Abstract
The drive to accumulate capital by extracting value from labour while pursuing profit in a competitive market and relentlessly commercializing socio-economic life is etched in capitalism’s DNA. During the last 40 years or so, this unequal and uneven yet improving trajectory of capitalist advance over more than 200 years has become increasingly distorted by the rise of an unashamedly predatory capitalism. This vampire form applies particularly to some global and financial corporations and an elite of super-wealth holders—not all of whom are directly involved in business. Their members siphon a disproportionate and unearned share of existing and new forms of growth and enterprise out of economic life but fail to (a) reinvest much of this in promoting the continued expansion of production and employment and (b) resist contributing pro rata to the reproductive sustainability of wider social life—citizen pensions, educational needs, social welfare, innovation, and so on. The chapter explores in detail four overlapping processes that sustain vampire capitalism: the pursuit of rising asset or share values as the primary path to wealth rather than productive investment; the ability to capture the greater share of gains from growth and rising productivity rather than labour; persuading governments, the media and public opinion to shift the tax burden on to regressive forms while hiring corporate lawyers and financial experts to avoid taxation and conceal their private assets; and forging alliances with politicians and officials whose policies and control of communal or public resources allow them to divert money-making opportunities, based on rent-seeking rather than directly productive enterprise, to capital.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Falling demand for gas-guzzling cars at a time of rising fuel prices and the impact of the 2008/9 recession brought the US auto industry to a state of financial collapse. Between them, Presidents Bush and Obama spent around $80 billion on rescuing Chrysler, General Motors and their suppliers in 2009.
- 2.
This discussion is taken up in detail in Chap. 3.
- 3.
- 4.
Forbes (2016) claims that in March 2016, there were also 1810 billionaires worldwide and their collective assets were worth $6.5 trillion—slightly down on 2015.
- 5.
Some claim that development since the 1990s in parts of the Global South has fundamentally shifted the balance of world economic power away from Western dominance. Others are sceptical. For example, they point to China’s central position: buying in huge stocks of raw materials (from Brazil and others) and components from South East Asian countries for home assembly and re-export. But this creates additional dependencies and has reduced market opportunities for other developing countries who can’t compete with China. Meanwhile, China has built up huge debts and remains well behind the West in terms of developing advanced technology (see, e.g., Nolan 2004; Kiely 2007 and 2015).
- 6.
This figure compares with China’s 190 and places India third in the world for the number of billionaires.
- 7.
In effect, the Federal Reserve at this time was under what one US economist (Stigler 1971) called ‘regulatory capture’ where special interests co-opt government policy to further their own ends.
- 8.
Instruments for managing future risks on the changing prices of currencies, commodities, shares and so on.
- 9.
Other estimates put it much higher—somewhere between $1000 trillion and $1200 trillion.
- 10.
I am indebted to Stephen Edgell for this point.
Bibliography
Beck, U. (2009). World at risk. Cambridge: Polity.
Carroll, W. K., & Carson, C. (2003). The network of global corporations and elite policy groups: A structure for transnational capitalist class formation. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 3(1), 29–59.
Dew-Becker, I. and Gordon, R. J. (2005). Where did the productivity growth go? Inflation dynamics and the distribution of income. National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved August 9, 2016, from http://www.nber.org/papers/w11842
Domhoff, G. W. (2016) Wealth, income, and power. Who Rules America? Retrieved August 10, 2016, from http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Durden, T. (2012) Manipulation and abuse confirmed in $359 trillion market. Retrieved August 10, 2016, from http://www.zerohedge.com/news/manipulation-and-abuse-confirmed-350-trillion-market
Elliott, L., & Atkiknson, D. (2008). The gods that failed: How blind faith in markets has cost us our futures. London: Bodley Head.
Farnsworth, K. (2013). Public policies for private corporations: The British corporate welfare state. Renewal, 21(4), 51–65.
Forbes. (2016). The world’s billionaires. Retrieved August 10, 2016, from www.forbes.com/billionaires/.
Freeland, C. (2012). Plutocrats: The rise of the new global super-rich and the fall of everyone else. New York: Penguin.
