Financial sector wealth derives from debts that discipline debtors into compliance
Evidence
For Lazarrato, finance represents a historic bloc of capitalist forces. The wealth of the financial sector exists because of the debts of actors as small as individuals and as large as nation-states, and this wealth and this debt are used to discipline these actors into compliance with an emerging global capitalist paradigm which is based not as much on the extraction of surplus value but more on the production of financialized, debt-driven subjectivities. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 90
Categorization
- DEFINE: Lazzarato’s core framing: finance as a historic bloc whose wealth rests on disciplining debt.
- QUESTION: Is the shift away from surplus extraction toward debt-driven subjectivities empirically defensible or rhetorical?
- XREF: connects to: Finance operates as a disciplinary mechanism that mobilizes debt to exploit labor. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 58; Debt and finance work biopolitically to produce compliant self-financing subjectivities — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 90; Finance wields power by forcing agency to express itself as debt — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 264 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Finance wields power by forcing agency to express itself as debt
#corroborates(0.85) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 264 - Obligation-credit structures concentrate power in hierarchical and stratified settings.
#expands(0.80) — Coleman, SocialCapitalCreation-1988, 92 - Debt has historically served to capture and fix people within political bonds
#exemplifies(0.78) — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 133 - Financialization operates as decentralized power through everyday financial practices
#expands(0.75) — Natascha van der Zwan, Making Sense of Financialization, 20