Revitalizing Marxist theory for today's capitalism [electronic resource] / edited by Paul Zarembka, Radhika Desai.

A critique of mainstream growth theory : ways out of the neoclassical science (-fiction) and toward Marxism / Rémy Herrera -- From growth stagnation to financial crisis : unproductive labor as a missing link in mainstream theory / Robert Chernomas, Fletcher Baragar -- Crisis theory and the great recession : a personal journey, from Marx to Minsky / Riccardo Bellofiore -- 'Financial' vs. 'real' : an overview of the contradictory role of finance / Özgür Orhangazi -- Nikolai Sieber : an introduction to a political economist approved by Marx / James D. White -- Marx's economic theory / Nikolai Ivanovich Sieber -- The value and price of information commodities : an assessment of the South Korean controversy / Heesang Jeon -- Lenin's economics : a Marxian critique / Seongjin Jeong -- Class struggle in production and devalorization of capital / A.D. Magaline -- Marxism, crisis, and economic laws : a comment / Gary Mongiovi -- Crisis, Marxism, and economic laws : a response to Gary Mongiovi / Alan Freeman.

Amidst a capitalist crisis that has upturned mainstream orthodoxies, this volume underscores the importance of historical and materialist understandings of capitalist economies. Thus, fundamentally, it exposes the limitations of neoclassical economics' endogenous growth theory and how it, in fact, gropes for understandings well established within Marxism. It goes on to examine the relationship between the 'real' economy and 'finance', and also examines how mainstream accounts of stagnation and financialization suffer from an inability to distinguish between productive and unproductive labour. A related study of the financialization of the Turkish economy dovetails this analysis. The volume also questions the current understanding of the information economy and the value of knowledge on a Marxist basis. Finally, an historical re-examination of the Great Depression in light of the current Great Recession, throws new light on modern capitalisms crisis tendencies. The volume concludes with a critique of Lenin's economics, serving also to remind the reader that he is the only world leader who had deeply studied his own country's economy before eventually becoming its leader.