IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ajecsc/v74y2015i2p236-277.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Great Recession and Marx's Crisis Theory

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Kliman

Abstract

To help understand why the Great Recession occurred, this article focuses on its underlying causes and employs Karl Marx's theory of capitalist economic crisis. It shows that U.S. corporations' rate of return on fixed asset investment fell throughout the half-century preceding the recession, and that this fall accounts for the entire decline in their rate of capital accumulation (productive investment). The investment slowdown led to a decline in the rate of economic growth, which was a main cause of rising debt burdens, as were stimulative fiscal and monetary policies that delayed but exacerbated the effects of the underlying economic problems. The article also refutes the claim that the rate of profit could not really have fallen because massive redistribution of income from wages to profits took place, and it argues that it is unlikely that major crises of capitalism can be eliminated.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Kliman, 2015. "The Great Recession and Marx's Crisis Theory," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(2), pages 236-277, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:74:y:2015:i:2:p:236-277
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ajes.12094
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Congressional Budget Office, 2011. "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007," Reports 42729, Congressional Budget Office.
    2. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009," Reports 43373, Congressional Budget Office.
    3. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 1-41.
    4. Congressional Budget Office, 2011. "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007," Reports 42729, Congressional Budget Office.
    5. Engelbert Stockhammer, 2009. "The finance-dominated accumulation regime, income distribution and the present crisis," Papeles de Europa, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales (ICEI), vol. 19, pages 58-81.
    6. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009," Reports 43373, Congressional Budget Office.
    7. Philip Armour & Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore, 2013. "Levels and Trends in United States Income and Its Distribution A Crosswalk from Market Income Towards a Comprehensive Haig-Simons Income Approach," NBER Working Papers 19110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009," Reports 43373, Congressional Budget Office.
    9. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2008 and 2009," Reports 43373, Congressional Budget Office.
    10. Congressional Budget Office, 2011. "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007," Reports 42729, Congressional Budget Office.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lee, Bill & Carlisle, Liam, 2024. "Interpreting an escape from an eviction trap as a social account: A Gramscian reading of a credit union’s policies in support of social housing tenants," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    2. Juan Pablo Mateo, 2017. "Theory and Practice of Crisis in Political Economy: the Case of the Great Recession in Spain," Working Papers 1715, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    3. Hasan BAKIR & Görkem BAHTİYAR, 2017. "Great Recession, Financialization and Marxian Political Economy," Sosyoekonomi Journal, Sosyoekonomi Society, issue 25(33).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jonathan Fisher & David S. Johnson & Timothy M. Smeeding, 2015. "Inequality of Income and Consumption in the U.S.: Measuring the Trends in Inequality from 1984 to 2011 for the Same Individuals," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(4), pages 630-650, December.
    2. Philip Armour & Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore, 2014. "Levels and Trends in U.S. Income and its Distribution: A Crosswalk from Market Income towards a Comprehensive Haig‐Simons Income Approach," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(2), pages 271-293, October.
    3. Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore & Sean Lyons, 2017. "Measuring Health Insurance Benefits: The Case Of People With Disabilities," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(3), pages 439-456, July.
    4. Philip Armour & Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore, 2013. "Levels and Trends in United States Income and Its Distribution A Crosswalk from Market Income Towards a Comprehensive Haig-Simons Income Approach," NBER Working Papers 19110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Sanders Korenman & Dahlia K. Remler & Rosemary T. Hyson, 2019. "Accounting for the Impact of Medicaid on Child Poverty," NBER Working Papers 25973, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. John Komlos, 2016. "Growth of Income and Welfare in the U.S. 1979-2011," CESifo Working Paper Series 5880, CESifo.
    7. Philip Armour & Richard V. Burkhauser & Jeff Larrimore, 2013. "Deconstructing Income and Income Inequality Measures: A Crosswalk from Market Income to Comprehensive Income," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 173-177, May.
    8. Dennis Fixler & David S. Johnson, 2014. "Accounting for the Distribution of Income in the U.S. National Accounts," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress, pages 213-244, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. N. Gregory Mankiw, 2013. "Defending the One Percent," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 21-34, Summer.
    10. Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman, 2020. "The Rise of Income and Wealth Inequality in America: Evidence from Distributional Macroeconomic Accounts," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(4), pages 3-26, Fall.
    11. Jeff Larrimore, 2014. "Accounting for United States Household Income Inequality Trends: The Changing Importance of Household Structure and Male and Female Labor Earnings Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 683-701, December.
    12. James Elwell & Kevin Corinth & Richard V. Burkhauser, 2019. "Income Growth and its Distribution from Eisenhower to Obama: The Growing Importance of In-Kind Transfers (1959-2016)," NBER Working Papers 26439, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Hager, Sandy Brian, 2013. "America's Real 'Debt Dilemma'," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(1), pages 41-62.
    14. Josh Bivens & Lawrence Mishel, 2013. "The Pay of Corporate Executives and Financial Professionals as Evidence of Rents in Top 1 Percent Incomes," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 57-78, Summer.
    15. Hager, Sandy Brian, 2014. "What Happened to the Bondholding Class? Public Debt, Power and the Top One Per Cent (Preprint)," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 19(2), pages 155-182.
    16. Bruce D. Meyer & Derek Wu & Victoria R. Mooers & Carla Medalia, 2019. "The use and misuse of income data and extreme poverty in the United States," AEI Economics Working Papers 1018925, American Enterprise Institute.
    17. Kevin C. Corinth & Jeff Larrimore, 2024. "Has Intergenerational Progress Stalled? Income Growth Over Five Generations of Americans," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-007, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Sara Torregrosa Hetland, 2015. "Did democracy bring redistribution? Insights from the Spanish tax system, 1960–90," European Review of Economic History, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 294-315.
    19. Warshawsky, Mark, 2016. "Earnings Inequality: The Implications of the Rapidly Rising Cost of Employer-Provided Health Insurance," Working Papers 06926, George Mason University, Mercatus Center.
    20. Hager, Sandy Brian, 2013. "Public Debt, Ownership and Power: The Political Economy of Distribution and Redistribution," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 157991, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:74:y:2015:i:2:p:236-277. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0002-9246 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.