Fictions of Financialization

‘Incisive, politically engaged, and theoretically sophisticated, Fictions of Financialization is a major critical contribution to debates on financialization. Bernards sets the record straight and makes a powerful case for recentring the exploitation of labour and nature in analyses of the powers of finance in contemporary capitalism. A must read for anyone concerned with the prospects of a liveable and sustainable future for all on this planet.’

‘Nick Bernards provides a comprehensive critique of the financialization discourse, offering vital insights about finance’s relationship to production, the state, colonialism, and nature. This is an urgently important intervention on the financial dimensions of capitalist social domination.’

‘Bernards’ powerful critique of the dogmatic fiction that the power of finance is crowding out ‘real’ capital is a much-needed intervention into the financialization literature and the misconception that definancialization or the democratization of finance are viable pathways for an anti-capitalist future.’

‘Whoever wants to critique global finance must directly confront capitalism first! With an accessible yet academically rigorous style, Bernards shows that the dizzying complexity of modern financial markets must be grounded in capitalism’s ecocidal and crisis-prone motion. He compellingly shows the limits of reformist calls to democratise finance by means of policy, challenging the comforting notion that the ‘excesses’ of global finance can be curbed through effective state action.’

Nick Bernards is Associate Professor of Global Sustainable Development at the University of Warwick. He is the author of A Critical History of Poverty Finance: Colonial Roots and Neoliberal Failures and The Global Governance of Precarity: Primitive Accumulation and the Politics of Irregular Work.