Markets, inequality, and poverty under finance capitalism

This commentary highlights how the markets for poverty finance, labor, and war, occupation, and genocide coproduce the crippling inequalities and poverty that are a key feature of the present era of finance capitalism. In this age, the state, industrial capital, technology, and innovation all serve at the altar of global finance. Wealth and power remain concentrated in the hands of a few in the Global North, entangling the lives, livelihoods, and capacities of those laboring at the bottom of the pyramid in the Global South. I join the call towards dystopian optimism by urging that critical scholars, while continuing to uncover the deathworlds of finance capitalism, strengthen the quest for degrowth through local solidarities and new ways of structuring our economies and societies.