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.

Presents a close and rigorous reading of fictitious capital and the place that it holds in the Marxist exposure of the process of autonomisation and subjectivation of capital Explores the historical uniqueness of today's dynamic of capital accumulation, guided by the appropriation of fictitious profits Provides an explanation of the recent economic crises, highlighting the 2007-8 crisis, and make considerations about the gloomy prospects for capitalism in the immediate future

Autorentext

Gustavo Moura de Cavalcanti Mello is Professor in the Department of Economics and the Post-Graduate Programme in Social Policy at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil

Mauricio de Souza Sabadini is Professor in the Department of Economics and the Post-Graduate Programme in Social Policy at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. the Place of Money in Marx's Theory of Capital.- 3. Speculative Capital and the Dematerialisation of Money.- 4. Crypto-Currencies: From the Fetishism of Gold to Hayek Gold.- 5. Financialisation and the Contradictory Unity Between the Real and Financial Dimensions of Capital Accumulation.- 6. Parasitic Speculative Capital: A Theoretical Precision on Financial Capital, Characteristic of Globalization.- 7. Profit, Interest, Rentism and Fictitious Profit.- 8. the Nature and the Contradictions of the Capitalist Crisis.