ISBN: 978-0-9860853-3-8 $24.95 2016 Ebook $19.00.00 ISBN 978-0-9972870-0-4 |
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| UNLEASHING USURY: How Finance Opened the Door for Capitalism Then Swallowed It Whole / Richard Westra |
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REVIEWS OF WESTRA'S CONFRONTING GLOBAL NEOLIBERALISM "a very good overview of key debates on contemporary development strategies and alternatives. As a rule, the chapters are devoted to state-based strategies. However, there is also material on relations between states, classes and social movements, and several chapters provide excellent and intriguing critiques of development strategy...." —THOMAS BARNES, Capital & Class 2012. "Anyone concerned with understanding combined and uneven development in the global economy today would profit immensely from reading this superb collection." — TONY SMITH Against the Current, 2011 |
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Richard Westra is Designated Professor at the Graduate
School of Law, Nagoya University, Japan and Visiting Professor
at the Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University,
Canada. He has authored and edited 13 books and is co-editor
of Journal of Contemporary Asia. His Ph.D. was completed in
2001 at the Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University,
Canada. Among his numerous international publications he
authored The Evil Axis of Finance, Clarity Press, 2012 and Exit
from Globalization, Routledge, 2014.
School of Law, Nagoya University, Japan and Visiting Professor
at the Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University,
Canada. He has authored and edited 13 books and is co-editor
of Journal of Contemporary Asia. His Ph.D. was completed in
2001 at the Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University,
Canada. Among his numerous international publications he
authored The Evil Axis of Finance, Clarity Press, 2012 and Exit
from Globalization, Routledge, 2014.
USURY AND FINANCE: NEW NAME, OLD BLOODSUCKING GAME
CONTENTS
To make the case that changes across the capitalist world at the turn of the 21st century put into
play a global financial system which operates as a reincarnation of ancient usury requires several
key steps.
It’s Not Just the Inequality Stupid!
- Chapter One, using broad brush strokes, introduces the problem.
- Shylock Unchained
Chapter Two takes the reader on a fascinating journey back into West European history to see
antediluvian “loan capital” or usury in action as it helped to bring then civilization to the brink of
collapse
Shylock Chained
Chapter Three shows how capitalism chained Shylock as it reset finance and trade with socially
redeeming purposes tied to the nexus of capitalist profit making and the social prosperity capitalism
initially spreads.
Troubles in Capitalist Paradise
Chapter Four follows the trail capitalism blazes as it increasingly forsakes its market operating
principles for a welter of extra-economic, extra-capitalist supports to survive in the 20th century.
Yet, notwithstanding these supports, what remains of capitalist substance drives advanced
economies into crises.
Merchants of Venice on Wall Street
Chapter Five exposes the big lie of the neoliberal era. It shows clearly why there is no longer any
capitalism in the 21st century. Production centered economies are largely disintegrated with the
activities which had acted as their engines of growth now disarticulated across the globe. What
currently exists is a global network of casino economies with financial systems which operate not
like capitalist markets, but like Merchants of Venice expropriating wealth through money games.
- The Final “Pound of Flesh”
Chapter Six concludes with a closer look at how wealth is expropriated upwards to a cabal of über
rich. It offers the disturbing prognosis that the current global trend of finance carving “pounds of
flesh” from the bones of humanity is leading toward a new Dark Age of world barbarism.
- REVIEWS
Richard Westra has developed a theory of financialization and globalization as
the disintegration of the pure logic of capital informed by analysis of idle money
funds unravelling any possibility of resuscitating a mode of accumulation as a
value-augmenting process. This happens when self-commodified money capital
in the money and capital markets disintermediates itself from production and
in effect forces industrial capital to become “not-at-all-manufacturing”
rentier vehicles. His contributions add great novelty to the Uno–Sekine
approach, and his analysis is fundamentally distinctive from the post-
Keynesian notion of finance-led growth regime or the classical Marxist notion of
the dominance of finance capital.
REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS. more
"Westra presents a bold and challenging Marxian analysis of the world economy
that concludes capitalism no longer exists and moreover cannot be recreated in
another form. In this post-capitalist world, the remaining capitalist states and
their productive capacity are being consumed and their ability to sustain their
populations destroyed by the unproductive monster produced by unused
money: creditism, casino capitalism or as Westra prefers usury."
Scottish Left Review more p. 28-29
- "Unleashing Usury is a must read for those concerned about the increasing
financialization of the global economy. 'Usury' got its deeply negative
connotations in the Middle Ages, when Christianity viewed it as out and out evil.
Westra argues that this was not simply some kind of naive bias on the part of
Christianity, since the dog-eat-dog trends of usury did play a role in
undermining medieval civilization. In this book he presents forceful arguments
backed by strong historical evidence to demonstrate that the capitalist
financialization we are now experiencing is far worse than the medieval breed
of usury. This is because of the extent to which the unleashing of usury has
penetrated global life with deep wounds, wounds that because of their depth
and breadth will be difficult to heal. A start at healing will require an
understanding of the nature of the wounds, and this is precisely where Westra’s
book is particularly strong. He makes it very clear that a patch work of surface
cures will not get us far when it is deep wounds that we need to cure. It is my
hope that this book will be widely read by scholars, politicians, and all those who
are troubled by our global economy’s current directions."
Robert Albritton, Professor Emeritus, York University
- "With his classical-Marxist scalpel, Westra brilliantly dissects the West-East
sweep of overaccumulated capital, allowing him to put financialization in proper
perspective and more explicitly make the case for socialism. If you tire of
circling around worsening inequality, imperialism and other 'idle-money'
symptoms of economic crisis, and instead you want to drill down to find root
causes within capitalism's putrefying remnants, as Westra puts it, this is a
superb guidebook."
Patrick Bond, Professor of Political Economy, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg
Get the gist of it by reading Westra's article in World
Financial Review
Financial Review
