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British Capitalism Before the Crisis

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British Capitalism After the Crisis

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Abstract

During the 1970s, the advanced capitalist economies entered into a period of deep ‘stagflation’. The 1970s crisis reflected the unravelling of the social compact which had underpinned the Bretton Woods settlement. The crisis was ‘resolved’ through a series of neoliberal reforms designed to discipline labour and re-establish the primacy of market forces. A new growth model of ‘privatised Keynesianism’ subsequently emerged in Britain, which maintained aggregate demand through increasing private debt across the economy. Whilst ‘privatised Keynesianism’ generated growth in the pre-crisis conjuncture, it also rendered Britain peculiarly exposed to the 2008 financial crisis. The chapter argues that whilst the ‘growth model perspective’ provides a useful characterisation of pre-crisis British capitalism, it also suffers from a number of theoretical limitations.

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    Scott Lavery

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Lavery, S. (2019). British Capitalism Before the Crisis. In: British Capitalism After the Crisis. Building a Sustainable Political Economy: SPERI Research & Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04046-8_2

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