Matt Vidal

Aviva Chomsky

Neil Larsen

Ramaa Vasudevan

Alex Gourevitch

Abbie Rhodes

Prospects for left renewal dominate this issue of Catalyst. Around the world, progressive forces continue to rebuild after decades retreat. In the process, fundamental questions of strategy are reemerging — from organized labor to electoral strategy to the function of culture and ideology in solidifying capitalist domination.

This issue asks not only how we might achieve power, but what we should prioritize once we have it. We question both the theory and viability of fashionable post-work utopias, give political context to the leftist victory in Colombia’s recent election, which broke with decades of right-wing rule, and analyze how socialists should think about public debt. We also turn a critical eye on C. L. R. James’s cricket memoir Beyond a Boundary and debunk the new discourse on “decoloniality,” the latest incarnation of postcolonial studies.

Vol.6, No.2

Catalyst

The crash of 2008, when financial markets came to a standstill, has had profound effects that are still being felt globally. Five years after those dramatic events, countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Cyprus are still reeling from the aftereffects of the financial crash, while the USA and the UK continue to be in the grip of a long slump. The crash exposed criminal swindles and the more rampant risky practices that have become the norm with the major banks. It has also revealed the failure of policy to curb unbridled risk taking with other people's money and the failure of policy-makers and economists to see the signs of the inevitable collapse. This book goes further to penetrate the fog of finance and explore the structure and balance of class forces that led to the crisis and its unfolding consequences. The author places the crisis in both historical and global perspectives through comparisons with the Great Depression and the focus on elaborating the role of the hegemony of the dollar over the international financial system. She argues that the crisis is as much a crisis of the neoliberal model of accumulation that finance launched as it is of the mechanisms by which dollar hegemony was preserved. This book provides an accessible point of entry to the literature on the crisis and its aftermath. It lays out a rich empirically grounded analysis of both the structural causes and the continuing repercussions of the crash of financial markets in 2008.

From the Crash of 2008 to the Great Slump

Things Fall Apart

The crash of 2008, when financial markets came to a standstill, has had profound effects that are still being felt globally. Five years after those dramatic events, countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Cyprus are still reeling from the aftereffects of the financial crash, while the USA and the UK continue to be in the grip of a long slump. The crash exposed criminal swindles and the more rampant risky practices that have become the norm with the major banks. It has also revealed the failure of policy to curb unbridled risk taking with other people’s money and the failure of policy-makers and economists to see the signs of the inevitable collapse. This book goes further to penetrate the fog of finance and explore the structure and balance of class forces that led to the crisis and its unfolding consequences. The author places the crisis in both historical and global perspectives through comparisons with the Great Depression and the focus on elaborating the role of the hegemony of the dollar over the international financial system. She argues that the crisis is as much a crisis of the neoliberal model of accumulation that finance launched as it is of the mechanisms by which dollar hegemony was preserved. This book provides an accessible point of entry to the literature on the crisis and its aftermath. It lays out a rich empirically grounded analysis of both the structural causes and the continuing repercussions of the crash of financial markets in 2008.

Ramaa Vasudevan

Books

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