Financialized capitalism shapes human activity and escapes human control

Evidence

But what I fear these perspectives often lose sight of is the way the economic, or the capitalist economic system as a whole, is not merely the product of human activity: it also helps shape human activity, and, as its power grows in an era of neoliberal, corporate-led, financialized globalization, it starts to run societies around the world in ways that are outside the control of any human agency, at least as we imagine that agency today. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 340

Categorization

• XREF: Links directly to deWaard’s argument about finance colonizing culture and everyday life — this is the framing claim the reader is explicitly seeking. — connects to: Under postindustrial capitalism, increased freedom and abundance produce more sophisticated social control — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 216; Autonomy is threatened by capitalism’s mutual implication of life and technology — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 566; Financialization ultimately represents markets displacing social institutions as society’s organizing principle. — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 98 (+9 more)
• QUESTION: What would it mean to reclaim human agency over an economy that structurally escapes it? Worth chasing in later chapters.

Broader Connections

• Capitalism shapes selfhood, ecology, and institutions well beyond economics #expands (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 69
• Financialization is capitalism’s most advanced mode of harnessing consumer agency and imagination #exemplifies (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 362
• Assetization supersedes commodification and marketization as the key analysis of financialized capitalism. #expands (0.80) — Paul Langley, Assets and Assetization in…, 19
• Theorizing away the concept of totality serves capitalism by hiding it from political challenge #complicates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 713