Professor Fabio Vighi (Critical Theory and Italian at Cardiff Uni.) can get heavy/borderline tedious but I think he's on to something. Plus, where else are you going to find sentences like:
"At the heart of this process is the reliance on the toxic fetish of the speculative bubble: trillions (quadrillions if we count derivatives) of insubstantial money orbiting above our heads at the speed of light."
There is a good chance that I will purloin "...the toxic fetish of
the speculative bubble"
From The Philosophical Salon, June 24:
The figure of the Enemy is probably the most precious asset of the imploding West. Just consider the recent celebrations for the 80th anniversary of the D-day, which, courtesy of the ubiquitous Volodymyr Zelensky (who a few days later turned up at the G7 meeting in Italy, and then at the bogus “peace summit” in Switzerland),[i] were transformed into yet another commercial against Russia – who in the fight against Nazism, supported by Ukraine, sacrificed around 27 million people (as USSR). Dressed up as Normandy, Ukraine was once again consecrated as the ontological frontier in the struggle of Good against Evil. The point to ponder here is the causal link between a panicky empire teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and the evocation of an Enemy to be fought, in this specific case, to the last Ukrainian (and to the detriment of the European vassals).
So, let’s confront reality head-on instead of fixating on its “political actors”. Russian disinformation, we are told, is everywhere. But what about Western disinformation? No mainstream media tells us that, after the new sanctions and the G7 decision to use frozen Russian assets to finance a new $50 billion package for Ukraine, the rouble has actually appreciated against the dollar. Why is the Russian currency strengthening? Weren’t we told for months on end that the sanctions would turn the rouble into toilet paper, which would then bring down Putin Ceausescu-style? In fact, how is it that the Russian economy is growing by more than 3%? And why does the Financial Times feel compelled to report that, in May this year, more Russian gas was exported to Europe than US liquefied gas (LNG)? Is it a coincidence that, after such “revelation”, the EU’s 14th sanctions package against Russia for the first time included gas – thus dealing the final blow to European industrial production? Also, why aren’t we informed that US debt securities worth approximately $10 trillion are due to mature in 2024? Isn’t it clear yet that, behind the Manichean media narratives we are fed, the West is engaged in an internal struggle for survival, which, as such, needs sacrificial lambs?
Anything can make the news these days except what would reveal that the matrix is no longer “sustainable.” This, of course, doesn’t mean that the world will fall off its axis tomorrow. Rather, more soberly, it means that Western economies will continue their race to the bottom while inflation ticks higher. Not only is inflation now structural, but it also serves to mitigate the costs of refinancing the ever-growing tsunami of debt which erodes the “sustainability” of the financial house of cards. In short, an economic model that thrives on artificial monetary expansion and endless debt securitization – a model of capitalism in an advanced stage of decay – can only attempt to capitalize on the currency devaluation it spontaneously engenders. Regardless of what one thinks of Russia, China, and other capitalist autocracies, can we really blame the growing number of countries from the Global South that are rushing to join the BRICS alliance? After all, these nations are seeking to escape the economic stranglehold imposed by their dependency on the US dollar, which has persisted for decades.
The dominance of the Western financial sector has imposed a model of “destructive creation” rather than “creative destruction” (as famously theorised by Joseph Schumpeter). “Creation” here refers to the leveraged expansion of derivative-driven speculative capital which necessitates the abandonment of the traditional framework of liberal-democratic values designed to safeguard industrial capitalism. This means that the Western elites (the 0.1 percenters) manage the terminal crisis of capital by inflicting its consequences upon increasingly impoverished masses, who are also “distracted” by relentless eschatological hype: catastrophic scenarios originating in the “misbehaviour” of an external Enemy (Virus, Russia, Iran, China, Climate Change, etc.). So, what does “sustainability” actually refer to?
One thing is clear: it bears no relation to the United Nation’s 17 “sustainable development” goals (defeating poverty and hunger, increasing health and well-being, fighting climate change, gender equality, etc.) – those, unfortunately, are just decoys. “Sustainable development” concerns an elitist economic model that pushes Wall Street to record-breaking highs while making ordinary folks pay for such achievement through real economic contraction and the erosion of purchasing power. The question, then, is: are we happy to take the hit to protect the wealth of the ultra-rich and their sinister idea of “the best of possible worlds”?
