Hardt and Negri are right: our economy is immaterial now, but that immateriality is not the immateriality of Apple Computer, Google, or Facebook, it’s the immateriality of Goldman Sachs and AIG. Whereas under traditional forms of capitalism the stock market was meant to produce returns on investment, a relationship summed up in Marx’s equation M-C-M’ (where M is money, C is a commodity produced with the money, and M’ is money plus surplus value), the financial market now seems to operate under the scheme of M-M’ (see Jeffrey Nealon’s brilliant Foucault Beyond Foucault). Surplus value is the product of speculation.
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| — | Kazys Varnelis, “The Decade Ahead” |
