Capitalism Hits the Fan

A BREATHTAKINGLY CLEAR ANALYSIS OF TODAY’S ONGOING ECONOMIC CRISIS In this updated edition of Capitalism Hits the Fan, Professor Wolff explains why capitalism's global crisis persists, why bank bailouts and austerity policies fail, and why deepening economic inequality now generates historic social tensions and conflicts and worsens the ongoing crisis. This book chronicles one economist’s growing alarm and insights as he watched, from 2005 onwards, the economic crisis build, burst, and then change the world. The argument here differs sharply from most other explanations offered by politicians, media commentators, and other academics. Step by step, Wolff shows that deep economic structures—the relationship of wages to profits, of workers to boards of directors, and of debts to income—account for the crisis. The book’s essays engage the long-overdue public discussion about capitalism as a system and about the basic structural changes needed not only to fix today’s broken economy but to prevent future crises. Richard Wolff has been a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst since 1981. He has been a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs, at the New School in New York since 2007. Wolff’s major recent interests and publications include studies of US economic history to ascertain the basic structural causes of the current economic crisis and the examination of how alternative economic theories (neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian) understand and respond to the crisis in very different ways. His past work involves application of advanced class analysis to contemporary global capitalism. He has written, co-authored, and co-edited many books and dozens of scholarly and popular journal articles. His recent analyses of current economic events appear regularly in the webzine of the Monthly Review. In 2009, Capitalism Hits the Fan, the documentary on the current economic crisis, was released by Media Education Foundation (www.mediaed.org). Visit http://www.rdwolff.com for more information. Abridged Table of Contents: Introduction Part I: Roots of a System’s Crisis Part II: The Economics of Crisis 1 Capitalism as a Crisis-Prone System 2 The Role of Economic Theory 3 Markets and Efficiency 4 Wages, Productivity, and Exploitation 5 Housing and Debt 6 Government Intervention in the Economy 7 International Dimensions of the Crisis Part III: Politics of the Crisis 1 Reforms and Regulations as Crisis Solutions 2 Debates over Socialist” Solutions 3 Anti-Capitalist Politics Index