Costas Lapavitsas, Guest Blogger
This is the final installment of a four-part interview with Costas Lapavitsas, author of Financialised Capitalism: Expansion and Crisis (Maia Ediciones, 2009) and Profiting Without Producing: How Finance Exploits Us All (Verso, 2014). This part considers the solutions to the problems of financialization, pointing ultimately toward a broad anti-capitalist program and new “avenues toward socialism.” (See the earlier parts of the interview here, here, and here.)
Dollars & Sense: Do you anticipate, out of this crisis, there being a major restructuring of capitalism in high-income capitalist countries? There seem to be little signs of a dramatic change at this point, with the continuity of neoliberal policy and the financial sector still riding high. Should we be thinking of this era in terms of possibilities of a dramatic change in the way capitalism works?
Costas Lapavitsas: The crisis has not led to dramatic change from within. That’s clear now. When it was at its peak in 2008-2009, it was legitimate to expect that it might bring a profound change in outlook leading to a structural transformation of capitalism—effected from within the capitalist class, or from above, as it were.
The financializing layers have controlled policy—they have effected policy capture—and they have taken measures which basically defended the financial system and protected financialization. Financialization is continuing. It hasn’t gone away, it’s here. Many people expected financialization to come to an end because they saw financialization as a matter of policy, you see. Well, we now know that this isn’t the case. Financialization has continued, policy hasn’t changed, because the social interests embedded in finance and connected to financialization will not allow it to change. They have acted to protect themselves and have been successful at it.