The anatomy of parasitism in financialised capitalism: Entitlement and the destructive nature of permissive neoliberalism

Jeremy Leaman

doi:10.18778/0208-600X.83.01

Authors

Jeremy Leaman Honorary Fellow in German and European Politics, Honorary Member of the Language Centre, German, Loughborough University, Epinal Way, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, England

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/0208-600X.83.01

Keywords:

financialised capitalism, neoliberalism, misallocation of capital, negative environmental effects, ecocidal trend

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to debates about the negative consequences of inequality, by examining the resilience of the failed and damaging doctrines of neoliberal supply-sidism in terms of the powerful hegemony of economic and political interests allied to the financial services sector, focussing the role of the UK in facilitating that hegemony. It deploys the concept “permissive neoliberalism”, signifying both the formal embedding of property rights over financial assets as the legal encoding of the short-term predatory hunt for “yield”, and the political toleration of criminal and criminogenic activity. The description of some of the most egregious examples of predatory financialisation illuminates the sanctification by the neoliberal state of ruthless value-extraction and the toleration of an increasingly chronic dependence on of the UK political economy on the City of London and its archipelago of secrecy jurisdictions.

The shorter second part of the paper charts the growth of a mindset of entitlement on the part of economic and political elites and the role of psychopathic narcissism in crafting a legitimating narrative of their hegemony. The chronic disorder in the allocation of humanity’s material and financial resources invites a strong conclusion that financialised capitalism is not simply “killing the host” qua sustainable economic order, but is threatening the very survival of humanity’s biosphere by blocking the deployment of financial and human capital at sufficient scale to rescue the world’s climate from catastrophe.

References

Babiak P., Neumann C., Hare R. (2010), Corporate Psychopathy: Talking the Walk, “Behavioural Sciences and the Law”, vol. 28, pp. 174–193, https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.925
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/bsl.925

Birch K., Muniesa F. (eds.) (2020), Assetization. Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism, MIT Press, Cambridge, https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12075.001.0001
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12075.001.0001

Blain B. (2022), The Crypto Bubble is Bursting – Open Your Eyes and Spot the Ugly Naked Truth, https://morningporridge.com/blog/blains-morning-porridge/the-crypto-bubble-is-bursting-open-your-eyes-and-spot-the-ugly-naked-truth/ (accessed: 8.12.2022).
Google Scholar

Brittain-Catlin W. (2005), Offshore: The Dark Side of the Global Economy, Picador, New York.
Google Scholar

Bullough O. (2019), Money Land: Why Thieves & Crooks Now Rule the World & How to Take it Back, Picador, London.
Google Scholar

Bullough O. (2022), Butler to the World: The book the oligarchs don’t want you to read – how Britain become the servant of tycoons, tax dodgers, kleptocrats and criminals’, Picador, London.
Google Scholar

Burgis T. (2020), Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World, William Collins, London.
Google Scholar

Christensen J. (2011), The Looting Continues: Tax; and Corruption, “Critical Perspectives on International Business”, vol. 7(2), pp. 177–196, https://doi.org/10.1108/17422041111128249
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/17422041111128249

Christophers B. (2018), The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain, Verso, London–New York.
Google Scholar

Christophers B. (2020), Rentier Capitalism. Who Owns the Economy and Who Pays for It, Verso, London–New York.
Google Scholar

Cunliffe J. (2021), Is ‘crypto’ a financial stability risk? – speech by Jon Cunliffe, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2021/october/jon-cunliffe-swifts-sibos-2021 (accessed: 8.12.2022).
Google Scholar

Dorling D. (2014), Inequality and the 1%, Verso Books, New York.
Google Scholar

Durand C. (2017), Fictitious Capital. How Finance is Appropriating our Future, Verso, London.
Google Scholar

Foroohar R. (2016), Makers and Takers. How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street, Crown, New York.
Google Scholar

Foroohar R. (2022), Talk of doing good rings hollow at Davos, “Financial Times”, 30 May.
Google Scholar

Foster D. (2018), Just look at housing to see the true cost of privatisation, “The Guardian”, 12 June.
Google Scholar

Funnell W., Jupe R. (2009), In Government we Trust: Market Failure and the Delusions of Privatisation, Pluto Press, London.
Google Scholar

Gabor D., Kohl S. (2022), My Home is an Asset Class. The Financialization of Housing in Europe, http://extranet.greens-efa-service.eu/public/media/file/1/7461 (accessed: 8.12.2022).
Google Scholar

Hare R.D. (2002), The predators among us, Keynote address to the Canadian Police Association Annual General Meeting, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, 27 August.
Google Scholar

