What is now so striking is the increasing power of the unproductive and parasitic rentiers, not simply the owners of land and all the resources that reside therein, but the owners of assets, the all-powerful bondholders, the owners of independent money power (which has become a paramount means of production in its own right), and the owners of patents and property rights that are simply claims on social labour freed of any obligation to mobilise that social labour for productive uses. The parasitic forms of capital are now in the ascendant. We see their representatives gliding through the streets in limousines and populating all the upmarket restaurants and penthouses in all the major global cities of the world – New York, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, São Paulo, Sydney ...
These are the so-called creative cities, where creativity is measured by how success- fully the ‘masters of the universe’ can suck the living life out of the global economy to support a class whose one aim is to compound its own already immense wealth and power. New York City has a huge concentration of creative talent – creative accountants and tax lawyers, creative financiers armed with glitteringly new financial instruments, creative manipulators of information, creative hustlers and sellers of snake oil, creative media consultants, all of which makes it a wondrous place to study every single fetish that capital can construct. The fact that the only class in the world to benefit from the so-called economic recovery (such as it is) after 2009 is the top 1 per cent, and that there is no visible protest on the part of the rest of the population left behind in the economic doldrums, is testimony to the success of their project. The parasites have won the battle. The bond- holders and the central bankers rule the world. The fact that their success is bound to be illusory and that they cannot possibly win the war for capital’s survival scarcely raises a sliver of doubt. After days spent ‘conscience laundering’ with their philanthropic colleagues in attempts to correct, as Peter Buffett puts it, with their right hand the damage they had earlier created with their left, the oligarchs may sleep well at night. Their inability to see how close they are sailing to the edge of disaster reminds one of King Louis XIV of France, who is reported to have prophetically said: ‘Après moi, le déluge.’ Capital may not end with a deluge. The World Bank is fond of reassuring us that a rising tide of economic development is bound to lift all boats. Maybe a truer metaphor would be that exponentially rising sea levels and intensifying storms are destined to sink all boats.
These are the so-called creative cities, where creativity is measured by how success- fully the ‘masters of the universe’ can suck the living life out of the global economy to support a class whose one aim is to compound its own already immense wealth and power. New York City has a huge concentration of creative talent – creative accountants and tax lawyers, creative financiers armed with glitteringly new financial instruments, creative manipulators of information, creative hustlers and sellers of snake oil, creative media consultants, all of which makes it a wondrous place to study every single fetish that capital can construct. The fact that the only class in the world to benefit from the so-called economic recovery (such as it is) after 2009 is the top 1 per cent, and that there is no visible protest on the part of the rest of the population left behind in the economic doldrums, is testimony to the success of their project. The parasites have won the battle. The bond- holders and the central bankers rule the world. The fact that their success is bound to be illusory and that they cannot possibly win the war for capital’s survival scarcely raises a sliver of doubt. After days spent ‘conscience laundering’ with their philanthropic colleagues in attempts to correct, as Peter Buffett puts it, with their right hand the damage they had earlier created with their left, the oligarchs may sleep well at night. Their inability to see how close they are sailing to the edge of disaster reminds one of King Louis XIV of France, who is reported to have prophetically said: ‘Après moi, le déluge.’ Capital may not end with a deluge. The World Bank is fond of reassuring us that a rising tide of economic development is bound to lift all boats. Maybe a truer metaphor would be that exponentially rising sea levels and intensifying storms are destined to sink all boats.
Source:
Harvey, D. (2014). Seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press. p.244-245
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