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Stolen: How Finance Destroyed the Economy and Corrupted Our Politics
For decades, it has been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, booming banks, rising house prices and cheap consumer goods propped up living standards in the rich world. Thirty years of rocketing debt and financial wizardry had masked the dep underlying fragility of finance-led growth, and in 2008 we were forced to pay up.
The decade sine has witnessed all kinds of morbid symptoms, as all around the rich world, wages and productivity are stagnant, inequality is rising, and ecological systems are collapsing.
Stolen is a history of finance-led growth and a guide as to how we might escape it. We've sat back as financial capitalism has stolen our economies, our environment and even the future itself. Now, we have the opportunity to change course. What happens next is up to us.
In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, booming banks, rising house prices and cheap consumer goods propped up living standards in the rich world. Thirty years of rocketing debt and financial wizardry had masked the dep underlying fragility of finance-led growth, and in 2008 we were forced to pay up.
The decade sine has witnessed all kinds of morbid symptoms, as all around the rich world, wages and productivity are stagnant, inequality is rising, and ecological systems are collapsing.
Stolen is a history of finance-led growth and a guide as to how we might escape it. We've sat back as financial capitalism has stolen our economies, our environment and even the future itself. Now, we have the opportunity to change course. What happens next is up to us.
316 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2019
110 people are currently reading
2280 people want to read
About the author
Grace Blakeley
12 books298 followersGrace Blakeley is a British economics commentator and author.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
May 26, 2019
I thought I knew everything I needed to know about financialization, but I was wrong. Bonus points for always directing the reader back to systemic, structural problems and away from "solutionism" and for including a critique of social democracy. A great place to start for those looking to understand late capitalism and its crises.
September 17, 2019
An accessible and well-written guide to financialisation & what we can do about it. The proposed solutions (primarily in a UK context) are wide-ranging and quite radical. Recommended for anyone who wants to better understand the left critique of capitalism and what the alternative could be.
October 21, 2019
Blakely delivers a scathing, thorough and very readable account of why the move to 'financialisation' - that is, a vast portion of economic growth has moved to the finance sector rather than the manufacturing or service. As she puts it; the majority of wealth is in the hands of those who make their money from the money they have, rather than those who work for a living. Decades of regulation encouraging this behaviour, along with the selling off of public services and the financialisaton of public life has lead directly to the crash of 2007, austerity and the continuing economic uncertainty that has seen the driving down of wages in real terms.
Over each section Blakely lays out the history of how we got here with clarity - the Bretton Woods accord, the post war consensus, and the breaking of this with financial deregulation in the 70s and 80s - and the complete red in tooth and claw free for all since the end of the cold war. I've seen a few negative reviews where it has been said that the author "doesn't understand economics" which is patently untrue; she has a very through grasp of economic theory, and recognises that it is far from being the clear-cut science that many pretend, that it relies on assumptions in prejudices and and understanding that humans are not the 'rational actors' portrayed by classical economics.
Blakely very much wears her own bias on her sleeve - as well as lambasting right -wing economics she calls for socialist policies - but also criticises Keynes and Piketty where she feels they deserve it, while drawing on their good ideas.
After all this, however, I confess I struggled with the final chapter, on how we fix the situation. Partly, the author loses some of the readability in laying out her vision for the future; suddenly there is less verve and clarity, and it begins to read more like an academic paper. The other problem, though, is that she doesn't shy away from how huge a change needs to be made; it's not just the relatively minor legislation that a government can enact, but root and branch change not just on the level of that undertaken by the post-war Atlee government, but the far greater changes they proposed but were forced to back down from. Blakely also recognises that the forces of international capital would fight these changes before, during and after they were enacted. Frankly, the scale and difficulty of the changes she suggests are beyond daunting, but that doesn’t detract from their veracity.
Grace Blakely has given a vital critique of what many call late-stage capitalism, pointing out just how destructive it is, in so many ways, as well as a potential way forward, This book should be on every radical reading list, beside Naomi Klein and Barbara Ehrenreich and Rutger Bregman - and, if you’re wanting more optimism, The Spirit Level and The Optimist’s Guide to the Future.
Over each section Blakely lays out the history of how we got here with clarity - the Bretton Woods accord, the post war consensus, and the breaking of this with financial deregulation in the 70s and 80s - and the complete red in tooth and claw free for all since the end of the cold war. I've seen a few negative reviews where it has been said that the author "doesn't understand economics" which is patently untrue; she has a very through grasp of economic theory, and recognises that it is far from being the clear-cut science that many pretend, that it relies on assumptions in prejudices and and understanding that humans are not the 'rational actors' portrayed by classical economics.
Blakely very much wears her own bias on her sleeve - as well as lambasting right -wing economics she calls for socialist policies - but also criticises Keynes and Piketty where she feels they deserve it, while drawing on their good ideas.
After all this, however, I confess I struggled with the final chapter, on how we fix the situation. Partly, the author loses some of the readability in laying out her vision for the future; suddenly there is less verve and clarity, and it begins to read more like an academic paper. The other problem, though, is that she doesn't shy away from how huge a change needs to be made; it's not just the relatively minor legislation that a government can enact, but root and branch change not just on the level of that undertaken by the post-war Atlee government, but the far greater changes they proposed but were forced to back down from. Blakely also recognises that the forces of international capital would fight these changes before, during and after they were enacted. Frankly, the scale and difficulty of the changes she suggests are beyond daunting, but that doesn’t detract from their veracity.
Grace Blakely has given a vital critique of what many call late-stage capitalism, pointing out just how destructive it is, in so many ways, as well as a potential way forward, This book should be on every radical reading list, beside Naomi Klein and Barbara Ehrenreich and Rutger Bregman - and, if you’re wanting more optimism, The Spirit Level and The Optimist’s Guide to the Future.
September 26, 2019
In the 1970s an insurgent Conservative party headed by a radical new leader emerged to challenge the post-war economic and social consensus: a consensus that had been authored in a large part by the Labour Party. Since the end of the war, radical right wing economists, academics and politicians had been working tirelessly to create an intellectual framework which might restore the dominance of unrestrained markets, big capital and - in their view - freedom itself.
The 1970s was marked by a highly visible and destructive unravelling of the existing compromise between labour and capital. Under the strain of a globalising economy the steadily growing pie which had allowed for both rising wages and rising profits began to contract - and open social conflict broke out for control of both political and economic power.
Conservative thinkers began to see the crisis as an opportunity and, in 1977, a document called "The Ridley Plan" was authored. It contained a radical set of proposals for breaking large scale strike action in a nationalised industry which occupied the commanding heights of the economy, as then existed. The idea wasn't simply to defeat the strike, but to defeat the ascendant power of labour that it would embody. The prescriptions contained in the Ridley Plan will now be all-to-familiar with anyone who remembers the 1985 miner's strike. The shocking detail is not what was done, but how far in advance an insurgent right had planned to do it.
In this breathtakingly ambitious book, Grace Blakeley sets out to do something similar for the emerging left movements that have followed the great financial crisis of 2007/08. She identifies the oligopolistic financial institutions that emerged from the glut of privatisation and deregulation of the Thatcher years, portraying them in an analogous role to that played by the trade unions in the post WWII decades. Stolen sets out to help its reader understand their nature, their function and the enormous barrier they will construct between a radical democratic socialist government and genuine reform of the economy.
In Blakeley's own words, "a socialist government must take on the banks like Thatcher took on the unions".
The bulk of this book therefore amounts to an economic history, based on the broad assumption that a strong political position occupied by ordinary working people (i.e. labour) is a good thing, and that a near monopoly of power held by a minority of high value asset owners (i.e. capital) is not. It also rests on the assumption that while these two interests can be temporarily reconciled, they tend towards the creation of a contradiction that results in crisis.
Stolen describes the historical conditions that led to the rise and fall of the post war consensus, as well as outlining the intellectual origins and political consequences of the Thatcherite consensus that would come to supplant it.
