[D66] Governing by Debt

[J.N.]

HOME <http://mitpress.mit.edu/>ECONOMICS AND FINANCE
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/disciplines/economics-and-finance>HUMANITIES
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/disciplines/humanities>GOVERNING BY DEBT
Governing by Debt
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/9781584351634_0.jpg>
Share on facebook <http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/governing-debt#>Share
on twitter <http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/governing-debt#>Share on email
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/governing-debt#>Share on pinterest_share
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/governing-debt#>More Sharing Services
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/governing-debt#>

  * Buying Options

*Paperback* | *$13.95 Trade* | *£9.95* | ISBN: 9781584351634 | 200 pp. |
4.5 x 7 in | January 2015 
 


    Also by this Author

Signs and Machines <http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/signs-and-machines>

Signs and Machines <http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/signs-and-machines>

>From Semiotext(e) <http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/semiotexte>


  Governing by Debt

By Maurizio Lazzarato <http://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/maurizio-lazzarato>
Translated by Joshua David Jordan
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/joshua-david-jordan>


    Overview

Experts, pundits, and politicians agree: public debt is hindering growth
and increasing unemployment. Governments must reduce debt at all cost if
they want to restore confidence and get back on a path to prosperity.
Maurizio Lazzarato’s diagnosis, however, is completely different: under
capitalism, debt is not primarily a question of budget and economic
concerns but a political relation of subjection and enslavement. Debt
has become infinite and unpayable. It disciplines populations, calls for
structural reforms, justifies authoritarian crackdowns, and even
legitimizes the suspension of democracy in favor of “technocratic
governments” beholden to the interests of capital. The 2008 economic
crisis only accelerated the establishment of a “new State capitalism,”
which has carried out a massive confiscation of societies’ wealth
through taxes. And who benefits? Finance capital. In a calamitous return
to the situation before the two world wars, the entire process of
accumulation is now governed by finance, which has absorbed sectors it
once ignored, like higher education, and today is often identified with
life itself. Faced with the current catastrophe and the disaster to
come, Lazzarato contends, we must overcome capitalist valorization and
reappropriate our existence, knowledge, and technology.

In /Governing by Debt/, Lazzarato confronts a wide range of
thinkers—from Félix Guattari and Michel Foucault to David Graeber and
Carl Schmitt—and draws on examples from the United States and Europe to
argue that it is time that we unite in a collective refusal of this most
dire status quo.


    About the Author

Maurizio Lazzarato is a sociologist and philosopher living and working
in Paris, where he studies immaterial labor, the breakdown of the wage
system, and “post-socialist” movements. He is the author of /The Making
of the Indebted Man /and /Signs and Machines/, both published by
Semiotext(e).

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.tuxtown.net/pipermail/d66/attachments/20150321/0dc40f48/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 9781584351634_0.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3950 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.tuxtown.net/pipermail/d66/attachments/20150321/0dc40f48/attachment-0001.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 9781584351306.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 5974 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://www.tuxtown.net/pipermail/d66/attachments/20150321/0dc40f48/attachment-0001.jpeg>