‘Political Aspects of Financialization - The Appropriation and Distribution of Value: Why Labour and Labour Process Theory Still Matters Under Financialization’

In 1943 Michael Kalecki outlined the demise of full employment capitalism in the UK and theorized a finance-led accumulation regime -what is now termed financialization which necessitates a falling labour share and rising inequality. A contemporary challenge for economic-sociologists is to explain how a concentration on financial value rather than use-value requires producers and suppliers to appropriate and extract value from labour to prompt two research questions. Firstly, have producers moved from a concentration on use value to financial value? Secondly, in what ways does the appropriation of value from labour legitimize a falling wages share? These questions require the application of analytical and theoretical categories which can capture and framework appropriation and extraction in terms of value. This article uses Kalecki (1943) as a primary source which informs and isolates shifting uses of profits and shifting claims on profit under contemporary finance-led capitalism in the UK.