The Crisis This Time: Socialist Register 2011 (Socialist Register (Merlin))

The global economic crisis that closed the first decade of the twenty-first century has demonstrated that the contradictions of capitalism cannot be overcome. The challenge for socialist analysis is to reveal both the nature of these contradictions in the neo-liberal era of globalized finance, and their consequences in our time. Crises need to be understood as turning points that open up opportunities. How to facilitate this is the sharpest challenge posed to socialists by the most severe global economic crisis since the 1930s.

What implications does the crisis this time have in terms of capitalist economic and political restructuring? Does it portend the end of neo-liberalism? Can working classes reverse the pattern of defeat in recent decades, build new capacities, and impose their own template for types of economic and political renewal that can put back on the agenda the need to transcend capitalism itself? What additional costs will they be expected to bear as capitalists states prepare their ‘exit strategies’? This edition of the “Socialist Register” addresses these questions and more with typically wide-ranging analysis from contributorsaround the globe.

Provisional Contributors: Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, Alfredo Saad Filho, Hugo Radice, Anwar Shaikh, David McNally, Doug Henwood, Johanna Brenner,Michael Moran, Julie Froud, Adriana Nilsson, Karel Williams, Riccardo Bellofiore, R. Taggart Murphy, Ho-Fung Hung, Adam Hanieh, Ben Fine, Samantha Ashman, Susan Newman, Susanne Soederberg, Larry Lohmann, Dick Bryan, Michael Rafferty, Ursula Huws, and Greg Albo.