Finance Dominated Accumulation

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Finance-Dominated Accumulation and the Limits to

Institutional and Spatio-Temporal Fixes in Capitalism

Finance-Dominated Accumulation

Bob Jessop

… within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is daw-ning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism

capable of change, and is constantly changing

(Marx 1967a: 8)

This chapter explores the improbability of capital accumulation and, more gene-rally, of the continued reproduction of ‘present society’. It assumes that crisis isan ever-present but abstract possibility in the capital relation and, hence, in itsinstantiation in capitalist social formations. Whether crises are actualized and, if

so, their timing, forms of appearance and effects depend on many other factors,forces, and contingencies. There are well-known counter-tendencies to many cri-sis-tendencies. In addition, social forces continually experiment with ways to mo-

bilize these counteracting forces and/or to handle crisis-tendencies and actual cri-

ses in other ways. These opening remarks t well with the theme of the presentvolume: fragile stability, stable fragility. Indeed, I will develop two arguments below. First, given the inherent possibility of crisis in capitalism, any contingentstability of capital accumulation and capitalist societalization is necessarily fra-gile. And, second, despite this necessary fragility, it is nonetheless possible for specic, but always partial, selective and fragile, institutional and spatio-tempo-ral xes to create zones of stability here-now at the intended or unintended costof creating zones of instability elsewhere and/or sowing the seeds of later instability. Combining these arguments, then, where these xes succeed we nd fra-

gile stability and, in so far as the breakdown of one complementary set of xes isfollowed, sooner or later, by another set, we can speak of stable fragility.

This analysis entails a rejection of the idea that social order is characterized by stasis or, alternatively, by self-identical cyclical repetition, views long sincerefuted by historical development. But it also rests on a denial that social order always exists ‘on the edge of chaos’, if this means that order could break downat any moment . If belief in stasis privileges a spatialized conception of social or-der as an inherently stable structure (‘a xed crystal’), the notion of living ‘onthe edge of chaos’ privileges a temporalized perspective for which an improbable

social order depends on the continuing but always contingent deferral of collap-



302 Bob Jessop

se. At stake in the analysis below is a tension between: (1) efforts to stabilize aninherently fragile social order, which is ‘capable of change and constantly chan-

ging’, through institutional and spatio-temporal xes; and (2) the problems thatthese xes create in turn because of their selective focus and their role in displa-cing and/or deferring problems that sooner or later react back on the erstwhilezones of relative stability. This puts agency, institutions, and spatio-temporalityat the centre of analyses of the fragile stability and/or stable fragility of social or-der. It also requires attention to the specicity of the problems of order in parti-cular social formations as these are construed from time to time by their mem- bers, interested outsiders, and disinterested observers.

The analysis proceeds in ve steps. First, I consider the fragility of societali-

zation, i. e., the production of stable ‘society effects’. While my remarks here areinitially very general, they later focus on ‘modern societies’. Second, I developthese views in the particular case of capitalist social formations, i. e., social for-mations in which prot-oriented, market-mediated accumulation is the hegemo-nic or, at least, dominant axis of societalization. Third, I introduce the notions of

institutional and spatio-temporal x to indicate one way in which capitalist so-cietalization, despite its inherent improbability, can be secured in an always par-tial, provisional, and precarious manner. Fourth, I illustrate this argument fromthe case of nance-dominated accumulation. Fifth, I return to general reectionsand offer some conclusions about fragile stability, stable fragility for other modes

of societalization in ‘modern societies’.

1. Fragile Societalization, Societalized Fragility

Since its inception in the early nineteenth-century, sociology has taken ‘society’and its contingent reproduction as its privileged object(s) of analysis or, at least,as its ultimate horizon of analysis. Yet society is a deeply problematic notion and

recent sociological contributions have questioned whether it should or, indeed,can remain the central focus of the discipline (e. g., Luhmann 1986; Urry 1999).If sociology can no longer take the existence of ‘society’ for granted, is there analternative theoretical object at a similar level of generality that does not assumexed boundaries and that offers more scope for analysis across different sites andscales? One candidate is societalization and societal projects. Whereas societa-lization (Vergesellschaftung ) denotes the social processes through which ‘soci-ety effects’ are produced, societal projects refer to the competing social imagi-naries that envision different principles of societalization and different ways to

achieve ‘society effects’. This implies that, to the extent that ‘society’ exists, it is



303Finance-Dominated Accumulation

constituted and reproduced through more or less precarious social processes and

practices that articulate diverse social relations in ways that produce macro-so-

cial order. For example, against the still common ‘methodologically nationalist’equation of society with the national territorial state (or, less persuasively, the na-tion-state and its imagined community), the alternative approach proposed hereclaims that the rise of modern (national) societies simply reects the hegemonyor domination of one, time-and-space-bound, principle of societal organization.Earlier (and still current) principles include segmentation, centre-periphery re-lations, and diverse projects that either: prioritize the codes and programmes of one or another ‘functional system’ (or institutional order); or, conversely, privile-ge the dominance of one or another social identity or category that is transversalto these codes (on principles of societalization, see Luhmann 1986, 1996; on thetransversal character of social identities such as ethnicity, gender, generation, na-tion, place, ‘race’, region, and so on, see Jessop 2010).

The nature of any particular ‘society’ depends on its hegemonic or dominant

principle of societalization and its collective identity (or self-description), if any;on how this principle is articulated with others; and on how the production of the

corresponding ‘society effects’ is secured despite its specic contradictions, cri-sis-tendencies, and conicts. A successful societalization project typically emer-ges from, and is based on, a more extensive substratum of social relations thatincludes many more elemental relations than those that are actually combined asmoments of a structurally coherent conguration to form these ‘society effects’.There are always interstitial, residual, marginal, irrelevant, recalcitrant, and cont-

radictory elements and, in so far as alternative societies are possible, there is clear-

ly scope for conict over rival ‘societal projects’ as well as contradictions amongcompeting institutional logics. Competing social forces try to establish one or

another societal project and its associated principle of societalization as the he -gemonic or dominant ‘frame’ in a given context and/or to foster complementary(sub-hegemonic) or opposed (counter-hegemonic) projects. Given the existenceof competing societal projects, each with its own social bases and organizational

principles, societalization is always incomplete. There are no societies (not evenfully closed ‘total institutions’) in which only one project prevails and achievesclosure. In addition, and equally importantly, not only can social interaction andorganizational life occur in the absence of societies, but much of social life oc -curs without regard to their existence, if any, and, on these grounds, there is noreason to privilege ‘society’ as a unit of analysis.

