The causal primacy of global inequality in the financial crisis

This article argues that global inequality was the root cause of the financial crisis of 2007–08. In doing so, it builds on two key components of Marx’s economic theory: his theory of the commodity, the extension of which allows for an understanding of the financial instruments and institutions that were at the epicentre of the crisis; and his commodity theory of exploitation and surplus appropriation, the extension of which allows for an understanding of how global inequality provided the all-encompassing causal framework for the crisis.