Abstract
Hilferding’s work provides important theoretical foundations for a much-needed ‘Institutional Marxist’ theory of corporate governance. By tracing the evolution of state and corporate organisation since the late nineteenth century, this chapter illustrates that such a theory constitutes a key basis for the periodisation of capitalist development. Drawing on Hilferding’s theorisation of ‘finance capital’ as a fusion of financial and industrial capital dominated by money-capital, we suggest that the restructuring of capitalism since the 2008 crisis has led to the emergence of a ‘new finance capital.’ Through a process linking the internal restructuring of ‘non-financial’ corporations with new forms of concentration and centralisation of finance across the economy, new institutional linkages between finance and industry have been consolidated, constituting a new organisational form of corporate power. Finally, we reflect on the implications of this theory for the democratic socialist movement today.
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Notes
- 1.
And, it should be said, were both greatly influenced by Hilferding.
- 2.
See Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Introduction, Part III: The Method of Political Economy. The consequence of reifying the most abstract level as the essence of concrete history is the formulation of an Idealist Marxist, as in the work of Louis Althusser. See Maher 2016.
- 3.
For a thorough elaboration of the Institutional Marxist framework, see Maher and Aquanno 2018.
- 4.
As of 2017 one of Vanguard, BlackRock, or State Street was the largest shareholder in 88 per cent of the S&P 500 companies.
- 5.
Jahnke provides a good empirical description of this new form of corporate control. He shows that while 6 per cent of S&P 500 companies reported investor engagement in 2010, this rose to 23 per cent in 2012, 50 per cent in 2014, and 72 per cent in 2017. His research also finds that from June 2016 to June 2017, Vanguard, a major passive investment firm, reported 954 engagements with corporate managers.
- 6.
It has been widely reported that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and Co., spearheaded this shift.
- 7.
For a thorough discussion of these proposed policies, see Maher et al. 2019.
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Maher, S., Aquanno, S.M. (2020). A New Finance Capital? Theorising Corporate Governance and Financial Power. In: Dellheim, J., Wolf, F.O. (eds) Rudolf Hilferding. Luxemburg International Studies in Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47344-0_6
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