Hmm, I don't know where you were in 2008 when finance capital got bailed out for trillions of dollars...and after two years, those profits still have not made it increase the wages of the majority of people in the US.
You can see this wage discrepancy here:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/red/blue_pics/2011/07/28/chart14_460.jpg
(from the The 'Jobless and Wageless' Recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-2009 (pdf). Source: Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts; May 2011).
I realize that those indices are not just from corporations that offer financial services, but let's just look at the rise of finance capital (as a break from industrial capital) and what it has induced.
Industrial capital accumulates wealth (i.e. attains surplus value/profit) by actually producing things. Say for instance, a pin-making factory. The capital invested in making pins, is (by definition) industrial capital. The value-added is by actually producing something (in this example, pins) and profit is made by the added value attained through the process production (i.e. taking raw materials – steel, etc, and through a process transform those materials into a product – pins.) On the other hand, merchant capital accumulates wealth, not by production, but rather, simply by trading something– as in the times of the mercantilist market. Adam Smith, for instance, writes about the East India Company buying cheaply and “selling dearly” (at a higher cost) – this is the essence of merchant capital. So the surplus value accumulated in productive (industrial) capital, comes by the process of adding value to raw material – by producing products. In merchant capital, it simply comes by manipulating and speculating prices in a trade-focused market and selling for a higher price than what the asset was originally attained (bought) for.
The rise of finance capital, in a sense, is a return to the paradigm of merchant (mercantilist) capital. Similarly to merchant capital, finance capital accumulates wealth simply by trading. But what is being traded? “Financial instruments” such as collateralized debt obligation (CDO) have increasingly become the “product” to sell for contemporary finance capitalists. Financial instruments such as CDO’s, accumulate capital by the extraction of capital through interest rates on loans (i.e. credit). It is, then, the function of finance capital to create credit. But why would more people need credit? For the majority of the people living in the neoliberal post-Fordist capitalism wages have stagnated (if you haven't yet, look at the report from Northeastern I linked to at the end of my comment); the cost of living, however, has increased, and so people are forced to take on credit to live a comfortable life.
But why does this matter? Doesn’t the rise of finance capital once again (as Fordism once did) bridge the gap between production and consumption by providing consumers with credit by which they can consume? No. Finance capital merely prolongs the problem of capitalist accumulation. Consumption can be sustained by credit only for so long before the system crashes and the contradiction of capitalism (i.e. the disconnect between dwindling wages and high expected consumption) crystallizes. At some point, the debt (interest and principal) has to be paid. But if wages are still stagnant, where will the majority of the population get enough capital to pay off their debt? They just will not pay. It is then that the economic system (which is overwhelmingly reliant on these debts – about 44% of
income of the U.S. economy is now in finance capital) collapses.
Clearly, the rise to prominence of finance capital has once again revived the question of the inherent contradiction in capitalist accumulation –what is to be done about it? It seems like until the state can be strong enough to redistribute the vast wealth generated by finance markets, those at the bottom of the economic chain will be enslaved by their credit histories and low wages, and will continue to suffer the economic crises created by those at the top.
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Below is the full report I mentioned in the beginning of my comment:
The 'Jobless and Wageless' Recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-2009 (pdf). Source: Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts; May 2011
http://www.employmentpolicy.org/sites/www.employmentpolicy.org/files/field-content-file/pdf/Mike%20Lillich/Revised%20Corporate%20Report%20May%2027th.pdf