WINTER 2013–14 47 47 Ben Fine is a professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, (SOAS), University of London. This paper is a written text of a talk, as continues to be reflected, in some respects, in style and content with focus upon the author’s own views. He thanks Tony Norfield and Alfredo Saad-Filho for discussion of some issues and comments on earlier drafts. International Journal of Political Economy, vol. 42, no. 4, Winter 2013–14, pp. 47–66. © 2014 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com ISSN 0891–1916 (print)/1558–0970 (online) DOI: 10.2753/IJP0891-1916420403 BEN FINE Financialization from a Marxist Perspective Abstract: Within the framework of Marxist political economy, finan- cialization is understood through the prisms of logical, theoretical, and historical perspectives. It is defined in terms of the increasing presence of interest bearing capital, as distinct from credit as such, the role this plays in real as opposed to fictitious accumulation of capital, and how this has underpinned the period of neoliberalism, including the global crisis. Financialization is seen as the expansion of interest bearing capital in intensive and extensive forms. The first is notable in terms of the growth and proliferation of financial assets themselves with increasingly distant attachments to production and exchange of commodities themselves, and the second involves the extension of interest bearing capital to new areas of economic and social life in hybrid forms with other types of capital. An appendix draws out the differences between the approach taken herein and the approach on financialization taken by Costas Lapavitsas. Keywords: fictitious capital, financialization, global crisis, interest bear- ing capital, Marxist political economy, neo-liberalism Although financialization is a relatively new term and entirely confined to heterodoxy, it has benefitted from a proliferation of definitions. 1 That it should be confined to heterodoxy within economics (as well as being