Content area
Full Text
Capital Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution, by Gérard Duménil and Dominique Levy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004. $55.00. Pp. vi. 249.
The terms "neoliberalism" and "globalism" play an important role in current economic discussion. Even though there are numerous books purporting to deal with these topics, few of them offer a solidly researched, historical point of view. Gérard Duménil and Dominique Levy, who have written together for many years on the evolution of the capitalist economy, have published just such a timely book.
As the tide indicates, the book places the neoliberal economy in proper historical context. It consists of three parts: the first deals with the structural crisis of the 1970s and 1980s, the background for the current neoliberal era; the second analyzes the law of finance that characterizes the neoliberal economy after the structural crisis; finally, the third part considers the historical meaning of the neoliberal economy by tracing the evolution of the capitalist economy through the 20th century.
Duménil and Levy begin by examining the structural crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Above all, this crisis was characterized by substantial growth of unemployment, the result of the slowdown of accumulation accompanied by a decline in the rate of profit. The slowdown of technological progress was ultimately responsible for the crisis. Through their attention to the different patterns of technical change, the authors also discuss why the problem of unemployment was more serious in Europe than in the United States. Finally, they consider whether or not the 1980s and 1990s marked the end of the crisis. This is a hard question to answer, since a strong...