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A Crime Beyond Denunciation – Sandra Bloodworth
A Crime Beyond Denunciation: A Marxist Analysis of Capitalist Crisis by Sandra Bloodworth is timely book written at the end of 2008 in the midst of world capitalism heading into the worst crisis since the 1930s.
The title of the short book comes from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, in which he says:
“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange.”
Bloodworth’s book provides an introduction to the theory of Marxist economics and how capitalism works, making the argument that the system is geared toward maintaining and increasing the profits of the few at the top of society, at the expense of the majority, the working-class who will pay dearly in times of economic crisis in order to restore profit. And how crisis is built into the way capitalism works, rather than a distortion or aberration.
The middle chapters of the book covers more theoretical aspects such as the labour theory of value, the market and how the tendency of the rate of profit to fall leads capitalism into crisis time and time again. The final chapter addresses what has happened since Marx’s day and argues that these developments don’t contradict Marx’s theory, but strengthen it – something I wholeheartedly agree with.
This is a great book for those wishing to understand how capitalism works, how it goes into crisis, and a beginning to further reading on Marxist Economics.
Rating: 
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Technorati Tags: Capitalism, recession, economic crisis, Marxism, Marxist economics
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[...] requires a decent amount of prior knowledge of Marxist economics such as Sandra Bloodworth’s A Crime Beyond Denunciation and another of Harman’s books, Economics of the [...]