Of course, we should never tire of pointing out that, even in the supposed “Golden Age,” the middle class was largely aspirational and a completely rigged game. Individualized consumer lifestyles depended on the neocolonial exploitation of the Third World, huge racialized underclasses (with virtually no access to debt or credit) (Winant 2001) and the systematic exploitation of women’s reproductive labour in the home and the market (Federici 2012). It also depended on a deep cultural conservatism enforced by homophobic terrorism (Kinsman and Gentile 2009) and what we now understand to be completely unsustainable ecological practices, including the mass exploitation of fossil fuels, the proliferation of toxic chemicals and plastics, and the mass production of commodities and their subsequent waste (Foster, Clark and York 2010).

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 519