In recent years, the political development of global capitalism has been accelerating enormously. Catastrophic incidences and new crises demanding our daily attention and reflection are taking turns at rapid pace. As a journal for critical social science and a political project of the left, it has become more and more difficult for PROKLA to keep up with the most recent developments and offer in-depth analyses that are ‘up to date’. With this article, we take up one of the journal’s earlier traditions and publish an extensive discussion held among the editors on this matter. Building on the many contributions to Marxist crisis theory that have been published in PROKLA since the early 1970s, we try to bring seemingly disparate developments together and discuss topics such as the financial crisis of 2008, the rise of new rightwing movements and parties in Europe and the Americas, the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and the devastating effects of eco-imperalism within one framework.