A Roadmap of Crisis Theories

This post could also be entitled, 'The Gurus of Contemporary Marxist Theory', interpreting 'Marxist' rather broadly.

A year ago, when I started to pay more attention to economics, I was clueless as to where to go for high-quality Marxist analysis (even at the start of my search I was not in any doubt that neoclassical economics - in its denial of the class structure of capitalism - was intellectually bankrupt).

I knew about Ernest Mandel of course, but who else was worth reading, and what were the key issues in contemporary debates?

On the latter question I soon discovered that the most important issue was, of course, the Marxist theory of crisis.

From Michael Roberts

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On page 15 of Michael Roberts's book, "The Long Depression", he shows a variant of the roadmap below from the San Francisco Bay Area Marxist Study Group (click on image to make larger and more legible).

San Francisco Bay Area Marxist Study Group via Nick Johnson

Incidentally I'm comfortable with Michael Roberts's take on the world because, like him, I'm hard left on the diagram above all the way down 😎.

Roberts is also not that tribal, seeking to understand rather than denounce. This is just as well as he secretly seems as convinced as I am that capitalism has at least another century before the imminence of total automation make production solely for the valorisation of capital essentially impossible.

This view of capitalism's likely future rather depends upon Marx's law of the ‘tendency of the rate of profit to fall’ (TRPF) applying over the long-term. I'm good with that as an empirical reality, increasing automation being the causal mechanism.

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So who are the top gurus of Marxist thinking today? I've already mentioned Michael Roberts who has a prolific blog. I should also mention Sam Williams at "A Critique of Crisis Theory".

Moving now to the superstars, we have Dave Harvey, Michael Heinrich and Anwar Shaikh. I have bought books authored by all three. I'd also mention Andrew Kliman, whose book (below) I've just acquired.

Amazon link

While not a Marxist, radical Keynesian Steve Keen gets an honourable mention for bearing the wrath and fury of the entire neoclassical establishment with courage and fortitude. Roberts writes about him here.

So I'm very much a work-in-progress at the moment, struggling hard to get an intuitive view of the dynamics of capitalist economies at all time scales (Michael Roberts's views on cycles are persuasive).

In the background Marx's own writings, Capital Vols 2, 3 and 4 are still on the stack.