A Political Economy of Contemporary Capitalism and its Crisis

Introduction

The recent financial crisis is without precedent in the post-war period, a fact acknowledged by the majority of economists. At the same time, the crisis is a “marginal moment,” which unveils and helps us rethink the workings of contemporary capitalism. The latter is mostly grasped under the term of financialization in relevant discussions.

A crucial aspect of almost all contemporary heterodox approaches is the idea that the hegemony of neoliberalism, and of the globalized financial sector of the economy, produces a peculiarly predatory version of capitalism, one with inherent tendencies towards crisis. In the relevant economic literature the term financialization denotes the phenomenon of the increasing importance of financial ...