Don't want an "apology from Wall Street," don't even need punitive compensation for executives. These are what will be given over as sacrifices in return for retaining the veil over the theological concept of ownership on which capital depends. The axis of revenge is the weakest form of opposition. Today's only pragmatic slogan: equity or barbarism.
One thing the Paulson bailout scheme makes apparent is the indivisibility, in late capitalism, of primitive accumulation and real subsumption. The bailout appears as primitive accumulation: the looting of taxpayer assets to be entered into the self-valorizing circuit of capital. However, insofar as the taxpayers don't actually "have" the loot on hand, they are obligated to pay over time, via work to be done (thus they are doubly looted: both of the surplus value extracted from the general labor process in which they participate, and the concrete value of the tax burden from their diminished pay). This is a core logic of financialization; it renders real subsumption to come as primitive accumulation now.
Posted by jane at September 23, 2008 10:33 AM | TrackBack