Profiting Without Producing
How Finance Exploits Us All
Published on 5. November 2013
352 pages
978-1-78168-506-8 (ISBN)
Description
Financialization is one of the most innovative concepts to emerge in the field of political economy in the last three decades, although there is no agreement on what exactly it is. Profiting Without Producing defines financialization in terms of the fundamental conduct of non-financial enterprises, banks and households. Its most prominent feature is the rise of financial profit, in part extracted directly from households through financial expropriation.
Financialized capitalism is prone to crises, none greater than the gigantic turmoil that began in 2007. Using abundant empirical data, the book establishes the causes of the crisis and discusses the options broadly available for controlling finance.
Financialized capitalism is prone to crises, none greater than the gigantic turmoil that began in 2007. Using abundant empirical data, the book establishes the causes of the crisis and discusses the options broadly available for controlling finance.
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Edition
Ebook UK & RoW
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Reflowable
ISBN-13
978-1-78168-506-8 (9781781685068)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
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Book
11/2013
Verso Books
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Person
Costas Lapavitsas is a Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is a member of Research on Money and Finance (RMF). He is the lead author of the new RMF report Breaking Up? A Route Out of the Eurozone Crisis. His previous publications include Crisis in the Eurozone; Social Foundations of Markets; Money and Credit; and Political Economy of Money and Finance.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Part 1: Financialization: Theoretical Analysis and Historical Precedents
- 1. Introduction: The Rise and Rise of Finance
- A peculiar crisis
- The context and structural aspects of financialization
- Financial markets and banks
- Expanding derivatives markets, dominant banks
- Organizing the analysis
- 2. Analysing Financialization: Literature and Theory
- Roots in Marxist political economy
- Other approaches to financialization
- An approach that draws on classical Marxism
- 3. The First Wave of Financial Ascendancy: Marxist Theoretical Responses
- The rise of finance at the end of the nineteenth century
- The intellectual and political context of Hilferding's analysis of capitalist transformation
- The structure of Hilferding's theoretical analysis
- The importance of starting with a theory of money and credit
- Stock markets
- Finance capital and trading blocs
- Crises
- Imperialism
- Part 2: Political Economy of Financialization
- 4. The Monetary Basis of Financialized Capitalism
- Monetary features of financialization
- Marxist monetary theory in relation to contemporary money
- Contemporary valueless domestic money: Fiat money, private credit money, and state-backed central bank money
- Domestic valueless money in the course of financialization: Electronic money
- Contemporary valueless world money: The dollar as quasi-world-money
- 5. The Fluid Terrain of Financialization: Finance and the Capitalist Economy
- A system of finance requires capitalist social conditions Interest-bearing and loanable money capital
- Finance and real accumulation: A two-way relationship
- Capital markets, investment banks, institutional investors, and the design of the financial system
- 6. The Conundrum of Financial Profit
- Financial profit: Multiple forms underpinned by heterogeneous social relations
- Profit in Marx's economics
- Pre-capitalist profit and financial profit
- Financial profit from advancing loans: The importance of leverage (gearing)
- Financial profit from holding equity: Shareholders compared to lenders of money
- Financial profit from trading financial assets
- Part 3: Empirical and Historical Features of Financialization
- 7. The Context of Financialized Accumulation
- Analysing financialization in historical terms
- The path of accumulation in the course of financialization: Characteristic trends
- The state shapes the 'channel' of financialized accumulation
- 8. Underlying Tendencies and Variable Forms: Mature and Subordinate Financialization
- Distinguishing between real and financial accumulation
- Financial accumulation in the aggregate
- Core relations of financialization in mature countries
- Subordinate financialization in developing countries
- Appendix
- 9. Tending to Crisis: Gigantic Turmoil Breaks Out in 2007
- Marx on finance and crises
- A vast bubble, primarily in the US: 2001-2007
- The bubble bursts, general crisis follows: 2007-2009
- The state intervenes to prevent the worst
- US leads the way, 2008-2009
- The crisis becomes fiscal: The eurozone in turmoil
- European states intervene with limited results
- 10. Controlling Finance
- The trajectory of regulation after the Second World War: Market-negating regulation
- Regulation under conditions of financialization: Market-conforming regulation and persistent market negation
- The failure of private banking and the difficulty of re-introducing market-negating regulation
- Confronting financialization: Some concluding remarks
- Bibliography
