Crisis of What?

Abstract

This sharp question is appropriately thought-provoking. We certainly have been living through a great capitalist crisis, really only the fourth crisis of such scale after the so-called Great Depression of 1873-96, the more familiar Great Depression of the 1930s, and the global stagflation and profitability crisis of the 1970s. The very fact that capitalism survived these earlier crises should warn us away from reverting to the old mistaken notions of economic crises heralding the final breakdown of the system. But could this at least be a major turning point? Is this at least a crisis of neoliberalism? Or of American empire? Or even perhaps of "globalization"?