The Global Structural Crisis of Capital

Abstract

John Bellamy Foster introduces our special summer issue on the "Structural Crisis of Capital," illuminating its four main characteristics as first outlined by István Mészáros in Marx's Theory of Alienation. Capital, Foster says, has found itself in a position akin to Lucian's sorcerer's apprentice: futilely attempting to control a runaway system that he had himself created, accumulating not only contradictions but outright catastrophe—with globe-spanning consequences.