Explaining the Economic Crisis: Portuguese Perspectives on Marxist Theory

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to acknowledge the reflections of Portuguese Marxist economists on the theory of economic crisis. Although references to Marx in Portugal date back to the 1850s, both the theoretical approaches adopted and the applied studies undertaken from this perspective were fairly superficial and belated in their appearance in this country. The relative backwardness of the Portuguese economy and other specificities of Portuguese society at that time were detrimental to an intellectual interest in the theory of economic crisis. Nonetheless, the approach adopted to this subject by some economists reveals the existence of a Marxist theoretical tradition in this semi-peripheral country especially in three main types of theories: the theory of crises in the business cycle, addressed from three different perspectives (underconsumption theories, disproportionality theories and theories based on the fall of the rate of profit); the theory of the crisis over the long cycle; and the theory of the systemic crisis. Only after World War II did the first relevant studies begin to emerge, and only after the 1970s did the academic world appear to become sensitive to the subject. Meanwhile, the context of the most recent economic and financial crisis, which began to set in after 2007–08, has revived the topicality of the theory of economic crisis, also viewed from this heterodox perspective.