{"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":9,"pdf_page":9,"physical_index":9,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"24be28fad716ddb79f5fb4bd1955e0c04644128e625699757733b4a5241cd117"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"But crises are not some new feature of the system. They have occurred at longer or shorter intervals ever since the industrial revolution established the modern form of capitalism in Britain fully at the beginning of the 19th century.\n\nThe poverty of economics\n\nThe mainstream economics that is taught in schools and universities has proved completely unable to come to terms with such things. The Bank of International Settlements recognises that:\n\nVirtually no one foresaw the Great Depression of the 1 930s, or the crises which affected Japan and South East Asia in the early and late 1990s, respectively. In fact, each downturn was preceded by a period of non-inflationary growth exuberant enough to lead many commentators to suggest that a \"new era\" had arrived.3\n\nNothing sums up the incomprehension of those who defend capitalism as much as their inability to explain the most significant economic episode in the 20th century-the slump of the 1930s. Ben Bernanke, the present head of the US Federal Reserve and supposedly one of mainstream economics' most respected experts on economic crises, admits that \"understanding the Great Depression is the Holy Grail of macroeconomics\"4-in other words, he can find no explanation for it. Nobel economic laureate Edward C Prescott describes it as \"a . . . pathological episode and it defies explanation by standard economics\" .5 For Robert Lucas, another Nobel Laureate \"it takes a real effort of will to admit you don't know what the hell is going on in some areas\". 6\n\nThese are not accidental failings. They are built into the very assumptions of the \"neoclassical\" or \"marginalist\" school that has dominated mainstream economics for a century and a quarter. Its founders set themselves the task of showing how markets \"clear\"-that is, how all the goods in them will find buyers. But that assumes in advance that crises are not possible.\n\nIntroduction\n\n9","previous_page":8,"next_page":10}