Capitalist Crises

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Connexions Library

The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know
Magdoff, Fred; Yates, Michael D.
Book
2009
Rich, powerful people created the economic crisis of 2008-09, while hundreds of millions of working people suffer the consequences -- lost homes, lost jobs, rising insecurity, and falling living stand...
The Accumulation of Capital
Luxemburg, Rosa
Book
1913
Rosa Luxemburg's analysis of the inherent contradictions of capitalist accumulation.
Age of Austerity: Capital, the Financial Crisis and the State in Canada
McCormack, Geoffrey; Workman, Thom
Article
2016
The financial and economic crisis of 2008 has left a continuing legacy on social welfare, showing up in slow economic growth, unemployment and underemployment, and increasing social conflict. In the d...
Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914 - 1991
Hobsbawm, Eric
Book
1994
A overview of the history of the years 1914 - 1991.
The Biggest 'October Surprise' Of All: A World Capitalist Crash
Goldner, Loren
Article
2008
Today we see the Western bourgeoisie, disarmed by its own neo-liberal ideology, falling back in a flash on Keynesianism, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system to stave off ...
Book Review: Marixism without Marx: Recent Interpretations of the Economic Crisis
Roth, Gary
Article
2012
Paul Mattick’s, Business As Usual, and David McNally’s, Global Slump, each focuses on a single, primary aspect of Marx’s theory as a means to explain the current crisis. For Mattick, the point of entr...
Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Future of Capitalism
Mattick, Paul Jr.
Book
2011
In Business as Usual Paul Mattick explains the recession in jargon-free style, without shying away from serious analysis. He explores current events in relation to the development of the world economy...
Can Civilization Survive "Really Existing Capitalism"? An Interview With Noam Chomsky
Polychroniou,C.J.
Article
2014
On the occasion of the release of his latest book, Masters of Mankind: Essays and Lectures, 1969-2013, Noam Chomsky gave an exclusive and wide-ranging interview to C.J. Polychroniou.
Das Capital, Volume 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
Marx, Karl
Book
1867
Marx's great work sets out to grasp and portray the totality of the capitalist mode of production, and the bourgeois society that emerges from it. He describes and connects all its economic features, ...
Capitalism is failing the planet
Weedall, Gemma
Article
2014
If we continue with capitalist business as usual, there will be disastrous consequences for humanity. Capitalism is in unavoidable conflict with environmental sustainability because of three key featu...
Capitalism's violence, masses' revolt show need for total view
Article
2013
News and Letters' Draft Perspectives Thesis. Our age is in such total crisis, facing a choice between absolute terror or absolute freedom, that a revolutionary organization can no longer allow any sep...
Chicken Game: Eurocrisis, Again.: Washington vs. Berlin
Sciortino, Raffaele
Article
2012
How does one take an autonomous position against the European policies of social butchery without falling into nationalist, anti-German nostalgia or into rhetoric against “Anglo-Saxon speculation”? Ho...
China in the Contemporary World Dynamic of Accumulation and Class Struggle
Goldner, Loren
Article
2005
The Chinese ruling elite is riding the whirlwind precisely because its own necessary reforms are quite visibly setting in motion social processes that could completely overwhelm it, namely a working-c...
Climate Crisis, the Deindustrialization Imperative and the Jobs vs. Environment Dilemma
Smith, Richard
Article
2014
So long as we live under capitalism, today, tomorrow, next year and every year thereafter, economic growth will always be the overriding priority till we barrel right off the cliff to collapse.
Communities of Resistance: Writings on Black Struggles for Socialism
Sivanandan, Ambalavaner
Book
1990
A series of essays advocating grass roots organisations as the pathway to socialism.
The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume I: Economic Writings 1
Luxemburg, Rosa (Edited by Peter Hudis
Book
2013
This first volume in Rosa Luxemburg's Complete Works, entitled Economic Writings 1, contains some of Luxemburg's most important statements on the globalization of capital, wage labour, imperialism, an...
The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, Volume II: Economic Writings 2
Luxemburg, Rosa (Edited by Peter Hudis and Paul Le Blanc)
Book
2015
This volume contains a new English translation of Luxemburg’s most important book, The Accumulation of Capital (1913) as well as her response to its critics. Taken together, they constitute one of the...
Connexions Library: Economy, Poverty, Work Focus
Website
Selected articles, books, websites and other resources on the economy and economics.
Creative Destruction: The Madness of the Global Economy
Article
2008
The current system of economics, particularly the latest stage of 'turbo-capitalism', known inoffensively as 'neoliberalism', is built upon painful boom-and-bust cycles fuelled by corporate greed and ...
