This chapter argues that the best proof of the correctness of Marxism has to be its ability to answer the challenges of the modern epoch. Such a proof requires works that feature the dialectical development of a system of categories that integrally reflect the present-day state of the system of capitalist production relations, using the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete. The chapter recalls the main features of the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete as applied in Capital. The task is posed of constructing a system of categories that reflects the system of production relations of twenty-first-century capitalism. In order to fulfil this task, it is not sufficient to distinguish the various modifications of particular categories that characterise the present stage of the involution of the capitalist economy. It is necessary to develop a system of categories that reproduces the system of Capital at a new level of the development of capitalism. This is not development in the pure sense of word: to a certain extent, twenty-first-century capitalism is changing in order to survive, in a process of self-negation. This is not development (evolution), but involution.

This chapter proposes a historical-genetic system, ascending from the abstract to the concrete, specific and conditioned by socio-spatial contradictions, of the forms and methods of exploitation of the worker by capital that are inherent in the global economy of the twenty-first century. From slave-like forms of personal dependence, the development of this system proceeds via the ‘classical’ forms of capitalist exploitation of the industrial worker, to the use of methods of generating and assigning monopolistic profits (as well as imperialist profits, based on the exploitation of the periphery), giving rise to significant new relationships of the exploitation of creative activity. The authors argue that the exploitation of the creative worker involves not merely the appropriation of surplus-value, but also the appropriation of universal cultural wealth. This result, associated as a rule not with a (creative) worker but with a subject of intellectual property (the corporation), has no value, but has a certain price. This situation allows the owner of a creative corporation to obtain so-called intellectual rent.On this basis, the authors demonstrate changes in the relationship of formal and real subordination by capital not only of the workforce, but also of the human individual, in particular of her or his free time. This study permits a constructive criticism of the categories of human and social ‘capital’, which in perverse form reflect real changes in the role of human beings and in their social relations within the modern economy.

This chapter sets out to show that the methodologies of positivism and post-modernism do not permit an understanding of the modern market and capital, and doom scholars to achieving no more than descriptions of external forms. The next part of the chapter is devoted to criticism of the general expansion of economics and of its continuation, so-called ‘economic imperialism’. The authors demonstrate that in the area of theory, ‘economic imperialism’ leads to the reduction of an increasingly wide range of social and humanitarian research to a narrow functional description of the interactions between different actors within the market. In the field of practice, its effect has been to strengthen market fundamentalism. Finally, the original contributions of the authors include their analysis of the now-prevalent version of orthodox economic theory, which they designate ‘market-centrism’. As the authors see it, this approach identifies the economy in general with one of its historically possible forms, the market, and reduces all non-market economic relations to market ‘failures’.The authors’ achievements include their success in revealing the specific advantages of using the dialectical method for studying transformational systems, which are characterised by a patchiness of social time and space; in demonstrating that the historical process is fundamentally nonlinear; and in showing that a multi-scenario approach is required to comprehend it. This methodology is used to study the process of the ‘sunset’ of capitalism and the nonlinear dialectics of the evolution and involution of goods, money, and capital.

The chapter discusses the intensification of the Eurozone crisis in the aftermath of the Greek election of May 2012, particularly as concerns over the health of the Spanish economy put pressure on the value of the Euro. The ECB warned that the very design of EMU was no longer sustainable, but the building of consensus over the reform of the Eurozone’s architecture proved elusive.

The chapter discusses the circumstances under which the Greek government was forced to seek a bailout from the EU and the IMF. It is argued that the economic measures taken by the Greek government did not prove sufficient to restore conference in the international markets, leaving Greece with no alternative but to seek external rescue. It is also argued that the Eurozone itself was unprepared to deal with the severity of the unfolding Greek crisis.

The chapter discusses the spreading of the Eurozone crisis to Italy, leading to the formation of the Monti government in November 2011. The uncertainty over Italy was compounded by fears that the firepower of the EFSF would not suffice in case Italy needed rescue. The launch of the Fiscal Pact and the accelerated entry into force of the European Stability Mechanism were meant to calm fears over the ability of the Eurozone to respond to future iterations of the crisis. Yet, the opting out of the UK from the Fiscal Pact and its apparent intergovernmental nature, created sceptism over the institutional design of economic governance in the Eurozone.