ABSTRACT
The Marxist framework continues to be used by many analysts because it remains one of the most comprehensive and systematic theoretical critiques of capitalism ever created. This chapter covers four topics in which the Marxist approach has continuing relevance: imperialism; regularization theory or the social structures of accumulation; financialization; and Marxism and feminism. Marx had intended to write an entire book on the financial dimension of capitalism. Several of the early authors on imperialism, both Marxists and non-Marxists, estimated that the imperial governments actually spent more on their imperial adventures in military and administrative expenditures than the tax revenue that they received in return. Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci defined the hegemon as an entity having not only political and military but also economic and ideological dominance. Marx actually thought that British colonialism in India had played a positive role in at least one respect, namely by instigating the transformation to capitalism.
