In making this argument, I am not seeking to contradict but, rather, to complicate analyzes of financialization that see it as a weapon marshalled by the capitalist ruling class (or a faction thereof) against workers of the world. I understand finance as a disciplinary mechanism of capitalist power, one whose primary purpose is to mobilize debt (of individuals, of firms, of governments) as a means to better extort and exploit labour, generate and circulate surplus value, and shape the reproduction of social and economic life.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 58