'Creative Destruction' - The Madness of the Global Economy - Part 2
Article
2008
The dominant system of economics is unstable, inimical to social justice and lethally damaging to the environmental support systems on which we all depend. A major failure in professional journalism h...
The Crisis and the Potential: Against The Current vol. 145
Moody, Kim
Article
2010
A veritable civil [war] erupted in the past year among several of America’s leading unions. At a time when over eight million jobs were disappearing, unemployment reaching highs unseen for nearly thre...
The Crisis Beneath the Bailout: Against The Current vol. 137
Rasmus, Jack
Article
2008
In early September, 2008 the Department of Labor reported that the U.S. economy in August had lost another 84,000 jobs. This was followed on October 2 with an announcement that officially recorded Sep...
Crisis in the US: Social and Economic Effects, Restructuring and Methods of Adapting
Simon, Henri
Article
2010
The cause of the crisis in the US must be found in the context of the world capitalist economy and not credited to internal causes. These internal causes of course exist but in fact only shape the way...
Decline of the Dollar: A Marxist View of the Monetary Crisis
Mandel, Ernest
Book
1973
Useful for a-deeper understanding of what you read about in the business pages.
Devastating Crisis Unfolds: Against The Current vol. 132
Brenner, Bob
Article
2008
Bob Brenner, for the ATC editors. The current crisis could well turn out to be the most devastating since the Great Depression. It manifests profound, unresolved problems in the real economy that have...
A Dictionary of Marxist Thought
Bottomore, Tom
Book
1983
The 'Dollar' Crisis, and Us
Goldner, Loren
Article
2004
A capitalist crisis like the current one resembles a poker game where the table is swept clean and all cards and chips must be redistributed for the game to continue at all. This could happen as an 'o...
Dunayevskaya, Raya - Writings - Index
Dunayevskaya, Raya
Article
Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya (1910-1987).
Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory
Mattick, Paul
Article
1974
The Economic Crisis in Fact and Fiction: Paul Mattick Jr. with John Clegg and Aaron Benanav
Mattick, Paul Jr.; Clegg, John; Benanav, Aaron
Article
2011
An interview with Paul Mattick Jr., the author of Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Future of Capitalism.
The End of Capitalism?
Knight, Alex
Article
2010
For all those who wish to see a different world, this moment is dripping with opportunity because the old order is crumbling before our eyes.
EnvironmentSources.com
Website
2017
Web portal with information about environmental issues and resources, with articles, documents, books, websites, and experts and spokespersons. The home page features a selection of recent and importa...
Europe's New Road to Serfdom: Trichet Threatens Greece with Iron Heel
Hudson, Michael
Article
2011
The conditios for Greece's new loan package is that Greece must initiate a class war by raising its taxes, lowering its social spending – and even private-sector pensions – and sell off public land, t...
Fictitious Capital and Contracted Social Reproduction Today: China and Permanent Revolution
Goldner, Loren
Article
2012
Once gain, as in 1914, capital requires, in order to survive as capital, a vast devalorization of all existing values, however great the destruction of human beings and means of production which that ...
Global Leveraged Buyout or the "Longest Boom in Capitalist History"?: A Reply to Robert Fitch
Goldner, Loren
Article
2009
Fitch's recent article, while making some good points about the unraveling of the world financial system, is seriously flawed.
The Greeks Get It
Hedges, Chris
Article
2010
Here's to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. They know what to do when Goldman Sachs and international bankers collude with their power elite to falsify...
The Heresy Of The Greeks Offers Hope
Pilger, John
Article
2010
Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely reported as such.
The Historical Moment That Produced Us
Goldner, Loren
Article
2010
As we emerge, hopefully, from this dismal period of rollback, we recall Rosa Luxemburg's remark, shortly before her murder in 1919: "The revolution says: I was, I am, I shall be!" We assert the ongoin...
How The Oligarchy Gets Politicized: A Short History of Elite Responses To Political-Economic Crisis
Nasser, Alan
Article
2011
The political activism of the elite is striking in times of crisis, when the latter takes the form either of severe economic contraction or of working-class militancy, or both.
Inside the Global Crisis
Smith, Tony
Article
2011
Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy
Hudson, Michael
Book
2015
In Killing the Host, economist Michael Hudson exposes how finance, insurance, and real estate (the FIRE sector) have seized control of the global economy at the expense of industrial capitalism and go...
Loren Goldner speaks on the current capitalist crisis
Goldner, Loren
Film/Video
2010
Writer and activist Loren Goldner contextualizes the current economic crisis and class struggles in a theory of capitalist development.
