That the many attempts to theorize the crisis of 2008, the deepest crisis since the Depression, have at best been inconclusive should not be all that surprising. After all, as Michael Bernstein noted in the late 1980s, a half-century after the Great Depression there was not yet any general agreement on the causes of that economic collapse. Another quarter century later, such a consensus over that long-passed crisis has still not emerged.

Yet if we on the Left want to assess the likely outcome of the recent crash and develop a meaningful response, we need to at least clarify some of the issues involved.

Is the problem insufficient demand? And if so, why have the state and industry tolerated finance’s insistence on austerity? Is it over-accumulation and the need to devalue (destroy) excess capacity? If this were the case, wouldn’t stimulus only postpone the problem? Is it, as the Left often argues about their own countries, that industrial capital is too weak and so micro-competitiveness and “industrial strategies” are the key concern? Or is it that capital is already too strong and needs to be reigned in (whatever that might mean)? Does the problem lie in a financial sector that separated itself from the ‘real’ economy? Is the problem a lack of international coordination, suggesting the need to give greater weight to such cross-national institutions as seems underway in Europe? Or are the main conflicts and contradictions at home?