This original and rigorous political-economic discussion of neoliberal global capitalism shows how deep the roots of the current crisis are and how stubbornly resistant it will be to conventional policy remedies. -- Duncan K. Foley, author of Adam's Fallacy An ambitious and original treatment of the ongoing global economic crisis. Dumenil and Levy provide both an in-depth statistical and historical narrative and an overarching analytical framework. -- Thomas R. Michl, author of Capitalists, Workers, and Fiscal Policy The Crisis of Neoliberalism is an insightful account of the factors that have led to the economic downturn. As Dumenil and Levy make clear, the economy cannot just return to its pre-crisis path. -- Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research
Gérard Duménil is a Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. Dominique Lévy is a Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris.
This original and rigorous political-economic discussion of
neoliberal global capitalism shows how deep the roots of the
current crisis are and how stubbornly resistant it will be to
conventional policy remedies.
*Duncan K. Foley, author of Adam's Fallacy*
An ambitious and original treatment of the ongoing global economic
crisis. Duménil and Lévy provide both an in-depth statistical and
historical narrative and an overarching analytical framework.
*Thomas R. Michl, author of Capitalists, Workers, and Fiscal
Policy*
The Crisis of Neoliberalism is an insightful account of the factors
that have led to the economic downturn. As Duménil and Lévy make
clear, the economy cannot just return to its pre-crisis path.
*Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research*
French economists Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy proceed from
the somewhat heterodox proposition that ruling ideas arise not from
their persuasive power or inner logic but from the interest of
ruling groups… Duménil and Lévy move directly to the social and
political history that led us to this turn, the underlying
situation in which such intellectually bankrupt ideas could
prevail. And what might become of a world that can no longer
sustain such beliefs… Though elements of their analysis proceed (in
their words) 'à la Marx,' the book is scarcely what one might
thereby expect—that is, the opposite of [an] unreflective apologia
for capitalism's premises… The two argue…that neoliberalism is not
a collection of theories meant to improve the economy. Instead, it
should be understood as a class strategy designed to redistribute
wealth upward toward an increasingly narrow fraction of folks. This
transfer is undertaken, they argue, with near indifference to what
happens below some platinum plateau—even as the failures and
contradictions of the economic system inevitably drive the entire
structure toward disaster. Duménil and Lévy offer two provocative
and interlocking schemas. They decline the bluntest of Marxist
oppositions, which supposes a world divided only between owners and
workers. But they equally abjure the endless proliferation of
categories and distinctions, the slippery slope of
micro-differences that leads to the paradoxical homily of
conventional American thought: that individuals are just that, and
thereby classless—and that everybody is middle-class. One might
well see in this the shadow of Thatcher's other hyperbolic dictum
of neoliberalism: 'There is no such thing as society. There are
only individuals and families.'
*The Nation*
Amid the torrent of books on the 2008 financial meltdown and the
North Atlantic 'great recession,' this important new contribution
from Paris stands out as an analytical beacon… Duménil and Lévy
conclude with a comparison of the aftermaths of 1929 and 2008, an
assessment of the significance of the crisis for U.S. hegemony and
some sober prognoses on the social and economic order likely to
emerge in its wake. The authors aspire to the kind of influence
that Baran and Sweezy achieved with Monopoly Capital some forty
years ago—and on this reading, they deserve it. Like Monopoly
Capital, the analytical framework of Crisis of Neoliberalism uses
some Marxian categories and language, but leavened with (often
implicit) elements of Veblen, Chandler, Galbraith, Keynes and
Polanyi. The result is a highly distinctive—and compellingly
radical—approach, which demands serious attention… By any measure,
The Crisis of Neoliberalism is a landmark intervention in the
post-crisis debates… Young workers or students who have had the
misfortune to enter the labor force during the Great Recession will
require a far-reaching education in the history of capitalist
crises if they are to begin to craft an alternative exit from the
present one. This book should help.
*New Left Review*
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