Carefully and methodically, Stolen leads us to the financial crash. This is where the book starts to become a little tricky. The workings of the modern financial system are so arcane and bizarre that there's no real way of breaking them down in such a way that makes easy sense. None the less, Stolen strikes a good balance between detail and intelligibility.
What follows is a hugely important section to those wishing to understand the current political moment, being a breakdown of the real meaning of the austerity program that followed the crash. Unlike a traditional economist, who often sees things purely in terms of mathematical models premised on (highly flawed) assumptions of rationality, the Marxist thinker sees the economy as both the cause of existing power structures and a thing constantly reshaped by the power structures it has created, in an ever evolving process. Blakeley relates the "lost decade" that followed the crash of 2008 with the troubled 1970s, seeing both as periods of intensifying social conflict created by a decaying economic order, in which different social forces struggle to assert political control.
At this point, the function of Stolen as a Ridley Plan for the left begins to emerge. It asserts that an insurgent socialist project will have to have a clear program for how to manage the inevitable power struggle that will emerge from economic realignment. The transition of power away from "the few" and into the hands of "the many" - which also moves towards environmental sustainability at breakneck speed - will face determined resistance from the very start.
Where Stolen gives us a relatively detailed appraisal of the leading thinkers and power structures which characterised the Keynesian settlement, and an extremely thorough breakdown of the methods by which is was supplanted, the policy ideas which it throws out towards the end are all very interesting, but almost feel like they could be a book in themselves. Despite being the most ambitious section, the final chapter is therefore comparatively sparse on details compared to the earlier parts of the book.
Stolen rails against "solutionism"; by which it means the use of policy levers that exist within a fracturing system to re-float that system. Instead, it advocates for wholescale reform and replacement of rotten institutions. One hopes that a larger, heavily referenced version of this final section has found its way onto the desk of the shadow treasury team. For the purposes of this relatively populist narrative however, a sketch - rather than a detailed schematic - of the proposed new financial architecture suffices.
Grace Blakeley is far from being the only exciting new thinker staking out this political and intellectual territory. She draws richly from contemporary thinkers like Ann Pettifor and the late Mark Fisher and for those readers desiring a serious slab of left-futurism, Aaron Bastani's new book, Fully Automatic Luxury Communism, will provide an excellent follow up read.
At its weakest moments, Stolen relies on a narrative of political change that is less firmly rooted in historical materialism and which borrows too liberally from the overexcitable "social movement" politics that emerged throughout the lost decade. Blakeley gives everything from Occupy to Extinction Rebellion an approving nod without really explaining what important function they play, other than as a creche for left wing intellectuals. She certainly doesn't explain why these social movements should be allowed institutional representation within the democratic structures of the new economy that she so vibrantly outlines. Despite its use of a powerful metanarrative, Stolen generally maintains a healthy intellectual distance from its subject matter, and the way in which the book dips its toes into the ecosystem of contemporary social movements feels indulgent and out of step with the grand scope of the main body of the text.
Overall, Stolen is an incredibly timely political and economic analysis; both fluent and engaging, it nevertheless retains a serious analytical depth. It will be a welcome read to those wishing to try and understand this precarious historical moment in which we live, as well as for those seeking a way of framing and synthesising the big ideas of our time.
The 1970s was marked by a highly visible and destructive unravelling of the existing compromise between labour and capital. Under the strain of a globalising economy the steadily growing pie which had allowed for both rising wages and rising profits began to contract - and open social conflict broke out for control of both political and economic power.
Conservative thinkers began to see the crisis as an opportunity and, in 1977, a document called "The Ridley Plan" was authored. It contained a radical set of proposals for breaking large scale strike action in a nationalised industry which occupied the commanding heights of the economy, as then existed. The idea wasn't simply to defeat the strike, but to defeat the ascendant power of labour that it would embody. The prescriptions contained in the Ridley Plan will now be all-to-familiar with anyone who remembers the 1985 miner's strike. The shocking detail is not what was done, but how far in advance an insurgent right had planned to do it.
In this breathtakingly ambitious book, Grace Blakeley sets out to do something similar for the emerging left movements that have followed the great financial crisis of 2007/08. She identifies the oligopolistic financial institutions that emerged from the glut of privatisation and deregulation of the Thatcher years, portraying them in an analogous role to that played by the trade unions in the post WWII decades. Stolen sets out to help its reader understand their nature, their function and the enormous barrier they will construct between a radical democratic socialist government and genuine reform of the economy.
In Blakeley's own words, "a socialist government must take on the banks like Thatcher took on the unions".
The bulk of this book therefore amounts to an economic history, based on the broad assumption that a strong political position occupied by ordinary working people (i.e. labour) is a good thing, and that a near monopoly of power held by a minority of high value asset owners (i.e. capital) is not. It also rests on the assumption that while these two interests can be temporarily reconciled, they tend towards the creation of a contradiction that results in crisis.
Stolen describes the historical conditions that led to the rise and fall of the post war consensus, as well as outlining the intellectual origins and political consequences of the Thatcherite consensus that would come to supplant it.
Carefully and methodically, Stolen leads us to the financial crash. This is where the book starts to become a little tricky. The workings of the modern financial system are so arcane and bizarre that there's no real way of breaking them down in such a way that makes easy sense. None the less, Stolen strikes a good balance between detail and intelligibility.
What follows is a hugely important section to those wishing to understand the current political moment, being a breakdown of the real meaning of the austerity program that followed the crash. Unlike a traditional economist, who often sees things purely in terms of mathematical models premised on (highly flawed) assumptions of rationality, the Marxist thinker sees the economy as both the cause of existing power structures and a thing constantly reshaped by the power structures it has created, in an ever evolving process. Blakeley relates the "lost decade" that followed the crash of 2008 with the troubled 1970s, seeing both as periods of intensifying social conflict created by a decaying economic order, in which different social forces struggle to assert political control.
At this point, the function of Stolen as a Ridley Plan for the left begins to emerge. It asserts that an insurgent socialist project will have to have a clear program for how to manage the inevitable power struggle that will emerge from economic realignment. The transition of power away from "the few" and into the hands of "the many" - which also moves towards environmental sustainability at breakneck speed - will face determined resistance from the very start.
Where Stolen gives us a relatively detailed appraisal of the leading thinkers and power structures which characterised the Keynesian settlement, and an extremely thorough breakdown of the methods by which is was supplanted, the policy ideas which it throws out towards the end are all very interesting, but almost feel like they could be a book in themselves. Despite being the most ambitious section, the final chapter is therefore comparatively sparse on details compared to the earlier parts of the book.
Stolen rails against "solutionism"; by which it means the use of policy levers that exist within a fracturing system to re-float that system. Instead, it advocates for wholescale reform and replacement of rotten institutions. One hopes that a larger, heavily referenced version of this final section has found its way onto the desk of the shadow treasury team. For the purposes of this relatively populist narrative however, a sketch - rather than a detailed schematic - of the proposed new financial architecture suffices.
Grace Blakeley is far from being the only exciting new thinker staking out this political and intellectual territory. She draws richly from contemporary thinkers like Ann Pettifor and the late Mark Fisher and for those readers desiring a serious slab of left-futurism, Aaron Bastani's new book, Fully Automatic Luxury Communism, will provide an excellent follow up read.
At its weakest moments, Stolen relies on a narrative of political change that is less firmly rooted in historical materialism and which borrows too liberally from the overexcitable "social movement" politics that emerged throughout the lost decade. Blakeley gives everything from Occupy to Extinction Rebellion an approving nod without really explaining what important function they play, other than as a creche for left wing intellectuals. She certainly doesn't explain why these social movements should be allowed institutional representation within the democratic structures of the new economy that she so vibrantly outlines. Despite its use of a powerful metanarrative, Stolen generally maintains a healthy intellectual distance from its subject matter, and the way in which the book dips its toes into the ecosystem of contemporary social movements feels indulgent and out of step with the grand scope of the main body of the text.
