Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T14:36:27.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Financialised Capitalism Soviet Style? Varieties of State Capture and Crisis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2010

Oane Visser  and
Don Kalb
Oane Visser
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen [o.visser@maw.ru.nl]
Don Kalb
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen [o.visser@maw.ru.nl]
Get access

Abstract

Looking for new ways to interpret the failings of the neo-liberal economy, this article argues that financialised capitalism at the eve of the 2008 financial crisis showed striking analogies with the characteristic combination of oligopoly and informality of the Soviet economy at the eve of its collapse. State capture by oligopolists, a large "virtual economy", the inability of agencies to obtain insight into economic and financial operations, the short term orientations of managers not coinciding with enterprise viability, and a "mystification of risk" by high science are some of the analogies to be discussed. It is argued that not only the origins but also the aftermath of the crisis may show significant analogies.

Résumé

L’hypothèse défendue est que le capitalisme financier de 2008 présentait de frappantes analogies avec l’économie soviétique à la veille de son effondrement. On examinera la mise en coupe réglée de l’État par les oligopoles, l’imposture de l’économie virtuelle, l’incapacité des agences de contrôle à suivre les opérations financières, la focalisation des managers sur le court terme au détriment de la viabilité à long terme de l’entreprise, le traitement mystificateur du risque par la mathématique financière. Outre les origines de la crise actuelle, on peut avancer que les lendemains prolongent les analogies.

Zusammenfassung

Die Finanzkrise 2008 scheint, so die Arbeitshypothese, Ähnlichkeiten mit dem sowjetischen Wirtschaftssystem kurz vor seinem Zusammenbruch aufzuweisen. Untersucht werden die Unterwerfung des Staates durch die Oligarchen, der Betrug der virtuellen Wirtschaft, die Unfähigkeit der Kontrollorgane die Finanzgeschäfte zu verfolgen, die kurzfristige Planung auf unternehmerischer Seite, der mystische Umgang der Wirtschaftmathematik mit dem Risiko. Nicht nur die Ursprünge der Krise sondern auch die Folgeerscheinungen weisen Ähnlichkeiten auf.

