Fictions of Financialization : Rethinking Speculation, Exploitation and Twenty-First-Century Capitalism

Incisive, politically engaged, and theoretically sophisticated’ Ilias Alami, author of Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging MarketsFor decades, many people on the left have decried the finance sector as the main culprit for the toxic effects of capitalism. Only by confronting finance, so the story goes, can there be any hope for a more sustainable economy. Nick Bernards makes the case against the dominance of this story. Arguing that the concept of financialization is ill-understood, Bernards shows how we risk glossing over the true nature of capitalism when focusing on the mythical powers of finance. Rather than indulging in the harmful fantasy that confronting the financial elite will fix the economy, Bernards provides an alternative approach. Starting from the premise that risk and speculation are core to the operation of all capital and not just the hallmark of a perverted financial sector, this Marxist reading of the interconnection between capitalism’s uneven exploitation of labour and nature and financial capital lays the groundwork for a much-needed view of the real powers of finance.