Overall, Stolen is an incredibly timely political and economic analysis; both fluent and engaging, it nevertheless retains a serious analytical depth. It will be a welcome read to those wishing to try and understand this precarious historical moment in which we live, as well as for those seeking a way of framing and synthesising the big ideas of our time.
September 17, 2019
Very disappointed. Blakeley is a self-avowed Marxist, but there is very little Marxism in this book. It is also riddled with basic errors about banks and finance, and it significantly misrepresents Keynes. I wonder if she has even read the General Theory? I expected far more radical proposals, such as nationalisation of banks and pension funds, punitive taxation of capital and strict capital controls to prevent capitalists avoiding the punitive taxes. The People's Asset Manager is an interesting idea, and the "dividend" is a nod in the direction of universal basic income. And there are a couple of unworkable proposals for the Bank of England. But apart from that, there is not much that we haven't heard before. And although she gives a couple of nods to climate change, there is no mention at all of the demographic timebomb facing the UK, and not much discussion of automation, the changing nature of work, and the productivity challenge. Yet climate change, demographics and automation are the three biggest threats to our capitalist economy. I was left feeling "is this all"?
October 25, 2024
An ambitious account of the contradictions and failures of the post WWII ultra-capitalism, or more exactly Anglo-American capitalism, trying to answer the question of why so much money flows into some markets to the point of them overheating-generating useless products (tech startups making blue-tooth mugs) while other markets are underinvested, asking if its an efficient system .
The book hopes to explain how and why capitalism has turned into a thieving model of ‘financialisation’ benefiting the few while destroying (stealing?) growth, employment and incomes from the many.
Main ideas:
1. The main protagonist in ‘Stolen’ is financialisation itself, a process that denotes increased debt-to-reality (equity) ratios and a rising share of national income accounted for by financial services relative to other sectors. IE: that which is measured is worked on. Turning everything into a business gives it "numbers" to work for, but by turning everything into a business it ultimately functions more poorly. Even as a business, it tries to pump stock options rather than actual real products.
2. In Stolen, Grace argues that the financial crash of 2007-08 was a major critical juncture for modern political economy and the start of the ‘death throes’ of modern capitalism. The stock market no longer reflects reality, so much as an over-glorified roulette wheel.
3. Looking backwards at the political actors o in the UK that have been complicit in finance-led growth and its cancerous spread through the UK, ultimately turning the country into a paper tiger by chopping up and 'eating' most other sectors for mere percents of their actual worth.
4. The answer to finance-led growth lies, for the author in a comprehensive system of democratic socialism.
3/5, while there are some issues with the facts, these arguments are designed to provoke and stimulate debate about what is otherwise a fine book.
The book hopes to explain how and why capitalism has turned into a thieving model of ‘financialisation’ benefiting the few while destroying (stealing?) growth, employment and incomes from the many.
Main ideas:
1. The main protagonist in ‘Stolen’ is financialisation itself, a process that denotes increased debt-to-reality (equity) ratios and a rising share of national income accounted for by financial services relative to other sectors. IE: that which is measured is worked on. Turning everything into a business gives it "numbers" to work for, but by turning everything into a business it ultimately functions more poorly. Even as a business, it tries to pump stock options rather than actual real products.
2. In Stolen, Grace argues that the financial crash of 2007-08 was a major critical juncture for modern political economy and the start of the ‘death throes’ of modern capitalism. The stock market no longer reflects reality, so much as an over-glorified roulette wheel.
3. Looking backwards at the political actors o in the UK that have been complicit in finance-led growth and its cancerous spread through the UK, ultimately turning the country into a paper tiger by chopping up and 'eating' most other sectors for mere percents of their actual worth.
4. The answer to finance-led growth lies, for the author in a comprehensive system of democratic socialism.
3/5, while there are some issues with the facts, these arguments are designed to provoke and stimulate debate about what is otherwise a fine book.
February 21, 2021
well-structured, concise, fairly accessible and engaging. also does a decent job at suggesting concrete possible solutions to the issues outlined in the earlier chapters in the final chapter. more of an introductory text (though that's not a criticism).
July 21, 2020
I think absolutely everyone should read this book. I have never read such an astute explanation of how financialised capitalism came to be and how it can never and will never work. The system is broken; our economy runs on almost nothing.
We have been lied to for decades and the continuation of a system that entrenches inequality, destroys the planet for profit and erodes the dignity and quality of life of the majority relies on us remaining economically uneducated because we think it's beyond us. It isn't. The health of our future societies, and of the climate, rely on us understanding how economics works, how the people in power manipulate it and what other economic theories there are; this book lays out exactly how economics has been moved from a public matter to a private matter through deregulation, financialisation and an attack on worker power. It also tells us how we might get that power back.
It also inarguably proves what Yorkshire folk have been telling you for years: that Thatcher is to blame for literally everything.
We have been lied to for decades and the continuation of a system that entrenches inequality, destroys the planet for profit and erodes the dignity and quality of life of the majority relies on us remaining economically uneducated because we think it's beyond us. It isn't. The health of our future societies, and of the climate, rely on us understanding how economics works, how the people in power manipulate it and what other economic theories there are; this book lays out exactly how economics has been moved from a public matter to a private matter through deregulation, financialisation and an attack on worker power. It also tells us how we might get that power back.
It also inarguably proves what Yorkshire folk have been telling you for years: that Thatcher is to blame for literally everything.
October 10, 2019
This is one of the worst books I have ever had the misfortune to read. If you’d like to understand finance please look for something else. If you want something about the recession I would suggest Adam Tooze’s “Crashed”, if you’d like an explanation of the actions of policy makers I’d suggest “Firefighting” by Ben Bernanke, Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner and if you’d like to understand modern inequality have a look at Piketty. Don’t buy this. I got it for free and even that was too much money
December 16, 2019
Wow - if there is one book I’ve read this year that I would recommend to everyone in my life most at the moment, this is probably it. From the narrative history of the financial crisis, to the policy solutions for democratization of finance, this was an engaging and highly accessible read about an often inaccessible and unengaging (but deeply important) topic.
September 30, 2021
4.5 Stars!
“The fate of our planet will never be ascribed the same importance as the fate of our banks until we change who is in charge, and to whom they are accountable. It is no exaggeration to say that today we must choose between protecting free-market capitalism and safeguarding the future of humanity.”
The introduction to this is a fairly devastating indictment on late stage capitalism, a world on the verge of a precipice, teetering on the brink of Armageddon, and every single word of it true. Blakeley has pulled off a devastatingly frank and eloquent examination, whilst still remaining clear and accessible, as she attacks the excesses and failings of capitalism from many angles.
“The owners of capital are able to derive profits without actually producing anything of value. They lend their capital out to other economic actors, who then hand over a portion of their future earnings to financiers, limiting economic growth. The costs of this model are left to future generations in the form of mountains of private debt and unsustainable rates of resource consumption.”
She touches on Thatcher’s greatest legacy, Tony Blair and his obsession with PFIs (Public Finance Initiatives). Channel Tunnel Rail Link turned out to be a disaster, saddling the taxpayer with £4.8bn worth of debt. Then there was Carillion, who when their bankruptcy was being managed they were found to only have £29 million in cash but owed £1.2 billion to the banks.
“The Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that the City had spent more than £92 million lobbying politicians and regulators in the wake of the financial crisis to limit new regulations.”
In what way is this any different from corruption?...if this happened in Africa, Asia or Latin America we would be crying out claims of corruption, calling it what it really is, a kleptocracy, but when the exact same thing happens in the white, English speaking world we call it lobbying.
“Since 2007, the UK has experienced the longest period of wage stagnation since the Napoleonic wars, whilst American workers have the same purchasing power as they did forty years ago.”
In fact the only thing more rage inducing and criminally reckless than the finance sector bringing on the financial crisis, is how atrociously bad the response of the British and American governments were. They further punished victims by imposing draconian laws of austerity, in spite of them doing nothing to help those most in need. In fact the UK’s government’s resulting policy of austerity (ie the transfer of vast wealth from the poorest to the wealthiest) was estimated to be so harsh that it was thought to be linked to around 120’000 deaths in the first decade alone.
It seems that in mainstream politics you are almost allowed to suggest or impose anything no matter how cruel, absurd or unfair, as long as you never, ever bring up the idea of anything which dares to even talk of reforming capitalism or moving beyond it. Particularly in places like the US, Socialism is a word that has been manipulated, distorted and fashioned into a tool for right wing maniacs and the elite to get away with manipulating markets and bribing politicians. They laugh at the idea of Socialism, but are happy to live in a world where they cannot even provide basic, free universal healthcare or house their own people. And of course it was Socialism which the elite depended on to bail them out of their criminal quagmire.
It has been said many a time that it is easier to imagine the end of humanity than the end of capitalism, we should never ever forget that when governments sniff an opportunity for political gain they can mysteriously change rules to suit their own agenda, this was shown to the world when the criminal class in the finance sector were bailed out and protected at the expense of the majority, Billions which was never made available for crumbling infrastructure, dwindling health and social care or for increasing basic wages, was suddenly made available to bail out a class of people who had habitually lied, stolen and cheated from the world for decades.
But also look at how quickly the government could change laws to suit agendas when they locked down large parts of the world. Now it’s worth asking the question why has a similar approach not be taken to combat the far greater threat of global warming?...Where is the meaningful actions and dramatic interventions in the face of a far greater threat?...Instead no major leader of any major nation doing anything beyond rhetoric and safe, tokenistic gestures, the loudest and sanest voice comes from a little Swedish schoolgirl who has put them all to shame.
July 26, 2025
Books like this are critical to resurrecting the idea of the "political economy" and rejecting the counterfactual, consensus view of Economics as a scientific exercise.
The Author, with considerable intellectual rigour, highlights the flawed assumptions and prejudices of mainstream economics and the rigid set of policy prescriptions that follow naturally from the assertion of the discipline as a fact-based science.
The Author, with considerable intellectual rigour, highlights the flawed assumptions and prejudices of mainstream economics and the rigid set of policy prescriptions that follow naturally from the assertion of the discipline as a fact-based science.
September 24, 2024
A brief and wonderful history of post-war capitalism from a British perspective and a pointed critique of the model of finance-led growth that has dominated the major economies since the 1980s.
April 13, 2025
This is a great way to get up to speed on finance capitalism and the history of neoclassical economics. Blakeley focuses on the UK context, which is fine as Thatcher/Friedman essentially invented and cemented this dumbass system. She takes a long historical view of the 2008 crisis, correctly locating it as a systemic failure of finance capitalism rather than JUST the whole sub-prime mess. However, it’s disappointing that her suggestions towards the end do not mention credit unions even once. Credit unions such as Desjardins are an already existent financial mechanism for socializing ownership, immediately. A socialist government that promotes widespread adoption through strategic incentives would then be relatively free to focus on other aspects of investment— in human capital, including necessary climate action, which would positively impact the real economy and kick start some goddamn Keynesian virtuous circles as a transitional measure. Amartya Sen has already outlined compelling arguments that would complement her analysis on the ineffectualness of austerity. Wages, obviously, need to rise across the board but Blakeley spends the majority of her textual space outlining a plan for a National Investment Bank and People’s Asset Management firm—again captured already by credit unions. Anyways still really good and you all should read it.
May 5, 2021
A great history and analysis of neoliberalism and financialisation – from the late '70s to 2019 – focussing on the British context.
Blakeley tells the story of how Thatcher (along with Reagan and others) implemented neoliberal policies that deregulated the banks, transformed housing into a speculative financial asset, broke the back of the labour movement, and successfully redistributed enormous amounts of power away from workers and towards capital. She walks readers through the emergence of neoliberal ideology, how in a time of stagnation and crisis it was codified and cemented through a new set of national and multi-national institutions, and how these neoliberal reforms enabled finance capitalists in particular (as opposed to industrial capitalists) to siphon off ever greater amounts of profit without any need to reinvest that capital into increasing productive capacity.
Blakeley concludes the book with lots of concrete, bold proposals for how to reign in the finance sector, and build the foundations of a democratic socialist economy.
Has anyone written a Canadian equivalent? Pls direct me to it, or write one. Thx
"We must build an electoral coalition, supported by a strong and diverse social movement, that will allow working people to take control of the apparatus of the state. At the same time, we must transform the balance of power in society, building up the labour movement and radical social movements in order to challenge the power of bosses, landlords, and lenders. And we must use this power to institutionalise a new political economic settlement — one that operates in the interests of those who live off work, rather than those who live off wealth."
Blakeley tells the story of how Thatcher (along with Reagan and others) implemented neoliberal policies that deregulated the banks, transformed housing into a speculative financial asset, broke the back of the labour movement, and successfully redistributed enormous amounts of power away from workers and towards capital. She walks readers through the emergence of neoliberal ideology, how in a time of stagnation and crisis it was codified and cemented through a new set of national and multi-national institutions, and how these neoliberal reforms enabled finance capitalists in particular (as opposed to industrial capitalists) to siphon off ever greater amounts of profit without any need to reinvest that capital into increasing productive capacity.
Blakeley concludes the book with lots of concrete, bold proposals for how to reign in the finance sector, and build the foundations of a democratic socialist economy.
Has anyone written a Canadian equivalent? Pls direct me to it, or write one. Thx
"We must build an electoral coalition, supported by a strong and diverse social movement, that will allow working people to take control of the apparatus of the state. At the same time, we must transform the balance of power in society, building up the labour movement and radical social movements in order to challenge the power of bosses, landlords, and lenders. And we must use this power to institutionalise a new political economic settlement — one that operates in the interests of those who live off work, rather than those who live off wealth."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 9, 2019
An urgent, powerfully written and compulsively readable account of the history of finance-led capitalism, followed by a clearly defined set of practical alternatives for moving towards a post-capitalist future. As with many other books from this publisher, the manuscript could have done with some judicious editing: the repetition of a number of key facts is particularly annoying (for instance, stating that wage growth in the UK is at its lowest point since the Napoleonic Wars sounds very dramatic, but less so when it’s repeated at least three times). But these are fairly minor quibbles about a must-read book by an author whose incredible work explaining the complexities of political economy rivals that of David Harvey.
February 14, 2022
Probably the most comprehensive work on the world’s biggest problems I’ve read so far. Stolen isn’t afraid to be redundant at times in order to establish the connections between certain phenomena as well as to hammer in essential points again and again.
Stolen is of those books that should be mandatory reading for everyone on the planet. Alas, the fact that it is not that - and far from it - taints the streaks of optimism towards the end. Tackling a very complex problem (albeit in the most approachable way arguably possible), Stolen is still too dense and too long to reach those not already interested in its topics. But it‘s not the book‘s fault the system is THAT broken.
Stolen is of those books that should be mandatory reading for everyone on the planet. Alas, the fact that it is not that - and far from it - taints the streaks of optimism towards the end. Tackling a very complex problem (albeit in the most approachable way arguably possible), Stolen is still too dense and too long to reach those not already interested in its topics. But it‘s not the book‘s fault the system is THAT broken.
June 26, 2020
really interesting book with lots of confusing concepts explained really well. discusses the rise of financialised capitalism, it's current state of demise, and how to help fix the system to benefit the many and not the few.
December 29, 2019
A glimpse of the future post-capitalism.
May 19, 2020
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” This piece of pessimism of the 1990s limped on into the new millennium and shaped the thinking of the crew who gathered around the New Labour ‘third way’ project. The glitz and glamour of a world that was being refashioned through the globalisation of capital movement led them to the question whether it was ever desirable to end capitalism anyway. Much better to grab a seat on the helter-skelter ride and see where it took us.
Grace Blakeley’s book looks back on forces that shaped capitalism during these years and offers a challenge to all those who thought it could be made to support the cause of equality and social justice. The changes wrought by Thatcher’s years in office had shifted the locus of the system away from its base in manufacturing, moving it instead in the direction of banking and financial services. The difference was that, whilst factories, mines and steel mills provided spaces where working people could assert their collective power against bosses, banks and the business running the financial services provided no similar opportunities for the interests of wage earning citizens to be advanced.
Rent seekers
More than that, the shift meant a move from productive to a rentier form of capitalism. Profits under the former system had depended on firms investing in plant and machinery that would increase the productivity of labour. The exploitation of workforces was still at the heart of capitalism but at least under the old dispensation the boss class ran a system that brought useful goods and services into circulation.
This is far less the case when financialised capitalism becomes hegemonic. Capitalist wealth accrues from the holding of assets – buildings, land, patents, stocks and shares – which in themselves create no new value but which can generate income in the form of rents. Financialisation describes a strategy in which rent seeking became the preferred form of economic activity on the part of those with resources to invest. The reforms to banking law and the structure of the stock market in the 1980s increased the amount of money seeking opportunities to earn rents whist the amount of valuable assets in existence grew at a slower rate. The result was a form of inflation that hiked the value of assets and created a series of expanding bubbles that were destined at some point to pop.
The other side of Blakeley’s account is the tremendous growth in debt during this period. Household debt expanded because the position of wage earners was weakened in the UK’s post-industrial economy. But banks and finance companies saw pressure on working class living standards as an opportunity to grow their asset portfolios by offering readily available, but very expensive, credit to families wanting to finance home improvement or take foreign holidays. For some this could be secured against the windfall gains from the right-to-buy sell-off of council homes in the 1980s; for the rest credit cards and overdrafts became essential to managing tight budgets.
Non-financial businesses
But financialisation involved more than the extension of the power of banks and financial service companies. Blakeley explains how it changed the nature on non-financial businesses that had hitherto made profits out of selling good or providing services. Company accounts were restructured to put commitments to spending – investing in machinery or technology, maintaining buildings, even paying the wages of workers – off the balance sheets which had the effect of enhancing the value of the assets they were holding. The financialised company now set on a huge volume of things that gained in value without anything being done to them whilst having very little in the way of committed outgoings. The mantra of shareholder value meant that what counted as the gains of this system were handed out as dividends to already wealthy owners of company stocks, whilst the now invisible workforce that was still retained paid peanuts.
Blakeley does more than explain how we got into this mess. Her book concludes with an eight-point plan to roll back this parasitic model and build a system where investment worked to promote the well-being of people and communities, rather than a means for the already affluent to grab larger slices of society’s wealth for themselves.
Grace Blakeley’s book looks back on forces that shaped capitalism during these years and offers a challenge to all those who thought it could be made to support the cause of equality and social justice. The changes wrought by Thatcher’s years in office had shifted the locus of the system away from its base in manufacturing, moving it instead in the direction of banking and financial services. The difference was that, whilst factories, mines and steel mills provided spaces where working people could assert their collective power against bosses, banks and the business running the financial services provided no similar opportunities for the interests of wage earning citizens to be advanced.
Rent seekers
More than that, the shift meant a move from productive to a rentier form of capitalism. Profits under the former system had depended on firms investing in plant and machinery that would increase the productivity of labour. The exploitation of workforces was still at the heart of capitalism but at least under the old dispensation the boss class ran a system that brought useful goods and services into circulation.
This is far less the case when financialised capitalism becomes hegemonic. Capitalist wealth accrues from the holding of assets – buildings, land, patents, stocks and shares – which in themselves create no new value but which can generate income in the form of rents. Financialisation describes a strategy in which rent seeking became the preferred form of economic activity on the part of those with resources to invest. The reforms to banking law and the structure of the stock market in the 1980s increased the amount of money seeking opportunities to earn rents whist the amount of valuable assets in existence grew at a slower rate. The result was a form of inflation that hiked the value of assets and created a series of expanding bubbles that were destined at some point to pop.
The other side of Blakeley’s account is the tremendous growth in debt during this period. Household debt expanded because the position of wage earners was weakened in the UK’s post-industrial economy. But banks and finance companies saw pressure on working class living standards as an opportunity to grow their asset portfolios by offering readily available, but very expensive, credit to families wanting to finance home improvement or take foreign holidays. For some this could be secured against the windfall gains from the right-to-buy sell-off of council homes in the 1980s; for the rest credit cards and overdrafts became essential to managing tight budgets.
Non-financial businesses
But financialisation involved more than the extension of the power of banks and financial service companies. Blakeley explains how it changed the nature on non-financial businesses that had hitherto made profits out of selling good or providing services. Company accounts were restructured to put commitments to spending – investing in machinery or technology, maintaining buildings, even paying the wages of workers – off the balance sheets which had the effect of enhancing the value of the assets they were holding. The financialised company now set on a huge volume of things that gained in value without anything being done to them whilst having very little in the way of committed outgoings. The mantra of shareholder value meant that what counted as the gains of this system were handed out as dividends to already wealthy owners of company stocks, whilst the now invisible workforce that was still retained paid peanuts.
Blakeley does more than explain how we got into this mess. Her book concludes with an eight-point plan to roll back this parasitic model and build a system where investment worked to promote the well-being of people and communities, rather than a means for the already affluent to grab larger slices of society’s wealth for themselves.
October 25, 2019
"Not even wrong" level of argument. I like how even communists don't like to use the word nationalisation and instead call it "democratisation". If only communism could produce more than just countless manifestos.
January 24, 2022
جروم راجرز نوزدهساله بود که به عنوان پیک در سیتی اسپرینت مشغول به کار شد.بعد از گذشت چند هفته از شروع کار،دوچرخه جروم خراب شد و او به مشکل خورد.او با وام بدون بهره یک دوچرخه نو خریداری کرد،اما چند هفته بعد اتفاق بدتری برایش افتاد.به دلیل راندن در خط ویژه،شورای شهر او را جریمه کرد.برای مدتی پرداخت جریمه را عقب انداخت و جریمههای او دوبرابر شد.او مجبور به گرفتن یک وام کوتاهمدت با بهره بسیار بالا شد تا بدهیاش را به شورا پرداخت کند.اما اکنون او مبلغی بیش از درآمدش را صرف پرداخت هزینهها و بازپرداخت بدهی خود میکرد.چند روز بعد جسد بیجان او را در جنگلی پیدا کردند. جروم نوزدهساله بدون هیچ سابقه بیماری روانی به خاطر غرق شدن در منجلاب بدهی اقدام به خودکشی کرده بود.داستان جروم داستان منحصر به فردی نیست،داستان مالیسازی جهان،شهرها و غرق شدن خانواده و افراد در دام بدهی است.مالیسازی که پروژه اقتصادی-سیاسی نئولیبرال است،به معنی هر چه بیشتر شدن نقش انگیزههای مالی،بازارهای مالی،فعالان بازارهای مالی و نهادهای مالی در عملکرد اقتصاد داخل و بینالمللی میباشد.خانم گریس بلاکلی، با استفاده از نظریه مارکسی،اعداد،ارقام و اطلاعات دقیق به زبانی ساده به بررسی تسلط فزاینده صنعت مالی بر اقتصاد بریتانیا و جهان میپردازد.از نظر ایشان سعادت انسانی در گرو آزاد کردن روح کارآفرینی از طریق بازارهای آزاد،حقوق مالکیت خصوصی،تجارت آزاد،انحصاریسازی شرکتها و در یک کلام الگوی رشد مالیسالار نمیباشد؛بلکه سعادت آدمی در گرو گسترش الگویی مردمگرا از اقتصادسیاسیست که تعادل قدرت را به نفع جنبشهای رادیکال اجتماعی برهمزده و از این قدرت برای نهادینهسازی ترتیبات اقتصادسیاسی نوین استفاده خواهد کرد.در نهایت خانم بلاکلی معتقد است«در این وضعیت بسیار حساس(یعنی دوراهی میان آرمانشهر و نابودی)ابنای بشر باید کنترل تاریخ خود را در دست بگیرند».
