Scott Aquanno is assistant professor of political science at Ontario Tech University. He is the coauthor of The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J. P. Morgan to BlackRock with Stephen Maher and author of Crisis of Risk: Subprime Debt and US Financial Power from 1944 to Present.
In Counterrevolution, Melinda Cooper reads the 1970s economic crisis as an elite revolt rather than proof of the New Deal order’s unsustainability. Her arguments rely on a rejection of Marxism as an analytical framework and of socialism as a political horizon.
Globalization is a project of class war whose destructive effects have driven many US workers into the Trumpian right. The Left needs a real response to the problems raised by global capital mobility — and that should start with capital controls.
Analysts of financialization often present it as a sign of capitalist decline, yet the rise of finance has actually strengthened capitalist domination. The only way to challenge this power is by converting finance into a public utility.
Finance’s dominance over the economy isn’t a deviant evolution of a “good” industrial capitalism. Finance and industry are interdependent — meaning solving problems like inequality and climate change will require a far-reaching democratization of the economy.