Skip to content

Will there be a boom

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis is that there will be no genuine post-COVID economic boom, despite the euphoria of the capitalist class over vaccine news and stock market rallies. The article argues that the pandemic has not created a new crisis but has dramatically deepened the pre-existing structural crisis of overaccumulation and overproduction that has characterised global capitalism since at least 2008. The "new normal" will be one of permanent scarring — mass unemployment, a wave of bankruptcies, intensified austerity, and heightened class struggle — not recovery. The ruling class has exhausted its crisis-management toolkit, and the fundamental contradiction between socialised production and private appropriation remains unresolved.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in Marx's theory of capitalist crisis, particularly the contradiction between the drive for profit and the development of the productive forces. It draws on the concept of overproduction — the existence of vast excess capacity across major industries — as the underlying disease of which COVID-19 is merely a symptom. The article also deploys the Marxist understanding of fictitious capital, noting that pre-pandemic growth was sustained only through ballooning debt, quantitative easing, and asset price inflation — a "secular stagnation" that bourgeois economists recognise but cannot explain. The analysis of "zombie capitalism" — unprofitable firms kept alive by cheap credit — is a concrete application of Marx's observation that credit masks but does not resolve the underlying contradictions of accumulation. The piece situates itself firmly within the Marxist tradition that rejects both Keynesian illusions (that the state can manage capitalism out of crisis) and MMT-style claims (that debt is merely a political choice), insisting instead that capitalist crises are intrinsic to the system's logic and cannot be resolved within its framework.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in November 2020, at a moment of apparent optimism: vaccine breakthroughs had just been announced, stock markets were hitting record highs, and bourgeois commentators were predicting a "V-shaped recovery" driven by pent-up demand. The analysis directly confronts this narrative with concrete data: the IMF's prediction of 4.4% global GDP contraction (5.8% for advanced economies, over 10% for Britain, France, Italy, and Spain); the $12 trillion in state support worldwide (12% of global output); the 40 million workers on furlough in Europe's five largest economies; the estimate that one-in-five publicly-traded US companies is a zombie firm; and the projection that 85 million jobs are threatened by automation accelerated by the pandemic. The article identifies the "K-shaped recovery" — where the wealthy rebound while workers bear permanent scars — as the best-case scenario for capital, and warns of a coming "tsunami of bankruptcies" and debt defaults that could trigger financial contagion. It also highlights the intensifying debt crisis in the Global South, where countries like Ghana and Pakistan spend 50% and 35% of government revenues respectively on debt repayments, and where 70-100 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty.

Where the Argument Continues

The article leaves several threads that are developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus. The analysis of "zombie capitalism" and the exhaustion of crisis-management tools is taken up in subsequent pieces on the inflationary spiral of 2021-2023, where the contradiction between money-printing and the falling rate of profit becomes sharper. The discussion of "digital offshoring" and the intensification of exploitation of white-collar workers is explored in articles on the platform economy and the "gigification" of professional work. The geopolitical dimension — the rise of protectionism and breakdown of global supply chains — is developed in IDOM analyses of the Ukraine war and the US-China trade conflict. The article's closing emphasis on the need for revolutionary organisation is a recurring theme across the corpus, particularly in Against the Stream episodes that examine the relationship between economic crisis and working-class consciousness.

Connections

The article sits within a broader Marxist literature on the long downturn: Robert Brenner's The Economics of Global Turbulence provides the empirical backdrop for the analysis of overcapacity and the profitability crisis since the 1970s. Andrew Kliman's work on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall offers a more rigorous theoretical framework for understanding why "secular stagnation" is not a contingent policy failure but a structural feature of late capitalism. The article's critique of MMT echoes arguments made by Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi. Within the IDOM corpus, it should be read alongside earlier pieces on the 2008 crash and the subsequent "recovery" that never was, as well as later analyses of the cost-of-living crisis and the wave of strikes that began in 2021.

Key Quotes

  1. "Even before COVID hit, the capitalist system was in a state of senile decay. The pandemic certainly exacerbated and accelerated this decline. But capitalism's crisis did not begin with coronavirus. And they will not end with it either."

  2. "The perspective, therefore, is not for a 'V-shaped' recovery. At best, as the WSJ suggests, there could be a 'K-shaped' recovery, where 'well-off people and some businesses will rebound...while lower-wage workers and some types of businesses...will bear long-term scars from the crisis'."

  3. "The number of undead corporations has multiplied thanks to the large sums of fresh credit that have been pumped into the economy by the US Federal Reserve and other central banks... A zombie apocalypse therefore lies ahead."

  4. "This is what bourgeois economists refer to as 'secular stagnation': the fact that even the meagre growth seen prior to the 2008-09 recession was only possible on the basis of using the tools that the ruling class would normally use to get out of a crisis."

  5. "But unlike with the demise of the ancien régimes, the capitalist system will not collapse of its own accord. There is no such thing as the 'final crisis of capitalism'. It must be actively and consciously overthrown."

  6. "The old world is certainly dying. And a new society is struggling to be born. What is needed, as Marx stated, is the 'midwife' of revolution. But this requires the building of a revolutionary organisation, to turn the ideas of Marxism into a material force."