اگر شما هم به دنبال درک این مسئله هستید که چگونه اقتصاد ما برای ایجاد نابرابری طراحی و برنامهریزی شده؟و چگونه این طرح و برنامه باعث فروپاشی عظیم اجتماعی میگردد؟و راهحل و رویکرد بدیل برای مقابله با این مسائل چیست؟میباشید.و پرسشهای دیگری مانند اینکه چگونه بورس و نظام مالی-بانکی ایران باعث سیهروزی هزار نفر شده؟چگونه شرکتها و کارخانههای مثل هفت تپه، هپکو و...به خاک سیاه نشستهاند؟چرا دولتها به دنبال طرحهایی مانند وامهای کوچک هستند؟چرا بسیاری خدمات دولتی به شرکتها خصوصی برونسپاری میشود؟هدف از مالیسازی مسکن چیست؟هستید،حتما این کتاب برای مطالعه مفید است.
اگر شما هم به دنبال درک این مسئله هستید که چگونه اقتصاد ما برای ایجاد نابرابری طراحی و برنامهریزی شده؟و چگونه این طرح و برنامه باعث فروپاشی عظیم اجتماعی میگردد؟و راهحل و رویکرد بدیل برای مقابله با این مسائل چیست؟میباشید.و پرسشهای دیگری مانند اینکه چگونه بورس و نظام مالی-بانکی ایران باعث سیهروزی هزار نفر شده؟چگونه شرکتها و کارخانههای مثل هفت تپه، هپکو و...به خاک سیاه نشستهاند؟چرا دولتها به دنبال طرحهایی مانند وامهای کوچک هستند؟چرا بسیاری خدمات دولتی به شرکتها خصوصی برونسپاری میشود؟هدف از مالیسازی مسکن چیست؟هستید،حتما این کتاب برای مطالعه مفید است.
November 27, 2019
The virtue of this book is that it locates the economic crises of capitalism, from the Great Depression (1939) to the crash of 2008, within the inherent contradictions of the capitalist system itself, rather than in the personal greed or incompetence of the bankers or industrial monopolists.
Grace Blakeley identifies the post-war Keynesian policies (of state intervention to stimulate demand during downturns in the economy) with the extension of social democracy and construction of the welfare state. However, she rightly states that, so identified, ‘social democracy, just like any other capitalist economic model, was subject to its own inherent contradictions’ (p. 39). Her account of the capitalist economy in the 20th century then notes that, what she refers to as the social democratic model of economic management, started to show signs of strain and with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement. Ultimately, for the UK in the 1970s, this presented itself in the form of ‘stagflation’ (that is, rising unemployment plus inflation) which confounded Keynsian assumptions about the inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation (expressed through the Phillips curve) and rendered state intervention ineffective (p. 46).
Neoliberalism - rolling back state intervention in favour of unregulated free markets - was the Thatcher/Regan response to the failure of social democratic economic management (52). This turn, and the economic growth that it promoted, was facilitated by ‘financialisation’, meaning, the massive expansion of corporate and personal debt which constituted an economic stimulus that Blakeley refers to as ‘privatised Keynesianism’. In this, personal debt - much of it secured on housing stock and traded internationally - replaced state spending (88-90). This later economic model was able to deliver only by means of a simultaneous weakening of the labour movement (93) but it could not sustain itself indefinitely. As made manifest by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the banking crisis ‘wasn’t simply a transatlantic banking crisis, it was the structural crisis of financial capitalism, emerging from the inherent contradictions of finance-led growth itself’ (147).
Blakeley defines capitalism, unexceptionally enough, as a system ‘based on private ownership of the means of production [...] with the aim of profit maximisation, the enforcement of private property rights by the state, and the allocation of resources through the market mechanism’ (20). She defines her own method of analysis as Marxist and argues that applying Marx’s method ‘to our current moment allows us to understand how the system really works, and how we might go about changing it (28). Blakely defines the politics that flows from her analysis as ‘democratic socialism’ and an explicit alternative to post-war social democracy and the current (UK) Labour Party: ‘the Labour Party’s manifesto reads like a return to the post-war consensus. It seems radical from the perspective of twenty-first-century financialised capitalism, but it is really a return to social democracy [...] We must fight for something much more radical. We must fight for democratic socialism - not only because it is a better system, but because the capitalist model is running out of road’ (229).
Blakeley’s anti--capitalism, her claim to the tradition of Marxism and her criticisms of social democracy sound radical - but only ‘from the perspective of twenty-first-century financialised capitalism’. When, finally, one reaches Blakeley’s proposals for the way forward, what is offered is not Marxism in any form, but a call for the labour movement to achieve anti-capitalist change by learning from neoliberalism: ‘learning from Thatcherism means developing a strategy for political contestation at three levels: narrative, of electoral politics, and of social forces’ (231). In the wake of Chantal Mouffe (thankfully stripped of her obscurantism and Freudian tosh) Blakeley calls for a left populism that identifies City bankers as ‘the natural villain’ and combines parliamentary power with an extra-parliamentary social movement that is capable of holding the elected politicians to account.
Her concrete proposals revolve around extending state ownership of key industries, including banking, and increasing democratic control of those industries. But the extension of state control is on explicitly capitalist lines, involving compensation for the creditors and maintenance of markets: ‘The public banks should buy up the debt from private banks, imposing a haircut on the private lenders, and then re-finance it at much lower [...] interest rates [...] The public bank should pay as little as possible for the outstanding mortgage without prejudicing the solvency of the private institution that owns the institution that owns the mortgage - [private] banks will have to take a hit, but not one large enough to threaten their solvency’ (243)
Yet what is the risk in all of this anti-capitalist strategy? For Blakeley, the key risk is sociological: ‘The debates about the possibility of parliamentary socialism that have raged for the last half century hinge on whether it is possible for a socialist government to maintain its radical stance whilst in government. No matter what the individual characters of the Cabinet and leadership, it is unquestionable that that level of proximity to power changes the material incentives such individuals face.’ (234). In fact, less than fifty years ago, the debates that raged about the parliamentary road to socialism had nothing to do with the seduction of politicians by ministerial limousines, but were about the military seizing power from parliamentary socialists and putting them to torture and death. That was the fate of the elected socialist government of Allende and its labour movement supporters in Chile in 1973.
We need to return to Blakeley’s definition of capitalism as private ownership of the means of production and including ‘the enforcement of private property rights by the state’ (20). Blakeley notes, almost in passing, that the “deep state” ‘may attempt’ to prevent the democratic socialist programme altogether (234), but chooses to forget that Marxism distinguishes itself from both social democracy and ‘democratic socialism’ through its understanding that the bourgeois state cannot be taken over and used in the interests of the working class. In the preface to the German edition of the Communist Manifesto of 1872, Marx acknowledged that the experience of the Paris Commune (1871) required the manifesto to be updated: ‘One thing especially was proved by the Paris Commune, viz., that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes’. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...]
While Blakeley may choose to learn from Thatcher, the fate of Chile offers harder lessons about the consequences of disposing of the Marxist analysis of the state.