Keywords

CapitalismPlanned EconomyFinancial CrisisState CaptureInformalityCapitalismeÉconomie planifiéeCrise financièreCaptation de l’ÉtatÉconomie informelleKapitalismusPlanwirtschaftWirtschaftskriseStaatlicher EinflußbereichInformelle Wirtschaft
Type
Research Articles
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 171 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © A.E.S. 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arrighi, Giovanni, 1994. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of our Times (London, Verso).Google Scholar
Arrighi, Giovanni, 2000. “Globalization. State Sovereignty, and the ‘Endless’ Accumulation of Capital”, in Kalb, Don, van der Land, Marco, Staring, Richard, van Steenbergen, Bart and Wilterink, Nico, eds., The Ends of Globalization. Bringing Society Back (Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers).Google Scholar
Aslund, Anders, 1995. How Russia Became a Market Economy (Washington, The Brookings Institution).Google Scholar
Augar, Philip, 2005. The Greed Merchants: How the Investments Banks Played the Free Market Game (New York, Portfolio).Google Scholar
Barnes, Andrew, 2006. Owning Russia. The Struggle over Factories, Farms and Power (Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berliner, Joseph, 1957. Factory and Manager in the USSR (Cambridge, Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brender, Anton and Pisani, Florence, 2009. Globalized Finance and its Collapse, (Belgium, Dexia). https://www.dexia-am.com/globalisedfinance/Globalisedfinance.pdfGoogle Scholar
Broekmeyer, Marius, 1995. Het verdriet van Rusland. Dagelijks leven op het platteland sinds 1945 [Russia’s Sorrow. Daily life in the countryside since 1945] (Amsterdam, Jan Mets).Google Scholar
Clarke, Simon, ed., 1998. Structural Adjustment without Mass Employment: Lessons from Russia (Cheltenham, Elgar).Google Scholar
Dorning, Michael, 2010. “Obama Adopts Behavioral Economics”, Businessweek, June 24, www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/1027/b4185019573214.htmGoogle Scholar
EC (Commision of the European Communities), 1990. Stabilization, Liberalization and Devolution: Assessment of the Economic Situation and the Reform Process in the Soviet Union.Google Scholar
Friedman, Benjamin, 2010. “Two Roads to Our Financial Catastrophe”, New York Review of Books, Vol. LVII (7), pp. 27-29Google Scholar
Friedman, Kajsa and , Jonathan, 2008a. Historical Transformations: The Anthropology of Global Systems (Lanham, Altamira Press).Google Scholar
Friedman, Kajsa and , Jonathan, 2008b. Modernities, Class and the Contradictions of Globalization: The Anthropology of Global Systems (Lanham, Altamira Press).Google Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis, 1992. The End of History and the Last Man (New York, Avon Books).Google Scholar
Gaddy, Clifford G. and Ickes, Barry W., 1998. “Russia’s Virtual Economy”, Foreign Affairs, 77 (5), pp. 53-67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granick, David, 1954. Management of the Industrial Firm in the USSR: a Study in Soviet Economic Planning (New York, Columbia University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granick, David, 1960. The Red Executive (London, MacMillan).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greskovits, Béla. 1998. The Political Economy of Protest and Patience: East European and Latin American Transformations Compared (Budapest, Central European University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossman, Gregory, 1977. “The ‘Second Economy’ of the USSR”, Problems of Communism, 26 (5), pp. 25-40.Google Scholar
Harvey, David, 2003. The New Imperialism (Oxford, Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hertz, Noreena, 2001. The Silent Takeover. Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy (London, Arrow Books).Google Scholar
Humphrey, Caroline, 1998. Marx Went Away, But Karl Stayed Behind. A Revised Edition of Karl Marx Collective. An Ethnography of a Soviet Collective Farm (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press).Google Scholar
Johnson, Simon, 2009. “The Quiet Coup”, The Atlantic, May. www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/2000905/imf-adviceGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Simon and Kwak, James, 2010. 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Take-Over and the Next Financial Meltdown (London, Pantheon).Google Scholar
Kalb, Don, 2005. “From Flows to Violence: Politics and Knowledge in the Debates on Globalization and Empire”, Anthropological Theory, vol. 5 (2), pp. 176-204CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalb, Don, 2009. “Conversations with a Polish Populist: Tracing Hidden Histories of Globalization, Class, and Dispossession in Postsocialism (and Beyond)”, American Ethnologist 36 (2), pp. 207-223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kay, John, 2009. “What a Carve Up”, Financial Times, July 31.Google Scholar
Kingston-Mann, Esther, 2006. “The Return of Pierre Proudhon: Property Rights, Crime, and the rules of Law”, Focaal, 48, pp. 118-127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitching, Gavin, 2001. “The Concept of sebestoimost in Russian Farm Accounting: A Very Unmagical Mystery Tour”, Journal of Agrarian Change, 1 (1), pp. 57-80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornai, János, 1980. Economics of Shortage (Amsterdam, North-Holland Publishing Company).Google Scholar
Kornai, János, 2009. “The Soft Budget Constraint Syndrome and the Global Financial Crisis. Some Warnings from an East-European Economist”, Financial Times blog 14 October, http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/10/kornai-on-soft-budget-constraints-bail-outs-and-the-financial-crisis/.Google Scholar
Kornai, János, Masku, Eric and Roland, Gerard, 2003. “Understanding the Soft Budget Constraint”, Journal of Economic Literature, 41 (4), pp. 1095-1136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuznetsov, Andrei, 1994. “Economic Reforms in Russia: Enterprise Behaviour as an Impediment to Change”, Europe-Asia Studies, 46 (6), pp. 995-1070.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ledeneva, Alena V., 1998. Russia’s Economy of Favours. Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Ledeneva, Alena V, 2006. How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices that Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business. (Ithaca/ London, Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Lerman, Zvi, Csaki, Csaba and Feder, Gershon, 2002. Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Transition Countries, Worldbank Policy Research Working Paper Series n° 2794, Washington, D.C.: The World Bank, www.ideas.repec.org/s/wbk/wbrwps.htmlCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandelbrot, Benoit B. and Hudson, Richard L., 2004. The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets, a Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward (London, Profile books).Google Scholar
McMichael, Philip, 2009. “A Food Regime Analysis of the ‘World Food Crisis’”, Agriculture and Human Values, 26 (4), pp. 281-295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nove, Alec, 1980. The Soviet Economic System (London, George Allen and Unwin).Google Scholar
Peston, Robert, 2008. Who Runs Britain?… And Who's to Blame for the Economic Mess We’re (London, Hodder and Stoughton).Google Scholar
Sassen, Saskia, 1998. Globalisation and its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money (New York, The New Press).Google Scholar
Soros, George, 2008. The Crash of 2008 and What it Means: The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (New York, Public Affairs).Google Scholar
Spoor, Max and Visser, Oane, 2004. “Restructuring Postponed? Large Russian Farm Enterprises ‘Coping with the Market’”, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 31 (3–4), pp. 515-551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strange, Susan, 1986. Casino Capitalism (Oxford, Blackwell).Google Scholar
Swedberg, Richard, 2010. “The Structure of Confidence and the Collapse of Lehman Brothers”, in Loundry, Mike and Hirsch, Paul M., eds., Markets on Trial: The Economic Sociology of the U.S. Financial Crisis, Research in the Sociology of Organizations series (Bingley, Emerald Group Publishing).Google Scholar
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, 2008. The Black Swan. The Impact of the Highly Improbable, (London: Penguin books).Google Scholar
Tett, Gillian, 2009. Fool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets, and Unleashed a Catastrophe (London, Little Brown).Google Scholar
Visser, Oane, 2006. “Property, Labour Relations and Social Obligations in Russia’s Privatised Farm Enterprises”, in von Benda-Beckman, Keebet, von Benda-Beckman, Franz and Wiber, Melanie, eds., The Changing Properties of Property (London/New York, Berghahn).Google Scholar
Visser, Oane, 2008. Crucial Connections.The Persistence of Large Farm Enterprises in Russia (Nijmegen, Radboud University Nijmegen).Google Scholar
Visser, Oane, 2009. “Household Plots and the Symbiosis with the Large Farm Enterprises”, in Max, Spoor, ed., Land, Peasants and Rural Poverty in Transition. The Political Economy of Rural Livelihoods in Transition Economies, ISS Series in Rural Livelihoods (London/New York, Routledge).Google Scholar
Visser, Oane and Spoor, Max, 2011. “Land Grabbing in Post-Soviet Eurasia: The World's Largest Agricultural Land Reserves at Stake”, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38 (1), forthcoming.Google Scholar
Wedel, Janine, 2004. “Blurring the State-Private Divide: Flex Organisations and the Decline of Accountability”, in Spoor, Max, ed., Globalisation, Poverty and Conflict: A Critical Development Reader (Dordrecht/Boston, Kluwer Academic Publishers).Google Scholar