Costas Lapavitsas
Biographic Data
| ID | 267677 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Costas Lapavitsas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Costas |
| FAMILY NAME | Lapavitsas |
| SIGNATURE | LAPAVITSAS C |
| AFFILIATIONS | SOAS University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9330-7105 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 434 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
ECB monetary policy in a quandary
The balance sheet of the ECB expanded greatly after the Great Crisis of 2007-9, similarly to other core central banks, but this development does not signify the adoption of a new ‘interventionist’ stance. The expansion of the balance sheet by core central banks reflects a profound change in the framework of monetary policy responding to pressures generated during and after the Crisis. In the case of the ECB, however, the expansion also resulted f…
U.S. Imperialism Resurgent
It is quite evident, Costas Lapavitsas begins, that the world is currently ensnared in geopolitical turmoil, perhaps for over a decade. In this article, Lapavitsas provides insight into the inseparable and interlocking mechanisms of dollar dominance and imperialism backed by the escalatory militarism of the second Trump administration. As Lapavitsas notes: "The dollar and the F-35—monetary coercion and military power—are two moments of a single s…
A Topography of the New Dollar Imperialism
Topography of the contemporary world economy as a system of subordination, structured by the primacy of Fed-backed dollar-liquidity and a world division of labour jointly configured by productive and financial capital, generating forms of peripheral financialization. Monetary dominance—ultimately underwritten by military force
Digital money: New forms and old contradictions
The arduous path to moneyness: Cryptocurrencies compared to mobile money
Persistent institutional malfunctioning in the Eurozone
Institutional change in the Eurozone is driven by the need to ensure the immediate survival of the euro rather than confronting the structural weaknesses of the common currency. The failure to deal with underlying weaknesses is demonstrated by the policy of "selective support", whereby markets and instruments considered vital for the survival of the euro are often adopted under pressure. This type of support is most prominently demonstrated by th…
The return of inflation and the weakness of the side of production
The acceleration of inflation in the early 2020s following the pandemic shock poses significant risks for financialised capitalism. This article argues that the root causes of inflation do not lie with excessive money creation, as is claimed by Monetarists. By drawing on Keynes's discussion of war finance, it shows that the causes are to be found primarily in the boost to aggregate demand delivered by core countries of the world economy, while ag…
China vs USA: Is China bound to win
Modern monetary theory on money, sovereignty, and policy: A marxist critique with reference to the Eurozone and Greece
This article compares and contrasts Modern Monetary Theory and Marxist monetary theory focusing on the relationship of money to commodities, the role of state power in monetary processes, and the significance of global hierarchy for world money. Money is a social relation, as MMT claims, but for Marxist theory capitalist money is specifically a relation of class, both domestically and internationally. The room for state policy is correspondingly …
Debating modern monetary theory
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has one indisputable achievement to its name: it threw down a challenge to mainstream Economics and forced it to respond, above all in the USA. This is a rare occurrenc
Profitability trends in the era of financialization: Notes on the U.S. economy
This article considers the evolution of financialization in the U.S. economy by examining the profitability and the volume of profits of the financial sector relative to general profitability and total profits in the economy. It is shown that financial profitability rose strongly from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. Similarly, the volume of financial profits reached extraordinary levels in the early 2000s. These phenomena occurred while inter…
Introduction: Money, finance, and capitalist crisis
Learning from Brexit
As part of the exchange on the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the left, Costas Lapavitsas provides an extensive response to Neil Davidson's and Andy Storey's contributions
The Theory of Credit Money: A Structural Analysis
MAINSTREAM atically distinguish among the different forms of money. For most purposes of macroeconomic analysis, for example, it is immaterial whether the money supply comprises coins, banknotes, bank deposits or, indeed, gold. It is usually assumed that what matters most is the practical facilitation of commodity exchange, i.e., money's function as means of exchange. Any instrument which systematically plays this role can be considered as undiff…
Marxist Monetary Theory: Collected Papers
The collected papers of Costas Lapavitsas are a pathway to Marxist monetary theory, a field that continues to attract strong interest. The papers range far and wide, including markets and money, finance and the enterprise, power and money, the financialisation of capitalism, finance and profit, even money as art. Despite its breadth, the collection remains highly coherent. Money and finance are pre-eminent, even dominant, features of contemporary…
Greece: Phase Two
Costas Lapavitsas (see, Costas Lapavitsas et al., ‘Euro-zone crisis: beggar thyself and thy neighbour’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, v.12, n.4, December 2010), a Professor of Economics at SOAS, University of London, and now elected member of the Greek parliament with left-wing party, Syriza, talks to Sebastian Budgen about Marxism and Keynesianism; the Euro-zone crisis; Greece’s predicaments; and ways out of the economic and politi…
