In this third and final part of the conversation, Marxist economist Michael Roberts brings the argument of his 2016 book The Long Depression into the present. He begins by rejecting the view that the system works as long as decisions are good: a system that produces for profit, he argues, delivers both vitality and grotesque inequality, and cannot continue as it is. He then describes a generation now worse off than its parents, and presents the postwar golden age as the exception, an era when profitability was high enough for capitalism to make concessions. Turning to the current cycle, Roberts considers whether the long depression that followed 2008 may be ending, whether AI could lift profitability for a time, and why he expects the law of profitability to reassert itself, possibly in the 2030s or later. The episode closes on the futures he sees ahead: a renewed period of expansion, a longer stagnation of the kind economist Robert Gordon describes, or, if working people do not change the system, fascist and military regimes and what Roberts calls barbarism, drawing on the fall of Rome. Along the way he answers Thomas Piketty’s proposal to tax billionaires.
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, 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 rejection of the view that the system works whenever decisions are good, and his case that a profit-driven system produces both vitality and grotesque inequality
– The golden age as the exception: concessions funded by high profitability, and the counter-reforms from the 1980s onward
– Inflation, the pandemic slump, and Roberts’s view that the depressionary period may be ending, with AI as a possible source of new profitability
– Who benefits from rising profits, and Roberts’s argument that working people are capitalism’s “Achilles heel”
– Roberts’s replies to Robert Gordon’s stagnation thesis and Thomas Piketty’s proposal to tax billionaires
– Roberts’s three scenarios for the future, and the fall of Rome as his image of barbarism
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 Capitalism Fails People
01:17 Welcome and Recap
01:37 Financialization and Crisis Myths
03:02 How Capitalism Works
04:06 A Generation Worse Off
06:12 Golden Age Was Exception
08:19 Inflation and Profitability Shift
10:19 Another Expansion or New Slump
12:49 Who Benefits From Profits
13:49 Working Class Alternative
16:04 Reaction and Fascism Risk
17:01 Three Future Scenarios
21:06 Rome and Barbarism Warning
23:34 Closing Thanks and Wrap
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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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