Equilibrium and crisis in Marx’s economic theory

This research line is partly inserted in the recent international debate about Marx and Non-Equilibrium Economics. From this point of view, the project has been focusing on the attractor role played by labour value and the difference between this concept and that of the equilibrium point. The principal objective has been to clarify, if indeed the concept of equilibrium exists in Marx, what kind of concept it is: a static one, as in the Walrasian tradition, or a dynamic one, like those of steady state or balanced growth. Marx’s theory, indeed, ignores the concept of full employment of the production factors and deals only with dynamic processes that are purely cumulative even though often contradictory in their interaction with one another. However, the research has also dealt with the reconstruction of Marx’s dialectical view of economic and financial crises, showing that, according to Marx, financial crises are phenomenal symptoms of the accumulation of the typical contradictions of economic crises within developed credit systems, and usually they can only anticipate and amplify the economic Bubbles and financial crises crisis effects. Moreover, Marx’s analysis is shown as a very interesting explanation of the structural tendencies to financialisation and the role of the latter in opening the way to financial crises.