Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-tn8tq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-17T07:31:37.417Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘The Current Crisis of Capitalism’: What Sort of Crisis?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Jocelyn Pixley
Jocelyn Pixley*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Macquarie University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Keeping an open mind on the severity of the financial crisis and its implications for capitalism, this article focuses on the role of the state and financial institutions in monetary regulation. Questioning whether orthodox economic theorists and policy-makers share the same world view as professional and central bankers, it argues that the monetary system has in the past twenty years been stabilised through trust relations, rather than by markets. Furthermore, in this process, which was not sufficiently recognised by the practitioners, such trust relations were unable to cope with the impersonality of money. The nub of the question about a ‘crisis of capitalism’ is how nation-states can possibly control money — the most anarchic and global social relation in the world today. The article questions Keynesianism and economic liberalism alike, by asking if it is possible for states to force global banks to take the risks of lending for development. It argues that the real focus of attention needs to be the practices of complex international banking networks and the way ‘banks march in step’.

Type
Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , July 2009 , pp. 59 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bell, D. (1976) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Basic Books, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, S. (2007) ‘Despite investor reaction, reducing interest rates may not be the answer’, The Australian, 23 August 2007, p. 30.Google Scholar
Guha, K. (2007) ‘Bourse fallout to dampen global growth’, The Australian/FT, 23 August 2007, p. 23.Google Scholar
Hoenig, T. (2009) ‘Troubled banks must be allowed a way to fail’, Financial Times, 4 May 2009, p. 11.Google Scholar
Ingham, G. (2004) The Nature of Money, Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Keynes, J. M. (1936, reprinted 1964) The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, Harbinger/Harcourt, New York.Google Scholar
Nason, D. (2007) ‘Central banks act in bid to arrest slump’, The Weekend Australian, 11–12 August 2007, p. 40.Google Scholar
O'Connor, J. (1973) The Fiscal Crisis of the State, St. Martin's Press, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pixley, J. F. (2004) Emotions in Finance: Distrust and Uncertainty in Global Markets, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pixley, J. F. (2009) ‘Time orientations and emotion-rules in finance’, Theory and Society, 38, pp. 383–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, P. (2008) Modernity as Experience and Interpretation, Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society, Roth, G., Wittich, C. (eds), University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.Google Scholar
Wray, L. R. (2003) ‘The neo-Chartalist approach to money’ in Bell, S. A., Nell, E. J. (eds) The State, the Market and the Euro, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.Google Scholar