{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":67,"pdf_page":67,"physical_index":67,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"0454376957ba4a3987f49c6a47186f31d251f0638451d2b14167c9d832c51612"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Major economic crises almost invariably involve crashes of banks and other financial institutions as well as the bankruptcy of productive firms and rising unemployment for workers. It is easy then for people to misunderstand what is happening and to blame finance, the banks or money for the crisis, rather than the capitalist basis of production.\n\nThe modernity of Marx\n\nMarx's picture of crisis was far ahead of his contemporary mainstream economists. It was not until the 1 930s that study of crises began to be taken seriously by the mainstream. Even the archpriest of free market economics, Friedrich August von Hayek, could admit in one passage that Marx was responsible for introducing, in Germany at least, ideas that could explain the trade cycle, while \"the only satisfactory theory of capital we yet possess, that of Bohm-Bawerk\", had \"not helped us much further with the problems of the trade cycle\" .2<sup>1</sup>\n\nRecurrent economic crises are as much a part of our world as of Marx's. Some at least of the ideological heirs of John Stuart Mill, Jevons and Bohm-Bawerk do not try to conceal the fact-at least when they are writing for an elite upper class audience in the Financial Times or the Economist, rather than propagandising to the masses. So the long-time Conservative chancellor of the exchequer in Britain, Nigel Lawson, who once embraced the \"monetarist\" doctrine that crises were an accidental result of central bankers allowing the money supply to go wrong,22 was eventually arguing that he was not responsible for the slump which followed the implementation of his policies because the \"business cycle\" is inevitable. They see the crisis as \"creative destruction\" without making clear that the creative element consists of wealth for one class, while the destruction is of the livelihoods of others.\n\nI will return to the question of crises in the 21st century later in this book. All that needs to be said for the moment is that there is no problem accounting for them by starting with Marx. Indeed, the only serious question confronting Marx's crisis theory does not arise from the occurrence of crises today, but rather from the fact that for three and a half decades, from 1939 to 1974, a major capitalist country like Britain did not experience a recession in which economic output fell, while the biggest economy, the US, only experienced one very brief such recession (that of 1948-9). The absence of such crises became a major element in economic discussion in the decades of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. And without coming to terms with it, one cannot grasp the intractability of the boom-recession cycle today.\n\nThe Dynamics of the System\n\n67","previous_page":66,"next_page":68}