Arrighi published an article (in 2004) that throws an interesting historical (world-systems) light on financialization (the current topic of MR, April 2008)
Giovanni Arrighi, “Spatial and other ‘Fixes’ of Historical Capitalism,” Journal of World-Systems Research, JWSR v10n2 pp527-538 (2004) Online= http://jwsr.ucr.edu/volumes/vol10/Arrighi-v10n2.pdf http://jwsr.ucr.edu/volumes/vol10/index2.html Arrighi discusses the historical transitions from Genoese, to Dutch, British, and US capitalist world-systems. Financialization plays an important part in those transitions. Arrighi writes: [quote] As I have argued in The Long Twentieth Century, persistent systemwide overaccumulation crises have characterized historical capitalism long before it became a mode of production in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Taking long periods of “financialization” across political jurisdictions as the most valid and reliable indicator of an underlying overaccumulation crisis, I identified four partly overlapping “systemic cycles of accumulation” of increasing scale and decreasing duration, each consisting of a phase of material expansion—in the course of which capital accumulates primarily through investment in trade and production—and a phase of financial expansion, in the course of which capital accumulates primarily through investment in property titles and other claims on future incomes. Contrary to the reading of some critics, the identification of these cycles does not portray the history of capitalism as “the eternal return of the same,” as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri put it (2000: 239). Rather, they show that, precisely when the “same” (in the form of recurrent systemwide financial expansions) appears to return, new spatial-temporal fixes, major switching crises, and long periods of accumulation by dispossession have revolutionized the historical geography of capitalism. Integral to these “revolutions” was the emergence of a new leading agency and a new organization of the system of accumulation.” [end quote] GK _________________________________________________________________ If you like crossword puzzles, then you'll love Flexicon, a game which combines four overlapping crossword puzzles into one! http://g.msn.ca/ca55/208_______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
