We live in a moment of interlocking and compounding crises that many commentators have aptly termed the ‘polycrisis.’ Rampant inequality. Unchecked climate change. A global pandemic. And now, seething international divisions and the escalatory spiral of war and state violence. As the world moves toward the end of the 2020s, each of the pieces of this mosaic are becoming impossible to ignore, but how do they all fit together? And where is it all heading?
To answer these questions, economist and marxist commentator Michael Roberts draws on his forty-plus years of experience working in various financial institutions in the City of London to provide an empirically grounded and wide ranging appraisal of the global situation.
Roberts takes readers on a tour of the contemporary global economy, first by turning back to the Great Recession of 2008, and then offering a granular look at the economic priorities and contradictions of every region of the world. His analysis unearths the fault lines left behind by our most recent financial meltdown and how they fuel the economic engines driving the ecological crisis and resurgence of inter-imperial conflict.
What emerges from this accounting of the polycrisis is the inescapable fact that capitalism’s rapacious drive toward profit over and against any geopolitical boundaries or plenary limits threatens both humanity and the planet.
Publication date: December 1, 2026
Introduction
Profitability and crises - on the underlying driver of capitalist accumulation and growth and its relation to investment and productivity
Cycles and long waves
Tracing the way that capitalist development takes the form of cycles, or waves, with varying degree of expansion or slowdown
The tepid twenties
A survey of the state of the world economy in the 2020s so far this decade
The regions
US/Canada
Europe
Asia
Latin America
Africa
Offering a more granular tour of the world’s major regions
China: the exceptional economy
Continuing on this global tour, but with a special focus on the most dynamic engine of global growth: China
Imperialism and the decline of US hegemony
Following from the analysis of China, this chapter examines the way that imperialist competition between China and the US has shaped an emerging global order with waning US influence
Polycrisis:
Inequality, Poverty,
Environment
Geopolitical conflict
Appraising the major constituent parts of what has been described as the Polycrisis—multiple, simultaneous crises in different spheres—and what its contradictions portend for the coming period
Time is running out (9k)
The final chapter considers the future of world capitalism as it enters the 2030s. Is there any realistic hope that things could change, or is humanity and the planet headed toward calamity and destruction?
Appendix: Measuring GDP
Appendix: Measuring the Rate of Profit
Appendix: A Marxist theory of inflation
Appendix: Measuring imperialist exploitation
Praise for The Long Depression:
"This book is a tour de force analysis of the current global economic crisis and the preconditions and prospects for recovery in the years ahead. Based largely on empirical data and Marx’s theory of the falling rate of profit, Roberts argues that the world economy is in a long depression due to a falling rate of profit and a massive increase of debt. He argues further that a full recovery and a return to more prosperous conditions requires a prior even more severe depression, characterized by widespread bankruptcies, which would devalue capital and restore the rate of profit and would also wipe out much of the debt. He argues that a much better alternative would be to wipe out capitalism and construct a more democratic and egalitarian economy that is not vulnerable to recurring depressions." —Fred Moseley, professor of economics, Mount Holyoke College
“With great clarity, Michael Roberts explains capitalism’s necessary proneness to profound economic crises and surveys the course of the current and previous depressions. Extensive use of empirical evidence, very accessibly presented, make his own main, Marxist argument and refutations of rival explanations persuasive. This book is at once an engaging read and a powerful political weapon.” —Rick Kuhn, honorary associate professor at the Australian National University and winner of the 2007 Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize
”Since the global economic crisis, Michael Roberts’s blog has become the indispensable source for those on the left seeking to understand and challenge capitalism. This book presents, with admirable clarity, the ideas drawn from Marxist political economy upon which his analysis rests. Anyone who wants to understand how we ended up here, where we are going, and what we should do about it must read The Long Depression.” —Joseph Choonara, author of Unravelling Capitalism: A Guide to Marxist Political Economy
“Michael Roberts has established himself as one of the foremost bloggers and theoreticians of classical Marxism. Here he takes on the economic orthodoxy, both Keynesian and neoclassical, as to the causes of the Great Recession and of depressions in capitalism going back to the nineteenth century. [While] the new normal’ and secular stagnation’ have be[come] clichés rather than explanations for the slow growth in the world economy since the 2008 crash, Michael Roberts reaches deep into the history of capitalism to set out a Marxist explanation for recent developments.” —Mick Brooks, author of Capitalist Crisis: Theory and Practice
"The Long Depression is an impressive review of the global economic crisis. Marshalling a wide range of evidence, Michael Roberts counters the facile explanations of establishment commentators and many alternative’ economists, showing instead how the origins of this crisis, and other historical examples, have clear links to declining capitalist profitability. Covering a wide range of topics, from stagnant productivity growth and high unemployment to the prospects for the BRICS countries, robots, and climate change, this book will educate readers about the outlook for capitalism today.” —Tony Norfield, author of The City: London and the Global Power of Finance
"This book is accessible and thoroughly convincing. It is essential reading for those of us living in today’s Long Depression who, like Roberts, see the need to replace capitalism with a planned economy owned in common and controlled by the majority”. —Mark Krantz, Socialist Review
"The attention to detail on specific economies, from the US, to Germany, to South Africa and more, is impressive.
The Long Depression is a good example of economics at its best.” —Better Red than Dead
