FINANCIAL GLOBALISATION/51surged 11.7 per cent upwards on the Paris stock market. This is
striking proof of the contradictory development of capital as a whole.
Company accounts determine profit by adding up revenues earned
on various types of capital. Profit is the measure of how far a company
is able to optimise its total capital holdings over a given period of time.
However, as far as the overall reproduction of capital is concerned,
things are not so simple. Indeed, financial revenues from various
types of money-capital investments are nothing more than the cream
skimmed off the surplus value (see glossary) that is created in the
productive sector of the economy (Serfati, in Chesnais, 1996;
Husson, 1996, 1997).
Loans provided by bankers and money taken in through stock and
bond issues can clearly be seen as complements to accumulation.
They allow the productive capital cycle to unfold unfettered by
serious financial constraints. But they are also pregnant with a
number of different conflicts over the sharing out of surplus value
created in the productive process. The main quarrel is over how
much of this surplus value will, on the one hand, be kept as profit by
the company and reinvested, and how much, on the other, will go
towards servicing debts (interest) and paying out dividends on
securities.
A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF FINANCIALISATION AND DEREGU-
LATION
For the last 30 years, the growth of financial markets has been fed in
part by the profits big industrial houses have declined to reinvest in
production.
Significant proportions of surplus value created in production have
been diverted into the financial sphere since the 1980s. We are a far
cry from the predictions made by Keynes that rentiers living off their
interest would disappear through a process of 'euthanasia' (Keynes,
1936)! Labour and the productive cycle revolve more than ever
around the need to satisfy the demands of interest-bearing capital.
After the outbreak of the Mexican crisis in December 1994, IMF
head Michel Camdessus let slip, 'Globalised economy without
exchange controls makes the world a dangerous place' (Eco-Soir/Le
Soir, 17 February 1995).