This approach implies that ‘society’ is not an actually existing entity (let alo-

ne a closed system) but a horizon against which to assess the individual feasibility



304 Bob Jessop

and compossibility of competing societal or societalization projects that privile-ge the codes and programmes of one or another functional system or, again, that

privilege identities, values, and norms that are not anchored in such systems. Inthese terms, the analysis of societalization does not entail a totalizing view of ‘so-

ciety’ as a fully formed, internally coherent, externally closed system but, rather,a concern with the relative weight of competing societalization projects and their always partial, contrary, and permeable ‘society effects’. An important questionfor the nature of the ‘social’ and ‘society’ in this regard concerns the importanceof different axes of societalization: economic, political, legal, scientic, educa-tional, religious, moral, artistic, and so on. Whereas Luhmann and his adherentstend to regard all functional systems as equal, I am less inclined, for reasons elaborated elsewhere, to accept this systems-theoretical postulate. On the contrary,to paraphrase, George Orwell, some systems are more equal than others. Whichsystem is paramount in a given set of spatio-temporal parameters is not pre-de-termined (not even by some logic of ‘the last instance that never comes’) but iscontingent on the prevailing societal project and structuring principles and thecapacities of its associated institutional and spatio-temporal xes to displace and/

or defer problems beyond these parameters.For present purposes, societal projects can be understood as instances of the

broader notion of social imaginary. Imaginaries exist at different sites and scalesof action – from individual agents to world society (Althusser 1977; Taylor 2003).There are many imaginaries and most are loosely-bounded and have links to others

within the broad eld of semiotic practices. Without them, individuals cannot ‘goon’ in the world and collective actors (such as organizations) could not relate totheir environments, make decisions, or engage in strategic action. In this sense,imaginaries are an important semiotic moment of the network of social practices

in a given social eld, institutional order, or wider social formation (Fairclough2003). Imaginaries have the same features as discursive relations more generally.They are polysemic and heteroglossic, i. e., have alternative meanings and invol-ve different voices and agents. This is both a source of the discursive power of societal projects (their capacity to mobilize different social forces in an unstableequilibrium of compromise) and a source of vulnerability (their susceptibility tocritique and re-articulation into rival projects). This is another way of restatingthe paradox that provides the theme of this volume. Where a societal project ishegemonic, it leads to the sedimentation of the resulting society effects, i. e., torelative stability. But hegemony is continually liable to re-politicization of what

is only ever provisionally taken-for-granted (cf. Glynos/Howarth 2007).




Imaginaries are most powerful where they operate across many sites and

scales and can establish and connect local discourses and practices into a more

encompassing hegemonic project. In this sense, they become societal projects.They will be retained (discursively reproduced, incorporated into individual rou-

tines, and institutionally embedded) when they reorganize the balance of forcesand guide supportive structural transformation. Although any given societal project is only ever partially realized, those that succeed, at least in part, have their own performative, constitutive force in the material world – especially when they

correspond to (or successfully shape) underlying material transformations, canmobilize key social forces to form a ruling bloc, can organize popular support,disorganize opposition, and marginalize resistance.

This argument is closely linked to a second aspect of societalization. Thisconcerns the emergent pattern of social interactions, including direct or indirect

human interactions with the natural world. Structuration establishes possible con-

nections and sequences of social interaction (including interaction with the na-tural world) so that they facilitate routine actions and set limits to path-shapingstrategic actions. Whereas structuration refers to a complex, contingent, tenden-tial process that is mediated through action but produces results that no actors

can be said to have willed, structure refers to the contingently necessary outcomeof diverse structuration efforts. In this sense, structuration creates a complex as-semblage of asymmetrical opportunities for social action, privileging some ac-tors over others, some identities over others, some ideal and material interests

over others, some spatio-temporal horizons of action over others, some coalition possibilities over others, some strategies over others and so on (Jessop 2007b).Structural constraints always operate selectively: they are not absolute and un-conditional but always temporally, spatially, agency-, and strategy-specic. Con-versely, to the extent that agents are reexive, capable of reformulating within li-mits their own identities and interests, and able to engage in strategic calculation

about their current situation, there is scope for strategic action to alter the strate-gic selectivity of current structural congurations and thereby modify strategi-cally selective constraints.

Where semiosis and structuration as forms of complexity reduction are com-

plementary, they transform meaningless and unstructured complexity into me-aningful and structured complexity. The social and natural world becomes rela-tively meaningful and orderly for actors (and observers) insofar as not all possible

social interactions are compossible in a given set of spatio-temporal parameters (a

time-space envelope). While there is usually massive scope for variation in indi-vidual transactions, the medium- to long-term semiotic and material reproduction



306 Bob Jessop

demands of meso-complexes and macro-social orders narrow this scope conside-

rably. In a complex world there are many sites and scales on which such proces-ses operate and, for present purposes, what matters is how local sites and scales

come to be articulated to form more encompassing sites and scales and how the

latter in turn frame, constrain, and enable local possibilities. If these are not to be

random, unpredictable, and chaotic, possible connections and sequences of action

must be limited. This poses intriguing questions about the articulation of micro-social diversity to produce relatively stable macro-social congurations (Bour-dieu 1990; Foucault 1976; Jessop 2007b; Luhmann 1986, 1996; Wickham 1987).Recursive selection of semiotic practices and extra-semiotic processes at thesescales tends to reduce inappropriate variation and thereby secure the ‘requisitevariety’ (constrained heterogeneity rather than simple uniformity) that supportsthe structural coherence of a stable social order. Many other meanings are the-reby excluded and so are many other possible social worlds. Stable semiotic or-ders, discursive selectivities, social learning, path-dependencies, power relations,

patterned complementarities, and material selectivities all become more signi-cant, the more that material interdependencies and/or issues of spatial and inter-temporal articulation increase within and across diverse functional systems andthe lifeworld. In so far as this occurs, we can talk of societalized fragility, i. e.,the capacity through societal projects to constrain micro-social diversity with

its potential for ‘anything goes’ anarchic proliferation within limits compatiblewith macro-social order. This does not exclude competing imaginaries for diffe-rent scales and elds of social action or, indeed, rival principles of societalizati-on more generally. All it means is that they are marginalized, subject to a logicof negative integration (not ‘rocking the boat’) and persist as useful sources of ir-ritation and exibility. Just stating the conditions for macro-social order revealsthe fragility and, indeed, improbability of the smooth reproduction of complexsocial orders. Yet they do exist.

