Resisting Financialization with Deleuze and Guattari by Charles Barthold

Author:Charles Barthold
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

A brief history of finance: from 1945 till the present day

In this section, I shall provide a brief history of finance since 1945 to contextualize the phenomenon of financialization. I shall first operate an analysis of the Bretton Woods financial system, and I shall then explain why it was ended. To be able to perform this task, I shall draw on a Marxian political economic literature.

The Bretton Woods financial system, 1945–1971

At the end of the Second World War the world financial system and the world economy were transformed with a regulative line (Hobsbawm 1994: 274). The Bretton Woods financial system provided a ‘reconstitution of the global financial system’ which had been broken by the Great Depression and the Second World War (Bryan and Rafferty, 2006: 112). Generally speaking, the Bretton Woods financial system was connected to the implementation of Keynesian macroeconomic policies:

the new goal was economic certainty and stability and the asserted agenda was nation-centred accumulation, with open international trade being re-established. This regime allowed for the privileging of social programmes and full employment, funded by high (and managed) levels of economic growth. In simple terms, we can associate this with the rise of “Keynesianism”.

(Bryan and Rafferty 2006: 112)

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