Financial wealth is fictitious yet real because shared fictions govern social reproduction

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. Indeed, it is through shared fictions that we reproduce social and subjective life itself. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 42

Categorization

• DEFINE: Recasts Marx’s fictitious capital as the claim that capital’s reproduction depends on social fictions — finance as performed cultural narratives, not merely speculation.
• XREF: The claim that fictions are powerful social forces connects to Yuval Harari’s Sapiens framing and to the reader’s own interest in finance colonizing imagination; also bridges directly to deWaard’s cultural argument. — connects to: Uncertainty deepens societies’ need for narratives and makes finance their model — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 36; Communities endure financialized life’s chaos by building shared fictions — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 563; Financial assets are largely imaginary, yet imaginary does not mean unreal — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 29 (+12 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion — that fictitious capital is real precisely because all social life runs on shared fictions — is a paradigm-defining move that reframes the entire financialization debate.
• SEED: Angle: an essay on how the debate between ‘finance is real’ and ‘finance is illusory’ is itself the wrong frame — finance is a cultural institution whose reality is produced through collective fiction-making.

Broader Connections

• Money as arbitrary fiction can only represent real social labour #corroborates (0.85) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 612
• Two dominant frames treat financial wealth as either real value or pure illusion #contradicts (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 41
• Ownership of wealth is real only when one can part with it freely #qualifies (0.70) — , A Year of World Stories, 12081
• Real subsumption makes social relations emerge from capital itself #expands (0.70) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 104