Jacob Langston Porter LaBelle has multiple passions and commitments for living a life in balance—among them are photography and art as a collaborative way to enhance equity and justice with beauty and humanity. He is committed to climate and environmental sustainability work as the chief of strategic growth with Heartlands.io. LaBelle is also sustained by his deep love of the outdoors and his family and is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Alison Leal Parker works as the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s US Program. Parker has conducted human rights investigations in prisons, jails, immigration detention centers, and immigrant communities throughout the US as well as in refugee settings in Africa and Central Asia. She has conducted extensive advocacy before the governments of the United States and Europe, has testified before state legislatures and the US Congress, and is a frequent voice in the media. She also sits on the board of directors for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.

Xavier McElrath-Bey serves as executive director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, is a cofounder of the Incarcerated Children’s Advocacy Network, and serves as a Safety and Justice Challenge advisory council member for the MacArthur Foundation. In 2002, McElrath-Bey was released at age twenty-six after serving thirteen years and reflects on his experiences in his TEDx Talk “No Child Is Born Bad.”

Jose Burgos is a former Michigan juvenile lifer who served twenty-seven years on a life without parole sentence. Since his release, he has dedicated his life to helping others successfully transition home and to transforming the systems that once defined his own life.

Bernardine Dohrn is a civic leader and advocate working to protect children involved with the legal system. Dohrn champions human rights locally and internationally. In 1992, she founded the Children and Family Justice Center (CFJC) at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and served as its director for more than twenty years until her retirement in 2013.

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Chap 1: Crises and their causes 

While mainstream economists tends to talk about capitalism’s crises as aberrations rooted in the improper balancing of supply and demand in the market, Michael Roberts offers a marxist account that argues crises are endemic and caused by the tendency of the rate of profit to decline.

Chap 2: From profits to investment 

To concretize this view, and to rebuke the notion of demand’s centrality, Michael Roberts marshalls a tremendous amount of financial data to show that profits are the most accurate predictor of economic investment.

Chap 3: Cycles and waves in capitalism 

Furthering his view about the centrality of the declining rate of profit, Michael Roberts introduces readers to the Long Waves theory of capitalist cycles, examining the historical record to consider where the global economy is at currently.

Chap 4: The long depression into the 2020s 

A quick, data driven tour through the major economic developments since the great financial crisis of 2008–what MR calls the Long Depression–with an eye toward how these trends will persist into the 2020s

Chap 5: The return of inflation 

Among the most important of these developments is the return of inflation as a major factor in the global economy. Michael Roberts looks at its causes and impacts

Chap 6: The polycrisis of capitalism: global poverty 

In his view, capitalism is in the midst of a multifaceted crisis—a polycrisis, as Adam Tooze has termed it—the first aspect of which is the massive growth of global poverty because of not despite rapid GDP growth.

Chap 7: the polycrisis of capitalism: inequality 

If global poverty is the international face of this polycrisis, inequality within nations is its domestic economic corollary. Michael Roberts shows how this, too, is a product of the profit seeking nature of the system.

Chap 8: the polycrisis of capitalism: climate change and the destruction of the planet 

This chapter examines the economic contributors to, and likely consequences of, the ongoing climate crisis.

Chap 9: The polycrisis of capitalism: the end of globalisation 

Michael Roberts looks at the way that the prevailing consensus around globalisation has come undone since the collapse of 2008, and plots out what will likely replace it.

Chap 10: The exorbitant privilege of the US 

Here Michael Roberts takes an indepth look at the state of the US economy

Chap 11: The junior partners: the advanced economies of the G20 (G7+Australia and Korea, Taiwan) Following the framework set by the previous chapter, MR turns his attention to the other advanced economies of the G20

Chap 12: The periphery: Latin America (Arg, Mex, Bra, Chile, Ven) 

Same as above, but here focused on Latin America

Chap 13: The periphery: Asia (India, Indonesia) 

Here on Asia

Chap 14: The periphery: Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia, Ukraine) 

Here on Eastern Europe

Chap 15: The periphery: the MidEast and Africa (Turkey, Saudi, Iran, South Africa and Nigeria) And here on the Middle East and Africa

Chap 16: China: the exceptional economy 

Because of its growing significance, and alternative development model compared to the hegemonic powers of the global economy, China gets special attention in Michael Roberts analysis of the global economic picture

Chap 17: Imperialism 

Far from a passing concern, in this chapter Michael Roberts takes stock of the way that the economic headwinds and changing priorities have given rise to intensified political competition on the world stage, predicting more and more dangerous flash points and outright military conflicts in the years ahead.

Chap 18: The future and the options for capitalism 

A quick look at what options for arresting the ongoing crisis of profitability are on the table, and the likelihood of their implementation

Chap 19: The socialist alternative 

As a conclusion, Michael Roberts argues that if capitalism is incapable of accomplishing even the meager goals it sets for itself without falling into periodic crises, then it must be replaced as a system by its alternative: socialism.