| While Unoist political economy has been underappreciated among English speaking Marxists, its unique 'levels of analysis' approach to addressing the 'theory and history' problem offers a promising solution to what can be considered the most central theoretical problems facing the current and future development of Marxist theory. A reconsideration of the 'post-war boom and crisis' is undertaken to draw theoretical attention to the need to address a series of theoretical issues surrounding what can be called capital's 'deep structure' and its relation to capitalist history before applying crisis theory to historical analysis. Controversies over interpretations of Marx's object of analysis and method in Capital are explored, their connection to the theoretical and historical analyses of crises examined, and an Unoist alternative is presented. In particular, this work attempts to extend the subsequent developments of the Unoist Marxist tradition by Sekine and Albritton to the fields of crisis theory and 'mid-range' theory. This approach is compared to, and contrasted with, recent trends in Marxist theory towards what Unoists refer to as 'pure theory' and 'stage theory' (or 'mid-range' theory). A two-fold examination and critique of major currents in Marxian crisis theory is undertaken, first, within the theorization of capitalist accumulation, and second, in the use made of each particular theory to the concrete analysis of the post-war boom and crisis. Critiques at each of these levels (theoretical and historical) are undertaken from an Unoist perspective of the works of the Monthly Review School (Baran and Sweezy), Mandel's long waves approach, the Regulation School (Aglietta) and the Social Structure of Accumulation approach (Bowles, Gordon and Weisskopf). |
