Originally published in Marxism 21, this article investigates the mechanisms and causes of recessions and depressions, and their relation to the more spectacular financial crises which announce them.
It demonstrates how the concept of the Monetary Expression of Labour Time (MELT) allows us to understand the most difficult aspect of this relation, namely how money acquires value, and thereby serves, under definite conditions which characterise recessions and depressions, as self-expanding value, so becoming an alternative use of capital to production.
The article is accompanied by a slideshow from a presentation at Renmin University in 2016