IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/eme/rpeczz/s0161-7230(2011)0000027005.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Crisis Theory and the Great Recession: A Personal Journey, from Marx to Minsky

In: Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism

Author

Listed:
  • Riccardo Bellofiore

Abstract

There are two influential interpretative positions in the current debate on the crisis among Marxists. The first understands financialization as a consequence of the tendential fall of the rate of profit. The other interpretation, prevalent among those influenced by Keynesianism and Neoricardianism, refers to the tendency toward the crisis of realisation, because of the squeeze on the wage bill and the insufficiency of consumer demand. In both cases, the current crisis is the crisis of a feeble capitalism, permanently stagnationist. A Marxian interpretation of the crisis cannot be separated from the tendential fall of the rate of profit. This latter, however, cannot be accepted as it is presented by Marx, and it must be rethought as a meta-theory of the crisis, including within it the different crisis theories that can be derived from Capital. This article first provides a personal survey of Marx's crisis theories, often presented as opposed to each other. Second, it seeks to integrate the different positions into a unitary discourse, within a nonmechanical reading of the fall of the rate of profit. This discourse then mutates into an historical sketch of the long dynamic of capital: from the Great Depression of the end of the nineteenth century, to the Great Crash of the 1930s, to the Social Crisis in the immediate processes of valorisation of the 1960s–1970s (the Great Inflation). Finally, the “new” capitalism (the Great Moderation) and its recent crisis (the Great Recession) are read – integrating Marx and Minsky – as the conjunction between the real subsumption of labour to finance and the fragmentation of labour.

Suggested Citation

  • Riccardo Bellofiore, 2011. "Crisis Theory and the Great Recession: A Personal Journey, from Marx to Minsky," Research in Political Economy, in: Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism, pages 81-120, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:rpeczz:s0161-7230(2011)0000027005
    DOI: 10.1108/S0161-7230(2011)0000027005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0161-7230(2011)0000027005/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0161-7230(2011)0000027005/full/epub?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec&title=10.1108/S0161-7230(2011)0000027005
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0161-7230(2011)0000027005/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/S0161-7230(2011)0000027005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emiliano Brancaccio, Orsola Costantini, Stefano Lucarelli, 2015. "Crisi e centralizzazione del capitale finanziario (Crysis and Centralization of Financial Capital)," Moneta e Credito, Economia civile, vol. 68(269), pages 53-79.
    2. Andrea Ricci, 2016. "Unequal Exchange in International Trade:A General Model," Working Papers 1605, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Department of Economics, Society & Politics - Scientific Committee - L. Stefanini & G. Travaglini, revised 2016.
    3. Ståle Holgersen, 2015. "Crisis and the Post-Industrial City: Or is Malmö Building Yesterday's City Tomorrow, Again?," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 106(3), pages 231-245, July.
    4. Autori vari, 2018. "Book reviews," HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND POLICY, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2018(1), pages 115-150.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:rpeczz:s0161-7230(2011)0000027005. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.