The turbulence of the financial markets is often explained in terms of
the immorality of market agents, misguided economic theory or unsuitable
regulation. Even when these explanations are not false ones, they leave
aside the main problem: the nature of financial value. Starting out
from the concept of fictitious capital, Cedric Durand argues that
finance pre-empts future production, appropriating for itself wealth
that is yet to be created.
Using comparative data covering the
last four decades, he shows that the rise in private and public debt,
the enormous proliferation of financial products, the promotion of the
norm that value is created for shareholders, and even public
authorities' steps to encourage financial stability, all contribute to
the same mechanism of social and political domination.If at one time the
increasing sophistication of finance allowed the masking of the growing
disconnect between the exhaustion of the production dynamic and the
needs of capital, the 2007-8 crisis tore away this veil: while the
hegemony of finance may well be decked out in the liberal finery of the
market, each time the markets collapse, fictitious capital turns to the
violence of politics.
Fictitious Capital: How Finance is Appropriating Our Future - Cedric Durand
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