The Whole of the Storm: Money, debt and crisis in the current Long Depression

This is the prepublication version of an article which appeared in Marxism 21 and should be cited as "Freeman, A. 'The Whole of the Storm', Marxism 21 Volume 20, No.2, pp 190-224'. It investigates the mechanisms and causes of recessions and depressions, and their relation to the more spectacular financial crises which announce them. It demonstrates how the concept of the Monetary Expression of Labour Time (MELT) allows us to understand the most difficult aspect of this relation, namely how money acquires value, and thereby serves, under definite conditions which characterise recessions and depressions, as self-expanding value, so becoming an alternative use of capital to production