Appearance and Essence: Neoliberalism, Financialization, and the Underlying Crisis of Capitalist Production
May 17, 2010 by
MHI
Filed under
Economic Crisis
By Andrew Kliman, author of Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”: A refutation of the myth of inconsistency.
1. Introduction
Some prominent Marxist and radical economists (e.g., Duménil and Lévy 2004, Husson 2008, Moseley 2008) have argued that “neoliberal” policies and increased exploitation have led to a substantial recovery of profitability since the early 1980s. They therefore dismiss the idea that a persistent fall in profitability is an underlying cause of capitalism’s latest economic crisis. Instead, they typically regard the crisis as an irreducibly financial one–that is, a crisis caused by the “financialization” of capitalism and macroeconomic difficulties resulting from it, as well as by more immediate financial-sector phenomena. This paper will challenge that thesis. Read More
