ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book challenges the theories behind monetarism and social services cuts. It argues that unemployment and the decline of the industrial workforce are not so much failures in the British economy as manifestations of a new stage of industrial development which will eventually affect all the other economies of the Western world. In this stage, a highly industrialised country no longer increases its production, but through new technology continues the automation of its productive processes. The book mainly utilizes a framework derived from the writings of the nineteenth-century political economist David Ricardo. It shows that Ricardo provides important clues about the origins of economic stagnation and unemployment, and their consequences in class conflict. The book presents complex economic and social questions in a simple and comprehensible way.