Funnell, B. (2009, July 30). Debt is capitalism’s dirty little secret. Financial Times. Retrieved August 10, 2016, from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e23c6d04-659d-11de-8e34-00144feabdc0.html#axzz4GvQlbNjv
Giugliano, F. (2015, July 25). BoE’s Haldane says corporations putting shareholders before economy. Financial Times. Retrieved August 9, 2016, from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7d347016-32f4-11e5-b05b-b01debd57852.html#axzz4GvQlbNjv
Global Financial Integrity. (2015). Illicit financial flows from developing countries, 2004–2013. Retrieved August 10, 2016, from http://www.gfintegrity.org/report/illicit-financial-flows-from-developing-countries-2004-2013/
Gowan, P. (2009). Crisis in the heartlands: Consequences of the new Wall Street system. New Left Review, 55, 5–28.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and democracy in the age of empire. New York: Penguin Press.
Henry, J. S. (2012). The price of offshore revisited. Tax Justice Network. Retrieved August 10, 2016, from http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_120722.pdf
Hutton, W. (2007). The writing on the wall: China and the West in the 21st century. London: Abacus.
Hutton, W. (2016, January 17). Why are we looking on helplessly as markets crash all over the world? The Guardian. Retrieved August 10, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/17/china-economic-crisis-world-economy-global-capitalism
Kiely, R. (2007). The new political economy of development: Globalization, imperialism, hegemony. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Kiely, R. (2015). The BRICs, US ‘Decline’ and global transformations. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Lansley, S. (2011). The cost of inequality: Why economic equality is essential for recovery. London: Gibson Square.
Lapavitsas, C. (2013). Profits without producing: How finance exploits us all. London: Verso.
Milne, S. (2013, January 8). There is a problem with welfare, but it’s not the ‘shirkers’. The Guardian. Retrieved August 11, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/08/welfare-problem-real-scroungers-greedy
Nolan, P. (2004). China at the crossroads. Cambridge: Polity.
Offe, C. (1985). Disorganized capitalism. Cambridge: Polity.
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.
Quiggin, J. (2010). Zombie economics: How dead ideas still walk among us. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Robinson, W. I. (2002). Capitalist globalization and the transnationalization of the state. In M. Rupert & H. Smith (Eds.), Historical materialism and globalization (pp. 210–229). London: Routledge.
Robinson, W. I., & Harris, J. (2000). Towards a global ruling class? Globalization and the transnational capitalist class. Science and Society, 64(1), 11–54.
Sandel, M. (2016, June 10–16). The energy of the Brexiteers and Trump is born of the failure of elites. New Statesman. Retrieved August 11, 2016, from http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/michael-sandel-energy-brexiteers-and-trump-born-failure-elites
Sennett, R. (2006). The culture of the new capitalism. London: Yale University Press.
Shaxson, N. (2011). Treasure islands and the men who stole the world. London: Vintage.
Sklair, L. (2001). The transnationalist capitalist class. London: Blackwell.
Stigler, C. J. (1971). The theory of economic regulation. The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, 2(1), 30–21.
Stiglitz, J. (2013). The price of inequality. London: Penguin.
Streek, W. (2014). Buying time: The delayed crisis of democratic capitalism. London: Verso.
The Economist. (2012, October 10). For richer, for poorer. Retrieved August 11, 2016, from http://www.economist.com/node/21564414
The Economist. (2014, March 15). Planet plutocrat: Our crony-capitalist index. Retrieved August 11, 2016, from http://www.economist.com/news/international/21599041-countries-where-politically-connected-businessmen-are-most-likely-prosper-planet
Treanor, J. (2012, October 21). Twenty-two more face investigation over potential Libor rigging. The Guardian. Retrieved August 11, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/21/sfo-investigation-libor-22
Webster, F. (2002). Theories of the information society. London: Routledge.
Žižek, S. (2011). Living in the end times. London: Verso.
Zucman, G. (2015, October 11). Inequality is the great concern of our age: So why do we tolerate rapacious, unjust tax havens?” The Guardian. Retrieved August 11, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/11/inequality-will-continue-until-corporations-stop-avoiding-tax
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kennedy, P. (2017). The Rise of Vampire Capitalism (and not a slayer in sight). In: Vampire Capitalism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55266-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55266-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55265-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55266-2
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)