Capital’s humpback bridge: ‘financialisation’ and the rate of turnover in Marx’s economic theory

The article aims to shed light on the role played by the ‘rate of turnover’ of capital in Karl Marx’s economic theory. Oddly enough, such a concept has been neglected by the most part of Marx’s scholars and exegetes, as it is demonstrated by the small number of scientific works dealing with it. Yet, the rate of turnover is a key-category in Marxian analysis, as it enables Marx to address the impact of the improvement in finance and other unproductive industries on the capitalist process of creation (and realisation) of surplus-value. The evidence from the new philological edition of Marx and Engel’s writings (MEGA2) further strengthens this insight. The main goal of the paper is, therefore, threefold: first, to bridge the gap in the literature dealing with the Volume Two of Capital; second, to provide a re-definition of several Marxian concepts in the light of the role played by the rate of turnover of capital; third, to analyse the effect of the developments in the banking & finance industry on the turnover rate and, thereby, on the general rate of profit.