Capital is process, and that is that.

Fierce, and what capitalists sometimes call ‘ruinous’ competition tends, therefore, to produce leap-frogging innovations that more often that not lead capitalists to fetishise technological and organisational innovations as the answer to all their prayers.

The management of the New York fiscal crisis pioneered the way for neoliberal practices both domestically under Reagan and internationally through the IMF in the 1980s. It established the principle that in the event of a conflict between the integrity of financial institutions and bondholders’ returns, on the one hand, and the well-being of the citizens on the other, the former was to be privileged.

Thatcher forged consent through the cultivation of a middle class that relished the joys of home ownership, private property, individualism, and the liberation of entrepreneurial opportunities.

It is therefore only at the money moment – the moment of capitalist universality – that we can tell where we are in relation to value and surplus-value.

As Marx amusingly put it elsewhere, in boom economies everybody acts like a Protestant – they act on pure faith. When the crash comes, though, everyone dives for cover in the “Catholicism” of the monetary base, real gold.

The assumption that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market and of trade is a cardinal feature of neoliberal thinking, and it has long dominated the US stance towards the rest of the world.

For Marx, capital is not a thing, but a process – a process, specifically, of the circulation of values.

We need to get behind the surface appearances if we are to act coherently in the world. Otherwise, acting in response to misleading surface signals typically produces disastrous outcomes.

Once you can hang a price tag on something, you can in principle put a price tag on anything, including conscience and honor, to say nothing of body parts and children.