The result of the rise of finance over the past 30 years has been the inescapable expansion of speculative (fictitious) capital across burgeoning financial markets of all shapes and sizes - from pension funds to forward commodities. This has limited the expansion, extension and restructuring of productive capital within and across national borders, with the economies of the poorest countries being especially hard hit. Yet the diagnoses and prognoses of the IFIs [international financial institutions] always take sound (and liberalised) finance as their first and foremost call upon policy making, further expanding the realm of fictitious capital and its debilitating effects. […]
A major stumbling block, if not prejudice, is the idea… that economics or the categories of political economy are reductionist and/or deterministic without allowing the material and cultural to be satisfactorily integrated…. Of course, this can be the case especially with the formal mathematical models and statistical techniques of mainstream economics. But categories such as ‘capital’, ‘commodity’ and ‘value’ are traditionally understood as reflecting economic and social relations and content…. Both capital and capitalism must be understood as material and cultural categories in exposing and contesting US hegemony.
Ben Fine (‘Examining the Ideas of Globalisation and Development Critically: What Role for Political Economy?’)
misslittleminimalist reblogged this from citizenalien
citizenalien posted this