Making Sense of This Economic Crisis: Against The Current vol. 146
Hossein-zadeh, Ismael
Article
2010
While it now is generally agreed that the main source of the 2008 financial implosion was the accumulation of too much toxic debt, there is little agreement on the factors that precipitated the buildu...
Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective
Burkett, Paul
Book
1999
While recognizing that production is structured by historically developed relations among producers, Marx insists that production as a social and material process is shaped and constrained by natural ...
Marxism.ca
Website
2016
A gateway to resources about Marxism compiled by Connexions.
A Marxist History of the World part 100: 1968-1975: the workers' revolt
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
As the crisis of capitalism spread around the world, the working class took centre stage – but the revolt did not result in successful revolution anywhere.
A Marxist History of the World part 105: The 2008 Crash: from bubble to black hole
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
The financial crisis represents the end of an era in which greed and casino-madness had been given free rein by market deregulation and rising debt.
A Marxist History of the World part 106: The Second Great Depression
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
Four years after the beginning of the crisis, the neoliberal elite is trapped by the contradictions of the system on which its wealth depends.
A Marxist History of the World part 61: The Long Depression, 1873-1896
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
Neil Faulkner writes about the The Long Depression – an unprecedented economic slump which started the countdown to the First World War.
A Marxist History of the World part 82: The Hungry Thirties
Faulkner, Neil
Article
2012
Beginning with the Wall Street Crash in 1929, the world economy entered the Great Depression. The misguided policies that world leaders pursued ensured that millions of lives were torn apart.
Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism
Hudis, Peter
Book
2013
In contrast to the traditional view that Marx's work is restricted to a critique of capitalism – and that he consciously avoided any detailed conception of its alternative – this work shows that Marx ...
Neoliberalism against capitalism?
Davidson, Neil
Article
2015
Neil Davidson on how the current neo-liberal project has been almost too successful as a ruling class strategy, creating a form of capitalism which endangers the long-term security of capital itself a...
A New Phase of Economic Crisis: Against The Current vol. 135
Rasmus, Jack
Article
2008
In early AprilL 2008 the general consensus was that the U.S. economy had clearly fallen into recession. A long list of key economic indicators from November 2007 through March 2008 were all flashing r...
1973 Redux?: Continuity and Discontinuity in the Decline of Dollar-Centered World Accumulation
Goldner, Loren
Article
2006
The world today is poised between the U.S. and East Asian centered phases of capitalist expansion.
No surrender in Greece
Davenellos, Antonis
Article
2010
A member of International Workers Left (DEA), reports from Athens on the May 20 general strike and workers' growing radicalization.
On Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"
Cockburn, Alexander
Article
2007
Capitalism has always been a shock doctrine of selfish predation, as one can discover from Hobbes and Locke, Marx and Weber, none of them saluted by Klein. However there are huge third world economies...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - August 21, 2014: Killings by Police
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Khan, Tahmid (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2014
Topic of the week is Killings by Police. Articles on the way the Ebola crisis illuminates the moral bankruptcy of capitalism; Responding the capitalist crisis, in 1914 and 2014; Globaling Gaza: Israel...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - April 9, 2015: Resisting Neoliberalism
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Khan, Tahmid (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
Resisting neoliberalism: "free markets" and "free trade" are an ideological cover for what is actually a form of state capitalism in which working people subsidize and bail out corporations and the ri...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - July 3, 2015: Greece and thd debt crisis
Diemer, Ulli (editor); Rickwood, Darien Yawching (production)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2015
Our spotlight this issue is on the debt crisis facing Greece. To understand the crisis, one has to look beyond the mainstream media to alternative sources of information. We've done that, with article...
Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - August 13, 2016: Sports and Politics
Diemer, Ulli (ed.)
Serial Publication (Periodical)
2016
Sports and politics have always been intertwined, though perhaps never as much so as in the current era. In the modern sports era, survival and success depend largely on the favour of corporations, wh...
A Political Economy of the African Crisis
Onimode, Bade
Book
1989
The economies of almost all African countries are in a state of crisis, and in some cases actual disintegration. This is a crisis not of natural disasters, but of human making, and in dramatic detail,...
Que se vayan todos! Krise und Widerstand in Argentinien
Situaciones, Colectivo
Book
2003
A collection of essays studying noncapitalist collectivism.
A Report on Recent Struggles in Greece
BIDA
Article
2010
In periods of crisis, such as the current period of overaccumulation crisis, capitalists use the politics of 'public debt' in order to devise new ways to intensify exploitation. In contrast with capit...
Root & Branch: A Libertarian Marxist Journal, #7
Serial Publication (Periodical)
1978
Articles on the class situation in Spain, authority and democracy in the United States, Marxism and Anarchism.
