Speculation’s rationality-irrationality tension now defines dominant political conflicts

Evidence

Hayek’s own radical endorsement of the irrational and his stress on the generative force of the unknowable in capitalist dynamics appear all but lost in these accounts. More than a decade after the latest crisis, the tension between rationality and irrationality (and between reality and fiction) that is embodied in speculation seems to define the fault lines of dominant conflicts such as those between experts and publics or between liberal elites and neopopulist insurgents. Speculation, then, is at the heart of today’s political economy and, as we will see, the ground on which capitalism’s new struggles for power are fought. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 66

Hayek’s own radical endorsement of the irrational and his stress on the generative force of the unknowable in capitalist dynamics appear all but lost in these accounts. More than a decade after the latest crisis, the tension between rationality and irrationality (and between reality and fiction) that is embodied in speculation seems to define the fault lines of dominant conflicts such as those between experts and publics or between liberal elites and neopopulist insurgents. Speculation, then, is at the heart of today’s political economy and, as we will see, the ground on which capitalism’s new struggles for power are fought. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 100

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the thesis that political conflict now runs along speculative rationality-vs-irrationality lines — relevant to the reader’s financialized populism frame. — connects to: Contemporary political movements emerge from speculation rather than rational calculation — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 553
• QUESTION: The precise mechanism by which a Hayekian embrace of the irrational was ‘lost’ in the elite readings deserves to be pinned down historically.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 66; Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 100