Revenge Capitalism
The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts
By (author) Max Haiven
Publication date:
20 May 2020Length of book:
288 pagesPublisher
Pluto PressISBN-13: 9781786806178
Capitalism is in a profound state of crisis. Beyond the mere dispassionate cruelty of 'ordinary' structural violence, it appears today as a global system bent on reckless economic revenge; its expression found in mass incarceration, climate chaos, unpayable debt, pharmaceutical violence and the relentless degradation of common life.
In Revenge Capitalism, Max Haiven argues that this economic vengeance helps us explain the culture and politics of revenge we see in society more broadly. Moving from the history of colonialism and its continuing effects today, he examines the opioid crisis in the US, the growth of 'surplus populations' worldwide and unpacks the central paradigm of unpayable debts - both as reparations owed, and as a methodology of oppression.
Revenge Capitalism offers no easy answers, but is a powerful call to the radical imagination.
'Perhaps the most theoretically creative radical thinker of the moment'