This paper, published in 2016, provides a prophetic background to the February 2018 stock-market shock using a value-theoretic analysis of the role of financial markets in today’s capitalist economy. It is a prepublication version of the paper that appeared in Marxism 21, Vol 20, issue 2, pp 190-206, and should be cited as such.
Abstract
This article investigates the mechanisms and causes of recessions and depressions, and their relation to the more spectacular financial crises which announce them. It demonstrates how the concept of the Monetary Expression of Labour Time (MELT) allows us to understand the most difficult aspect of this relation, namely how money acquires value, and thereby serves, under definite conditions which characterise recessions and depressions, as self-expanding value, so becoming an alternative use of capital to production.
