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. Read more...