Wednesday, April 30 - 1:00pm - Verney Room, Political Science Department

In the study of globalization we are constantly confronted by the complicated and diverse interaction between production and finance. This presentation explores a variety of ways that financial capitalist activity may both facilitate AND compromise/destabilize capitalist production. We will discuss the Marxian class analytic framework developed by Resnick and Wolff (see their new book Class Theory and History and elsewhere ) to explore the simultaneously supportive and antagonistic dimensions of this complex and shifting relationship between productive and financial capital. Within this framework, we will confront some of the issues which are so persistently troubling for contemporary analysts of financial capital : How we might we distinguish “speculative” financial activity from other sorts of financial activity? How do new financial instruments (such as derivatives) and institutions (such as the new mergers among banks and other financial firms) support and/or thwart the growth and stability of capitalist production.