A Political Economy of Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crisis

Since the great nancial 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 nance as merely parasitical rent. It also advances a radical Marxist understanding of the intrinsic role that nance plays in contemporary capitalism. Sotiropoulos, Milios, and Lapatsioras plow a technically nuanced opening to the deeper signicance 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, USA Sotiropoulos, Milios, and Lapatsioras have undertaken the ambitious task to rethink and revitalize Marx’s ideas on nance 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 Opposition Most “Marxist” analyses of the contemporary crisis suffer from an overly simpli- ed 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 ctitious 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 This page intentionally left blank A Political Economy of Contemporary Capitalism and its Crisis The recent nancial meltdown and the resulting global recession have rekindled debates regarding the nature of contemporary capitalism. This book analyzes the ongoing nancialization 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 nancial sphere, which displays a striking contrast to the majority of contemporary heterodox approaches. Their argument stresses the crucial role of n- ancial derivatives in the contemporary organization of capitalist power relations, suggesting that the process of nancialization 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 nancial crisis. Employing a series of relevant international examples, this book will be essential reading for all those with an interest in the nancial crisis, and all those seeking to comprehend the workings of capitalism. 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 Uni- versity of Crete, Greece. Routledge frontiers of political economy 1 Equilibrium Versus 7 Markets, Unemployment and Understanding Economic Policy Towards the rehumanization Essays in honour of Geoff of economics within social Harcourt, volume two theory Edited by Philip Arestis, Mark Addleson Gabriel Palma and Malcolm Sawyer 2 Evolution, Order and Complexity 8 Social Economy Edited by Elias L. Khalil and The logic of capitalist Kenneth E. 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