[lbo-talk] Pierre Bourdieu quote

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Sun Mar 30 13:02:55 PDT 2008


Bourdieu, from a 2000 lecture in Berlin.

Something about the last sentence of the paragraph below I like a lot ("the dominant in this game are dominated by the rules of the game they dominate"), and seems apropos given the proposed new powers of the Fed:

"It is, in fact, the managers of big institutions, the pension funds, the big insurance companies, and, particularly in the United States, the money market funds and mutual funds who today dominate the field of financial capital, within which financial capital is both stake and weapon. These managers possess a formidable capacity to pressure both firms and states. They transfer the imperative of short-term profit -- which, in complete disregard of ecological and, above all, human consequences, becomes the practical purpose of the entire system -- onto company managers, who in turn transfer that risk to wage earners. In short, because the dominant in this game are dominated by the rules of the game they dominate (the rule of profit), this field functions as an infernal machine without subject, which imposes its will on both states and firms."


>From _Firing Back: Against the Tyranny of the Market_,
Verso

-B.



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