The current crisis: a Marxist analysis

Abstract

Due to its breadth and depth, the current crisis requires that the diverse schools of economic thinking and analysis employ all of their analytical tools. This article is based on an integral Marxist perspective of capitalist dynamics, and focuses on a number of elements, especially the rate of profit and its trends, and the forms and functions of capital, all of which allow for insight into the phenomenon of crises in general, but in particular into the current one, as an innate aspect of the capitalist market. Through this theoretical strategy, the article proposes that the current crisis has its idiosyncrasies that are related to the hegemonic emergence of one of the forms and functions of financial capital under the special figure that is fictitious capital. The article signals that in the end, capital represents its own limitations through the concepts of over accumulation and overproduction.