"A co-publication with the Social Science Research Council."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The end of the long twentieth century / Beverly J. Silver and Giovanni Arrighi -- Dynamics of (unresolved) global crisis / Immanuel Wallerstein -- The enigma of capital and the crisis this time / David Harvey -- A turning point or business as usual? / Daniel Chirot -- Marketization, social protection, emancipation: toward a neo-Polanyian conception of capitalist crisis / Nancy Fraser -- Crisis, underconsumption, and social policy / Caglar Keyder -- The crisis of global capitalism: toward a new economic culture? / Manuel Castells -- The convolution of capitalism / Gopal Balakrishnan -- The future in question: history and utopia in Latin America (1989-2010) / Fernando Coronil.

Situates the current crisis in the historical trajectory of the capitalist world-system, showing how the crisis was made possible not only by neoliberal financial reforms but by a massive turn away from manufacturing things of value towards seeking profit from financial exchange and credit. Much more basic than the result of a few financial traders cheating the system, this is a potential historical turning point.