first began to clarify central elements of his mature problematic. With chapters by an international range of authors from different traditions of interpretation, including the International Symposium on Marxian Theory, this volume provides an in-depth analysis of key themes and concepts in the Grundrisse, such as method, dialectics and abstraction; abstract labour, value, money and capital; technology, the ‘general intellect’ and revolutionary subjectivity, surplus-value, competition, crisis; and society, gender, ecology and pre-capitalist forms. Contributors include: Chris Arthur, Luca Basso, Riccardo Bellofiore, George Caffentzis, Martha Campbell, Juan Iñigo Carrera, Howard Engelskirchen, Roberto Fineschi, Michael Heinrich, Fred Moseley, Patrick Murray, Geert Reuten, Tony Smith, Guido Starosta, Massimiliano Tomba, Jan Toporowski, Peter D. Thomas, Joel Wainwright, and Amy Wendling.

This republication of a long out-of-print collection of essays, first published in 1979, focuses on the elusive concept of “value.” The field of study surrounding the theory of value remains comparatively sparse in Anglophone circles, and the essays here aim to answer the question, “Why is Marx’s theory of value important?”

The provocative political thinker asks if it will be with a bang or a whimper In How Will Capitalism End? the acclaimed analyst of contemporary politics and economics Wolfgang Streeck argues that capitalism is now in a critical condition. Growth is giving way to secular stagnation; inequality is leading to instability; and confidence in the capitalist money economy has all but evaporated. Capitalism’s shotgun marriage with democracy since 1945 is breaking up as the regulatory institutions restraining its advance have collapsed, and after the final victory of capitalism over its enemies no political agency capable of rebuilding them is in sight. The capitalist system is stricken with at least five worsening disorders for which no cure is at hand: declining growth, oligarchy, starvation of the public sphere, corruption and international anarchy. In this arresting book Wolfgang Streeck asks whether we are witnessing a long and painful period of cumulative decay: of intensifying frictions, of fragility and uncertainty, and of a steady succession of “normal accidents.”

In The Political Economy of Housing: The Case of Turkey, Sila Demirors explores the analytical and historical process of how housing, a special use-value and social relation, which is crucial for the social reproduction of labour-power, becomes an instrument of speculative finance to feed itself. While the second part of the book discusses the political economy of housing in Turkey, in which housing has been used by the state as both a political project and a macroeconomic tool for the last two decades, the first part of the book formulates a methodological and theoretical framework to provide a comprehensive approach for comparative housing research from a Marxist political economy perspective.

This timely book critically examines the European Social Model as a contested concept and concrete set of European welfare and governance arrangements. It offers a theoretical and empirical analysis of new economic models and existing European investment strategies to address key issues within post-Covid-19 Europe.

Much has been written about the prospects of automation in recent years. While many have raised concerns over the threat of technological mass unemployment, others have anticipated a fully automated communist utopia which will provide material abundance to everyone. (De)Automating the Future gathers chapters that critically investigate automation’s ambivalences from inter-disciplinary Marxist perspectives. The contributions raise questions about automation’s affordances for postcapitalism, its transformation of manual and mental labour, and its role in the intensification of class antagonisms and exploitation.