Marxist theories of crisis, Allen Myers

Crises have existed as long as capitalism. While Marx did not live to complete a theory of the business cycle and the crises which punctuate it, his discovery of the fundamentals of capitalism has provided the framework for a continuing analysis that remains relevant more than a century after Marx’s death. There has been considerable debate within the Marxist movement as to whether “disproportion” or “underconsumption” should be considered as primary in causing crises, and this debate is reflected in bourgeois economists’ efforts to “manage” economies so as to avoid or mitigate crises. This workshop will examine crises as a product of all the contradictions of capitalism, and will seek to relate them also to the “long waves” of development and stagnation.

Allen Myers is the assistant editor of and a frequent writer for Direct Action. He taught Marxist economics at the Democratic Socialist Party’s cadre school in the 1980s and ’90s.

for workshop times: click here to download agenda