The issue consists of four parts. The first, unusually for us, is a collection of previously published articles from Workers Power and Fifth International. Each of them deals with the financial crisis as it emerged at the time. As each article was intended to be self-standing and not to form part of a more general publication, several of them attempt not only a straightforward explanation of the events that shook the credit and banking system, but also a popular exposition of the basic Marxist theory of credit, overaccumulation and crisis. There is therefore necessarily some repetition, but we decided not to remove it because to do so would harm the flow of the argument in the articles. We also want to reprint each article as a matter of record. We believe they show that, notwithstanding the occasional inaccuracy or oversimplification, in general we understood the magnitude of the unfolding events, that we explained their meaning and their likely impact on the class struggle, and that we avoided both 'catastrophist' hysteria and its opposite and logical complement  complacent faith in the capacity of the system to avert crisis.

The events of the last year further drew our attention to the fact that, notwithstanding the sheer volume of material on the subject, attempts to deliver a popular explanation of Marx's theory of crisis are few and far between. The second part of this journal  Richard Brenner's 'Karl Marx's Theory of Crisis: A Short Overview'  is a much needed corrective to this, offering as it does an accessible introduction to the Marxist theory of crisis. Brenner uses the experience of the last year to demonstrate what Marx meant when he first set out the key elements of his theory of overaccumulation and breakdown in the Grundrisse 150 years ago. It shows that Marx's law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is fundamental to Marx's theory, how Marx's refutation of the principal objections to his theory cast an uncannily relevant light on current economic developments, and how Marx's famous law explains the operation of trade-industrial cycles of 7-10 years culminating in violent crises of devaluation and recession.

The third part of this journal focuses on another fundamental Marxist theory and its applicability today: Lenin's famous theory of imperialism. Michael Probsting's article has its origins in a debate among supporters of this journal, which culminated in a split in 2006, over the extent to which the current globalisation phase of imperialism continues to manifest clear signs of a tendency to stagnation of the productive forces in the imperialist countries and thus in the global system. Examining what

Lenin meant by imperialism as capitalism in its epoch of decline, and as "moribund and decaying", the article asks if Lenin's theory still provides us with an accurate analysis of a world which has seen strikingly high GDP growth rates in some countries over recent years. It considers the Marxist approach to concepts such as the decline of a system, stagnation, productive forces and GDP, before setting out the statistical evidence that since the end of the post-war boom the key elements of Lenin's composite model continue to exist, and that the underlying tendency to stagnation has not been overcome.

The final part of this journal is of more explicitly polemical intent. Faced with the continuing if increasingly quixotic attempts of former supporters of this journal, now grouped around the publication permanent revolution, to claim that we are in the midst of a new long upward wave in the world economy, Richard Brenner replies. First examining the very concept of 'long waves', he argues that it is a suspect and non-Marxist notion, defends Trotsky from the charge of being a long wave theorist, and demonstrates how attempts by Mandel and others to meld Kondratiev's long cycles theory with Marxism have ended in confusion. Then he develops a critique of the permanent revolution group's analysis of the financial crisis, showing how their schematic conception of the long upward wave blinded them to unfolding events and prevented them from communicating their meaning to the working class. Finally, he examines what the current crisis tells us about the real essence of the latest globalisation phase of capitalism.

Each of the parts is self-contained, and they stand alone as separate articles, with the exception that part four inevitably assumes some knowledge of the Marxist theory of crisis, which is fully explained in part two. Only part four is explicit in its polemical and partisan content. However, all four sections of this issue have been written not only in an attempt to examine the unfolding economic crisis but also to set the record straight. We have recently been accused of "catastrophism"  projecting an indefinite and unmediated capitalist crisis, and universal revolutionary ferment  and this charge naturally intensified since the split with what has become the permanent revolution tendency in 2006. We always contested this extravagant and self serving claim; we never asserted that capitalism was in a permanent crisis facing imminent collapse, nor that the class struggle would in this period simply develop 'upward ever, backward never', unaffected by the deep-seated crisis of working class leadership. Rather we analysed the political and economic contradictions of globalisation, from the uneven and partial character of its so-called "long boom", to the neoliberal offensive it unleashed on the working class and poor, and the resistance this has sparked which dominated the political terrain for much of the last decade.

Noting how these conditions had created a number of political crises in states across the last decade, we felt our analysis had a political significance, in that it turned our attention to the expectation of further crises, posing attendant questions of revolutionary strategy and opportunity. This issue's focus on explaining theoretically, analytically and empirically our changing times  and defending our long held views onthese questions  has implications for Marxist strategy and tactics that we look forward to discussing further in future issues.