As the current economic crisis, sometimes called the Great Recession, unfolds, a new phase in the history of capitalist development has clearly begun. three changes have come together. First, the economic and financial crisis has conclusively discredited neoliberalism, the free-market dogma responsible for the development crisis of recent decades. Second, growth in the rich countries, whose ‘Long Boom” of the 1950s and 1960s ended long ago in the persistent ‘Long Downturn” (Brenner, 2006), slowed to a near halt. By contrast, though most poor countries remained mired in the stagnation that hd plagued them since the onset of neoliberalism in the 1980s, some of them, the so-called emerging economies, continued the rapid growth they had recently enjoyed, at least beginning to narrow the enormous gap in incomes and welfare with rich countries. Closing that gap had been the goal of the development project launched after World War II. For decades, substantial progress on it had eluded all but a few rather small countries, such as South Korea and Taiwan. Now, however, economic vibrancy has become possible for more countries, including two – China and India – that between them account for a third of humanity. This is a momentous development even though it leaves out too many countries and too many people even in the rapidly developing countries. Finally, less spectacular, but equally important, has been the turn during the 2000s, primarily in Latin America, to progressive policies that flout the tenets of neoliberalism and put popular welfare at the centre of the development agenda once again. This political shift has signalled at least a start in confronting the legendary inequality of the region.