The Profits of Financialization
The financialization of capitalism has been marked by the sustained rise of financial profits. In the United States, financial profits as a proportion of total profits rose enormously from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, collapsed during 2007–09, and subsequently recovered, but without reaching previous heights. During this period, the trend of the average rate of profit has been largely flat. The relative rise of financial profits in spite o…
How to change the post-crash economy: A discussion following the publication of ‘Profiting without Producing’
Ben Chew: Hello, everyone, and thank you very much for coming to this Royal Society of Arts event on How to Change the Post-Crash Economy. My name is Ben Chew and I'm the Economics Editor of The In
Financialisation varied: A comparative analysis of advanced economies
Financialisation remains an unclear term in social science. We deploy a Marxist framework to establish that financialisation represents a structural transformation of advanced capitalist economies with three characteristic tendencies: non-financial enterprises have acquired capacity to engage in financial activities independently; banks have turned to mediating transactions in open markets as well as lending to households; and households have bee…
The financialization of capitalism: ‘Profiting without producing’
Financialization is a systemic transformation of capitalism that has occurred during the last four decades. This paper shows that the concept of financialization originates in Marxist theory, though its meaning remains unclear. It then proposes a theory of financialization as rooted in the altered behaviour of the fundamental agents of capitalist accumulation, including non-financial corporations, banks and workers. Finance has reshaped the activ…
European Capitalism at a Turning Point
The Eurozone turmoil is a structural crisis of European capitalism associated with the euro as world money. More broadly, the crisis reflects the culmination of tensions which have accumulated over three decades of neoliberalism in Europe. To create a global means of payment and reserve, the European Monetary Union (EMU) brought together countries of uneven and diverging competitiveness. The result was a situation of embedded current account surp…
Theorizing financialization
The crisis of 2007-9 has cast fresh light on the ascendancy of finance in recent years, a process that is often described as financialization. The concept of financialisation has emerged within Marxist political economy in an effort to relate booming finance to poorly performing production. Yet, there is no general agreement on what it means, as is shown in this article through a selective review of economic and sociological literature. The artic…
Eurozone crisis: Beggar thyself and thy neighbour
The sovereign debt crisis that broke out in Greece at the end of 2009 is fundamentally due to the precarious integration of peripheral countries in the eurozone. Its immediate causes, however, lie with the crisis of 2007–2009. Speculative mortgage lending by US financial institutions and trading of resultant derivative securities by international banks created a vast bubble in 2001–2007, leading to crisis and recession. State provision of liquidi…
Financialised Capitalism: Crisis and Financial Expropriation
The current crisis is one outcome of the financialisation of contemporary capitalism. It arose in the USA because of the enormous expansion of mortgage-lending, including to the poorest layers of the working class. It became general because of the trading of debt by financial institutions. These phenomena are integral to financialisation. During the last three decades, large enterprises have turned to open markets to obtain finance, forcing banks…
El capitalismo financiarizado: Expansión y crisis
Theorizing financialization
The crisis of 2007-9 has cast fresh light on the ascendancy of finance in recent years, a process that is often described as financialization. The concept of financialisation has emerged within Marxist political economy in an effort to relate booming finance to poorly performing production. Yet, there is no general agreement on what it means, as is shown in this article through a selective review of economic and sociological literature. The artic…
Financialised Capitalism: Crisis and Financial Expropriation
The current crisis is one outcome of the financialisation of contemporary capitalism. It arose in the USA because of the enormous expansion of mortgage-lending, including to the poorest layers of the working class. It became general because of the trading of debt by financial institutions. These phenomena are integral to financialisation. During the last three decades, large enterprises have turned to open markets to obtain finance, forcing banks…
The financialization of capitalism: ‘Profiting without producing’
Financialization is a systemic transformation of capitalism that has occurred during the last four decades. This paper shows that the concept of financialization originates in Marxist theory, though its meaning remains unclear. It then proposes a theory of financialization as rooted in the altered behaviour of the fundamental agents of capitalist accumulation, including non-financial corporations, banks and workers. Finance has reshaped the activ…
Markets and money in social theory: What Role for Economics
This article addresses the issue of how the market and the non-market are to be understood especially by concentrating on the theory of money. For mainstream economics, the market is simply an institution facilitating exchange, money being the key instrument for alleviating the inefficiencies of barter. In contrast, recent work in other social sciences, such as that by Zelizer, distinguishes among markets, and various roles of money, depending on…
Financialisation varied: A comparative analysis of advanced economies
