James Petras & Henry Veltmeyer

ABSTRACT

With the onset of the so-called “global financial crisis” in 2008 the world capitalist system suffered a shock that shook its very foundations, threatening the functioning of key financial institutions and the economies at the center of the system. However, the crisis merely served to restructure the system, destroying capital in the process but also regenerating conditions for a new round of accumulation. Finance capital, the major force behind and the principal detonator of the financial meltdown and its repercussions, recovered from its losses, and the capitalist class in its financial core was strengthened by a bailout of the financial institutions with public funds. In short, the crisis has been used to the strategic advantage of capital in its class war against labor, to further the accumulation of capital and the consolidation of capitalist rule. The point is that the crisis, like all crises, is functional for the leading elements of the capitalist class, allowing them to profit from the crisis while passing on the costs to the working class—to convert a systemic crisis (of capital and the state) into a crisis for labor.

KEYWORDS: Financial capital, financialization, global financial crisis, crisis for labor

From: International Critical Thought 2019 9 (1)

Editor: Wang Yi