2. Fragile Accumulation, Accumulated Fragility

I now apply these general arguments to the specic problems of capitalist so-

cietalization, i. e., the organization of a social formation under the dominance of

a societalization principle that rests on prot-oriented, market-mediated accu-

mulation. The improbability and, hence fragility, of a capitalist social formationderives not just from the generic (and authentic) problems of institutional integ-ration and social cohesion in any social formation (e. g., Hobbes, Durkheim, Par-

sons, Luhmann). It is also rooted in particular (and equally genuine) contradic-




tions that are peculiar to the capitalist mode of production (e. g., Marx, Weber,Gramsci, David Harvey). These contradictions are inherent and incompressible.

In other words, however they are handled, whether directly or through displace-ment and deferral, they are permanent features of the capitalist mode of produc-tion (or CMP). Their forms of appearance nonetheless vary across accumulationregimes and their effects depend on how they are construed and how (well) theyare handled. I develop these points below.

The basic features of the CMP and its nature as a distinctive ensemble of ob-

jects of régulation/governance are such that neither capital as a whole nor the capital-labour relation on which its contradictory and conictual dynamic dependscan be reproduced purely through market relations. What most distinguishes capitalism from other forms of producing wealth is its treatment of labour-power as if it were a commodity. In short, the appropriation of surplus labour takes theform of exchange. This turns the labour market and labour process into sites of

class struggle between capital and workers. This economic class struggle is over-determined, of course, by juridico-political and ideological structures and strugg-

les, the complexity of class relations in actually existing social formations, andthe intersection of class with other social categories. Its dynamic also has manyother economic and extra-economic determinants and, in addition, class (or class-

relevant) struggles extend beyond production and market relations to other socialelds. Class struggle and competition are key sources of capitalism’s open-en-ded dynamic and underpin the differential accumulation that reects the abilityof some capitals to grow through market and non-market means faster than others

(or, at least to suffer less in cyclical downturns and/or in periods of crisis). Whilethe generalization of the commodity form to labour-power is peculiar to capita-lism, there are three other key categories of ctitious commodity: land (or nature),

money, and knowledge with corresponding forms of revenue (rent, interest, roy-alties) (Jessop 2007a). The relative weight of these ctitious commodities provi-des one way to distinguish different stages of capitalism, different regimes of ac-cumulation, and different modes of competition within the overall framework of the world market, which is the ultimate horizon of accumulation.

The most important general law of the CMP is the law of value. This de-scribes the tendency of capitalist enterprises to allocate resources to different

elds of production according to their expectations of prot. Money and credithave crucial roles in this allocation process as they do in other aspects of the cir-cuit of capital and, indeed, the wider social formation. Although the law of val-ue is mediated in the rst instance through market forces and the price mecha-nism, the combined operation of which socially validates – or invalidates – the



308 Bob Jessop

private decisions of economic agents, it is ultimately grounded in the sphere of production. It is only here that value gets created and thereby becomes available

for subsequent validation, redistribution, or destruction. What this implies for -nance-dominated accumulation (hereafter, also FDA) will be explored in the next

section. There are also other laws that characterize capitalist economies (Dumé-nil 1978). These are not ‘iron necessities’ that operate regardless of circumstanc-es. On the contrary, they are doubly tendential, i. e., they exist only in so far astheir associated social forms are also reproduced. Their always tendential repro-duction is mediated through competition and class and class-relevant struggles based on market and non-market factors and forces. So it is far from guaranteed.Failure to reproduce these forms weakens, suspends, or terminates the relevantlaws. Indeed, it undermines the capital relation itself: for there is no ‘iron neces-sity’ to its expanded reproduction.

The stability of a social formation based on the dominance of prot-orien-ted, market-mediated accumulation can be described, in the spirit of this volu-me, as fragile. Stated in the more familiar, and apposite, language of the Marxistcritique of political economy, this fragile stability is rooted in three key aspectsof the capital relation:

▪ The incompleteness of capital as a purely economic (or prot-oriented,

market-mediated) relation such that its continued reproduction depends, inan unstable and contradictory way, on various and changing extra-economic

mechanisms whose presence cannot be guaranteed and which, even when present, cannot prevent ‘market failures’ or correct them automatically andwithout repercussions.

▪ The interrelated structural contradictions, micro-macro paradoxes, and

strategic dilemmas of the capital relation. The resolution of some may exa-cerbate others or, at least require hard-to-achieve complementary solutions,the combination of which depends on different accumulation regimes, modes

of régulation, and conjunctures; and ▪ Conicts over the regularization and/or governance of these contradictions and

dilemmas as expressed in the circuit of capital and the wider social formation.

The rst feature is a commonplace of contemporary economic sociology as well as

classical sociology more generally and is taken for granted here. The second fea-ture is more controversial but also foundational to the present approach. It there-fore merits more extended treatment. Marx (1967a) identied an essential contra-diction in what he designated as the ‘cell-form’ (nowadays one might well say the‘stem-cell form’) of the CMP: the commodity. This is the co-existence in the same




form of exchange- and use-value. While exchange-value denotes a commodity’smarket-mediated monetary value (expressed in the price-form) for the seller; use-

value refers to its material and/or symbolic usefulness to the purchaser. Withoutexchange-value, no enterprise would produce commodities for sale; without use-value, they would nd no purchaser. Starting from this contradiction, which isalso the basis of capitalist societalization, Marx aimed to unfold the complex dy-namic of the CMP, including the role of money and credit relations, the nature of the wage relation and the duality of production as a process of material transfor-mation and valorization, the potential for, and mechanisms of, periodic crises,and, of course, their creatively destructive role in renewing accumulation by as-serting the organic unity of capital.

I suggest that all forms of the capital relation in the CMP, considered in its pure form, embody different but interconnected versions of this basic contradic-tion. These impact in different ways on (different fractions of) capital and on (dif-

ferent categories and strata of) labour at different times and places (Jessop 2002,

2011b). Thus, productive capital is both abstract value in motion (notably in theform of realized prots available for reinvestment) and a concrete stock of alrea-dy invested time- and place-specic assets in the course of being valorized; theworker is both an abstract unit of labour-power substitutable by other such units(or, indeed, other factors of production) and a concrete individual (or, indeed, amember of a particular collective workforce) with more or less specic skills,

knowledge and creativity able to produce particular goods and services; the wage

is both a cost of production and a source of demand; money circulates both as po-tentially world money (ideally in stateless space) and as national currencies subject to some measure of state control (with the currency of the dominant econo-my tending to become the reference point for world money); land functions bothas a form of property (based on the private appropriation of nature) allocated interms of expected revenues in the form of rent and as a natural resource (modi-ed by past actions) that is more or less renewable and recyclable; knowledge un-derpins intellectual property rights and is a collective resource (the intellectualcommons). Likewise, the state is not only tasked with securing key conditions for

valorization and the reproduction of labour-power but also with maintaining co-hesion in a divided, pluralistic society. In turn, taxation is both an unproductivededuction from private revenues (prots of enterprise, wages, interest, and rents)and a means to nance collective investment and consumption to compensate for ‘market failures’. And so on (see Jessop 2002).

The tension between the two co-existing poles, which in their opposition

dene the contradiction, generates strategic dilemmas on how best to handle the



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latter. For example, does – or should – the state treat the (social) wage mainly asa source of demand, a cost of production, or attempt to reconcile these aspects?

The rst case is illustrated in the Keynesian welfare national state, the second inneo-liberal austerity politics or export-led growth, and the third in welfare regi-mes based on exicurity. Analogous arguments hold for other contradictions anddilemmas. The plurality of contradictions and their interconnections, the possibilities of handling them at different sites, scales, and time horizons, etc., creates

signicant scope for agency, strategies and tactics to affect economic trajectories.

How they are handled also shapes the form of subsequent crises but does not de-termine the nature of subsequent regimes, which also depend on the formal andmaterial adequacy outcome of path-shaping initiatives.

These contradictions and dilemmas are the source of the fragile stability of capitalist social formations. They are immanent in the capital relation and insoluble in the real world. However, while they cannot be reconciled permanently andin all respects in abstracto, they can be moderated provisionally and partially

through specic mechanisms and projects that provided temporary xes that en-able accumulation to continue in some economic spaces, albeit at the cost of un-even development now and future problems. When the contradictions and their associated crisis-tendencies intensify and interact with each other, we could talk of accumulated fragility. The solution to this within the framework of the CMP,as Marx noted, was crises that re-assert the organic unity of capital through their purgative effects (Marx 1968: 509). The continued search and recurrent chancediscoveries of such partial, provisional, and temporary solutions helps to explainthese formations’ stable fragility – a stability that is achieved through the trans-formations effected in and through new xes. The latter emerge, to the extent

that they do, in a contested, trial-and-error process, involving different econo-mic, political, and social forces and diverse strategies and projects; and they typically rest on an institutionalized, unstable equilibrium of compromise. Fixingis a contested process, involving different economic, political, and social forcesand diverse strategies and projects. Hence they only appear to harmonize cont-radictions, which persist in one or another form.

3. Fixed Fragility, Fragile Fixes

Two useful concepts for exploring the improbable partial, provisional, and temporary resolution of the contradictions and dilemmas of capitalist societalizationare ‘institutional x’ and ‘spatio-temporal x’. An institutional x comprises a

complementary set of institutions that, via institutional design, imitation, impo-




sition, or chance discovery, helps to provide a temporary, partial, and relativelystable solution to the challenges of securing economic, political, or social order.

It is not purely technical but rests at best on an institutionalized, unstable equi-librium of compromise and, at worst, on the open use of force. Institutional -xes work in part because, in strategic-relational terms, institutions have distinc-tive discursive-material selectivities, favouring some actors, alliances, identities,interests, projects, spatio-temporal horizons, and so forth, over others; they arelinked with specic technologies of governance; and they are articulated into spe-

cic institutional orders and ensembles that create specic forms of domination(Jessop 2007b). In this sense, institutions matter. Different modes of societaliza-tion may have their own institutional xes that provide the strategically-selectiveframework in which their respective hegemonies or domination may be secured.Here I focus on the case of capitalist societalization. While many institutions that belong to an institutional x are related to the fundamental categories of the capital relation noted above (and further explored below), their specic forms andlogics, their particular patterns of selectivity, and their most likely points of rup-ture and fragility are irreducible to these basic categories. This requires a moredetailed institutional analysis – but one that does not forget that these are insti-tutional xes tied to capitalist societalization and not to the production of ‘soci-ety effects’ in general.

The notion of spatio-temporal x is an important complement to (or, better,

dimension of) institutional xes insofar as they partly overlap. A spatio-tempo-ral x (hereafter STF) establishes spatial and temporal boundaries within whichthe always relative, incomplete, provisional, and institutionally-mediated struc-tural coherence of a given order (here, a mode of growth) are secured – to the ex-tent that this occurs. STFs facilitate the institutionalized compromises that help

to sustain a given accumulation regime, mode of régulation, governance pattern,and more general form of capitalist societalization. They depend on the capacityto secure order within this spatiotemporal framework by displacing and/or defer-ring inherent or contingent problems elsewhere and/or into the future. This caninvolve super-exploitation of internal or external spaces outside the compromise(relative to the levels within the compromise), unsustainable exploitation of nature

or inherited social resources, deferral of problems into an indenite future and the

exploitation and/or oppression of specic classes, strata or other social categories.

Issues of institutional design apart, consolidating an STF also involves buil-ding support in and across many conictual and contested elds for the respec-tive accumulation strategies, associated state projects and, where it is relevant,hegemonic visions. They are typically linked to different patterns of institution-



312 Bob Jessop

alized conict and compromise. Indeed, given that these contradictions and di-lemmas are insoluble in abstracto, their moderation depends on specic visions, projects, and strategies that focus on some particular interests rather than others

and link them to an always and inevitably selective denition of the general in-terest. Thus, even within a given STF (and as occurs in institutional xes), someclasses, class fractions, social categories or other social forces are marginalized,

excluded, or oppressed. This is where the notion of social imaginaries, introduced

in the preceding section, acquires more specic form and substance. Thus theyonly appear to harmonize contradictions, which persist in one or another form.

