Financialized speculation on reputational value can reproduce its own social resistance

Evidence

Michel Feher (2018) has put forward a bold thesis on the political role of finance in these recent developments: capital’s increased fixation on “asset value” speculation has “backfired,” so that neoliberalism now generates its own resistance—a spin on Marx’s “inherent contradiction” thesis. According to Feher, financialized economies now compete more intensely than ever for investment in perceived (that is, in “reputational”) value, while the rapid proliferation of social media-based evaluation technologies fires up mass speculation conflicts in wider society. Neoliberal capitalism’s unintended consequence thus becomes a threat to its own dominance. But even if openness to the unknown poses a threat to the status quo, it can also coexist with the regressive instincts of “order” that ultimately reaffirm neoliberalism’s legitimacy. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 70

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘financialized populism is speculation under uncertainty’ thesis the reader is developing, and to Feher’s ‘rated agency’ work on self-appraisal as investment. Resonates with the author’s stock-trading-to-self-presentation migration argument.
• QUESTION: Does Feher’s ‘backfire’ thesis actually hold, or is openness-to-the-unknown absorbable by an even more speculative, resilient capitalism? The author flags the tension himself in the next sentence.