ABSTRACT

This review paper examines some of the main Marxist-inspired interpretations of the Great Recession that were published in the form of books. From the broad set of publications on the subject, the following works were analyzed: The Great Financial Crisis, by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff (2009Foster, J. B. e F. Magdoff (2009) The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences. New York: Monthly Review Press.); The Enigma of Capital, by David Harvey (2011Filgueiras, L. (2010) A Crise Geral do Capitalismo: Possibilidades e Limites de sua Superação. Crítica Marxista, 30: 21-27.), originally published in 2010; The Crisis of Neoliberalism, by Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy (2011Duménil, G. e D. Lévy (2011) The Crisis of Neoliberalism. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.); and The Failure of Capitalist Production, by Andrew Kliman (2012Kliman, A. (2012) The Failure of Capitalist Production: underlying Causes of the Great Recession. London: Pluto Press.). It is argued that the Marxist debate about the ultimate causes of the Great Recession can be systematized from the following cleavage: 1) on the one hand, the authors who attribute the turbulence to the specific political/economic/institutional form assumed by the capitalist system over the last decades; 2) on the other hand, those who interpret the recent crisis as a manifestation of capitalist dynamics in general - and not the particular form that it supposedly assumes. While Foster and Magdoff (2009Foster, J. B. e F. Magdoff (2009) The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences. New York: Monthly Review Press.), Harvey (2011Filgueiras, L. (2010) A Crise Geral do Capitalismo: Possibilidades e Limites de sua Superação. Crítica Marxista, 30: 21-27.) and Duménil and Lévy (2011Duménil, G. e D. Lévy (2011) The Crisis of Neoliberalism. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.) belong to the first group, Kliman (2012Kliman, A. (2012) The Failure of Capitalist Production: underlying Causes of the Great Recession. London: Pluto Press.) is a representative of the second strand.

KEYWORDS:
Marxist theories of crises; Great Recession; neoliberalism; rate of profit