Overview

The recent financial meltdown and the resulting global recession have rekindled debates regarding the nature of contemporary capitalism. This book analyses the ongoing financialization of the economy as a development within capitalism, and explores the ways in which it has changed the organization of capitalist power. The authors offer an interpretation of the role of the financial sphere which displays a striking contrast to the majority of contemporary heterodox approaches. Their interpretation stresses the crucial role of financial derivatives in the contemporary organization of capitalist power relations, arguing that the process of financialization is in fact entirely unthinkable in the absence of derivatives. The book also uses Marx’s concepts and some of the arguments developed in the framework of the historic Marxist controversies on economic crises in order to gain an insight into the modern neoliberal form of capitalism and the recent financial crisis. Employing a series of international case studies, this book will be essential reading for all those with an interest in the financial crisis, and all those seeking to comprehend the workings of capitalism.

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9780415684088

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Reviews

'Since the great financial debacle of 2008 a blizzard of analyses has buried critical understanding beneath drifts of moral righteousness and pleas for regulatory rescue. This book clears a crucial path toward a comprehensive framework. It provides an incisive mapping of the conceptual foundations for the prevailing heterodox approaches that treat finance as merely parasitical rent. It also advances a radical Marxist understanding of the intrinsic role that finance plays in contemporary capitalism. Sotiropoulos, Milios and Lapatsioras plow a technically nuanced opening to the deeper significance of derivatives as a form of abstract risk that embodies productive social relations. As storms continue to gather on the horizon, you'll want to have this book with you.' - Randy Martin, Chair and Professor of Department of Arts and Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University 'Sotiropoulos, Milios and Lapatsioras have undertaken the ambitious task to rethink and revitalize Marx's ideas on finance and use them to decipher the nature of contemporary capitalism and the crisis emerging from it. Their argument is important and provocative, the fruit of long years of involvement in research and political activism. Their major achievement is to have constructed a unique and distinctive interdisciplinary analysis - a real analytical contribution - in the burgeoning contemporary literature on that subject. Their study is both theoretically profound and politically compelling, and especially relevant in the present critical period.' - Alexis Tsipras, Head of SYRIZA and Leader of the Greek Parliamentary Oppositiona 'Most 'Marxist' analyses of the contemporary crisis suffer from an overly simplified understanding of value and money. By contrast, this study focuses on what distinguishes Marx's critique of political economy from both classical political economy and modern heterodox approaches: value form analysis and the theory of fetishism. The authors not only use the full theoretical apparatus of all three volumes of Capital (which rarely takes place), but offer exciting theoretical enhancements such as demonstrating the connection between fictitious capital and fetishism. They also show how to make such theoretical innovations fertile for a critical analysis of the Euro crisis. In sum, this is a really thrilling piece of modern Marxist critical analysis.' - Michael Heinrich, University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Author of An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital

Author Information

Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos is Lecturer of Economics at Kingston University, London, UK. John Milios is Professor of Political Economy and History of Economic Thought at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. Spyros Lapatsioras is Lecturer of the History of Economic Thought at the University of Crete, Greece.

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