Grace Blakeley identifies the post-war Keynesian policies (of state intervention to stimulate demand during downturns in the economy) with the extension of social democracy and construction of the welfare state. However, she rightly states that, so identified, ‘social democracy, just like any other capitalist economic model, was subject to its own inherent contradictions’ (p. 39). Her account of the capitalist economy in the 20th century then notes that, what she refers to as the social democratic model of economic management, started to show signs of strain and with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement. Ultimately, for the UK in the 1970s, this presented itself in the form of ‘stagflation’ (that is, rising unemployment plus inflation) which confounded Keynsian assumptions about the inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation (expressed through the Phillips curve) and rendered state intervention ineffective (p. 46).
Neoliberalism - rolling back state intervention in favour of unregulated free markets - was the Thatcher/Regan response to the failure of social democratic economic management (52). This turn, and the economic growth that it promoted, was facilitated by ‘financialisation’, meaning, the massive expansion of corporate and personal debt which constituted an economic stimulus that Blakeley refers to as ‘privatised Keynesianism’. In this, personal debt - much of it secured on housing stock and traded internationally - replaced state spending (88-90). This later economic model was able to deliver only by means of a simultaneous weakening of the labour movement (93) but it could not sustain itself indefinitely. As made manifest by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the banking crisis ‘wasn’t simply a transatlantic banking crisis, it was the structural crisis of financial capitalism, emerging from the inherent contradictions of finance-led growth itself’ (147).
Blakeley defines capitalism, unexceptionally enough, as a system ‘based on private ownership of the means of production [...] with the aim of profit maximisation, the enforcement of private property rights by the state, and the allocation of resources through the market mechanism’ (20). She defines her own method of analysis as Marxist and argues that applying Marx’s method ‘to our current moment allows us to understand how the system really works, and how we might go about changing it (28). Blakely defines the politics that flows from her analysis as ‘democratic socialism’ and an explicit alternative to post-war social democracy and the current (UK) Labour Party: ‘the Labour Party’s manifesto reads like a return to the post-war consensus. It seems radical from the perspective of twenty-first-century financialised capitalism, but it is really a return to social democracy [...] We must fight for something much more radical. We must fight for democratic socialism - not only because it is a better system, but because the capitalist model is running out of road’ (229).
Blakeley’s anti--capitalism, her claim to the tradition of Marxism and her criticisms of social democracy sound radical - but only ‘from the perspective of twenty-first-century financialised capitalism’. When, finally, one reaches Blakeley’s proposals for the way forward, what is offered is not Marxism in any form, but a call for the labour movement to achieve anti-capitalist change by learning from neoliberalism: ‘learning from Thatcherism means developing a strategy for political contestation at three levels: narrative, of electoral politics, and of social forces’ (231). In the wake of Chantal Mouffe (thankfully stripped of her obscurantism and Freudian tosh) Blakeley calls for a left populism that identifies City bankers as ‘the natural villain’ and combines parliamentary power with an extra-parliamentary social movement that is capable of holding the elected politicians to account.
Her concrete proposals revolve around extending state ownership of key industries, including banking, and increasing democratic control of those industries. But the extension of state control is on explicitly capitalist lines, involving compensation for the creditors and maintenance of markets: ‘The public banks should buy up the debt from private banks, imposing a haircut on the private lenders, and then re-finance it at much lower [...] interest rates [...] The public bank should pay as little as possible for the outstanding mortgage without prejudicing the solvency of the private institution that owns the institution that owns the mortgage - [private] banks will have to take a hit, but not one large enough to threaten their solvency’ (243)
Yet what is the risk in all of this anti-capitalist strategy? For Blakeley, the key risk is sociological: ‘The debates about the possibility of parliamentary socialism that have raged for the last half century hinge on whether it is possible for a socialist government to maintain its radical stance whilst in government. No matter what the individual characters of the Cabinet and leadership, it is unquestionable that that level of proximity to power changes the material incentives such individuals face.’ (234). In fact, less than fifty years ago, the debates that raged about the parliamentary road to socialism had nothing to do with the seduction of politicians by ministerial limousines, but were about the military seizing power from parliamentary socialists and putting them to torture and death. That was the fate of the elected socialist government of Allende and its labour movement supporters in Chile in 1973.
We need to return to Blakeley’s definition of capitalism as private ownership of the means of production and including ‘the enforcement of private property rights by the state’ (20). Blakeley notes, almost in passing, that the “deep state” ‘may attempt’ to prevent the democratic socialist programme altogether (234), but chooses to forget that Marxism distinguishes itself from both social democracy and ‘democratic socialism’ through its understanding that the bourgeois state cannot be taken over and used in the interests of the working class. In the preface to the German edition of the Communist Manifesto of 1872, Marx acknowledged that the experience of the Paris Commune (1871) required the manifesto to be updated: ‘One thing especially was proved by the Paris Commune, viz., that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes’. [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...]
While Blakeley may choose to learn from Thatcher, the fate of Chile offers harder lessons about the consequences of disposing of the Marxist analysis of the state.
February 1, 2020
Grace Blakeley's account of financialisation is excellent. Much of what she writes about will be familiar to those who followed the Great Financial Crisis and its aftermath - the rise of sub-prime debt, the proliferation of arcane and dubious financial practices (credit-default swaps, mortgage-backed securities, derivatives), the way the banks were bailed out while ordinary people were saddled with losses and subjected to austerity. However, Blakeley situates these financial practices in the 'real economy', making clear that the problem was much more than arrogant and out-of-control bankers - the problem was a whole model of capitalism forged in the neoliberal revolution of the '80s.
Blakeley makes economic theory more accessible, both when talking about thinkers you may have heard of (Marx, Keynes, Friedman) but also when creatively applying thinkers I hadn't heard of, like Michal Kalecki and Hyman Minsky.
The proposals for political action are interesting and gave me a lot to think about. I loved the idea that "socialists should take on the banks the way Thatcher took on the unions".
My only gripe would be that the account was highly centred on the UK and US. This is fine as a focus, but it made the author's comments about the need to dismantle imperialism feel like throwaway lines. I have no doubt that Grace Blakeley is a committed anti-imperialist, but I think insufficient attention was paid to how, materially, the Anglo-American model of financialised capitalism is related to imperialism. I was a little uncomfortable with the idea that a democratic socialist government in the UK could, single-handledly, shatter capitalist realism and show a new way to the world - this seems to overstate our country's significance and underplay the significance of socialist movements in the global South which are much more advanced and inspiring than our own.
Blakeley makes economic theory more accessible, both when talking about thinkers you may have heard of (Marx, Keynes, Friedman) but also when creatively applying thinkers I hadn't heard of, like Michal Kalecki and Hyman Minsky.
The proposals for political action are interesting and gave me a lot to think about. I loved the idea that "socialists should take on the banks the way Thatcher took on the unions".
My only gripe would be that the account was highly centred on the UK and US. This is fine as a focus, but it made the author's comments about the need to dismantle imperialism feel like throwaway lines. I have no doubt that Grace Blakeley is a committed anti-imperialist, but I think insufficient attention was paid to how, materially, the Anglo-American model of financialised capitalism is related to imperialism. I was a little uncomfortable with the idea that a democratic socialist government in the UK could, single-handledly, shatter capitalist realism and show a new way to the world - this seems to overstate our country's significance and underplay the significance of socialist movements in the global South which are much more advanced and inspiring than our own.
November 12, 2019
Grace Blakely is one of the most impressive of the new wave of young Left Wing public intellectuals to have emerged over the past few years of intellectual ferment in the UK. It makes a change for the UK to actually be at the cutting edge of ideas and events again after years of torpor. She writes clearly and well about the financialization of the UK and the world economy, clearly illustrating how it was planned and engineered by a coalition of right wing interests to benefit a small, wealthy elite. She also has some clear prescriptions for how we fight back and reverse this process. As she is a Marxist she understands and shows how this is rooted in power and class dynamics, unlike many liberal economists. Some of the economics is hard to grasp if you are a layperson like me but I encourage everyone to read this book. We have to understand economics if we want to change the world for the better and change the balance of power.
January 13, 2020
Love this book as an in-depth exploration of fiance-based growth as the ongoing dismantling of the labor led advances in society since WW2.
