I am not simply arguing that financial wealth is a mere fiction, and for this reason we must distinguish fictitious capital as something significant and unique. All wealth, all value is a fiction, whether it exists under capitalism or any other economic system (see Graeber 2001). Certainly, material culture is valuable, and much of it appears to be intrinsically valuable (things like food and shelter). But the value we ascribe to things is a matter of cultural intercourse. A thing is just a thing until it is backed by a story, and this is as true of the value of a loaf of bread as it is of the value of an Andy Warhol print, an hour of a massage therapist’s time, or a futures contract. While there is political and rhetorical utility in contrasting the hyperbolic wealth of the financial sector with the emaciated “real economy,” the reality is that all value is a fiction, a story about what is valuable used to shape social cooperation. The reason why the idea of fictitious capital is useful is because it draws our attention to the way that finance foments and depends on the production of social fictions. It is fictitious not simply because it is a fiction, but because it helps transform the social fictions that order social cooperation. It is productive of fictions and reproduced by fictions.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 111