"An essential feature of the law of motion" of the rise and fall of civilizations

Or, the fall anyway.

Financialization in a Long-Run Perspective: An Evolutionary Approach, by Alessandro Vercelli

On the view of Marx:

What we call financialization is nothing but the process through which exchange value becomes independent from and gains predominance over use value. In this sense, financialization is not just a symptom of the basic contradictions of capitalism but is an essential feature of the law of motion of capitalism.