I would like to recommend the latest entry from the Critique of Crisis Theory blog by Sam Williams. In it he analyses the current stage of the industrial cycle and asks, "Is the Economic Crisis Over?" (See http://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/)
I hope that reading this blog post will encourage people to look more closely at the entire series, which has taken the form of a developing book on crisis theory.
The first blog chapter explains the biggest challenge the author faced - the fact that Marx did not leave a completed crisis theory. It was certainly the plan when Marx began Capital, but in the end only one volume was completed before his death and volumes two and three only took partial steps to a completed theory.
However, based on all of Marx's writings, Sam believes the answer can be clarified. The solution he believes involves reaffirming Marx and Engels' views that periodic crises are the inevitable result of a clash between the powerful forces that drive capitalist expansion of production and the laws that govern the expansion of the market. In the words of Engels in Anti-Duhring: "The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another 'vicious circle'." Why this is the case is the subject of the blog.
To answer this question the blog author believes it is necessary to build on the most important economic discoveries of Marx in Capital, including Marx's perfected labour theory of value. In the process he critiques both the "underconsumptionist" and "tendency of the rate of profit to fall" schools for their one-sided approach to understanding crises. The first ignores the problems associated with the production of surplus value and the second the problems associated with its realization.
At the same time both schools have tended to ignore the role of the money commodity gold as the universal equivalent. Sam argues that the money commodity continues to be an integral part of the operation of the law of value in capitalist society with or without the gold standard for state-issued paper currencies, which in reality continue to represent gold in circulation. Taking into account this role is critical to understanding why capitalist crises of generalized overproduction periodically occur, according to Sam.
He takes up bourgeois critics of or alternatives to Marx including detailed critiques of Ricardo and the theory of "comparative advantage", Say's Law, marginalism, the Austrian school and Keynes. He looks at the concrete history of capitalism and the question of "long waves" including whether there is a material basis to their existence.
After the main blog series was finished Sam took up questions and suggestions for discussion. I had my own "debate" over the question of productive and unproductive labour. And finally he discusses what the historical limits are to the continued existence of capitalism.
There is much to interest and challenge the reader.
Even if you don't agree with everything that is written it does challenge and stimulate new ways at looking at the questions under debate - which are ultimately questions vital for the future of humanity.
Mike Treen