From Politics to Theory and Back

Debates about global economic stagnation are unlikely to resolve the pressing political questions they raise. Better to tackle the politics directly than fall back into theory battles.

Having made our way through a deep dive into Anwar Shaikh's work and then a rapid tour through long wave theory, those of us who have been following the debate between Seth Ackerman and Aaron Benanav in Jacobin about the cogency of Robert Brenner’s theory of global stagnation might forget that it all started with a political question. Earlier this year,…