The Politics of Imperial Finance

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is not to summarize the previous chapters but to draw together some of the lines of argument presented in the various essays and to reflect on some of their broader implications in terms of political contestation, crisis and democracy both historically and today. It does so by analysing the relationship between American empire and global finance along three fundamental axes: (i) the distinctive interaction between class and finance in the American social formation; (ii) the mutually constitutive relationship between the state and financial markets; and (iii) the processes of financial internationalization that have entailed not only the externalization of American financial forms and practices but also the internalization of a variety of heterogeneous and geographically dispersed practices and relations into spaces structured by American rules and institutions.