{"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":88,"pdf_page":88,"physical_index":88,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"bee262741ca5823a2bf5c60061a7a84666a51d0d931ac1f44b4409bbe3bcd92b"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"The gap between the model and the reality left many questions unanswered about the course capitalism would take. These questions did not necessarily seem to matter that much either to Marx and Engels or to the activists in the new workers' movements of the 1870s and 1880s. These were the years of a long period of crises known as the Great Depression. The US steel magnate Andrew Carnegie expressed the mood even in capitalist circles in 1889:\n\nManufacturers . . . see savings of many years . . . becoming less and less, with no hope of a change in the situation. It is in a soil thus prepared that anything promising of relief is gladly welcomed. The manufacturers are in the position of patients that have tried in vain every doctor of the regular school for years, and are now liable to become the victim of any quack that appears . . . 1\n\nA quarter century of falling profit rates2 led to massive pools of poverty in London and other cities and to mass unemployment in the mid- 1 880s.3 It was not surprising that Frederick Engels could feel that the logic of Marx's model was working itself out right in front of his eyes in England as \"the decennial cycle of stagnation, prosperity, overproduction and crisis\" seemed to give way to \"a permanent and chronic depression\" .4\n\nThe trajectory of capitalism soon, however, proved to be more complicated than the experience of the 1 880s suggested. Profit rates recovered in Britain in the 1890s, and the US and Germany went through a new wave of economic expansion.5 There were certain positive reforms for workers that seemed to contradict Marx's picture: Otto von Bismarck granted pensions to Germany's workers in 1889 and a British Liberal government produced a similar scheme in Britain 20 years later, along with free school meals; real wages rose in the last two decades of the 19th century, even if they tended to stagnate after that;6 working hours everywhere tended to fall from 12 or 14 hours a day to eight, and the working week to fall from six days to five and a half. 7\n\n88\n\nUnderstanding the System: Marx and Beyond","previous_page":87,"next_page":89}