A Marxist in the City of London: Michael Roberts on The Long Depression
Apple Podcasts 
Spotify 
Deezer In this first of a three-part conversation, Marxist economist Michael Roberts joins Notions of Progress to lay out the central argument of his 2016 book The Long Depression: that the 2008 financial crash was not an ordinary recession, but the opening of a longer structural depression driven by capitalism’s own tendency toward falling profitability. Before getting there, Roberts traces his own path — from a Marxist conversion as a student to a three-decade career as an economist inside the City of London, a combination he treats as complementary rather than contradictory. He then lays out a materialist conception of history underlying his economics: social change driven by who owns and controls production, not by ideas or political leadership taken on their own. Capitalism, on his account, is real progress — rising productivity, rising living standards — and, at the same time, structurally exploitative and radically unequal. The episode closes on the specific technical definition of a “depression” that Parts Two and Three will test against the historical record: not simply a downturn, but one whose recovery never returns to the prior trend line.
About Our GuestMichael Roberts worked in the City of London as an economist for over 30 years before retiring. He is the author of several books: The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009); The Long Depression (2016), the book at the center of this conversation; World in Crisis (joint editor, 2018); Marx 200: His Economics (2018); and Engels 200: His Economics (2020). With Guglielmo Carchedi, he co-authored Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023). His new book, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s and Beyond, is forthcoming in December 2026. He writes regularly at thenextrecession.wordpress.com.
Show Notes & Timestamps00:00 Cold Open: The Contradictions of Capital
01:03 Welcome & Introduction
03:38 Michael’s Background
08:38 A Marxist in the City of London
11:03 The Nature of Capitalism
16:25 Inequality & Systemic Change
20:35 The Long Depression Thesis
28:31 Next Time: Historical Parallels
Key Concepts & TermsMaterialist Conception of History — Roberts’s term, following Marx, for the view that social and historical change is driven primarily by a society’s economic foundations — who owns and controls production — rather than by political leadership or ideas considered on their own.
Means of Production — The productive assets of an economy — factories, companies, capital — whose ownership Roberts identifies as the key dividing line of capitalist society: control over investment and employment decisions rests with those who own them.
Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall — The Marxist thesis, central to Roberts’s economics, that capitalism’s drive to invest and compete generates a long-run downward pressure on profitability — the mechanism Roberts identifies behind the 2008 crash and the depression that followed it.
Long Depression — Roberts’s working definition, distinct from an ordinary recession: a period of low growth and low investment whose recovery never returns the economy to its prior trend line — a category he applies to the 1870s, the 1930s, and, in this episode’s argument, the period after 2008.
Fascinating Historical InsightsA Marxist Inside the City of London — Roberts describes becoming a Marxist as a university student in the late 1960s and early ’70s, after encountering the materialist conception of history in economic-history books whose authors, he later discovered, were Marxists — and then spending the next three decades working as an economist for major financial institutions and banks, a combination he frames as a productive vantage point rather than a contradiction.
A Depression Capitalism Could Not Exit on Its Own — Roberts recounts the Great Depression of 1929–41/42 as roughly thirteen years in which employment, production, and investment collapsed and stayed collapsed — government stimulus and profitability measures included — until wartime state control of investment, financed partly through war bonds, finally broke the depression.
Progress and Exploitation as a Single Argument — Roberts presents Marx’s assessment of capitalism as genuinely two-sided: it raised productivity and living standards far beyond feudal society, and it was, at the same time, built on the exclusion of most people from any control over the investment decisions shaping their lives.
A Very Small Number of Decision-Makers — Roberts points to a concentration of ownership — by his account, roughly 0.01% of the U.S. population controlling the largest companies and assets — and extends the point explicitly to today’s dominant AI, technology, banking, and energy firms.
Resources & Further ReadingPrimary Sources
- Michael Roberts, The Long Depression (2016) — the book at the center of this conversation.
Works Discussed
- Michael Roberts, The Great Recession: A Marxist View (2009)
- Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi (eds.), World in Crisis (2018)
- Michael Roberts, Marx 200: His Economics (2018)
- Michael Roberts, Engels 200: His Economics (2020)
- Michael Roberts and Guglielmo Carchedi, Capitalism in the 21st Century (2023)
- Michael Roberts, Time Is Running Out: The World Economy in the 2020s and Beyond (forthcoming, December 2026)
Marx’s own writings on the materialist conception of history and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall underlie this conversation throughout; Roberts characterizes them in his own words rather than through a specific cited edition, and no specific Marx title or page is cited in this episode.
Coming Up NextPart Two goes back to where this pattern begins: the depression of the 1870s, traced forward through the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the rival explanations economists on the left and right have offered for both. Part Two lands in two weeks.
Listen & SubscribeWebsite — notionsofprogress.com
Email: marshall@notionsofprogress.com
About the ShowNotions of Progress is a podcast tracing ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Marshall Madow — an independent researcher whose MA in History (Cambridge) examined Georges Sorel’s epistemology of myth, and whose MSc (Oxford, Saïd Business School) focused on Complexity Science and Leadership — the show surfaces the debates rather than settling them, tracing how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, and for whom.