Classical Marxist approaches

This chapter deals with some traditional topics of classical Marxism and the neo-Marxists in order to highlight a series of financial aspects that already described, or anticipated, many of the features that are now emphasised as turning points of the new phase of capitalist development in the recent literature on financialisation. In particular, the concepts of financial capital, proposed by Hilferding to overcome the Marxian distinction between industrial, commercial and financial capital, and of monopoly capitalism, first proposed by Bukharin and Lenin and later developed by American neo-Marxists such as Baran, Sweezy and Magdoff, are analysed, showing that these new social forms are the effect of the inherent tendency of the capitalist mode of production towards concentration and centralisation of capital. The historical tendencies of monopoly capital towards financial arrangements in order to manage corporate control and the role played in this by financial oligarchies and rentiers are also discussed.