Financialisation remains an unclear term in social science. We deploy a Marxist framework to establish that financialisation represents a structural transformation of advanced capitalist economies with three characteristic tendencies: non-financial enterprises have acquired capacity to engage in financial activities independently; banks have turned to mediating transactions in open markets as well as lending to households; and households have bee…
The social relations of money as universal equivalent: A response to Ingham
In a recent debate in Economy and Society, Ingham criticized Marxist theory of money on the grounds that it relates money to commodities through the labour theory of value, while ignoring credit money. Ingham suggested instead that money is constituted by social relations characteristic of credit, namely relations of ‘promise to pay’. Drawing on Marx, this article shows that, pace Ingham, it is necessary theoretically to relate money to commoditi…
Globalization and Contemporary Banking: On the Impact of New Technology
Technological innovation has contributed to recent changes in the conduct and character of banking, but its impact has been contradictory. First, money-dealing transactions have become cheaper, but investment costs have increased and a broader range of services had to be provided. The cost efficiency of banks has not improved. Second, banks have developed computationally intensive, ‘arms length’ techniques to assess creditworthiness and manage ri…
Information and trust as social aspects of credit
According to mainstream economic theory the contractual relationship between borrower and lender is characterized by asymmetry of information regarding the project to be financed. It is assumed that trust among credit participants is constructed individually as they collect and assess requisite information. In contrast, this paper argues that trust and information among credit participants have compelling social constituents that depend on econom…
The Profits of Financialization
The financialization of capitalism has been marked by the sustained rise of financial profits. In the United States, financial profits as a proportion of total profits rose enormously from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, collapsed during 2007–09, and subsequently recovered, but without reaching previous heights. During this period, the trend of the average rate of profit has been largely flat. The relative rise of financial profits in spite o…
Relations of Power and Trust in Contemporary Finance
Commodities and Gifts: Why Commodities Represent More than Market Relations
In social science commodities frequently stand for economic rationality and commercial gain, while gifts are presumed to be bearers of moral obligation and social concerns. “Commodity versus gift” often acts as metaphor for “market versus non-market.” From the perspective of Marxist political economy, the binary opposition between commodities and gifts is unwarranted. Analysis of the neglected role of use value in commodity exchange as well as of…
The Emergence of Money in Commodity Exchange, or Money as Monopolist of the Ability to Buy
Money's emergence in commodity exchange remains an unresolved issue within economic theory. Current general equilibrium models offer an explanation that rests on the economic advantages of a universally accepted means of exchange that is partly established through social custom. These models neither fully explain money's unique ability to buy, nor theorise the customary practices required for money's emergence. They are dominated by Menger's earl…
Two Approaches to the Concept of Interest-Bearing Capital
In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the issues of credit and finance among radical political economists, reflecting the remarkable growth and instability of the international financial system. This revival is especially important because credit and finance have not featured strongly in the renaissance of Anglo-Saxon radical political economy in the last three decades. The analysis of credit and finance from the standpoint of r…
On Marx's Analysis of Money Hoarding in the Turnover of Capital
The formation of money hoards, which underpins the demand for money, is typically treated by mainstream monetary theory as originating in the motives of the rational individual. In contrast, Marx's discussion of money hoarding treats hoard formation as a necessary tendency of capitalist production and circulation rather than as a result of the individual's predilections. Based on Marx's analysis, this article identifies several structural reasons…
The Recent Turkish Crisis: Another Step Toward Free Market Authoritarianism
[In February 2001, Turkey experienced her third and deepest economic crisis in fifteen months. The importance of the event far exceeds its Turkish confines for the following two reasons. First, the crisis is closely linked to changes in class relations in Turkey due to internationalisation of production and finance. Second, more generally, the crisis is a consequence of the absence of a world monetary system that could sustain the aforesaid inter…
Addressing the World Economy: Two Steps Back
This article reviews Robert Brenner's 'The Economics of Global Turbulence', New Left Review, May/June, 1998. Several decisive weaknesses of Brenner's contribution are identified. First, Brenner's theoretical treatment of capitalist competition and accumulation is in the spirit of Adam Smith and mainstream economics rather than Marx. Second, Brenner ignores the significance of credit for capitalist crisis. Third, he leaves entirely out of account …
The arduous path to moneyness: Cryptocurrencies compared to mobile money
The return of inflation and the weakness of the side of production
The acceleration of inflation in the early 2020s following the pandemic shock poses significant risks for financialised capitalism. This article argues that the root causes of inflation do not lie with excessive money creation, as is claimed by Monetarists. By drawing on Keynes's discussion of war finance, it shows that the causes are to be found primarily in the boost to aggregate demand delivered by core countries of the world economy, while ag…
