Labour, Financialisation and the Nature of Contemporary Capitalism

Frances Coppola has written a thought-provoking piece drawing an eye-catching parallel between wage labour and slave labour to help describe the contemporary phenomenon of “The Financialisation of Labour”. Here I will argue that the major trends noted but not fully explained by Coppola – such as deteriorating labour conditions and the failure of corporate investment – are due to the very nature of contemporary capitalism as a whole, that I will describe as financialised capitalism. I will argue that we need to see the “big picture”, the specific nature of contemporary capitalism, if we want to explain the reality that Coppola keenly observes in her piece, and this big picture is best understood through the notion of “financialisation”. Read more