Andrew Kliman: The Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · capitalism, debt, economics, history, political economy, production
“The recent financial crisis and Great Recession have been analysed endlessly in the mainstream and academia, but this is the first book to conclude, on the basis of in-depth analyses of official US data, that Marx’s crisis theory can explain these events.
Marx believed that the rate of profit has a tendency to fall, leading to economic crises and recessions. Many economists, Marxists among them, have dismissed this theory out of hand, but Andrew Kliman’s careful data analysis shows that the rate of profit did indeed decline after the post-World War II boom and that free-market policies failed to reverse the decline. The fall in profitability led to sluggish investment and economic growth, mounting debt problems, desperate attempts of governments to fight these problems by piling up even more debt – and ultimately to the Great Recession.
Kliman’s conclusion is simple but shocking: short of socialist transformation, the only way to escape the ‘new normal’ of a stagnant, crisis-prone economy is to restore profitability through full-scale destruction of existing wealth, something not seen since the Depression of the 1930s.”
Publisher Pluto Press, 2011
ISBN 0745332390, 9780745332390
256 pages
Reviews: Matthew Wood (Marx & Philosophy, 2013), David J. Bailey (Political Studies Review, 2013), Michael Roberts (2011), Tibor Rutar (n.d.).
PDF, PDF (updated on 2020-1-30)
Comments (3)David Graeber: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011–) [EN, CZ, RU]
Filed under book | Tags: · anthropology, capitalism, debt, economics, economy, finance, financial crisis, history, market, money, politics, revolution
“Before there was money, there was debt.
Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter system–to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.
Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginning of the agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems. It is in this era, Graeber shows, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.
With the passage of time, however, virtual credit money was replaced by gold and silver coins–and the system as a whole began to decline. Interest rates spiked and the indebted became slaves. And the system perpetuated itself with tremendously violent consequences, with only the rare intervention of kings and churches keeping the system from spiraling out of control. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history–as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.”
Publisher Melville House, July 2011
ISBN 1933633867, 9781933633862
542 pages
Original essay (Mute, February 2009)
Illustrated essay with excerpts from the book (Triple Canopy, July 2010)
Video interview on Greece (Democracy Now!, July 2011)
Video interview (PBS: Need to Know, August 2011)
Review: Maryam Monalisa Gharavi (Social Text, 2011).
Debt: The First 5,000 Years (English, 2011, updated on 2020-4-10)
Dluh: prvních 5000 let (Czech, trans. Lenka Beranová, 2012, 71 MB, added on 2020-4-10)
Dolg: pervyye 5000 let istorii (Russian, trans. A. Dunayev, 2015, 18 MB, added on 2020-4-10)
querelles-net, Rezensionszeitschrift für Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung (2000-2011-) [German]
Filed under journal | Tags: · art, body, economics, education, fashion, gender, history, image, internet, law, literature, music, politics, pornography, religion, science, space, technology, women, youth
querelles-net erschließt die Vielzahl fachspezifischer, inter- und transdisziplinärer Veröffentlichungen im Bereich der Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung/Gender Studies. Wissenschaftliche Rezensionen geben einen Überblick über wichtige Publikationen und aktuelle Forschungsschwerpunkte. Die fortlaufend aktualisierte Bibliographie informiert über die Neuerscheinungen des Feldes.
querelles-net erscheint seit 2000 in Ergänzung zu Querelles. Jahrbuch für Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung (1996 ff.).
querelles-net ist Teil des Publikationsförderprogramms zur Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung an der Freien Universität Berlin.
Redaktionsleitung: Marco Tullney
Redaktion: Valeria Raupach, Anita Runge, Marco Tullney
Published by Freien Universität Berlin
ISSN 1862-054X
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany License (from Issue 2009 / 1)
PDF (Vol 12 Issue 2; 2011; EPUB)
View online (all issues; HTML articles)