While ‘credit’ and ‘debt’ have a longer history than capitalism, the power of credit money over the shoulders of the laboring classes is a relatively new phenomenon in the current phase of capital accumulation. Emerging in the Global North in the 1970s, financialized capitalism acquired a distinct character with the inclusion of the Global South in financial circuits during the 1990s, further shaped by the expanded financial inclusion of households in both the Global South and North in the 2000s. The economic crisis that began in the centers of the global financial system in 2008, spreading in 2009 and resulting in one of the largest international financial crises in history, added a new dimension to discussions on financialization and household indebtedness, manifested in the form of mortgages, student loans, consumer credits, payday loans, and more. We are currently witnessing an era marked by the escalating influence of financial actors, markets, practices, measurements, and narratives at various scales. This has led to a structural transformation affecting economies, firms (including financial institutions), states, and households as well as gendered relations of social reproduction.
This largely one-sided strategy on financialization, however, poses great obstacles to impoverished masses around the world—regular workers, but also large number of those who cannot easily and sustainably integrate into capitalist economies, along with rising figures of urban poor and the dispossessed in Global North and South. Capitalist ruling class’s lack of a clear strategy of both growth-with-jobs and its catastrophic ecological impact on the widening metabolic rift, not only requires but also pushes us for radical possible alternatives for rational economy. In other words, this brings forth the table for a renewed discussion on planning for a post-capitalist world. Reclaiming the business of statecraft, what can Marxists offer to respond the socio-economic requirements of a green transition, how can they take account of the stark geographical differences between global North and South, and how can they strategize—at national, local, and international levels—for a political transformation so drastic that can tame the power of finance through its democratization and ensure progressive social change?
This stream welcomes any current work exploring financialization, the crisis of financialized capitalism, dependent financialization in the Global South, changing financial roles of the capitalist state, and the political economy of household indebtedness in various forms. We also look forward to receiving papers on post-capitalist and socialist planning.
Historical Materialism Istanbul 2024 