TY - JOUR

T1 - Five theses on the debt economy: A Review Essay on Maurizio Lazzarato

AU - Karakilic, Emrah Ali

PY - 2017/10/31

Y1 - 2017/10/31

N2 - Maurizio Lazzarato is an independent researcher (sociologist, political philosopher and social theorist) and activist producing within and through the post-workerist (post-operaist) mode of Marxist thought since the 1990s. Notwithstanding the conceptual and political differences between the authors associated with the post-workerist movement (see Terranova 2014), a central thesis acts as the touchstone of a common base for post-workerism. It is upon this common base that Lazzarato also bases his argument. That is, the production of commodities and profit is inseparable from the ethico-political activity of producing the subject. ‘The central project of capitalist politics’, as Lazzarato (2004) puts it in Sign and Machines, ‘consists in the articulation of economic, technological, and social flows with the production of subjectivity’ (p. 8). In the books here under review, Lazzarato (2012) abstracts and analyses debt as the primary mechanism working precisely on forming such an articulation: ‘debt … combines work on the self and labour, in its classical sense, such that ethics and economics function conjointly’ (p. 11). This essay will review Lazzarato’s arguments, almost scattered as jigsaw puzzle pieces throughout the chapters, by categorising and approaching them under five key theses.

AB - Maurizio Lazzarato is an independent researcher (sociologist, political philosopher and social theorist) and activist producing within and through the post-workerist (post-operaist) mode of Marxist thought since the 1990s. Notwithstanding the conceptual and political differences between the authors associated with the post-workerist movement (see Terranova 2014), a central thesis acts as the touchstone of a common base for post-workerism. It is upon this common base that Lazzarato also bases his argument. That is, the production of commodities and profit is inseparable from the ethico-political activity of producing the subject. ‘The central project of capitalist politics’, as Lazzarato (2004) puts it in Sign and Machines, ‘consists in the articulation of economic, technological, and social flows with the production of subjectivity’ (p. 8). In the books here under review, Lazzarato (2012) abstracts and analyses debt as the primary mechanism working precisely on forming such an articulation: ‘debt … combines work on the self and labour, in its classical sense, such that ethics and economics function conjointly’ (p. 11). This essay will review Lazzarato’s arguments, almost scattered as jigsaw puzzle pieces throughout the chapters, by categorising and approaching them under five key theses.

KW - debt economy

KW - debt

KW - Lazzarato

U2 - 10.1177/0309816817735719

DO - 10.1177/0309816817735719

M3 - Book/Film/Article review

VL - 41

JO - Capital and Class

JF - Capital and Class

SN - 0309-8168

IS - 3

ER -