Progressive politics can combat financialization only by adopting its speculative ground

Evidence

I conclude with a plea for illuminating the overlooked affinities between the speculative imagination of financial markets and the radical potential of counter-speculation in society. I argue that understanding these affinities requires a departure from monolithic accounts of negative speculation, as well as myths of risk-taking and risk control, acknowledging instead the complex sociality of speculative communities both within and beyond financial markets. Such an integrated approach points to the unexpected ways in which the speculative imagination can empower the project of collective autonomy and offer the political grammar for a more radical engagement with the future’s indeterminacy. Harnessing the transformative forces of speculative communities for progressive political purposes means fighting financialization on its own ground—while acknowledging that this ground is shifting in unforeseeable ways. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 43

Categorization

• SEED: Directly feeds the reader’s core question: does the counter-speculation chapter reclaim the speculative imagination for the left — this passage is the book’s closing thesis statement of that program.