An updated edition of a groundbreaking work on the global financial
crisis from a postfordist perspective.
The 2010 English-language edition of Christian Marazzi's The Violence
of Financial Capitalism made a groundbreaking work on the global
financial crisis available to an expanded readership. This new edition
has been updated to reflect recent events, up to and including the G20
summit in July 2010 and the broad consensus to reduce government
spending that emerged from it. Marazzi, a leading figure in the European
postfordist movement, argues that the processes of financialization are
not simply irregularities between the traditional categories of wages,
rent, and profit, but rather a new type of accumulation adapted to the
processes of social and cognitive production today. The financial
crisis, he contends, is a fundamental component of contemporary
accumulation and not a classic lack of economic growth. Marazzi shows
that individual debt and the management of financial markets are
actually techniques for governing the transformations of immaterial
labor, general intellect, and social cooperation. The financial crisis
has radically undermined the very concept of unilateral and multilateral
economico-political hegemony, and Marazzi discusses efforts toward a new
geomonetary order that have emerged around the globe in response.
Offering a radically new understanding of the current stage of
international economics as well as crucial post-Marxist guidance for
confronting capitalism in its newest form, The Violence of Financial
Capitalism is a valuable addition to the contemporary arsenal of
postfordist thought. This edition includes the glossary of the esoteric
neolanguage of financial capitalism--"Words in Crisis," from "AAA" to
"toxic asset"--written for the first English-language edition, and
offers a new afterword by Marazzi.
