economics

New year, old music, from a well-known score sheet played out by... the Left. A "Left" that’s not ashamed to dress itself up in populist clothes, worn in the service of state capital on the understanding that this is the way to open up markets as a "progressive realisation of the patriotic ideal and the concept of nationhood". In the name, of course, of the people and the "concept of community" as understood by those who are ready to recite the hidden virtues of a renewed "capital-socialism".

It is now 11 years since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The crisis in the real economy, instead of fading from memory, has become a fixture.

Today, as the global economy flounders from crisis to crisis, Marx’s analysis of capitalism is the essential basis for a correct understanding of what is going on. Moseley’s book reaffirms key elements of this analysis. The previous obsession with the transformation problem has resulted in the undermining of these key aspects of Marx’s critique, actually making an understanding of twenty first century capitalism harder. Moseley’s book, though long winded and somewhat repetitive, serves a very useful purpose in exposing this undermining and its implications. For this reason alone it is worth reading.

Part three of this series was published in 2005, two years or so before the great financial crash when the economic pundits were lauding the move away from manufacture to 'business and financial services'.