Marx's method and the global crisis

Abstract

In the introduction to the Grundrisse, Marx describes a method of political economy involving an ‘obvious’ ordering of analysis. This has seldom been followed. This paper argues that doing so has the potential to deepen understandings of the post-2007 economic crisis. Presenting an analysis of the crisis in terms of a progressive movement from the abstract and general to the concrete and specific can avoid an empiricist eclecticism while challenging a tendency within existing Marxist scholarship to make too big a conceptual leap from the analysis in Marx's Capital to that of the particular crisis. It can incorporate insights from other perspectives while better explaining the relationships between the variety of contributing factors and their social bases.

Keywords:

• Marx
• method
• crises

Acknowledgements

For their helpful comments, I would like to thank the editor, an anonymous referee, and the participants at the Historical Materialism Conference, London, 2010, where an earlier version of this paper was presented.