Hebous S., Johannesen N. (2021), At your service! The role of tax havens in international trade with services, “European Economic Review”, vol. 135, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2021.103737
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2021.103737

Howson P. (2022), Cryptocurrency price collapse offers hope for slowing climate change – here’s how, “The Conversation”, 17 May.
Google Scholar

Hudson M. (2015), Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy, ISLET, Dresden.
Google Scholar

Huffschmid J. (2002), Politische Ökonomie der Finanzmärkte, VSA-Verlag, Hamburg.
Google Scholar

Keen S. (2017), Can we avoid another financial crisis?, Polity, London.
Google Scholar

Laville S. (2020), England’s privatised water firms paid £57bn in dividends since 1991, “The Guardian”, 1 July.
Google Scholar

Mazzucato M. (2013), The Entrepreneurial State. Debunking Public vs Private Sector Myths, Anthem & Penguin, London.
Google Scholar

Mazzucato M. (2018), The Value of Everything. Making and Taking in the Global Economy, Allen Lane, London.
Google Scholar

McCauley R. (2021), Why bitcoin is worse than a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme, https://www.ft.com/content/83a14261-598d-4601-87fc-5dde528b33d0 (accessed: 8.12.2022).
Google Scholar

McNamara S. (2016), The Law and Ethics of High Frequency Trading, “The Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology”, https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mjlst; https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2565707 (accessed: 8.12.2022).
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2565707

Mellor M. (2010), The Future of Money: From Financial Crises to Public Resource, Pluto Press, London.
Google Scholar

Murphy L., Nagel T. (2002), The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/0195150163.001.0001

Ogle V. (2017), Archipelago Capitalism: Tax Havens, Offshore Money, and the State, 1950–1970s, “The American Historical Review”, vol. 122(5), pp. 1431–1458, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.5.1431
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.5.1431

Parker D. (2004), The UK’s Privatisations experiment: the passage of time permits of the sober assessment, “CESifo Working Paper”, no. 1126, https://www.google.pl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwin--eNvOz7AhW6QvEDHQkwDcMQFnoECAwQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifo.de%2FDocDL%2Fcesifo1_wp1126.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2CRGJVZp9S0sTwKXFT8jJP (accesed: 8.12.2022).
Google Scholar

Pettifor A. (2017), The Production of Money. How to Break the Power of the Bankers, Verso, London.
Google Scholar

Picardo E. (2022), 4 Big Risks of Algorithmic High-Frequency Trading, Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/012716/four-big-risks-algorithmic-highfrequency-trading.asp (accessed: 8.12.2022).
Google Scholar

Pistor K. (2020), The Code of Capital, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Google Scholar

Raworth K. (2017), Doughnut Economics. Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist, Random House, London.
Google Scholar

Ryan-Collins J., Lloyd T., Macfarlane L. (2017), Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, Zed Books, London.
Google Scholar

Sagar P., Christensen J., Shaxson N. (2013), British Government Attitudes to British Tax Havens in British Dependent Territories from 1967–1975, [in:] J. Leaman, A. Waris (eds.), Tax Justice and the Political Economy of Global Capitalism, 1945 to the Present, Berghahn Books, New York–Oxford.
Google Scholar

Shaxson N. (2011), Treasure Islands. Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World, Bodley Head, London.
Google Scholar

Shaxson N. (2018), The Finance Curse. How Global Finance is Making Us All Poorer, Bodley Head, London.
Google Scholar

Stafford P. (2020), FCA researchers outline $5bn “tax” imposed by high-speed trading, “Financial Times”, January 27.
Google Scholar

Strange S. (1986), Casino Capitalism, Blackwell, Oxford.
Google Scholar

Strange S. (1998), Mad Money, Manchester University Press, Manchester, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10897
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10897

Taylor S. (2021), The problem of pathocracy, “The Psychologist”, vol. 34, pp. 40–45, https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.45.1.40
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.45.1.40

Tett G. (2010), Fool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe, Abacus, London.
Google Scholar

Twenge J., Campbell K. (2009), The Narcissism Epidemic. Living in the Age of Entitlement, Simon & Schuster, New York.
Google Scholar

Vercellone C. (2010), The Crisis of the Law of Value and the Becoming-Rent of Profit. Notes on the systemic crisis of cognitive capitalism, HAL, https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00516801 (accessed: 8.12.2022).
Google Scholar

Weeks J. (2014), Economics of the 1%. How Mainstream Economics Serves the Rich, Obscures Reality and Distorts Policy, Anthem Press, London–New York–Delhi.
Google Scholar

Wilkinson R., Pickett K. (2010), The Spirit Level. Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Penguin, London.
Google Scholar

Wilkinson R., Pickett K. (2019), The Inner Level. How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Well-being, Penguin, London.
Google Scholar