TFB co-founder Costas Lapavitsas invites all supporters of The Full Brexit to the launch of his latest, co-authored book, The State of Capitalism: Economy, Society, Hegemony, at 17:30 on 6 December at SOAS, University of London. You can attend in person at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, or online via Zoom.
The health emergency that began in 2020 is a landmark event in the development of capitalism. It confirmed the underlying change of the Great Crisis of 2007–09: the movement of the state to the centre
of economic activity. What is becoming apparent
now is the fault line in the core of the world economy.
Productive accumulation is flaccid. Financialisation
has entered a new phase, as ‘shadow banking’
has grown relative to other banks and persists
entirely dependent on the state. The power of the
state derives from command over fiat money and
can certainly deliver enormous boosts to aggregate
demand, but that is not enough to tackle the weakness of the productive sector.
Inflation underscores the need for intervention on the supply side, directly challenging capitalist property rights. There is no evidence, however, that the ruling blocs in core countries will do what’s required.
The Pandemic Crisis brought to the fore fresh divisions of core and periphery across the world economy. Imperialism has assumed new forms, spurred by globally active financial capital and internationalised productive capital. A renewed contest for hegemony emerged as US power has declined. The economic challenge of China will unfold steadily in the years ahead, intensifying political tensions and military rivalries.
This book is the work of a research collective comprising authors from several parts of the world. It analyses these vital issues from the perspective of Marxist political economy and puts forth alternative anticapitalist proposals.
‘A meticulous analysis of what happened when the greatest health crisis since 1918 crashed into the greatest capitalist crisis since 1929. A must-read’
— YANIS VAROUFAKIS, author of Adults in the Room: My Battle with the European and American Deep Establishment
‘The State of Capitalism provides an elegant and exhaustive analysis of the changing faces of financialization, neoliberalism, state power and US empire – and how the left must adapt and respond. Lapavitsas develops a typically brilliant and incisive narrative on the transformation of global capitalism since the turn of the century, and shows how these changes formed the foundations of our era of perennial crisis’
— GRACE BLAKELEY, author of Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation
‘Capitalism, in its current neoliberal variant, is a perfectly designed system for producing ruinous financial bubbles, massive increases in inequality, and the destruction of the planet. In The State of Capitalism, Costas Lapavitsas and the EReNSEP Writing Collective explain with great scope and force how this has been happening before our eyes for the past forty years, in all regions of the globe. Critically, they also advance a clear-eyed political program for transcending neoliberalism and building viable democratic socialist alternatives’
— ROBERT POLLIN, Distinguished University Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Political Economy Research Institute
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