Fictitious capital means finance depends on society’s shared fictions

Evidence

The premise of this book is that neither position is particularly helpful in terms of either understanding or overcoming financialization. Rather, the first chapter suggests we take up Marx’s (1981, 594-652) notion of fictitious capital in a way he probably did not fully intend it: capital’s reproduction depends on and transforms the social fictions that animate society. Financial wealth may be largely “fictitious,” but that does not make it any less “real”: as Thomas King (2003), among many others, teaches us, fictions can be among the most powerful forces in human societies. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 42

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the book’s core concept: reinterpreting Marx’s fictitious capital as operating through social fictions that remain powerful despite being imaginary.
• SEED: This ‘fictions can be among the most powerful forces while unreal’ claim is the load-bearing pivot of the whole cultural argument — potentially a thesis paragraph for the synthesis with deWaard.
• XREF: connects to: Financial wealth is fictitious yet real because shared fictions govern social reproduction — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 42; Finance shapes modern societies’ collective myths and imagined communities, not just economies — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 19; Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Financial wealth is fictitious yet real because shared fictions govern social reproduction #corroborates (1.00) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 42
• Financial assets are largely imaginary, yet imaginary does not mean unreal #corroborates (0.95) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 29
• Finance’s social dominance rests on popular speculative imagination, not mere value subordination #corroborates (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 356
• Finance is where real and fictitious, rational and irrational worlds collapse into one another #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 159
• Financialized subjects stay in fictions because fictions order protean reality #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 79
• Fictitious capital promises security and fulfillment it structurally cannot deliver #expands (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 582
• Finance shapes modern societies’ collective myths and imagined communities, not just economies #expands (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 19
• Finance produces its own imagined communities rather than merely colonizing existing ones #expands (0.75)
• Financialization both produce and depend on cultural fictions like precarity and creativity #expands (0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 54
• Uncertainty deepens societies’ need for narratives and makes finance their model #expands (0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 36
• Money as arbitrary fiction can only represent real social labour #qualifies (0.72) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 612