My best takeaway is a understanding of the Stock market as antithesis of labor - That stock-market increases since the 70s has represented NOT increase in production but just the vault where the 1% powerful stash what they've systematically stolen from the bottom 90%. Redefining polarization as economic progress itself and convincing the public to cheer their own destruction (DOW29000?) as a 'it's fine' as the house burns down.
My best takeaway is a understanding of the Stock market as antithesis of labor - That stock-market increases since the 70s has represented NOT increase in production but just the vault where the 1% powerful stash what they've systematically stolen from the bottom 90%. Redefining polarization as economic progress itself and convincing the public to cheer their own destruction (DOW29000?) as a 'it's fine' as the house burns down.
September 10, 2019
Wanted to like this book but after going through it, I don't think it was worth the time. This is not because the author does not seem to know the material but because the book is written in such a way that the average reader (myself) is not actually able to follow the way material is presented or the way the concepts are explained without having to struggle.
April 15, 2020
Phenomenal book. The title doesnt do it justice. This book is on the level of the great works of past socialist theorists. Equal parts accessible and sophisticated, the book presents an inspiring and extremely well thought out roadmap to a sustainable future.
July 30, 2021
TL;DR: A very clever polemic against the finance-led economics that frames our economic thinking today, and the style of politics that supports it but difficult to follow and doesn't spend much time on persuasion.
I picked up this book after listening to the author speak at an online event. She comes across as clever and insightful in person and the same is true for this book on some of systemic factors behind the 2008 financial crash and the seeming state of perma-crisis we've been living in since. She clearly knows her stuff but I personally found it very difficult to follow the pace of this book - that may be partially my fault for listening to a tome on economics on audiobook. She didn't spend much time laying out the facts or convincing me that what she was saying was true, but rather lined them up as arguments for her case against finance-led economics.
Now, I think of myself as quite a lefty, and I love a good polemic, but this book was a little intense even for me, and it made me feel a little uncomfortable. While I am relatively convinced about the systemic problems she describes I found myself pushing back against what felt like very little benefit of the doubt to individual actors within the system.
One thing I really like about the book, and which I haven't really crossed paths with before, was the notion that having an elegant functional solution to problems with contemporary capitalism isn't enough because there are vested interests that would prefer things to stay as they are, so a certain amount of power struggle is just going to be inherent in any change we might want to make. In this she pushes back against other lefty economists like Piketty, who are big on analysis and theoretical problem solving but don't really take power dynamics into account. If we want meaningful social and economic change, we have to break the power of the banks and international finance in the same way that the early neoliberal governments deliberately broke the power of trade unions.
One thing I'm not sure about is her total rejection of the social democratic economic model - basically, she says it's not socialist enough to work long term. She certainly has a point that at the moment the rich and powerful are concentrating wealth and power to a very unhealthy degree, and governments around the world are not set up to counterbalance them. But I'm just not convinced that what she is proposing is not just another fairly reactionary pendulum swing to the left - this is where a little more Piketty-style "solutionism" might have been helpful.
I picked up this book after listening to the author speak at an online event. She comes across as clever and insightful in person and the same is true for this book on some of systemic factors behind the 2008 financial crash and the seeming state of perma-crisis we've been living in since. She clearly knows her stuff but I personally found it very difficult to follow the pace of this book - that may be partially my fault for listening to a tome on economics on audiobook. She didn't spend much time laying out the facts or convincing me that what she was saying was true, but rather lined them up as arguments for her case against finance-led economics.
Now, I think of myself as quite a lefty, and I love a good polemic, but this book was a little intense even for me, and it made me feel a little uncomfortable. While I am relatively convinced about the systemic problems she describes I found myself pushing back against what felt like very little benefit of the doubt to individual actors within the system.
One thing I really like about the book, and which I haven't really crossed paths with before, was the notion that having an elegant functional solution to problems with contemporary capitalism isn't enough because there are vested interests that would prefer things to stay as they are, so a certain amount of power struggle is just going to be inherent in any change we might want to make. In this she pushes back against other lefty economists like Piketty, who are big on analysis and theoretical problem solving but don't really take power dynamics into account. If we want meaningful social and economic change, we have to break the power of the banks and international finance in the same way that the early neoliberal governments deliberately broke the power of trade unions.
One thing I'm not sure about is her total rejection of the social democratic economic model - basically, she says it's not socialist enough to work long term. She certainly has a point that at the moment the rich and powerful are concentrating wealth and power to a very unhealthy degree, and governments around the world are not set up to counterbalance them. But I'm just not convinced that what she is proposing is not just another fairly reactionary pendulum swing to the left - this is where a little more Piketty-style "solutionism" might have been helpful.
February 23, 2021
An account of global finance capital since the 1980s which is easy to read and understand. It starts with explaining Breton Woods and the Keynesian consensus and uses these as a counterpoint to the Neoliberalism which was to follow. This is not however a book which extolls the virtues of the pre-neoliberal turn, but one which sees a financialised economic system as an inevitable outcome of the failure of Keynes' vision in the 70s.
This book explains concisely and narratively the corporate culture, social lobbying and political actors which came together to engineer a ludicrously unjust, yet inexplicably popular financial system in the UK and beyond.
Blakeley describes how Thatcher and those who came after her managed to get the middle class on board whilst going over their heads to enrich the elite and how companies were transformed into profit making machines beholden to shareholders, with private financial institutions being central players in the game. What the book does brilliantly is it shows how all these acts are interrelated and engineered with purpose, rather than simply random or unrelated incidents which led to our current economic reality.
It uses the 2008 financial crisis as its focal point, which I think works really well to illustrate the books central thesis: that neoliberalism simply does not work in the long run. Not due to some quirk or accident, but because it is built on shoddy neoclassical economic foundations which cannot provide anything like a stable future for the global economy (at least for those who are not at its helm).
I really do think this is one of the best accounts of where we went wrong and who and what is to blame. The reason I give it four stars rather than five is because the final chapter, which attempts to tell us what to do is much weaker than the rest of the book. Bear in mind, the book was written before Labour lost the 2019 election and before Bernie lost the democratic primary, but I do find it to be overly optimistic, which stands in stark contrast to the implicit pessimism implied by the rigged political system it describes. It puts too much faith in the democratic part of "democratic socialism" for my liking. By this point I personally find it hard to envision a long-standing upheaval of the current economic system preceded by a socialist platform winning at an election. I think social movements and direct action are our only hope for a better future.
This book explains concisely and narratively the corporate culture, social lobbying and political actors which came together to engineer a ludicrously unjust, yet inexplicably popular financial system in the UK and beyond.
Blakeley describes how Thatcher and those who came after her managed to get the middle class on board whilst going over their heads to enrich the elite and how companies were transformed into profit making machines beholden to shareholders, with private financial institutions being central players in the game. What the book does brilliantly is it shows how all these acts are interrelated and engineered with purpose, rather than simply random or unrelated incidents which led to our current economic reality.
It uses the 2008 financial crisis as its focal point, which I think works really well to illustrate the books central thesis: that neoliberalism simply does not work in the long run. Not due to some quirk or accident, but because it is built on shoddy neoclassical economic foundations which cannot provide anything like a stable future for the global economy (at least for those who are not at its helm).
I really do think this is one of the best accounts of where we went wrong and who and what is to blame. The reason I give it four stars rather than five is because the final chapter, which attempts to tell us what to do is much weaker than the rest of the book. Bear in mind, the book was written before Labour lost the 2019 election and before Bernie lost the democratic primary, but I do find it to be overly optimistic, which stands in stark contrast to the implicit pessimism implied by the rigged political system it describes. It puts too much faith in the democratic part of "democratic socialism" for my liking. By this point I personally find it hard to envision a long-standing upheaval of the current economic system preceded by a socialist platform winning at an election. I think social movements and direct action are our only hope for a better future.
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