Crisis of Financialization or Crisis of Falling Rate of Profit

There exist many studies on the 2007-9 global economic crisis, now commonly named as the ‘Great Recession’, from Marxist standpoints. This paper attempts to classify and compare various existing Marxist accounts of the current crisis by applying the criteria of whether they adopt the Marxian theory of falling rate of profit. This paper argues that the Marxian theory of falling rate of profit has the merit of explaining the ultimate cause of the current crisis as well as its persistence and severity. In addition, Marxian concept of the rate of profit will be extended to analyze the phenomenon of financialization. This paper will show that any Marxist approach which negates the relevance of Marxian theory of falling rate of profit in the explanation of the current crisis will converge to Keynesianism in theory and politics, before summarizing Marxist alternative strategies to the crisis.