Where the incompleteness of Marx's own account does matter is in coming to terms with changes in capitalism since his death. Things he only refers to in passing in Capital-the growth of monopolies, the intervention by states in capitalist production and markets, the provision of welfare services, war as an economic weapon-have become massively important. Marxists in the first decades of the 20th century were forced by circumstances to debate some of these matters, and there was a new burst of creative thinking in the 1960s and early 1970s. I attempt to draw from such discussions the concepts needed to "go beyond Capital" and fill in gaps in Marx's own account of the system (Chapters Four and Five). The rest of the book then tries to come to terms with the development of capitalism over the last 80 years, from the great slump of the inter-war years to the crisis causing turmoil across the world as I write. The account must be not simply one of economic processes, but at every stage of how the interaction of capitals and states on a world scale gives rise to wars and civil wars, hunger and environmental disaster, as well as booms and slumps. Nuclear weapons and greenhouse gases are as much a product of alienated labour as car factories and coal mines.
A note on the book
The instability of the capitalist economy has had its impact on the writing of this book. I set about writing the first draft when what I call "the great delusion"-the belief that the capitalism had found a new way of expanding without crises-was at its height in late 2006. I viewed another economic crisis as inevitable, in much the same way that someone living in a city built on a seismic fault line knows it is at some point going to suffer an earthquake. But I did not pretend to be able to predict when this would happen, or how destructive it would be. My aim, rather, was to update my Explaining the Crisis of 25 years ago, taking into account changes in the system since, but repeating the basic conclusion that its blind rush forward would have devastating repercussions for people's lives through the rest of this century, creating immense social and political crises with potentially revolutionary implications.
Introduction
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