The premise of this book is that neither position is particularly helpful in terms of either understanding or overcoming financialization. Rather, the first chapter suggests we take up Marx's (1981, 594–652) notion of fictitious capital in a way he probably did not fully intend it: capital's reproduction depends on and transforms the social fictions that animate society. Financial wealth may be largely "fictitious," but that does not make it any less "real": as Thomas King (2003), among many others, teaches us, fictions can be among the most powerful forces in human societies. Indeed, it is through shared fictions that we reproduce social and subjective life itself.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 42