Just published! THE FAILURE OF CAPITALIST PRODUCTIONUnderlying Causes of the Great Recessionby Andrew KlimanPaperback / 256 pp. / ISBN-13: 978-0745332390. Published by Pluto Press, November 2011.Only $23.40 from MHI + $3.60 shipping in U.S. -- below Amazon's price (foreign purchasers: please contact MHI for rates).Order here: http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/economic-crisis/new-book-the-failure-of-capitalist-production.htmlThe reasons behind the global financial crisis and the Great Recession are the subject of much debate. This is the first book to conclude, on the basis of in-depth analyses of official U.S. data, that Marx’s crisis theory can explain these events.Marx believed that the rate of profit has a tendency to fall, leading to economic crises and recessions. Many economists, Marxists among them, have dismissed this theory out of hand, but Andrew Kliman’s careful data analysis shows that the rate of profit did indeed decline after the post-World War II boom. He shows that free-market policies have failed to reverse that decline. This fall in profitability led to sluggish investment and economic growth, mounting debt problems, desperate attempts of governments to fight these problems by piling up even more debt – ultimately ending in the Great Recession.Kliman's conclusion is simple but shocking: short of socialist transformation, the only way to escape the “new normal” of a stagnant, crisis-prone economy is to restore profitability through full-scale destruction of the value of existing capital assets, something not seen since the Depression of the 1930s. .Endorsements:“Clear, rigorous and combative. Kliman demonstrates that the current economic crisis is a consequence of the fundamental dynamic of capitalism, unlike the vast bulk of superficial contemporary commentary that passes for economic analysis.” – Rick Kuhn, Deutscher Prize winner, Reader in Politics at the Australian National University“Among the myriad publications on the present day crisis, this work stands out as something unusual. Kliman cogently argues against the view that the crisis is ultimately rooted in financialization. He is an excellent theorist, and an equally excellent analyst of empirical data.” – Paresh Chattopadhyay, Université du Québec à Montréal“One of the very best of the rapidly growing series of works seeking to explain our economic crisis. … The scholarship is exemplary and the writing is crystal clear. Highly recommended!” – Professor Bertell Ollman, New York University, author of Dance of the DialecticChapters:1. Introduction2. Profitability, the Credit System, and the “Destruction of Capital”3. Double, Double, Toil and Trouble: Dot-com boom and home-price bubble4. The 1970s––Not the 1980s––as Turning Point5. Falling Rates of Profit and Accumulation6. The Current-cost “Rate of Profit”7. Why the Rate of Profit Fell8.The Underconsumptionist Alternative9. What Is to Be Undone? For a synopsis of chapters, and excerpts from the book, please visit http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/economic-crisis/new-book-the-failure-of-capitalist-production.htmlPodcast (audio) interview: Kliman and host Doug Lain discuss the book (causes of the Great Recession, inequality, underconsumptionism, the #Occupy movement, and more) on Diet Soap Podcast #125: Crisis and Capitalism’s System Failure (70 mins.), http://dietsoap.podomatic.com .