Derivatives and the Development of Capitalist Relations

In earlier chapters, we identified the growth of financial derivatives, and especially their generalised use by large corporations for risk management, as an emerging and decisive change in capitalist development. We contended that the growth of financial derivatives in the 1980s is akin to the watershed created by the growth of joint stock companies in the middle-to-late nineteenth century. Derivatives are transforming our understanding of capital and of money and, indirectly thereby, of competition. There are also wider potential implications that warrant consideration. Just as it could be said that the joint stock company gave rise to new capacities for corporations, with now well-recognised social implications, so we here look to possible broader social and economic implications of financial derivatives growth.