Review – Capital Hates Everyone

Maurizio Lazzarato, with his agile, direct and above all provocative style, addresses contemporary political issues without hesitating to express his political positions. He is a radical left intellectual and, therefore, a fierce critic of capitalism. This does not prevent him from being equally scathing in his reproaches to the errors he identifies within the left. He also criticizes feminism, Marxism and poststructuralism, among others, for their apparent inability to create a truly revolutionary alternative to capitalism.

In his book, Lazzarato fearlessly tackles topics as diverse as feminism, civil war, revolution, post-structuralism, social movements, globalization, the financial market, and labor under capitalism. He skillfully connects these issues to construct a coherent explanation of the world. While his multidimensional analysis may be disconcerting to inexperienced readers, his central argument is clear: the world is entering a phase in which capitalism is increasingly and irreversibly adopting a fascist character, leaving revolution as the only alternative to avoid a fascist future.

The book’s central thesis unfolds in three chapters: “When Capital Goes to War,” “Technical Machine and War Machine,” and “Becoming Revolutionary and Revolution.” In the first two chapters, Lazzarato critiques the influential role of Foucauldian “biopolitics” in understanding the dynamics of contemporary capitalist power. He particularly challenges the idea that direct state violence recedes as biopolitical power advances in societies.

Biopolitical power and the capitalist “war machine”

According to Foucault, biopolitical power focuses on the management of life at the population level while relying less and less on direct violence to control people. Lazzarato agrees that modern capitalism exercises biopolitical power—a subtle form of control that individuals internalize, shaping their perceptions of what is possible, moral, and normal, an idea that resembles Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power. However, Lazzarato argues that biopolitical power does not exclude the use of direct violence or “hard power.” Unlike Foucault, Lazzarato argues that direct violence remains a tool of control even within biopolitical regimes like neoliberal capitalism.

According to Lazzarato, neoliberal capitalism exercises a form of “positive” control that seduces and convinces people of its superiority over any other model. It reaches a point where capitalism is perceived as the only viable system. At the same time, as Lazzarato argues, neoliberal capitalism does not hesitate to repress and even kill those who propose alternatives that negatively impact the interests of finance capital. At this point, the fascist character of contemporary neoliberalism becomes explicit, partly explaining the persistence of “class, racial, and sexual violence” (p. 72) directly against marginalized populations.

Lazzarato argues that racial and sexual violence fit “without much difficulty into neoliberal governmentality because marginalized communities participate in the same capitalist war machine” (p. 52). This capitalist “war machine” includes the dominant and the dominated, involving “power relations from which norms, habits, and laws are produced” (p. 107), as well as forms of violence that arise from state power. The concept of a “war machine” then presupposes a confrontation from the top down, where capital’s insatiable aspiration for accumulation seeks satisfaction.

Lazzarato argues that capitalist societies function as a “war machine,” involving an inherent conflict between the ruling capitalist class and the subjugated working class. This “war machine” relies on the establishment of oppositional power relations, where norms, laws, and societal structures are produced to reinforce the ruling class’s domination over the exploited masses. For the capitalist class to perpetuate its hegemony and its insatiable thirst for capital accumulation, direct violence and repression against the working class become necessary tools despite the seductive rhetoric of capitalism’s “soft power.” The ruling class will not hesitate to openly crush any threat to the established order that challenges its economic interests.

Regarding the political power of capital, Lazzarato argues that capital maintains its governmental authority through multinational corporations that provide resources to governments in exchange for political and economic benefits, even when those benefits are detrimental to the majority of the population. As a result, governments become dependent on large conglomerates to carry out their responsibilities and tasks, whether due to corruption or practical necessity. A recent example is the billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks offered by various countries to entice companies like Amazon and Tesla to build new facilities, despite criticism that such corporate subsidies undermine public services.

Lazzarato’s argument is particularly relevant for the countries of the South. As the structuralist theory of international relations in Latin America posits, these countries face unequal development conditions compared to the countries of the North, which makes them beholden to transnational corporations and more developed industrialized countries. One consequence of these inequalities is that, in the countries of the South, working conditions deteriorate, violence and insecurity intensify, state corruption escalates, and political power is exercised in an increasingly discretionary manner, to the detriment of democracy and equality.

The revolution and the missteps of the left

In the third chapter, Lazzarato argues for the need for revolution to catalyze transformative change in neoliberal capitalist societies. He points out that Soviet communism prioritized productivity over challenging existing social roles and hierarchies. For example, the USSR perpetuated the subordinate role of women relative to men. According to Lazzarato, the historical failure of the Soviet project stems from its failure to recognize that domination operates both objectively and subjectively. Therefore, any authentic transformation must take into account this subjective dimension of domination.

Furthermore, Lazzarato criticizes the May 68 movement for opposite reasons: unlike the USSR, the May 68 protesters were not able to establish revolutionary strategies aimed at an objective transformation of reality. However, they were able to understand the subjective situation of domination. In other words, they sought emancipation without revolution. More precisely, they sought “the liberation of every minority (sexual, racial, ethnic, etc.) from the state of inferiority, exclusion and domination in which capitalism has locked them” (p. 193), but they did not seek to overcome capitalism.

However, emancipation alone does not lead to real transformations. Lazzarato illustrates this point by using the example of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Although Americans successfully “emancipated” the population of African descent over a century ago, racial segregation persisted. According to Lazzarato, a similar situation exists with contemporary feminism. While contemporary feminism creates policies and practices that benefit women, it fails to transform the heteropatriarchal system that oppresses them. Non-revolutionary emancipation only entails formal changes that, however radical, are ultimately incapable of overcoming relations of domination.

Unfortunately, Lazzarato does not propose a solution to these shortcomings of the left movements. His work remains a critique that fails to propose a viable alternative to capitalism. He commits the same error that he attributes to the left: the inability to envisage a path towards political and social transformation. He acknowledges this by asserting that his proposal is characteristic of a revolutionary theory rather than a theory of revolution. In other words, “it represents society in terms of its potential transformation, revealing relations of domination (…) without proposing concrete strategic principles” (p. 195).

In conclusion, this book remains highly relevant to understanding the contemporary world. Dependency theory in international relations and Latin American structuralism support the argument that colonialism persists in new forms. Modern colonialism manifests itself in dependency patterns, where countries in the Global South limit themselves to exporting raw materials, trapping them in a cycle of underdevelopment. States that defy global capitalist directives risk isolation, sanctions, subversion, or intervention, as seen in the Chilean coup of 1973 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Further reading on electronic international relations