Fictions of Financialization
Rethinking Speculation, Exploitation and Twenty-First-Century Capitalism
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'Incisive, politically engaged, and theoretically sophisticated' Ilias Alami, author of Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets
For 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.
About this Author
Nick Bernards is Associate Professor of Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick. He is the author of A Critical History of Poverty Finance: Colonial Roots and Neoliberal Failures and The Global Governance of Precarity: Primitive Accumulation and the Politics of Irregular Work.
Reviews
'Incisive, politically engaged, and theoretically sophisticated, Fictions of Financialization is a major critical contribution to debates on financialization. Bernards sets the record straight and makes a powerful case for recentring the exploitation of labour and nature in analyses of the powers of finance in contemporary capitalism. A must read for anyone concerned with the prospects of a liveable and sustainable future for all on this planet.'
'Nick Bernards provides a comprehensive critique of the financialization discourse, offering vital insights about finance's relationship to production, the state, colonialism, and nature. This is an urgently important intervention on the financial dimensions of capitalist social domination.'
'Bernards' powerful critique of the dogmatic fiction that the power of finance is crowding out 'real' capital is a much-needed intervention into the financialization literature and the misconception that definancialization or the democratization of finance are viable pathways for an anti-capitalist future.'
'Whoever wants to critique global finance must directly confront capitalism first! With an accessible yet academically rigorous style, Bernards shows that the dizzying complexity of modern financial markets must be grounded in capitalism's ecocidal and crisis-prone motion. He compellingly shows the limits of reformist calls to democratise finance by means of policy, challenging the comforting notion that the 'excesses' of global finance can be curbed through effective state action.'
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