Transition and Crisis in the Japanese Financial System: An Analytical Overview
This paper provides an overall view of the recent development of the Japanese financial system. The profound crisis of the 1990s indicates that financial deregulation has met obstacles created by the fundamental underlying structure of Japanese industrial capitalism. The movement toward a market-based Anglo-Saxon financial system, at arms-length from industry and the state, has lost its momentum. Crisis-resolution in the 1990s has revealed the re…
Persistent institutional malfunctioning in the Eurozone
Institutional change in the Eurozone is driven by the need to ensure the immediate survival of the euro rather than confronting the structural weaknesses of the common currency. The failure to deal with underlying weaknesses is demonstrated by the policy of "selective support", whereby markets and instruments considered vital for the survival of the euro are often adopted under pressure. This type of support is most prominently demonstrated by th…
The Classical Adjustment Mechanism of International Balances: Marx's Critique
Journal Article THE CLASSICAL ADJUSTMENT MECHANISM OF INTERNATIONAL BALANCES: MARX'S CRITIQUE Get access COSTAS LAPAVITSAS COSTAS LAPAVITSAS School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Contributions to Political Economy, Volume 15, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 63–79, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.cpe.a014049 Published: 01 June 1996
The Theory of Credit Money: A Structural Analysis
The Classical Adjustment Mechanism of International Balances: Marx's Critique
Journal Article THE CLASSICAL ADJUSTMENT MECHANISM OF INTERNATIONAL BALANCES: MARX'S CRITIQUE Get access COSTAS LAPAVITSAS COSTAS LAPAVITSAS School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Contributions to Political Economy, Volume 15, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 63–79, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.cpe.a014049 Published: 01 June 1996
Two Approaches to the Concept of Interest-Bearing Capital
In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the issues of credit and finance among radical political economists, reflecting the remarkable growth and instability of the international financial system. This revival is especially important because credit and finance have not featured strongly in the renaissance of Anglo-Saxon radical political economy in the last three decades. The analysis of credit and finance from the standpoint of r…
Transition and Crisis in the Japanese Financial System: An Analytical Overview
This paper provides an overall view of the recent development of the Japanese financial system. The profound crisis of the 1990s indicates that financial deregulation has met obstacles created by the fundamental underlying structure of Japanese industrial capitalism. The movement toward a market-based Anglo-Saxon financial system, at arms-length from industry and the state, has lost its momentum. Crisis-resolution in the 1990s has revealed the re…
Political Economy of Money and Finance
To explain the pronounced instability of the world economy since the 1970s, the book offers an important and systematic theoretical examination of money and finance. It re-examines the classical foundations of political economy and the creator of money. It assesses all of the important theoretical schools since then, including Marxist, Keynesian, post-Keynesian and monetarist thinkers. By presenting important insights from Japanese political econ…
Addressing the World Economy: Two Steps Back
This article reviews Robert Brenner's 'The Economics of Global Turbulence', New Left Review, May/June, 1998. Several decisive weaknesses of Brenner's contribution are identified. First, Brenner's theoretical treatment of capitalist competition and accumulation is in the spirit of Adam Smith and mainstream economics rather than Marx. Second, Brenner ignores the significance of credit for capitalist crisis. Third, he leaves entirely out of account …
Money and the Analysis of Capitalism: The Significance of Commodity Money
Monetary theory based on commodity money possesses sound foundations for analysis of capitalist monetary phenomena. "Valueless" forms of money (fiat and credit) have their roots in the nature and functions of commodity money. The evolution of the form of money is explained by the adequacy of each particular form for the functions which money is called to perform in capitalist exchange. Performing these functions encourages the development of mone…
Money and the analysis of capitalism: The significance of commodity money
Dialectics and Crisis Theory: A Response to Tony Smith
Brenner's ‘The Economics of Global Turbulence’ has induced a flood of responses, the vast majority of them critical, especially on grounds of (divergence from Marx's) method and theory. Tony Smith1 is an exception in seeking to defend Brenner, mostly by pushing his arguments further and by attacking his critics, including ourselves. In part, Smith interprets Brenner and credits him with positions that he can either defend for himself or, as we su…
On Marx's Analysis of Money Hoarding in the Turnover of Capital
The formation of money hoards, which underpins the demand for money, is typically treated by mainstream monetary theory as originating in the motives of the rational individual. In contrast, Marx's discussion of money hoarding treats hoard formation as a necessary tendency of capitalist production and circulation rather than as a result of the individual's predilections. Based on Marx's analysis, this article identifies several structural reasons…
Markets and money in social theory: What Role for Economics
