How finance is a mechanism of social and political domination The 2007–08 credit crisis and the long recession that followed brutally exposed the economic and social costs of financialization. Understanding what lay behind these events, the rise of “fictitious capital” and its opaque logic, is crucial to grasping the social and political conditions under which we live. Yet, for most people, the operations of the financial system remain shrouded in mystery. In this lucid and compelling book, economist Cédric Durand offers a concise and critical introduction to the world of finance, unveiling the truth behind the credit crunch. Fictitious Capital moves beyond moralizing tales about greedy bankers, short-sighted experts and compromised regulators to look at the big picture. Using comparative data covering the last four decades, Durand examines the relationship between trends such as the rise in private and public debt and the proliferation of financial products; norms such as our habitual assumptions about the production of value and financial stability; and the relationship of all this to political power. Fictitious Capital offers a stark warning about the direction that the international economy is taking. Durand argues that the accelerated expansion of financial operations is a sign of the declining power of the economies of the Global North. The City, Wall Street and other centres of the power of money, he suggests, may already be caked with the frosts of winter.

Drawing on a wide range of case studies, Cultures of Financialization argues that, in our age of crisis, the global economy is more invested than ever in culture and the imagination. We must take the idea of 'fictitious capital' seriously as a way to understand the power of finance, and what might be done to stop it.

During a tumultuous period when financial speculation began rapidly to outpace industrial production and consumption, Victorian financial journalists commonly explained the instability of finance by criticizing its inherent artifice—drawing persistent attention to what they called “fictitious capital.” In a shift that naturalized this artifice, this critique of fictitious capital virtually disappeared by the 1860s, replaced by notions of fickle investor psychology and mental equilibrium encapsulated in the fascinating metaphor of “psychic economy.” In close rhetorical readings of financial journalism, political economy, and the works of Dickens, Eliot, and Trollope, Kornbluh examines the psychological framing of economics, one of the nineteenth century’s most enduring legacies, reminding us that the current dominant paradigm for understanding financial crisis has a history of its own. She shows how novels illuminate this displacement and ironize ideological metaphors linking psychology and economics, thus demonstrating literature’s unique facility for evaluating ideas in process. Inheritors of this novelistic project, Marx and Freud each advance a critique of psychic economy that refuses to naturalize capitalism.

A major rereading of Marx’s critique of political economy Now a classic of Marxian economics, The Limits to Capital provides one of the best theoretical guides to the history and geography of capitalist development. In this edition, Harvey updates his seminal text with a substantial discussion of the turmoil in world markets today. Delving into concepts such as “fictitious capital” and “uneven geographical development,” Harvey takes the reader step by step through layers of crisis formation, beginning with Marx’s controversial argument concerning the falling rate of profit and closing with a timely foray into the geopolitical and geographical implications of Marx’s work.

This is an excerpt, concentrating on Marxian economics, from the 4-volume dictionary of economics, a reference book which aims to define the subject of economics today. 1300 subject entries in the complete work cover the broad themes of economic theory.

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Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of ‘capital as power’ and a new history of the ‘capitalist mode of power’.

This unique book presents the contemporary achievements in management research and managerial practice of Chinese enterprises. Featuring a collection of keynote and plenary speeches by well-known international scholars and CEOs of multinational and national corporations, this book puts forth their solutions to management challenges from both China''s reality and global concerns. Comprehensively discussed and examined, the various topics being broached are strategic management; organizational behaviors; accounting and finance; management science; information and technology management; as well as innovations. This book not only highlights the cutting-edge findings of management research in China but is also a reflection of the changes of management theory and applications in the face of China''s economic reform and open-door policy; hence making it a useful resource for readers interested in China''s management and economic development.

How would Marx have understood twenty-first-century capitalism? For Buzgalin and Kolganov, the answer lies in a theoretical investigation of how and why the fundamental elements of capitalism– commodities, money and capital – have changed since the publication of Marx’s Capital more than 150 years ago. Introducing the concepts of social creativity, markets for simulacra and virtual fictitious capital – Buzgalin and Kolganov offer a recovery and development of Marx’s understanding of social transformations. Twenty-first century capitalism not only demonstrates Marxism’s relevance to the core economic questions of our time and its superiority over neoclassical economics, but it leads English-language readers into the ‘undiscovered country’ of Soviet and post-Soviet critical Marxism. How might modern Marxism respond to the contemporary challenges of the commodification of knowledge and information? And can it arrive at something resembling a Capital for the twenty-first century? This accessible and comprehensive account is essential reading for those wanting to understand the problems of the modern economy.

This book provides an original account of financialisation and outlines the creation of fictitious profits as a basis to describe the present phase of capitalist accumulation in the neoliberal era. Making innovative theoretical elaborations on Marx’s notion of fictitious capital, Financial Speculation and Fictitious Profits offers a dialectic analysis of the increasing financialization during this crisis-ridden period based on the original concepts of fictitious profit and fictitious wealth. Combining the most important research from over twenty years of scholarly inquiry with groundbreaking new studies, Financial Speculation and Fictitious Profits is more than a collection of texts by political economists on a contemporary topic; it is a synthesis of an intense process of academic production that began with work of Karl Marx and has resulted in the formulation of a differentiated interpretative perspective on the contemporary evolution of capitalist crisis.