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.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Value as Embodied Labor
2. Value as a Social Relation(Annex to Chapter 1 and 2: Marx
and Engels on the Law of Value)
3. Exploitation and Surplus Value
4. The Circuit of Capital (Annex to Chapter 4: Marxian and
Mainstream Economic Categories)
5. Commodity Money
6. Capital and Money (Annex to Chapter 6: The Neoclassical
Quantity Theory)
7. Credit, Crises and Capital
8. Competition among Capitals
9. Fixed Capital and Circulation (Annex to Chapter 9: Marx and
Demand Failures)
10. Accumulation and Crises
11. First Crisis of the Twenty-first Century
192 pages, Hardcover