Rudolf Hilferding

This edited volume is focused on Hilferding's major workFinance Capital. In revisiting this influential book from a methodological point of view, both historical and intellectual, this book affirms Hilferding's place in the Marxist tradition. Hilferding's ideas are used to criticise incumbent approaches in economics and enrich existing discussions and debates about the nature of modern capitalism. In doing so, this book highlights the importance of Hilferding's work in analysing and understanding modern capitalism and corporate developments.

The volume has contributions from a range of expert scholars addressing various aspects of Hilferding’s arguments. It elaborates on Hilferding’s central idea on the political economy, as well as its historical context, and its relation to Marx. Contributors move on to criticize Hilferding’s views on the political economy and politics in general. This book is relevant to those interested in the political economy, the history of economic thought, and European politics.

1. Introduction: Critically Returning to Rudolf Hilferding.- 2. Rethinking Hilferding’s Finance Capital.- 3. From Luxemburg to Sweezy. Notes on the Intellectual Influence of Hilferding’s Finance Capital.- 4. Contradictions in Hilferding’s Finance Capital: Money, Banking and Crisis Tendencies.- Chapter 5: Finance Capital, Financialisation and the Periodisation of Capitalist Development.- 6. A New Finance Capital? Theorizing Corporate Governance and Financial Power.- 7. Finance Capital and Contemporary Financialisation.- 8. Finance Capital and Militarism as Pillars of Contemporary Capitalism.- 9. Hilferding and the Large-scale Enterprise.- 10. Hilferding and Kalecki.- 11. A Socialist Third Way? Rudolf Hilferding’s Evolutionary Socialism as Syncopated Note to Early Neoliberalism.- 12. Hilferding as an Eclectic: A History of Economic Thought Perspective on Finance Capital (1910).- 13. Rudolf Hilferding on the Economic Categories of ‘Joint-Stock Company/Share Capital’: A Refinement ofthe Critique of Political Economy?.- 14. Hilferding’s Impressive Failure. A Reading of His Last Major Text.