Crise e capitalismo contemporâneo

Abstract

The aim of this study is to review the main marxist interpretations of the Great Recession (2007)(2008)(2009) and identify the main lines of the debate on its origins and fundamental characteristics. I did not intend to do a thorough examination of the growing literature on the subject. I opted, instead, to select those studies that seemed representative of the most important theoretical approaches in the contemporary marxism and then evaluate their respective positions with regard to the recent crisis.In order to achieve the proposed objective, the first chapter sets out the key concepts and methodology used throughout this study. It presents a definition of crisis, the distinction between the ultimate and immediate cause and, finally, the approach adopted to organize the literature. It was possible to demonstrate thereby the presence of two major approaches in the theoretical marxist universe with regard to determining the recent crisis:A -on the one hand, those who attribute the turbulence to the dynamics of a particular phase of capitalism, the specific political/economic/institutional form assumed by the capitalist system over the past decades; in short, to what may be called neoliberalism; B -on the other, those who see the recent crisis as a manifestation of general capitalist dynamics itself -and not the particular form that supposedly assume.In the first group, Dumenil, Levy, Saad-Filho and Kotz, whose works are examined in chapter II, are among its main exponents. As seen above, the argument of those who advocate this perspective focuses mainly on the power relationship between classes that constitute capitalism, especially the capitalist and worker, and the reflection of the institutional setting from that upon the economy, particularly on the behavior of the financial sector and income distribution.By contrast, according to the analyzes undertaken by members of the second group, which the supporters of the so-called Temporal Single System Interpretation of Marx's value theory are the main representatives, the argument is based mainly on the movement of the rate of profit and capital accumulation. As the third chapter demonstrates, the declining rate of profit because of the increasing organic composition of capital is the basic hypothesis to explain the Great Recession in this approach.