The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China
"The authors carefully develop a powerful case that the normal state of 'really existing capitalist economies,' increasingly dominated by multinational megacorporations along with associated financialization, is not growth with occasional recession, but rather stagnation with occasional escapes that have diminishing prospects. Hence an 'endless crisis,' endless in both time and space, including China. And a crisis that is heading towards disaster unless there is a radical change of course. This valuable inquiry should be carefully studied and pondered, and should be taken as an incentive to action."-Noam Chomsky,"In the distinguished tradition of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Foster and McChesney here combine grim analysis with bleak prognosis, reminding us that monopoly power disappeared from the textbooks but not from real life. This is a useful book for anyone raised on the reflexive American optimism of the post-war years."-James K. Galbraith, author ofInequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis,"Chilling in its analysis of the evolution of global capitalism and the contours of the global class struggle . . . you cannot but ask the question: 'When do we get serious about a strategy for the Left to respond to the system of modern day robber-barons that Foster and McChesney so well analyze?'"-Bill Fletcher, Jr., BlackCommentator.com; author ofSolidarity Divided and 'They're Bankrupting us' And Twenty Other Myths about Unions,"A compelling discussion of the central economic reality of our time: that the Wall Street collapse and Great Recession of 2007-09 was a human calamity whose effects are ongoing. Foster and McChesney explore the underlying causes of the crisis as a result of the normal operations of capitalism in its contemporary neoliberal variant. Their discussions on financialization, monopoly power, imperialism, and other topics all provide opportunities for us to think more clearly about what is wrong with the societies we live in and how to advance a transformative political project in behalf of equality and social justice."-Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts-Amherst,"The most important book yet to appear on stagnation, the central problem of modern economic reality. Essential reading for serious liberal, heterodox, radical, and all open-minded economic thinkers."-Gar Alperovitz, author ofAmerica Beyond Capitalism, and Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland,