Contradictions in Hilferding’s Finance Capital: Money, Banking and Crisis Tendencies

Abstract

Hilferding’s theory of money, credit and capitalist crisis tendencies has never been more important to reconsider. Its strengths and weaknesses have been exposed to more than a century of testing. Similar to his era, today’s conjuncture combines financial power and vulnerability, and is popularly described as financialisation. Unearthing the laws of motion of the ‘finance capital’ formulation requires digging deeper than what was apparent in early twentieth-century Germany, Hilferding’s main empirical site of praxis, since so many features of economic organisation have subsequently evolved in very different directions. While Hilferding contributed to understanding how generalities of the capitalist debt system—especially corporate financing—could be advanced beyond the disorganised state of Marx’s Capital Volume 3, a critique is essential for both intellectual and practical purposes.