In their interaction, institutional and spatio-temporal xes handle contradic-

tions and their associated dilemmas through:

▪ hierarchization (treating some contradictions as more important than others),

▪ prioritization (giving priority to one aspect of a contradiction or dilemmaover the other aspect),

▪ spatialization (relying on different scales and sites of action to address oneor another contradiction or aspect or displacing the problems associated

with the neglected aspect to a marginal or liminal space, place, or scale), and

▪ temporalization (alternating regularly between treatment of different aspects

or focusing one-sidedly on a subset of contradictions, dilemmas, or aspects

until it becomes urgent to address what had hitherto been neglected).

Different patterns of capitalist societalization can be distinguished, based on theweights attributed to different contradictions and dilemmas (hierarchization),

the importance accorded to their different aspects (prioritization), the role of dif -ferent spaces, places, and scales in these regards (spatialization), and the tempo-ral patterns of their treatment (temporalization). In all cases, because the capital

relation is reproduced – when it is – through social agency and entails specicforms, stakes, and sites of conict and struggle, the relative importance of cont-

radictions and dilemmas is not structurally inscribed nor strategically pre-scrip-ted. Last, but not least, because the basic contradictions and dilemmas are incom-

pressible, even if modied in specic stages and/or varieties of capitalism, all xes

will be incomplete, fragile, and impermanent. When the circuit of capital breaks,

for whatever set of causes, space opens for struggles over different trajectories.An important caveat is needed here. To paraphrase Marx in the 1857 Intro-

duction, ‘there is no contradiction in general, there is also no general contradic-tion’. Continuing the paraphrase, each contradiction has its own aspects and is ac-

tualized in its own ways in particular institutional and spatio-temporal contexts,

giving rise to a complex, overdetermined, contradictory and multiply dilemmatic




ensemble of social relations. These arguments imply that no regime has just one(fundamental) contradiction that must be regulated and/or governed appropria-

tely to ensure continuing accumulation. The relation among contradictions anddilemmas is not mechanically additive but reciprocally, albeit asymmetrically,

overdetermined: they are not simply aggregated as ‘so many potatoes in a sack’ but modify each other in distinctive ways. Their signicance varies, posing dif-ferently congured sets of régulation-cum-governance problems at different sites

and scales (cf. Gough 1991, 2004). The asymmetries can be analysed by deplo-ying three key concepts elaborated by Althusser on the basis of Mao’s insight-ful, ill-specied and politically malleable essay on contradiction: (1) the distinc-tion between the principal contradiction and other, secondary contradictions in

a given social order – with their articulation being complex and overdeterminedrather than simple and set exclusively by the principal contradiction; (2) the di-stinction between the primary aspect and the secondary aspect of a given cont-radiction in a given conjuncture, i. e., which of its poles is more problematic for expanded reproduction; and (3) the uneven development of contradictions, i. e.,

changes in the principal and secondary contradictions and their primary and se-condary aspects (Althusser 1965; Mao 1967).

The prevailing strategies modify each contradiction, with the result that

they are mutually presupposed, interiorizing and reproducing in different waysthe overall conguration of contradictions. Different congurations can be sta- bilized based on the weights attached to (1) different contradictions and dilem-mas and their dual aspects, (2) the counter-balancing or offsetting of different so-lutions to different contradictions and dilemmas, (3) different patterns of social

conict and institutionalized compromise, (4) differences in the leading placesand spaces for accumulation, and (5) the changing prospects of displacing and/or deferring problems and crisis-tendencies. The complex structural congurationof a given accumulation regime depends on institutional and spatio-temporal -xes that establish the primacy of one or more contradictions and assign a primacy

for governance to one rather than another of its aspects. Other contradictions areregularized/governed according to how they complement the current dominantcontradiction(s). Nonetheless, these xes are not ‘magic bullets’: they cannot eli-minate contradictions and dilemmas and, whatever their capacity to temporari-ly ‘harmonize’ or reconcile them, they create the conditions for the next crisis. Inow illustrate these arguments from the case of nance-dominated accumulation.



314 Bob Jessop

Fragile Financialization, Financialized Fragility

Some commentators refer to the rise of nance-led growth in contrast with theallegedly wage-led growth associated with the Fordist regime. Whereas the latter involved a virtuous circle of mass production and mass consumption and a cru-cial role for the Fordist wage relation as a driver of rising prosperity in relativelyclosed national economies, it is the nancialization of capitalist social relations(including the wage relation) that is said to provide a wealth-driven growth dy-namic in this post-Fordist regime (e. g., Boyer 2000). Others prefer the term ‘-nance-dominated accumulation regime’ in order to separate the empirical trendtowards the autonomization of nance from the question of whether it produces

growth, greater volatility, or stagnation (cf. Stockhammer 2011: 3; see also vanTreeck 2008: 11-12, 27). I side with the second group and will discuss nancia-lization in this context.

The recent and continuing North Atlantic nancial crisis (hereafter NAFC)has nance-dominated, neo-liberal accumulation at its core; it was made in theUSA and broke out there, spreading via a mix of contagion and endogenous cri-sis-tendencies to other parts of the world market, even when these had not under-gone neo-liberal regime shifts or even when, indeed, had taken defensive measu-res against this very eventuality. In this part of my reections on fragile stability,

stable fragility, I consider the sources of what Hyman Minsky presciently termed‘nancial fragility’ and the manifestation of which he attributed to the pithy pa-radox, which should be dear to readers of this volume, that stability produces in-stability (Minsky 1982).

I begin with some general comments on nancialization both as a form of economic organization and as a principle of societalization. Money, credit anddebt have existed for three millennia but acquire new forms and functions with the

consolidation of the CMP. In particular, capitalist credit-money is one of the basic

forms of the capital relation and essential to its continued reproduction. Among

these new forms of credit money is interest-bearing capital and this, in turn, can become the basis of increasingly fantastic forms of ctitious capital (Marx 1967b;

Carneiro et al., 2012). In this context, I suggest that nancialization involves theincreased importance of interest-bearing capital both in the organization of pro-t-oriented, market-mediated accumulation and in societalization more broadlyconsidered. Where the circuits of nance have become increasingly autonomous – in the short- to medium-term – from the circuits of prot-producing capital, in-terest-bearing capital and ctitious capital have also gained major roles in mo-dern social formations more generally. In Habermasian terms, they have become

major vectors of the colonization, commodication, and, eventually, nanciali-




zation of the lifeworld. This points beyond the general signicance of capitalistcredit-money in the circuits of capital to its specic forms and effects when in-

terest-bearing capital as opposed to, say, production or trade credit, can make its pursuit of interest – and its pursuit of its interest in interest – the dominant forcein economic, political, and social life. This is by no means a natural outcome of economic evolution or the invisible hand but depends on a series of deliberate eco-

nomic, political, and social interventions that can be summarized broadly (albeittoo schematically) under the rubric of neo-liberalism (or, better, neo-liberalizati-on) and its role in the accelerating integration of the world market (Elsner 2012;

Jessop 2002, 2009; Duménil/Lévy 2004; Peck 2010).Exploring the relation between FDA and neo-liberalization is like solving the

riddle of whether the chicken or egg came rst and, however important it may be,need not detain us here. Sufce it to say that they are closely related. Althoughneo-liberalization takes many forms in different national contexts, the overall ten-

dency, whether planned or not, of its preferred economic and political program-me is to privilege the exchange-value moment of the various forms of the capitalrelation noted above. Thus it promoted value in motion, the treatment of workersas disposable and substitutable factors of production, the wage as a cost of (in-ternational) production, money as uid international interest-bearing capital (especially due to the increased importance of derivatives) rather than national atmoney, nature as a commodity, knowledge as intellectual property, the state asa driver of accumulation by dispossession and protable deals with political au-thority, taxation as a means of private enrichment, and public spending decitsas a means of debt peonage for the state’s citizen-subjects.

The neo-liberal project of world market integration also enhances capital’s

capacity to defer and/or displace its internal contradictions by increasing the global scope of its operations, by reinforcing its capacities to disembed certain of itsoperations from local material, social, and spatio-temporal constraints, by enab-

ling it to deepen the spatial and scalar divisions of labour, by creating more opportunities for moving up, down, and across scales, by commodifying and secu-ritizing the future, and re-articulating time horizons. This helps to free monetaryaccumulation from extra-economic and spatio-temporal constraints, increases

the emphasis on speed, acceleration, and turnover time, and enhances capital’scapacity to escape the control of other systems insofar as these are still territo-

rially differentiated and fragmented. This disembedding from the frictions of

national power containers intensies the inuence of the logic of capi-tal on a global scale as the global operation of the law of value commensurates

local conditions at the same time as it promotes the treadmill search for super -



316 Bob Jessop

prots. Supported by a stress on shareholder value, this particularly benets hy- permobile nancial capital (understood here as interest-bearing capital and in its

most advanced forms), which controls the most liquid, abstract, and generalizedresource and has become the most integrated fraction of capital, and enhances

its abilities to displace and defer problems onto other economic actors and inte-rests, other institutional spheres, and the environment. This is even clearer in thecase of highly leveraged forms of ctitious capital (see below). In short, neo-liberalism tends to promote nancialization, both as a strategic objective and asan inevitable outcome.

Financialization matters because it modies the functioning of capitalist eco-

nomies at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels. Specically, it changes the calcu-lations and behaviour of non-nancial rms through the rise of shareholder valueas a coercive discourse, a technology of governance, and a vector of competition.One aspect is the increased importance in the operation of non-nancial rms of nancial activities (e. g., treasury functions, nancial intermediation, share buy- backs rather than investment from retained prots, expansion or acquisition of -nancial subsidiaries) that are not directly tied to their main prot-producing pur-suits. This in turn entails the revenues from nancial speculation and risk-taking became more signicant relative to prots of enterprise (cf. Nölke 2009). In ad-dition, nancialization boosts the size and inuence of the nancial relative tothe non-nancial sector. This is reected in the growing importance of fee-pro-ducing and risk-taking activities in the operation of banking capital relative toits more traditional roles of intermediation and risk management; in the augmen-ted role and weight of securitization, leverage and shadow banking in this regardwith corresponding risks in relation to liquidity and effective prudential controls;

and the greater signicance of new forms of nancial capital (e. g., hedge funds, private equity, vulture capital, sovereign wealth funds) in the nancial sector. Atthe same time, as shown by the series of nancial crises from the mid-1970s on-wards, nancialization makes the economy more prone to recession and, as therecent and continuing North Atlantic Financial Crisis demonstrates on both sidesof the Atlantic (with Iceland mid-way between them), more prone to the debt-de-ation-default trap that may produce an epic recession (Rasmus 2010). More ge-nerally, we see the nancialization of everyday life as household debt levels riseand social welfare (or the social wage) has been re-commodied (housing, pen-sions, higher education, health insurance); and the intensication of income andwealth inequalities, limiting the impact of wages as a demand source (Dore 2008;

Duménil/Lévy, 2005; Fine 2010; Krippner 2005; Lapavitsas 2010).




Drawing on the terminology of the Parisian approche en termes de régulati-

on, we can distinguish ve main structural forms around which the institutional

and spatio-temporal xes of accumulation regimes and their modes of régulati-on are organized. These are the money form, the wage form, forms of enterpri-se and competition, the state form, and international regimes (see Boyer 1991;Boyer/Saillard 2002; extended critique of different regulationist approaches, seeJessop/Sum 2006).

Table 1 presents the institutional and spatio-temporal xes of nance-do-minated accumulation regime en régulation (i. e., when it is relatively stable). Its principal (or dominant) structural forms are money and the (social) wage relati-on; the others are subordinated to these in potentially destabilizing ways – as thegenesis and repercussions of the NAFC have amply shown. This regime gainedincreasing inuence in the variegated world market through the disembeddingof interest-bearing capital and the importance of neo-liberalism as the drivingforce in world market integration (Jessop 2009). The continuing efforts to revi-ve this model tell us something about the broader dynamics of class domination,the ability of those with power not to have to learn from their mistakes, and thegrowing turn to authoritarian statism and, indeed, repressive measures to main-tain class power (on this see, for example, Duménil/Lévy 2004, 2011; Harvey

2005; Lapavitsas 2011).The primary aspect of money (understood here as different forms of credit

money rather than coin or bullion) in the nance-dominated regime is the role of money as the most abstract expression of capital and its disembedding from na-tional economic controls in a space of global ows. Fictitious credit (pseudo-va-lidated loans that are not advanced for productive investment) and ctitious capital (capital as property rather than functioning capital) acquire a much larger role compared with the Fordist period – with securitized loans and credit advan-ced for nancial trading massively boosted by neo-liberal banking and nancialderegulation. Financial innovation in turn facilitates the increasing accelerationand hyper-mobility of credit money and its escape from regulation. This contrasts

with the more territorial logic of Atlantic Fordism, in which national economies

were relatively closed, the Bretton Woods international monetary regime impo-sed limits on currency volatility and relied on a gold-dollar exchange standard,and even so-called liberal market economies closely regulated nancial institu-tions. The secondary aspect of money capital (real assets) was secured through the

neo-liberal policy boost to post-ta x prots. This was not always reected, how-ever, in productive investment because of the pressures resulting from the logicof shareholder value.



