Subsequent to the financial crisis of 2007-2008 there has been a revival of theories about the possibility of a “secular stagnation” in capitalist economies. Some of these theories revive the doctrine by Alvin Hansen, developed in the 1930s on Keynesian bases. Nevertheless, they change their core theoretical foundations, shifting their attention toward an explanation of the disproportion between saving and investment based solely on demographic and technological factors, typical of a neoclassical framework of growth theory.

But the idea that neo-capitalist economies that emerged from the ashes of World War II have  an inherent stagnation tendency, connected to some of their structural and institutional features, has also long been the main research objective of many heterodox economists,  in particular Kaleckian and neo-Marxist, who found stagnation to be a major result of the monopolistic nature of big corporations and the features of their monopolistic or oligopolistic forms of competition. Strictly connected to this monopolistic structure and behaviour of big corporations are many problems of corporate governance, which can play a major part in producing financialisation and its preeminent role in preparing financial crises.

The paper deals with some of these theories, such as those by Steindl, Baran and Sweezy and O’Connor, analysing the major role that the concept of degree of capacity utilization plays in them. It also examines some criticisms of them made by orthodox Marxists, including Mattick. The last part of the paper focuses on the role that corporate governance in big monopolistic corporations can play in producing growing corporate savings and putting them into financial channels, underlining the fact that financialisation is actually the other side of the coin of long-term real stagnation.