In this first of a three-part conversation, Marxist economist Michael Roberts joins Notions of Progress to lay out the central argument at the heart of his 2016 book The Long Depression: that the 2008 financial crash was not an ordinary recession, but the opening of a longer structural depression driven by capitalism's own tendency toward falling profitability. Before getting there, Roberts traces his own path — from a Marxist conversion as a student to a three-decade career as an economist inside the City of London, a combination he treats as complementary rather than contradictory. He then lays out the materialist conception of history underlying his economics: social change driven by who owns and controls production, not by ideas or political leadership taken on their own. Capitalism, on his account, is real progress — rising productivity, rising living standards — and, at the same time, structurally exploitative and radically unequal. The episode closes on the specific technical definition of a “depression” that Parts Two and Three will test against the historical record: not simply a downturn, but one whose recovery never returns to the prior trend line.
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Michael Roberts worked in the City of London as an economist for more than thirty years before retiring. He is the author of The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009) and The Long Depression (2016), the book at the center of this conversation; joint editor of The World in Crisis (2018); author of Marx 200: His Economics (2018) and Engels 200: His Economics (2020); and, with Guglielmo Carchedi ⛑ name pending verification, Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023). His next book, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s, is expected in December 2026. He writes regularly at thenextrecession.wordpress.com.
KEY TOPICS COVERED
– Roberts's path from student Marxism to a three-decade career as a City of London economist — and why he sees the two as complementary rather than contradictory
– The materialist conception of history: why Roberts locates the drivers of social change in economic foundations rather than ideas or political leadership alone
– Capitalism as simultaneously genuinely progressive — rising productivity, rising living standards — and structurally exploitative, built on a small ownership class's control of investment
– The debate over whether inequality can be addressed through taxation and wages, or requires a different underlying ownership structure altogether
– Roberts's working definition of a “depression”: not simply a severe downturn, but one whose recovery fails to return to the prior growth trend
– Why Roberts argues the 2008 crash opened a long depression rather than an ordinary recession — the claim Parts Two and Three will test against the 1870s and 1930s
CHAPTERS
(Note: chapter list below is intentionally plain — no dashes, bullets, or characters before the timestamp. YouTube's parser only recognizes a chapter line if the timestamp is the very first thing on the line.)
00:00 Cold Open: The Contradictions of Capital
01:03 Welcome & Introduction
03:38 Michael's Background
08:38 A Marxist in the City of London
11:03 The Nature of Capitalism
16:25 Inequality & Systemic Change
20:35 The Long Depression Thesis
28:31 Next Time: Historical Parallels
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ABOUT NOTIONS OF PROGRESS
Notions of Progress is a podcast tracing ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Marshall Madow — an independent researcher whose MA in History (Cambridge) examined Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth, and whose MSc (Oxford, Saïd Business School) focused on Complexity Science and Leadership — the show surfaces the debates rather than settling them, tracing how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, and for whom.
TRANSCRIPT
Full transcript available at notionsofprogress.com
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