This article addresses the issue of how the market and the non-market are to be understood especially by concentrating on the theory of money. For mainstream economics, the market is simply an institution facilitating exchange, money being the key instrument for alleviating the inefficiencies of barter. In contrast, recent work in other social sciences, such as that by Zelizer, distinguishes among markets, and various roles of money, depending on…
The Recent Turkish Crisis: Another Step Toward Free Market Authoritarianism
[In February 2001, Turkey experienced her third and deepest economic crisis in fifteen months. The importance of the event far exceeds its Turkish confines for the following two reasons. First, the crisis is closely linked to changes in class relations in Turkey due to internationalisation of production and finance. Second, more generally, the crisis is a consequence of the absence of a world monetary system that could sustain the aforesaid inter…
The Recent Turkish Crisis: Another Step Toward Free Market Authoritarianism
Social Foundations of Markets, Money and Credit
Where does the power of money come from? Why is trust so important in financial operations? How does the swapping of gifts differ from the exchange of commodities? Where does self-interest stop and communal solidarity start in capitalist economies?These issues and many more are discussed in a rigorous, yet readable, manner in Social Foundations of
Social foundations of markets, money, and credit
Transforming the Transformation Problem: Why the “New Interpretation” is a Wrong Turning
The new interpretation (NI) offers a particular understanding of important problems in value theory, especially the value of money and labor power and the structure and dynamics of capitalist accumulation. The NI is to be welcomed for raising these issues but not for the way in which it has dealt with them. Above all, the NI falsely assumes that value is directly and immediately represented by money. The authors propose alternatives that emphasiz…
Commodities and Gifts: Why Commodities Represent More than Market Relations
In social science commodities frequently stand for economic rationality and commercial gain, while gifts are presumed to be bearers of moral obligation and social concerns. “Commodity versus gift” often acts as metaphor for “market versus non-market.” From the perspective of Marxist political economy, the binary opposition between commodities and gifts is unwarranted. Analysis of the neglected role of use value in commodity exchange as well as of…
The Universal Equivalent as Monopolist of the Ability to Buy
The theoretical analysis of money as the universal equivalent in the opening chapters of Capital is a highly distinctive aspect of Marx’s theory of value. Neither classical political economy nor neoclassical economics offers a comparable analysis of the relationship between value and money. In Capital (and elsewhere, selectively cited below) Marx defines money as the universal equivalent, or the independent form of value. By representing value in…
The Emergence of Money in Commodity Exchange, or Money as Monopolist of the Ability to Buy
Money's emergence in commodity exchange remains an unresolved issue within economic theory. Current general equilibrium models offer an explanation that rests on the economic advantages of a universally accepted means of exchange that is partly established through social custom. These models neither fully explain money's unique ability to buy, nor theorise the customary practices required for money's emergence. They are dominated by Menger's earl…
The social relations of money as universal equivalent: A response to Ingham
In a recent debate in Economy and Society, Ingham criticized Marxist theory of money on the grounds that it relates money to commodities through the labour theory of value, while ignoring credit money. Ingham suggested instead that money is constituted by social relations characteristic of credit, namely relations of ‘promise to pay’. Drawing on Marx, this article shows that, pace Ingham, it is necessary theoretically to relate money to commoditi…
Relations of Power and Trust in Contemporary Finance
Information and trust as social aspects of credit
According to mainstream economic theory the contractual relationship between borrower and lender is characterized by asymmetry of information regarding the project to be financed. It is assumed that trust among credit participants is constructed individually as they collect and assess requisite information. In contrast, this paper argues that trust and information among credit participants have compelling social constituents that depend on econom…
Globalization and Contemporary Banking: On the Impact of New Technology
Technological innovation has contributed to recent changes in the conduct and character of banking, but its impact has been contradictory. First, money-dealing transactions have become cheaper, but investment costs have increased and a broader range of services had to be provided. The cost efficiency of banks has not improved. Second, banks have developed computationally intensive, ‘arms length’ techniques to assess creditworthiness and manage ri…
Financialised Capitalism: Crisis and Financial Expropriation
The current crisis is one outcome of the financialisation of contemporary capitalism. It arose in the USA because of the enormous expansion of mortgage-lending, including to the poorest layers of the working class. It became general because of the trading of debt by financial institutions. These phenomena are integral to financialisation. During the last three decades, large enterprises have turned to open markets to obtain finance, forcing banks…
El capitalismo financiarizado: Expansión y crisis
Economics (41 works) · Economic Theory and Policy (29 works) · Political science (26 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (22 works) · Monetary economics (20 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (17 works) · Politics (17 works) · Market economy (16 works) · Neoclassical economics (15 works) · Law (13 works)