[OPE] David McNally, _Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance_

Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance
By David McNally
Author: David McNally
Publisher: PM Press/Spectre
Published: December 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60486-332-1
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 248 Pages
Dimensions: 8 by 5
Subjects: Politics-Marxism, Economics
$17.00

http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=DavidMcNally

Global Slump analyzes the global financial meltdown as the first
systemic crisis of the neoliberal stage of capitalism. It argues
that—far from ending—the crisis has ushered in a whole period of
worldwide economic and political turbulence. In developing an account of
the crisis as rooted in fundamental features of capitalism, Global Slump
challenges the view that its source lies in financial deregulation.

The book locates the recent meltdown in the intense economic
restructuring that marked the recessions of the mid-1970s and early
1980s. Through this lens, it highlights the emergence of new patterns of
world inequality and new centers of accumulation, particularly in East
Asia, and the profound economic instabilities these produced. Global
Slump offers an original account of the “financialization” of the world
economy during this period, and explores the intricate connections
between international financial markets and new forms of debt and
dispossession, particularly in the Global South.

Analyzing the massive intervention of the world’s central banks to stave
off another Great Depression, Global Slump shows that, while averting a
complete meltdown, this intervention also laid the basis for recurring
crises for poor and working class people: job losses, increased poverty
and inequality, and deep cuts to social programs. The book takes a
global view of these processes, exposing the damage inflicted on
countries in the Global South, as well as the intensification of racism
and attacks on migrant workers. At the same time, Global Slump also
traces new patterns of social and political resistance—from housing
activism and education struggles, to mass strikes and protests in
Martinique, Guadeloupe, France and Puerto Rico—as indicators of the
potential for building anti-capitalist opposition to the damage that
neoliberal capitalism is inflicting on the lives of millions.

Praise:

"In this book, McNally confirms—once again—his standing as one of the
world's leading Marxist scholars of capitalism. For a scholarly, in
depth analysis of our current crisis that never loses sight of its
political implications (for them and for us), expressed in a language
that leaves no reader behind, there is simply no better place to go."
- Bertell Ollman, Professor, Department of Politics, NYU, and author of
Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method

“David McNally's tremendously timely book is packed with significant
theoretical and practical insights, and offers actually-existing
examples of what is to be done. Global Slump urgently details how
changes in the capitalist space-economy over the past 25 years,
especially in the forms that money takes, have expanded wide-scale
vulnerabilities for all kinds of people, and how people fight back. In a
word, the problem isn't neo-liberalism—it's capitalism.”
- Ruth Wilson Gilmore, University of Southern California and author,
Golden Gulag

“Standard accounts of the present crisis blame the excesses of the
financial sector, promising that all will be well when the proper
financial regulations are in place. McNally’s path breaking account goes
far deeper. He documents in great detail how the roots of the crisis are
found in the systematic failings of capitalism. At this moment in world
history the case for a radical alternative to the capitalist global
order needs to be made as forcefully as possible. No one has done this
better than McNally.”
- Tony Smith, Professor of Philosophy, Iowa State University and author
of Globalisation: A Systematic Marxian Account

On Political Economy and the Rise of Capitalism:

“McNally has developed a powerful interpretation that sheds a mass of
new light… This is a superb book.”
- Robert Brenner, author of The Economics of Global Turbulence

On Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the
Marxist Critique:

“By exposing the historical and theoretical roots of ‘market socialism,'
David McNally demonstrates in a particularly lucid and powerful way the
fundamental flaws and contradictions in that concept.”
- Ellen Meiksins Wood, author of Empire of Capital
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Received on Thu Jun 9 08:18:34 2011