In and Out of Crisis; The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives

Description

While many around the globe are increasingly wondering if another world is indeed possible, few are mapping out potential avenues-and flagging wrong turns-en route to a post-capitalist future. In this groundbreaking analysis of the financial meltdown, renowned radical political economists Albo, Gindin, and Panitch lay bare the roots of the crisis in the inner logic of capitalism itself.

With an unparalleled understanding of capitalism, the authors provocatively challenge the call by much of the Left for a return to a largely mythical Golden Age of economic regulation as a check on finance capital unbounded. They deftly illuminate how the era of neoliberal free markets has been, in practice, undergirded by state intervention on a massive scale. The authors argue that it’s time to start thinking about genuinely transformative alternatives to capitalism-and how to build the collective capacity to get us there.In and Out of Crisis standsto be the enduring critique of the crisis and an indispensable springboard for a renewed Left.

“Once again, Panitch, Gindin, and Albo show that they have few rivals and no betters in analyzing the relations between politics and economics, between globalization and American power, between theory and quotidian reality, and between crisis and political possibility. At once sobering and inspiring, this is one of the few pieces of writing that I‘ve seen that‘s essential to understanding-to paraphrase a term from accounting-the sources and uses of crisis. Splendid and essential.”-DOUG HENWOOD, LEFT BUSINESS OBSERVER, AUTHOR OF AFTER THE NEW ECONOMY

“In and Out of Crisis could not come at a more important time. The crisis of neoliberal globalization compels the Left to better understand the dynamics of global capitalism, the US empire, but also the tasks confronting us. This book pushes the envelope and bravo for that!”-BILL FLETCHER, JR., BLACKCOMMENTATOR.COM, CO-AUTHOR OF SOLIDARITY DIVIDED

“Mired in political despair? Planning your escape to a more humane continent? Pull yourself together and read this book, in which Albo, Gindin, and Panitch, some of the world‘s sharpest living political economists, explain the current financial crisis-and how we might begin to make a better world.”-LIZA FEATHERSTONE, AUTHOR OF SELLING WOMEN SHORT

“This book not only gives us a course in the global financial meltdown, but it also provides a model for how the Left must develop its alternatives, not ex nihilo, but from a study of the contradictions of the present.”-VIJAY PRASHAD, AUTHOR OF DARKER NATIONS: A PEOPLE‘S HISTORY OF THE THIRD WORLD

Leo PanitchandGreg Alboare co-editors of the Socialist Register. Sam Gindin is a former research director of the Canadian Autoworkers Union. All three teach political economy at York University in Toronto, Canada.