A sinister idea like “sustainable neo-feudal capitalism” requires sinister (and often farcical) ceremonies. After decades of stable decline, the Western “advanced” economies are now accelerating toward collapse, and simultaneously grappling with a delusion-of-omnipotence complex which exploits the threat of ineffable exogenous Enemies. For around three decades after WWII, the capitalist matrix functioned by cajoling surplus-value producers through the carrot of social mobility and consumerism, while also using violence when necessary. It was almost effortless, then, to pretend to be good, democratic, and liberal. The choreography that obscured the collective prison was still credible, almost realistic, even attractive. The bloodstains on the walls were erased by strokes of paint called “progress”, “democracy”, “growth”. In short, capital and its bureaucrats managed to represent the aspirations of the Western masses that they also exploited, or worse, that they persistently looted in various regions of the “Third World.”
But now the party is over. The most powerful social illusion in modern history dupes only the dupers, and all those who believe they can still cash in on an obsolescent system. As the American Dream slowly morphs into a nightmare also for the middle classes, the only realistic option left is to turn the screw on entire populations: propaganda, censorship, war escalations, daily administrations of calamitous scenarios, ethnic cleansing, even the return of political violence against the non-aligned. This, to be sure, is the autopilot of a socioeconomic discourse which represses its destructive madness by turning every vision of the future – therefore, of the possible – into a vision of terror. The logic at work is as cunning as it is desperate. The eschatological kernel of a financial simulation of growth driven by quantum machine learning algorithms, which forces entire societies into stagnation, is first disavowed and then released into the geopolitical scene. The combination of accelerating financial metastasis and depressive social inertia is now steadily offset by the threat of exogenous catastrophes.
Amin Samman and Stefano Sgambati have noted that ‘the current financial system operates on the basis of a “rolling apocalypse”, perpetually scheduling and deferring millions of endpoints around which lives and livelihoods are organised.’ More precisely:
“The financialisation of capitalism in this way installs eschatology at the heart of daily life, binding the contemporary subject to the ends of finance through the unending circulation and leveraging of debt. We all live under the shadow of the financial eschaton, no matter how we find ourselves plugged into the financial machine, and the result is a transference onto indebtedness of all the psychological charge previously reserved for the end of history.”[ii]
This perceptive argument could be developed further through the following observation: insofar as it is increasingly fragile and unmanageable in financial terms alone, the apocalyptic threat that haunts the “leveraged economy” of the West is now deployed directly as a bio- or geopolitical weapon. This brings to light the repressed content of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, for his famous claim that Western liberal democracy is the final form of human government comes true in the ongoing collapse of the future into a claustrophobic present trapped amidst the violent dynamics of debt and the continuous threat of global disasters. This way, the financial eschaton morphs into a discourse of explicit social and geopolitical end-time. With the sustained and deliberate promotion of war theatres like the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and the Palestinian genocide, the eschatological dimension inscribed in the libidinal economy of leverage spills over into what I have called “emergency capitalism,” or the “libidinal economy of the apocalypse”.
It is vital to reiterate that the disabling of the future, which binds us to a depressive presentism (while also erasing traces of the past), originates in the terminal crisis of capital, as best represented by the insubstantial character of money in our hyper-financialised universe. As the real value of capital is shrinking, so does capital’s capacity to reproduce our societies. Money capital is now emerging as the nothing of self-reflexive performativity, the endless circulation of rolled-over debt that vainly attempts to hide its own void – de facto accomplishing nothing except its own proliferation. In the era of financial capitalism, money is created ex nihilo as electronic bytes on banks’ computer screens, and the faster it circulates as debt, the more it reveals its ruinous destiny. While debts are not supposed to be settled but instead packaged and invested as assets in a potentially infinite loop,[iii] in truth their proliferation is exposed to growing systemic fragilities – which is why, I argue, the financial eschaton needs to promote fear of Armageddon by breeding conflicts and emergencies that must be perceived as part of an apocalyptic destiny devoid of redemption. The main feature of contemporary Power is a type of totalitarian rule based on the weaponization of impending doom.
At the heart of this process is the reliance on the toxic fetish of the speculative bubble: trillions (quadrillions if we count derivatives) of insubstantial money orbiting above our heads at the speed of light. The virtualization of the economy – monetary capital that multiplies without valorising itself, that is, without passing through the living bodies of commodity-producing workers – now generates terrifying “returns in the Real”. It is therefore no surprise that Western capitalism, which on account of its advanced financial structure is the first to experience implosion, increasingly resembles a drunk looking for a fight. This is somewhat inevitable, as an empire that parts ways peacefully with the idols that have marked its history is hard to fathom....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also:"Red Pill or Blue Pill? Variants, Inflation, and the Controlled Demolition of Society"
The Philosophical Salon has had some of the most interesting explorations of the interplay between the torrents of both fiscal and monetary liquidity, lockdowns, and the nagging sense that something much larger than official explanations is going on. Some previous links after the jump....