Thank you very much Paul. Jayson Funke Graduate School of Geography Clark University 950 Main Street Worcester, MA 01610
-----Original Message----- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Paul Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 3:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] de Brunhoff, Dumenil & Levy 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 --------------------------------------------------- >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.
