Rethinking Hilferding’s Finance Capital

Abstract

Krätke offers a clear overview of the history of this seminal work by Rudolf Hilferding, from its inception to its making, its impact and reception and later plans by its author to rewrite the book. This chapter gives a full list of the major theoretical achievements of Hilferding’s Finance Capital, correcting the conventional view of the book as an historical account of the latest phase of capitalist development. Instead, and contrary to the conventional view, Krätke presents Hilferding’s work as an effort to continue Marx’s Capital and to deal with questions that Marx had left unsettled, such as the theory of competition, of credit and finance. Following an assessment of Hilferding’s main theoretical contributions, Krätke presents a full list of major amendments and conceptual changes that should allow us to understand the phenomena of contemporary financial market capitalism.