[p2p-research] Can Marxian Economics Explain the Crisis?

[Kevin Carson]

On 1/7/10, Ryan <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> John Quiggin wonders if anyone has constructed "a distinctively Marxian analysis of the current  crisis":
>   Marxian economics MIA?, by John Quiggin: The financial crisis has,  justifiably, enhanced the reputation of Karl Marx as an economic thinker. Marx  was the first economist to treat crises and panics as an inherent feature of  capitalism rather than as an inexplicable, but fortunately temporary, departures  from a natural equilibrium.
>  Unfortunately, most of his analytical effort, and even more, that of the school  of thought that followed him, was devoted to pointless exercises in value  theory[1]. Marx’s discussion of crisis rested mainly on the idea of the falling  rate of profit which seemed at the time to be both a theoretical inevitability  and an observable trend. But with technological progress, there’s no necessity  for the rate of profit to fall consistently, and it hasn’t. There are other  ideas in Marx that might be developed to yield a better theory of crisis, but  nothing resembling a systematic theory.
>

Marx himself, in vol. 3 of Capital, wrote of a number of offsetting
tendencies to the falling direct rate of profit, which were developed
by twentieth century Marxists (including the export of surplus
capital, in assorted theories of imperialism by Lenin, Kautsky,
Luxemburg, etc.).

IMO the most relevant Marxist work to the present crisis is that of
the neo-Marxists in the Monthly Review group, starting with Baran and
Sweezy's dissection of corporate capitalism's tendency toward
overaccumulation in Monopoly Capitalism.  More recently, Harry Magdoff
did some great work on financialization as a remedy for growing
surpluses, tendencies to jobless recoveries, etc., over the past
twenty years or so.

-- 
Kevin Carson
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