Socialist Register 2012: The Crisis and the Left

The global economic crisis that closed the first decade of the 21st century has demonstrated that the contradictions of capitalism cannot be overcome. The challenge for socialist analysis is to reveal both the nature of these contradictions in the neo-liberal era of globalized finance, and their consequences in our time. Crises need to be understood as turning points that open up opportunities. How to facilitate this is the sharpest challenge posed to socialists by the most severe global economic crisis since the 1930s.

This volume, a companion to The Crisis This Time: Socialist Register 2011, examines the response of the international Left and asks, how has the Left responded and can it offer an alternative to faltering capitalism?

Contents

Leo Panitch, Greg Albo, Vivek Chibber: “Preface”; David Harvey, “The urban roots of financial crises: reclaiming the city for anti-capitalist struggle”; David McNally, “Slump, austerity and resistance”; Ursula Huws, “Crisis as capitalist opportunity: new accumulation through public service commodification”; Larry Lohmann, “Financialization, commodification and carbon: the contradictions of neoliberal climate policy”; Frances Fox Piven, “The new American poor law”; Nicole M. Aschoff, “A tale of two crises: labour, capital and restructuring in the US auto industry”; Adolph Reed, Jr and Merlin Chowkwanyun, “Race, class, crisis: the discourse of racial disparity and its analytical discontents”; Adam Hanieh “Finance, oil and the Arab uprisings: the global crisis and the Gulf states”; Claudio Katz, “The singularities of Latin America”; Ho-fung Hung, “Sinomania: global crisis, China’s crisis?”; Jan Toporowski, “Eastern Europe: post-communist assets in crisis”; Peadar Kirby, “When banks cannibalize the state: responses to Ireland’s economic collapse”; SYMPOSIUM ON THE EUROZONE CRISIS AND LEFT STRATEGIES: Elmar Altvater, “From subprime farce to Greek tragedy: the crisis dynamics of financially driven capitalism”; Costas Lapavitsas, “Default and exit from the eurozone: a radical left strategy”; Michel Husson, “Exit or voice? a European strategy of rupture”

Leo Panitch and Greg Albo are Professors in the Department of Political Science at York University, Toronto. Vivek Chibber is Professor of Sociology at New York University.