
Martin Thomas outlines the guide he followed in compiling Crisis and Sequels, a book on the 2007-8 crash and its aftermath now out in paperback edition.
âAnalysis must proceed not from a blurred outline of a âtypicalâ capitalist economy, but from the complex reality of a world economy with its own structure and within it national economies substantially different in pattern both from the global structure and from each otherâ.
Crisis and Sequels is built round 32 interviews with or contributions by 15 economists, organised into five chronological sections as the 2007Â8 crash and its sequels proceeded up to 2015. In each followÂup interview the economist was asked to consider their earlier assessments.
Thomas contributes a long introduction, explores differences between the economists in his interviews, and follows up with an afterword and three appendices.
The questions put to the economists include the cause and trigger for the 2007Â8 crash, and whether the crisis period marked the beginning of an end to neoliberalism, and if so in what sense.
What did the crisis and its aftermath show about the role of the USA in the global economy? Does the
USA remain the dominant force, or is it beginning to crumble? What does financialisation mean? Where
does it fit in economic development?
Martin Thomas does not offer a final judgment of his own on all those matters under discussion. He seeks to challenge himself, and the reader, to keep on thinking through these questions.
The book endeavours both to point to the value of trying to reach a common understanding, and how that might be approached through critical dialogue rather than different self-defined âMarxist theoriesâ standing alone, protected by walls of anathema.
It also contains a challenge to the conventional popular formulae of Marxist economics inherited from the Stalinist tradition; it is a contribution to their reÂexamination, just as in other books Sean Matgamna has re-examined Stalinist-Âshaped formulas which have weighed down the history of Trotskyism.
âMany on the left...â, writes Thomas, âmake elaborate plans to fight the last war. The spectre of the 1970s (and even the 1920s) still hang over much of the left. Many socialists still regard imperialism in terms of (a garbled version of) the analysis Lenin made during the First World War. They repeat a cannibalised
âLeninistâ, actually Stalinist account of imperialismâ.
Appendix 3 argues for rejecting the idea of a tendency of the rate of profit to fall as a thesis with explanatory power in understanding crisis. The âtendency of the rate of profit to fallâ, as it appeared in Marxâs unfinished notes later collected as volume 3 of Capital, is just one tendency, among countervailing tendencies, operating in a limited context, and excluding other variables.
It âdeveloped traction in the early years of Stalinâs rule, as a convenient reason to abandon revolutionary agitation on the grounds that capitalismâs collapse was inevitableâ.
Socialists need to become better at discussing contemporary challenges to working-class interests, in terms of Marxist political economy, and in ways that are relevant and well-informed.
This book will help us to do that.