Jayson F. asks
Has anyone read La Finance Capitaliste by de Brunhoff, Dumenil, Levy etc?
It does not seem to have made it into English translation.
If anyone has read it can you provide a brief synopsis? It would be much
appreciated.
I have not yet seen the book (I believe it came out in France only a few
months ago) but since no one else has replied, here is what I know. Hope
it helps.
The book is aimed at an audience similar to Dumenil's recent "Capital
Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution" -- neither high academia
(e.g. no math), nor mass consumption. Its line of analysis is also quite
similar - classical, "meat and potatoes" Marxism rooted in "late" 3rd or
4th international-like analysis. The book focuses on how finance has
emerged as a dominant force (and weak point) under neo-liberal
capitalism. Lenin and Hilferding provide important historical
foundations. A major theme is how capitalism is returning to its
pre-1930's formations and that themes like those in Hilferding's
FinanzKapital are newly relevant. {To me, there been a recent
mini-rediscovery of Hilferding, etc., much like the upsurge in
rediscovering classical analyses of imperialism. But mostly extending well
worn paths; not too much written yet that either looks afresh or tries to
reassess prior dichotomies a century old. Of course, easier said than done.}
As Jayson probably knows, the book has five articles from four sets of
authors - but it was more harmonized than most books of essays and the
authors are like-minded mainstream classical marxists, so they form a
coherent tour d'horizon. (In fact the book was the product of a seminar
given about five years ago in the basement of the Maison des Sciences
d'Hommes and I happened to have been invited to attend one of the sessions)
The table of contents (in French) is available at:
http://hussonet.free.fr/finacap-.pdf
Dumenil's first chapter is available (in French) on his website look at the
links in the left frame:
http://www.jourdan.ens.fr/levy/exindex.htm
Below is a quick translation of Dumenil's outline of his chapter. Hope
this helps.
Paul
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The first chapter initially reviews the principle aspects of the analysis
Karl Marx gives financial mechanisms and the use we make of it. This
review shades into the theses of Hilferding and Lenin. But the core of
the chaper is devoted to a strictly historical interpretation, including
up to contemporary capitalism. This includes:
- the birth of finance and its first period of hegemony
- the loss of this hegemony in the Keynesian compromise after WWII
- Finance's reconquest on hegemony through neo-liberalism.
That is quite a bit.
The detailed analysis of Marx's analytic framework is reverved for the
next chapter. That is also where we discuss the theses of the great
continuators: Hilferding and Lenin and their relation to Marx. Thus the
second chapter goes deeper into theory. There we focus on the
relationship between the theory of capital and the analysis that Marx
gives to financial mechanisms. This gets complex and one can not go into
all of the twists and turns of the analytic framework so one obviously
misses a bit the theoretical foundations provided by the study of
capitalism. But such a shortcut does not prevent providing a Marxist
interpretation of finance and it at least permits squeezing a bit of the
subtleties from a incomplete text [Capital] and from a thought still in
flux. This is just as true for Hilferding and Lenin, as for Marx although
Marx took many more theoretical detours than those who continued his work.
The first two sections are introductory in nature. The 1st section is
devoted to the definition of finance and stays within the general spirit
of Marx as our reference point. The 2nd section goes over the
principle lessons we find from Marx's analysis of financial mechanisms:
the analalytic framework and the main thesis concerning the history of
capitalism. In a way, this section summarizes the conclusions of the
following chapter. The 3rd section deals with a period of about a
century, from the end of the 19th C to the end of the 70's. The 4th
section describes contemporary capitalist finance in the neoliberal era:
the upper part of the capitalist class and the financial
institutions. The 5th section analyzes the dynamics of finance's new
hegemony. What are its methods and its future? This section mainly
focuses on the present situation and future projections.
So there is is a chronological dimension to this presentation: 1) up to
1980 2) neoliberalism in the recent past 3) where goes neoliberalism.
