Capitalism at a crossroads:

authoritarian state capitalism or radical transformation?

Classical demand or supply-side economic policies have proved unable to overcome this contradiction. In this respect, the global financial crisis of 2008 marks an economic turning point that has made the capitalist dilemma ever more apparent. Despite massive government rescue packages and a paradigm shift in monetary policy (zero and negative interest rates, massive bond purchases by central banks), no sustainable economic recovery could be achieved. On the contrary, these measures led to a further increase in public debt relative to economic output and the emergence of new speculative bubbles.

Or, in the famous words of Marx and Engels: „How does the bourgeoisie overcome crises? On the one hand, by the forced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets and the more thorough exploitation of old ones. And how? By preparing bigger and more terrible crises and by reducing the means of preventing crises“.

Faced with this dilemma of capitalist production, „The Great Depression 2.0“ points to two possible paths of development: increasingly authoritarian state control of the economy or the overthrow of capitalist relations of production.