318 Bob Jessop

Table 1: Finance-Dominated Accumulation en Régulation?

Basic

Form Primary Aspect Secondary Aspect Institutional FixesSpatio-

temporal fxes

Money /Capital

Fast, hyper-mobile money asgeneral form (+derivatives) asgeneral form

Valorization of

capital as xedasset in global

division of labour

De-regulation of nancial markets,state targets price

stability, not jobs

Disembed owsfrom national

or regional state

controls; grab

future values

(Social)

wage

Private wage plushousehold credit

(promote privateKeynesianism)

Cut back on

residual social

wage as (global)

cost of production

Numerical + timeexibility; newcredit forms for

households

War for talents +race to bottom for

most workers and

‘squeezed middle’

State

Neo-liberal policieswith Ordo-liberalconstitution

Flanking plus soft+ hard disciplinarymeasures to secure

neo-liberalism

Free market plus

authoritarian

“strong state”

Intensies unevendevelopment atmany sites + scalesas market outcome

GlobalRegime

Create open space

of ows for allforms of capital

Dampen unevengrowth, adapt to

rising economies

Washington

Consensus regimes

Core-periphery tiedto US power, its

allies and relays

K

E

Y

Principal (or dominant) structural form Secondary structural form

Primary aspect of principal form Primary aspect of secondary form

Secondary aspect of principal form Secondary aspect of secondary form

The primary aspect of the wage form is the nancialization of everyday life asthe labour force turns to credit (and usury) to maintain its standard of living andto provide for its daily, life-course, and intergenerational reproduction. This re-ects the growing treatment of the wage as a cost of (international) productionrather than as a source of (domestic) demand. It is associated with the exibilityof wage labour, precarisation, downward pressure on wages and working condi-

tions, and cut backs in the residual social wage.The appropriate state form of such a regime en régulation would be an Ordo-

liberal framework, as envisaged in the Social Market Economy paradigm. Thiswould have provided a formally adequate institutional and spatio-temporal x,including the embedding of neo-liberalism internationally in a new disciplina-ry constitutionalism and credible commitments to corporate social responsibili-ty, i. e., a ‘new ethicalism’ (Gill 1995; Sum 2010). However, the neo-liberal biastowards de-regulation, which opened the space for nancialization, was more

often linked to an institutional x that relied (and still relies) on ‘unusual deals

with political authority’, predatory capitalism, and reckless speculation – all of




which provided fuel for the global nancial crisis. As the limits to ‘more market,less state’ became apparent, there was growing resort to anking and supporting

measures to keep the neo-liberal show on the road. This was reected in the dis-course and policies of the ‘Third Way’, which nonetheless maintained the courseof neo-liberalization in new circumstances. The global regime of nance-domi-nated accumulation was initially organized around the Washington Consensus,i. e., the promotion on a global scale of liberalization, deregulation, privatization,market proxies in any residual state services (whether infrastructural or welfare),cuts in direct taxation (especially on corporations) and a shift towards indirect ta-

xes, thereby providing greater scope for the operation of market forces to allocatecapital and distribute income and wealth on a global scale. Geo-politically, thisapproach was heavily promoted by the USA and its allies; it was also supported by interest-bearing capital and mobile prot-producing and commercial capital.

In the short-term, nancial accumulation depends on pseudo-validation of highly leveraged debt but ctitious credit and ctitious capital (let alone capitalin general) cannot escape their long-term material dependence on the need for surplus-value to be produced before it can be realized and distributed. Nor cancapital more generally escape its material dependence on the existence and per-formance of other institutional orders (e. g., protection of property rights and con-

tracts, basic education, effective legislation, scientic discoveries). Both sets of constraints are evident in the North Atlantic Financial Crisis. On the one hand,overaccumulation of ctitious credit and ctitious capital enabled by their disso-ciation from, and indifference to, other moments of the capital relation and their

disembedding from prudential and state control have contributed signicantly tothe eventual bursting of nancial bubbles. In this sense, the creation of ctitious(or virtual) wealth has not provided the basis for a stable accumulation regime but

has created the conditions for volatility and crisis. On the other hand, growing privatization and/or nancial cuts in other functional systems (e. g., education,health, science, and politics) have undermined the capacity of these systems todeliver services needed by a productive rather than parasitic economy. Another symptom of this tendency is the deterioration of economic infrastructure previ-ously provided directly or indirectly, even in liberal market economies, throughlocal, regional, or national state intervention. As interest-bearing capital met theconstraints of real economic growth, it upped the stakes not only be inventing and

speculating in even more rareed forms of pseudo-validation of advanced pay-ments (e. g., securitization, purchase of government debt) but also by resorting tovarious forms of primitive accumulation (e. g., land-grabbing, enclosure of the in-

tellectual commons, privatization of accumulated public wealth, colonization of




Table 2: Finance-Dominated Accumulation in Crisis

Basic

Form Primary Aspect Secondary Aspect Institutional FixesSpatio-

temporal fxes

Money/Capital

Rising antagonism between “MainStreet” and “WallStreet” (City, etc)

Epic recession

based on debt-default-deationdynamics (D4)

De-regulationcrisis of TBTF

predatory nance +contagion effects

Protectionism incore economies,

growing resistance

to free trade from

periphery

(Social)

wage

Credit crunch puts

private Keynesian-ism into reverse

Austerity reinforcesD4 double dip or epic recession

Growing reservearmy of surplus, precarious labour

Global crisis andinternal devaluationreproduction crisis

State

Political capitalism

undermines Ordo-liberalism

Austerity policies

meet resistance,harsher discipline

Crises in political

markets reinforce“post-democracy”

Cannot halt uneven

development atmany sites + scales

GlobalRegime

Unregulated space

of ows intensies“triple crisis”

