The financier embodies an ideal of leveraged precariousness imposed on all workers

Evidence

In the financier, we find the paragon of leveraged precariousness, the ideal to which all workers, no matter how humble, are instructed to aspire. They lead a form of life that strives towards maximum liquidity: one that has few durable bonds and is highly adaptable to profitable circumstances, able to respond with almost inhuman alacrity to the needs of the market. Ho’s research subjects report that it is rare to find finance workers over the age of 40, the vast majority either having been downsized or having succumbed to the personal costs of the frenetic lifestyle and work rhythm in terms of mental or physical health (2009, 97–107). Many take the “work ethic,” ethos and connections they cultivated in the financial realm into private and public management of non-financial firms and government bureaucracies, imposing their austere expectations on other workplaces and sectors. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 187

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds deWaard’s cultural argument — the financier as a universal aspirational archetype is the bridge between Haiven’s economic critique and deWaard’s cultural reading. — connects to: Finance operates as a disciplinary mechanism that mobilizes debt to exploit labor. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 58; Financialization drives the rise of precarious labor and dissolves social bonds — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 141; Finance functions to obscure capitalism’s raw dependence on precarious life — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 46 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Financialization drives the rise of precarious labor and dissolves social bonds #expands (0.82) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 141
• Workers internalize capitalist values and accept precarity as deserved #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 63
• Finance functions to obscure capitalism’s raw dependence on precarious life #complicates (0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 46
• Financial practice expresses class and acts as a control mechanism #expands (0.78) — Natascha van der Zwan, Making Sense of Financialization, 20
• Financiers profiting solely from commissions embody the phantom-like unreality of imperialist capital #epitomizes (0.75)
• Wealth and power in bourgeois society come from fraud or force concealed as earnings #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 430
• Wage-earners are both workers and capital owners under financialization #expands (0.74) — Natascha van der Zwan, Making Sense of Financialization, 102
• Financialized capitalism requires subjects who see themselves as miniature financiers. #qualifies (0.72) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 95
• Wage labor is capitalism’s primary pillar and historical precondition. #contradicts (0.72)