Crise, crédito e derivativos: ensaios de Economia Política

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyze how the finance sphere, namely, credit and derivatives contracts, might be potential conditioning factors in forming crises within the capitalist mode of production from the Critique of Political Economy’s perspective. This does not mean either that the mere presence of those instruments assert that crises will break out nor that its absence can prevent them. Those instruments, nonetheless, modify the way the mode of production works, particularly its circulation sphere, and doing so, modify the forms of the crisis. It does not depict a causality relationship, but the conditioning of crises' possibilities. This thesis is divided into four essays. In the first one, we tried to discuss the Critique of Political Economy’s legacy in terms of crises’ analyzes, distinguishing aspects which define the potential crisis and the effective one. The facts that define a potential crisis are not enough to convert it into an effective one, but they are founding pieces because they condition, in terms of forms, how and whence a crisis can begin. In this essay we also tried to point to the transformations which the capitalist mode of production suffers which, in turn, will condition new potential forms of crisis. The second essay deals with money and credit theory within Marx’s elaboration. The aim of this essay is to show how the general properties of money, which are valid for any society where there might be production of commodities in a labor division regime, must be submitted to capital. In doing so, it is possible to catch its particular way of working within the capitalist mode of production whose main characteristic is the absorption of the monetary system by the credit system. The third essay contains an exploratory discussion of derivative contracts in their relation to the Critique of Political Economy. Initially, in a descriptive fashion, the forms of those markets and their main contracts are presented. Thereafter, we try to highlight that their ever growing usage is caused by capitalism's own metamorphoses which transform its own circulation sphere – in its interactions with production – setting the conflicts around value’s realization in a new level. The fourth essay highlights how the potential of crises were formed, considering the case of the 2008 crisis, focusing on institutional transformations in credit’s system which was the foundation of the real estate market in the U. S. through different models of securitization. The derivative contracts also took part in the formation of the potential of this crisis because they were used in an attempt to dump the risk of credit markets in those instruments. Finally, we conclude that it is not possible to neglect the themes which relate to circulation’s sphere when analyzing the capitalist mode of production because, although surplus-value is created within the sphere of production, there is no guarantee that the productive unit where it was originated will realize it, and so, the realization process is also conflictual.