Multilateral, multi-scalar imbalances

and race to bottom

Crisis + rejection of (post-)WashingtonConsensus

Crisis of US

hegemony, BRICSin crisis and

disarray

This activates the potential antagonism of ‘Wall Street’ and ‘Main Street’ (andtheir equivalents elsewhere) as too-big-to-fail nancial institutions benet from

bailouts and from quantitative easing that enables them to rebuild their capital base at low or no cost and to engage in further speculation; and, conversely, assmall and medium capitalist enterprises nd it harder to access production andtrade credit and as households nd it harder to secure personal credit and/or tofund their now privatized health, pension, higher education, and other life-course

and intergenerational reproduction needs. Most households also lose from the at-tack on ‘entitlements’, previously part of the social wage, as these are even morevocally portrayed as costs that prevent the rundown of public debt, national debt,and sovereign debt. This reversal of ‘private Keynesianism’ reinforces the above-

noted debt-default-deation dynamics. The same result also follows in the Euro-zone from ofcial attempts to create an ‘internal devaluation’ through reductionsin the private and social wage, other production costs, and so on, to compensatefor the legal restrictions on devaluation or exit from the Eurozone.

The development of debt-default-deation dynamics also strengthens other crisis-tendencies inherent in nancialization and neo-liberalism. The crisis ex- pands the ‘reserve army of labour’ on a global scale, weakening the bargaining power of wage-earners over wages and conditions, and increasing precarious

work. The Washington Consensus, already fragile, is even harder to maintain as



322 Bob Jessop

demands for protectionism increase in the crisis-hit metropolitan economies andas opposition to free trade rises in the periphery (sometimes linked to proposalsfor ‘post-neo-liberalism’). Nonetheless transnational elites continue to present free

trade agreements as an essential and purportedly cost-free economic recovery

measure. The impact of the NAFC has also aggravated imbalances in the globaleconomy and shifted its centre of gravity to the east and south. Specically thiswas reected in the halting rise of the BRICS economies – Brazil, Russia, India,China, and South Africa -- with China gaining most nationally, regionally, andglobally as the USA, the UK, and the Eurozone economies experience lean ye-ars. Nonetheless, even the BRICS have been caught up in the global contagioneffects of the North Atlantic Financial Crisis in addition to suffering from their own particular, endogenous crisis-tendencies.

Three further features of nance-dominated accumulation in crisis should be mentioned briey. The rst is that, as austerity policies begin to bite, there isgrowing, if still fragmented, resistance (which will increase as further measures

are taken) and this is leading to increased surveillance, harsher disciplinary mea-sures, and a further shift towards authoritarian statism or, as some choose to call

it, ‘post-democracy’. This is reinforced, second, by the growing anger about thelinkages among interest-bearing capital, politicians, and state managers as re-

ected in the phenomena that Max Weber classied as ‘political capitalism’. Itsthree modes of orientation to prot ( Erwerbsorientierung ) include prot-makingthrough force and domination, through nancing political parties and other enter-

prises, and through unusual deals with political authority (Weber 1961). All threehave been implicated in the opening of the space for nancialization and, morerecently, in the privileged, indeed protected, position of interest-bearing capitalin ofcial crisis-management responses. They are also associated with the rise of technocratic administration of the crisis. Third, and nally, the crisis of nance-dominated accumulation and its neo-liberal integument has reinforced uneven

development at many sites and scales. This is reected in particular in the inten-sifying ‘triple crisis’: nancial, economic, and ecological. The third element inthis crisis represents the biggest source of fragility, indeed vulnerability, in theglobal economy and in world society more generally.

Fragile Stability, Stable Fragility

This chapter has traversed much, perhaps too much, theoretical ground. It has explored the relation between fragile stability/stable fragility on three levels, with

the referent of this paradoxical couplet differing at each level. First, I reinterpreted




the general problem of social order in terms of the production of ‘society effects’in and through specic modes of societalization, which are linked to particular

social imaginaries and specic patterns of structuration. Next, I identied a dis-tinctive set of problems in modern social formations linked to capitalist societa-lization, i. e., the dominance of prot-oriented, market-mediated accumulation,with the world market (and, by extension, world society) as its ultimate horizonof enactment. I also noted the potential contribution of institutional and spatio-temporal xes to the partial, provisional, and fragile resolution of capital’s basiccontradictions and dilemmas as a condition of being en régulation. This condi-tion is fragile because the contradictions are incompressible, the dilemmas are

insoluble in abstracto, and the xes can at best displace and/or defer for a timecapital’s basic crisis-tendencies. Third, I explored the specic case of nance-do-

minated accumulation, which illustrates well the Minskyan claim that stability produces instability or, more precisely, that nancial stability produces nancialfragility. I used the concepts developed for the CMP to outline theoretically thenature of such a regime were it to be en régulation and then indicated how its in-itial form and xes already contained the possibility of distinctive forms of crisis.

These remarks remain underdeveloped at all three levels. The general re-marks still require development in terms of other modes of societalization, i. e.,in relation to the fragility of segmentation and core-periphery relations as basesof societalization, as well as in relation to hybrid forms of societalization. Theobservations on capitalist societalization imply that modern societies (i. e., for-mations dominated by functional differentiation) are not necessarily organizedin terms of a capitalist logic. But this is not elaborated and it would be important

to explore the nature and conditions of other principles of societalization, such

as national security, juridication, religion, or, cross-cutting functional systems,a social order based on ethnic or ‘racial’ stratication (such as an apartheid re-gime). This in turn poses the problem of whether all possible modes of societa-lization are equal or some are more equal than others. Finally, the comments onnance-dominated accumulation are, in their present form, more of a thought-experiment, albeit one strongly inuenced by the Marxian and Marxist critiqueof political economy and by theoretically-informed observation of the develop-ment, crisis-tendencies, and crises of the most ‘advanced’ of these regimes. Thisanalysis needs further development not only in its own terms but also in relati-on to the ability of this regime to shape accumulation and societal dynamics on aworld scale even in economic, political, and social spaces where interest-bearingcapital is not the dominant form and/or fraction of capital.



324 Bob Jessop

Acknowledgment

The writing of this chapter was enabled by a professorial fellowship funded by theUK’s Economic and Social Research Council (Grant number: RES-051-27-0303).

The usual disclaimers apply for errors of omission and commission.

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