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As we observed in the first two parts of this piece, this book posits a fundamental distinction between capitalism as a an economic system of private investment in the production of goods and services for profit and financialism as the investment of money in the multiplication of money for the limitless pursuit of profit for its own sake without an underlying base in actual concrete production. The authors, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Brian Browne, argue that financialism is a monstrosity that perverts, distorts and chokes capitalism and precipitates economic collapse. In identifying an unusual and unorthodox nexus between the highly advanced American economy and the still largely underdeveloped Nigerian variant, the authors contend that the excesses of financialism are the root cause of recent economic and fiscal crises in both countries with serious negative implications for millions of their citizens. The seventh chapter of the book, which examines how ‘Financialism Trumps Capitalism’ is thus critical for understanding the text’s central thesis. Here the authors trace the history of the ascendancy of financialism and what they describe as ‘the demise of capitalism’ in America and Nigeria as well as its destructive systemic effects in both countries.

In the tenth chapter of the book, the authors offer concrete policy proposals for ‘defeating financialism’ and rescuing capitalism from its feral jaws. They argue that America and Nigeria have taken different paths to arrive at the current ‘similar degeneration’ and warn that continuing on the same path of deepening financialism will limit opportunities for millions and worsen poverty even though the powerful political elites will profit enormously from the resultant collective economic misery. The challenge of America, they argue, is to tame financialism in order to revive a genuinely productive economy. They thus advocate a new industrial policy for America that will involve government support for vulnerable yet critical industries, modernization of the country’s infrastructural platform as well as substantial government subvention for research in new technologies “that promise a new wave of industrial processes and the invention of new materials and products”. To regenerate America’s productive capacity, the book also advocates detailed educational, financial, fiscal and even political reforms for that country.

For Nigeria, they identify the challenge as that of “shedding financialism in order to build an industrial base”. Here again, they advocate a National Industrial Policy that will protect the country’s few existing industries, markedly improve electrical power generation, focus on new ventures in light manufacturing, seek foreign direct investment that produces jobs for Nigerians while shifting from subsistence to commercial farming including the establishment of commodity exchange boards that guarantee minimum prices for farm produce. They equally advocate the remodelling of Nigeria’s educational system to place emphasis on technical skills and education as well as far reaching reforms in the financial, fiscal, land tenure, health sectors. In this regard the authors conclude that “If both nations do not take the path of reform soon, they may forever foreclose themselves to the possibility of turning their inaccurate claims of greatness into something resembling the truth”. The sections of the book that deal with economic theory and policy are largely inaccessible to the general reader and may be understood only by experts in the field. Although they claim that they write not as academics but as laymen willing to bring fresh insights into a subject that has lost touch with reality, the language is such that may be readily digested mainly by the academic and professional economic/financial elite. Perhaps many of the ideas in these specialized sections could have been more simply communicated to enable easy comprehension by the average reader.

For the non- economist or financial expert, chapters three to five of the book are easily the most interesting and stimulating parts. These are the chapters that provide the philosophical and intellectual bases for the economic postulations and ideas advocated by the authors. The student of politics will be particularly fascinated by how the book links its caustic and unsparing critique of the Social Contract theorists – Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau – to their fundamental disagreement with the excessively individualistic and anti-state phobia that undergirds financialism. The authors question the contention of the Social Contract theorists that the state evolved as a mechanism of curbing the brutish individualism they believed characterized the ‘state of nature’. They are particularly harsh in their critique of Hobbes who perceived man as basically evil, selfish, belligerent and violent thus rendering the ‘state of nature’ short, nasty, solitary and brutish. In his own case, Locke considered the state of nature as being governed by reason but argues that increasing complexity of society led to disruptive irrational acts by individuals that necessitated the creation of government through a social contract. Even though Rousseau admitted the existence of the family in his own conception of the state of nature, the authors believe that he drained the concept of family of all emotional ties while also perceiving man as basically amoral and lacking in foresight.

The authors dismiss the whole concept of the state of nature and man’s perceived innate destructive individualism as ahistorical and entirely mythical. Man, they argue, is not just individualistic, he is more fundamentally a social animal. Rather than evolve as a solitary individual, they argue that man evolved as a member of a group, namely, the family. They detect a negative attitude towards the state by the social contract theorists who see it not necessarily as a positive construct, but as a necessary evil to curb man’s aggressive instinct and protect society from mutual self-destruction. This suspicion of the state and its role in the society, they believe, provide the philosophical underpinning of financialism with its emphasis on individualism and limited government among others. Of course, the critical reader may contend that the authors do not necessarily differ fundamentally from the social contract theorists they so strongly criticise since they equally advocate “a greater role for government in shaping and sustaining financial and economic activity” given what they describe as “the dynamic complexity of government in society”. It would appear, for instance, that the Hobbesian notion of the state of nature and the necessity of the state as ‘Leviathan’ does not differ markedly from the authors’ notion of the negative effects of excessive individualism and the need for remedial state regulation of the economy.

This book argues that active government intervention and regulation of the economy is a necessary condition for the health and sustenance of capitalism. The authors argue vigorously against the ‘myth’ of human rationality and an infallible, self-regulating free market on which the whole edifice of modern economics rests. Man, they argue, does not necessarily act rationally most times and government has a responsibility to act as a safeguard against the tendency of the free market to be indulgent towards man’s natural proclivity for greedy pursuit of excessive material acquisition at the expense of the collective good. The authors are not anti-capitalist. They seek to save capitalism from itself. But is financialism not a logical outcome of the profit motive that is the driving force of capitalism? Well, you must read the book and make up your own mind. But there is so much in this book to stimulate deep reflection on the human condition and the nature of society. It is worth your money and time.