About the Lab

The Financialization Research Lab aims to be a Canadian and international hub for critical research and political engagement in the emerging political economy sub-field of ‘financialization’. It will welcome and feature the development and sharing of heterodox and critical political economy analysis of the growing weight and power of private finance in contemporary capitalism.

What is ‘financialization’? One premise of this Lab is that contemporary crisis-plagued capitalism is increasingly financializing in ways that are important but opaque. We see the process visibly in the sheer size of private finance as a share of GDP, globally and within many countries. But the most important developments are more qualitative and political. They involve new concentrations of power and authority of financial actors and markets across all sectors and geographies. They also centrally involve the evolving role of the state in advancing and supporting financialization as a capitalist accumulation strategy.

These shifts bear a number of contradictions, not the least of which is the direct involvement of workers within this dynamic through pension funds and individual retirement savings. While some workers, overwhelmingly in the global North, derive a form of ‘benefit’ from the returns (profits) of these investment funds, workers as a broader category, in the global North and South, are seeing an increasing range of their own jobs, infrastructures, and public services being sacrificed or privatized through the operations of private finance. With very few exceptions, past efforts to use workers’ savings and funds – so called “workers capital” – to exert a counter-power within these institutions and markets, have failed. (For illustrations, see this article from Canadian Dimension)

The initial projects of the Lab, profiled on this website, focus attention on the pivotal role being played by pension funds within the dynamics of financialization. However, we recognize that these funds are integrated into a much larger (and growing) pool of financial capital that is itself increasingly interwoven with industrial and productive capitals once viewed as categorically distinct. Developing a stronger understanding of these dynamics, as part of the social and political project of contesting them, is the ultimate goal of this Lab.

We welcome contacts from researchers, trade unionists, social movement activists, students, and others sharing this interest. Please get in touch with us through our Contact Us page.