Rosa Luxemburg: Abridged Edition
Nettl, Peter
Book
1966
A biography of Luxemburg by a British academic.
The Rosa Luxemburg Reader
Luxemburg, Rosa. [Anderson, Kevin; Hudis, Peter (eds.)]
Book
2004
A definitive one-volume collection of Luxemburg's writings.
Seeds of Fire: A People's Chronology
Diemer, Ulli
Article
2012
Recalling events that happened on this day in history. Memories of struggle, resistance and persistence.
Seven Reasons Why Capitalism Can't Recover Anytime Soon
Cooke, Shamus
Article
2010
There is a larger disease in the international economic system, a disease that cannot be cured by politicians who swear allegiance to this deteriorating system and to the wealthy elite who benefit fro...
Book Review: Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism
Article
2014
David Harvey has three aims in Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (SCEC). First and mainly he wants to schematically analyze the contradictions of capital, the 'economic engine' drivin...
Shock and Au-sterity
Article
2010
Scared to death that all the lights were about to go out after pulling the plug on Lehman Brothers, the bourgeoisie rolled up its sleeves, girded its loins, crossed its fingers, and reached deeper tha...
Socialists and the Capitalist Recession
De Santos, Raphie; Husson, Michel; Katz, Claudio; Mandel, Ernest; et al
Book
2009
Anyone seeking to understand the ABCs of the meltdown would benefit greatly from reading this collection.
The State as Protection Racket: Chapters in the History of Daylight Robbery
Wilkinson, T.P.
Article
2010
The debate about the current global economic "crisis" is obscenely counterintuitive and illogical to the point of incoherence. Who is willing to 'follow the money"? This dictum appears utterly forgott...
Syriza and the crisis
Garganas, Panos
Article
2015
Interview with Garganas Panos about the election victory of Syriza (the Coalition of the Radical Left) in Greece.
System Change Not Climate Change
McLaren, Jesse (ed.)
Article
2014
Stopping climate catastrophe and winning a world of climate justice is a critical task of our generation -- and it will require a radical transformation of society and of our relationship with nature....
The theory of the collapse of capitalism
Pannekoek, Anton
Article
1934
Struggle is never simple or convenient.
Toronto's Poor: A Rebellious History
Palmer, Bryan D.; Heroux, Gaetan
Book
2016
Toronto’s Poor reveals the long and too often forgotten history of poor people’s resistance. It details how the homeless, the unemployed, and the destitute have struggled to survive and secure food an...
Us and Them
Article
2011
To move beyond wishing and hoping, our self organization has to overcome and overwhelm the limits, the divisions, the separations of workers and poor by categories of “organized,” “unorganized,” “immi...
U.S. Labor's Subterranean Fire: Against The Current vol. 131
Post, Charlie
Article
2007
The broad outlines of the crisis of the U.S. labor movement -— sharply declining union density, concession bargaining, failures to organize the growing non-union manufacturing and service sectors, the...
We can't go on like this
Halimi, Serge
Article
2013
The legitimacy of capitalism as a way of organising society has been undermined; its promises of prosperity, social mobility and democracy have lost credibility. But there has been no radical change. ...
What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism: A Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment
Magdoff, Fred; Foster, John Bellamy
Book
2011
A manifesto for those environmentalists who reject schemes of “green capitalism” or piecemeal reform. Magdoff and Foster argue that efforts to reform capitalism along environmental lines or rely solel...
Whose Wipeout? Whose Bailout?: Against The Current vol. 137
The Editors
Article
2008
Is this what 1931 looks like? Years ago, we recall, two themes for popular cinema were people trapped in burning skyscrapers ("Towering Inferno") and market sharks engaged in financial manipulations ...
A World at Financial War: Will Greece Let EU Central Bankers Destroy Democracy?
Hudson, Michael
Article
2011
The crisis for Greece – as for Iceland, Ireland and debt-plagued economies capped by the United States – is occurring as bank lobbyists demand that “taxpayers” pay for the bailouts of bad speculations...

Connexions Directory of Groups & Websites

Break Their Haughty Power
Articles on capitalism, socialism, and revolution, from a left-Marxist perspective.
Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Journal of Socialist Ecology
CNS is a journal of ecosocialism. We welcome submissions on red-green politics and the anti-globalization movement; environmental history; workplace labor struggles; land/community struggles; politica...
Corporate Watch
Corporate Watch is a not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism. Since 1996 our research, journalism, analysis an...

Sources Library

Banks got $114B from governments during recession
CBC News
2012
Canada's biggest banks accepted tens of billions in government funds during the recession, according to a report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.