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gmeluski's review against another edition
4.0
Interesting perspective on what debt means for modern culture.
bearunderthecypresses's review against another edition
4.0
Intense description of how Neoliberalism continues to kick me down everyday. A depressing but interesting learning experience.
"The production of the social through "welfare" used to act as an instrument for control over the lives of beneficiaries and as a means of reforming income redistribution and access to myriad services and rights. At present, the reformist route is blocked; only control remains exercised through a politics of debt. From a means of capitalist reform, the Welfare State has become a means by which to establish authoritarian regimes. The function of the Welfare State has thus completely changed. Under these circumstances, a New Deal is quite simply impossible. There is no question of economic equilibrium or economic imperatives, but rather of a politics of totalization and individualization of authoritarian control over indebted man. It is this fact that explains why it is impossible to return to reformist capitalism." (p. 127 - 128).
"Crisis still has a positive connotation. It can refer to a situation capable of being overcome." (p. 151).
"The debt economy has deprived the immense majority of Europeans of political power, which has already been diminished through the concessions of representative democracy. It has deprived them of a growing share of the wealth that past struggles had wrestled from capitalist accumulation. AND, above all, it has deprived them of the future, that is, of time, time as decision-making, choice, and possibility." (p. 5).
"For debt simply neutralizes time, time as the creation of new possibilities, that is to say, the raw material of all political, social, and esthetic change." (p. 49).
"The battles that were once fought over wages are now being fought over debt, and especially public debt, which represents a kind of socialized wage." (p. 127).
"The creditor-debtor relationship entails a radical change in the measure of value." (p. 138).
"Debt/money asks neither trust nor consent from the dividual. It asks only that he function correctly according to the received instructions. And the same is true for all the machines that we encounter every day. Following the prescribed orders determines access to information, to money, to plane and train tickets bought on the internet, parking ramps, computers, bank accounts, etc." (p. 149).
"The production of the social through "welfare" used to act as an instrument for control over the lives of beneficiaries and as a means of reforming income redistribution and access to myriad services and rights. At present, the reformist route is blocked; only control remains exercised through a politics of debt. From a means of capitalist reform, the Welfare State has become a means by which to establish authoritarian regimes. The function of the Welfare State has thus completely changed. Under these circumstances, a New Deal is quite simply impossible. There is no question of economic equilibrium or economic imperatives, but rather of a politics of totalization and individualization of authoritarian control over indebted man. It is this fact that explains why it is impossible to return to reformist capitalism." (p. 127 - 128).
"Crisis still has a positive connotation. It can refer to a situation capable of being overcome." (p. 151).
"The debt economy has deprived the immense majority of Europeans of political power, which has already been diminished through the concessions of representative democracy. It has deprived them of a growing share of the wealth that past struggles had wrestled from capitalist accumulation. AND, above all, it has deprived them of the future, that is, of time, time as decision-making, choice, and possibility." (p. 5).
"For debt simply neutralizes time, time as the creation of new possibilities, that is to say, the raw material of all political, social, and esthetic change." (p. 49).
"The battles that were once fought over wages are now being fought over debt, and especially public debt, which represents a kind of socialized wage." (p. 127).
"The creditor-debtor relationship entails a radical change in the measure of value." (p. 138).
"Debt/money asks neither trust nor consent from the dividual. It asks only that he function correctly according to the received instructions. And the same is true for all the machines that we encounter every day. Following the prescribed orders determines access to information, to money, to plane and train tickets bought on the internet, parking ramps, computers, bank accounts, etc." (p. 149).
renny's review
2.0
About as compelling and insightful as a high school term paper. I should have stopped at the description. Nietzsche, Marx, Deleuze... nothing new here really. Debt as the foundation of human subjectivity and morality. Okay, but what of it and what then? "We must fight for the cancellation of debt, for debt, one will recall, is not an economic problem but an apparatus of power designed not only to impoverish us, but to bring about catastrophe." Good luck with that.
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