Global Crisis and Reproduction of Capital pp 45-59 | Cite as
Money Capital, Fictitious Capital and “Toxic” Capital
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Abstract
Money capital, as a seemingly autonomous entity, does not produce value. Its “profit” arises as interest and dividend from industrial profit for productively invested loans, as interest on taxes levied by the state to service the public debt and as interest from wages for consumer loans to workers. Money capital corresponds to a real value that is either productively invested or consumed privately, but which can expand fictitiously, thus creating a “toxic value”. Financial derivatives created an opaque environment and permitted an unprecedented growth of fictitious value and of its “toxic part”. They stimulated consumption and investment for a while, but they also led to an unsustainable growth of debt that was an integral part of neoliberal schemas of accumulation.
Keywords
Financial derivatives Opacity of financial system Fictitious value “Toxic value”Bibliography
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