1 Finance

The finance sector is dancing to any music that makes money for the moment.

Finance is not production, but it seems to be involved in every aspect of it.

Indeed, under conditions of financial capital abundance, finance operates not so much as “a system for the allocation of resources” than as “a weapon by which the claims of wealth holders are asserted against the rest of society”.

Piketty himself gets into some murky waters because his “Marshallian apparatus” sees capital “more as a stock of accumulated savings rather than a claim on future output”.

Finance is a way to separate foolish retail investors from their hard-earned savings.

Finance is useful. Financialisation, on the other hand, describes a situation in which ordinarily non- financial activity is seconded into service for finance. When finance escapes its marketplace, it is because it has been allowed, or even solicited, to do so. (Part 2 of this paper has detailed the reasons for, and effects of, financialisation.) Definancialisation, then, refers to the process of restoring ordinary non-financial activity so that it can operate normally, and removing dysfunctional social dependencies on finance. Percy (2021) Universal Basic Prosperity: Sustainable prosperity for the 21st century