Blakely delivers a scathing, thorough and very readable account of why the move to 'financialisation' - that is, a vast portion of economic growth has moved to the finance sector rather than the manufacturing or service. As she puts it; the majority of wealth is in the hands of those who make their money from the money they have, rather than those who work for a living. Decades of regulation encouraging this behaviour, along with the selling off of public services and the financialisaton of public life has lead directly to the crash of 2007, austerity and the continuing economic uncertainty that has seen the driving down of wages in real terms.
Over each section Blakely lays out the history of how we got here with clarity - the Bretton Woods accord, the post war consensus, and the breaking of this with financial deregulation in the 70s and 80s - and the complete red in tooth and claw free for all since the end of the cold war. I've seen a few negative reviews where it has been said that the author "doesn't understand economics" which is patently untrue; she has a very through grasp of economic theory, and recognises that it is far from being the clear-cut science that many pretend, that it relies on assumptions in prejudices and and understanding that humans are not the 'rational actors' portrayed by classical economics.
Blakely very much wears her own bias on her sleeve - as well as lambasting right -wing economics she calls for socialist policies - but also criticises Keynes and Piketty where she feels they deserve it, while drawing on their good ideas.
After all this, however, I confess I struggled with the final chapter, on how we fix the situation. Partly, the author loses some of the readability in laying out her vision for the future; suddenly there is less verve and clarity, and it begins to read more like an academic paper. The other problem, though, is that she doesn't shy away from how huge a change needs to be made; it's not just the relatively minor legislation that a government can enact, but root and branch change not just on the level of that undertaken by the post-war Atlee government, but the far greater changes they proposed but were forced to back down from. Blakely also recognises that the forces of international capital would fight these changes before, during and after they were enacted. Frankly, the scale and difficulty of the changes she suggests are beyond daunting, but that doesn’t detract from their veracity.
Grace Blakely has given a vital critique of what many call late-stage capitalism, pointing out just how destructive it is, in so many ways, as well as a potential way forward, This book should be on every radical reading list, beside Naomi Klein and Barbara Ehrenreich and Rutger Bregman - and, if you’re wanting more optimism, The Spirit Level and The Optimist’s Guide to the Future.
( first published at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48201027-stolen )
