Financialization, Risk and Labour

Abstract

The term ‘financialization’ has acquired significant popularity. This paper evaluates some of the leading applications and identifies the need to link the process of financialization to capitalist class relations. The link we focus on is the way in which financial derivatives impose global competitive calculation on capital, with direct implications for the disciplining of labour. This class dimension becomes the basis of a progressive, transformational politics that focuses not on growing financial fragility in capital markets, but on the ways in which financialization is socializing both accumulation and daily life.