The Final Factory
For the past 40 years the world - and especially the UK - has been becoming increasingly financialised. There has been a shift in the “pattern of accumulation in which profits [now] accrue primarily through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production.” This rearrangement of our economy is not an ahistorical accident, but rooted in a specific context that demanded this in response to the deepening contradictions of capitalism. Immense overproduction of commodities meant there was little room for capital to reproduce in the physical sphere of the economy. During Thatcher’s first term in office, 1 in 4 manufacturing jobs disappeared, while investment in financial services increased by 320% over her 11 years in power. This may of sounded good in 1981 as individuals held 28% of shares, UK-based pension & insurance funds 47% and overseas investors 4%; now pension & insurance funds hold 1.6%, individuals 10% and overseas investors 58%. Financial markets have long been surging ahead of the productive economy; up until the 1970s UK financial assets had been 50% of UK GDP, by the mid 2000s they had grown to 5x GDP. In the 1960s companies shares were held for an average of 8 years, this had dropped to just 3 months by 2008, the same year this fictitious empire came crashing down onto the heads of ordinary people.
Britain was the first nation to industrialise and one of the first deindustrialise. However we must not fetishise the nation state and ignore the wider context. Production still occurs, just not within the borders of the UK, it has been outsourced across the globe. China produces almost 30% of the worlds manufactured goods. This has not only reduced UK workers bargaining power, but massively increased wealth inequality. In 1984 the top 0.1% owned 3% of total UK wealth, nowadays they own near 10%. UK House prices in the 1970s were 3.5x average income and are now 8.4x. The UK economy has been unimaginably transformed by this process of financialisation, in ways that predominantly benefit a specific class of society.
CMYK/others Screenprint
29.7 x 42cm
