Research Catalog

Title

Portfolio society : on the capitalist mode of prediction / Ivan Ascher.

Author

Ascher, Ivan

Publication

New York : Zone Books, [2016]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

191 pages; 21 cm.

Summary

"As financial markets expand and continue to refashion the world in their own image, the wealth of capitalist societies no longer presents itself, as it did to Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, as a "monstrous collection of commodities." Instead, it appears as an equally monstrous collection of financial securities, and the critique of political economy must proceed accordingly. But what would it mean to write Capital in the twenty-first century? Are we really to believe that risk, rather than labor, is now regarded as the true fount of economic value? Can it truly be the case that the credit relation--at least in the global North--has replaced the wage relation as the key site of exploitation and political struggle? And finally, if precarity is indeed the name of today's proletarian condition, what possible future does it actually portend, what analysis does it require? Through a series of creative substitutions, in Portfolio Society Ivan Ascher extends Marx's critical project in bold and unexpected ways. Ascher not only explains some of the often mystifying processes of contemporary finance, he also invites us to consider what becomes of capitalism itself in those places where the relation of capital to its own future is now mediated by financial markets. In the end, we may find that much has changed and much has not; relations of domination endure, and mystifications abound, but the devil is in the details, and that is where Ascher directs our attention. At once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell, Portfolio Society succeeds in revealing the potential limits of Capital, while reveling still in its limitless potential." -- Publisher's description

Series Statement

Near futures

Uniform Title

Near futures.

Subjects

• Financial crises
• Securities
• Capitalism
• Capital market
• Marx, Karl, 1818-1883 > Kapital
• Kapital (Marx, Karl)

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 133-179) and index.

Contents

Capitalism: a horror story -- A monstrous collection of securities -- Finding safety in numbers: inside the hidden abode of prediction -- From vagabond to subprime: the making of homo probabilis -- When Goldman broke the law.

ISBN

• 9781935408741 (hardcover : alk. paper)
• 1935408747 (hardcover : alk. paper)

LCCN

• 2016021176
• 99970313471

OCLC

• ocn946160294
• 946160294
• SCSB-9400484

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries