“ – after every crisis, power seems to become more concentrated in the hands of the people that caused it.”

“everything you know about capitalism is wrong.”

“Nobody planned for the financial crisis. But the response to that crisis was determined by a tight-knit network of financiers and politicians deciding amongst themselves who would be saved and who would be sacrificed.”

The title itself all-but assured a sensation on it’s own, but my expectations were surpassed, if not thrashed, by the spectacularly forthright aplomb of the (then unknown) author. Jesus-HC! Grace Blakeley does not fuck around! In a climate of “centrist” creep, & the paradigm of professional punch-pulling, here is a “warrior class” battle knight on an academically excoriating takedown of the pivotal masquerade & core fallacy that underpins the presiding capitalism, or what in operation is far more accurately described as crony-capitalism, corrupto-capitalism, or vulture capitalism (take your goddamn pick!).

Time-and-time-again she will drive the point home & vividly detail real-world examples; that the current reigning formula (of capitalism) is absolutely not authentic capitalism at all, & this fundamental deception of misrepresenting it as so is, in itself, a colossal fraud & lie.

“A sufficiently large financial institution has the power to direct investment into certain technologies, and therefore to influence which futures are available and which ones are foreclosed. And all of these firms consolidate their power by buying up their competitors, erecting barriers to entry and crushing workers’ attempts to organise, further insulating themselves to competitive pressure and giving them significant authority both within their domains and over society as a whole. As one author puts it, ‘the free market is a smokescreen, behind which lies the brutal, despotic power of corporations‘”.

Vulture Capitalism also reads like a dream, & the nine-chapters & conclusion are so surfeit with critical information that the tome becomes a bit of a reference repository.

For younger or newer enthusiasts wanting a thorough grounding in the real machinations & magicianship of ‘accepted’ capitalism/neoliberalism/free market ruse, this a blistering education & foundational companion.

“Similar to the word ‘feudalism’, the term ‘capitalism’ signifies both the importance of commodities and the dominance of the capitalist class. This is what it means to say that capital is a ‘social relationship’. The terms meaning refers not just to the means of production, but to the relationships that underpin how the commodities are produced and used, much as feudalism refers not just to the importance of land in general, but to the way it was controlled by an aristocratic class.”

Grace’s crusade of refutation makes short work of the deception’s popular ideologues, with the likes of Henry Ford, Friedrich Hayek & Milton Freedman getting a severe & complete shredding, along with many of the central – but remarkably duplicitous – arguments of the doctrine.

“The transformation of Ford from one of the US’s largest employers and manufacturers into an oligopolistic financial institution that acted as a piggy bank for wealthy shareholders who’s greed ultimately brought the firm to the brink of bankruptcy, only to be bailed out by the US state, provides a pretty clear indication of what the ‘free market’ turn of the 1980s was all about. Rather than constraining the power of the state, the neoliberal term was associated with a redistribution of power away from workers and towards owners and managers. The neoliberal revolution was about restoring the order of capital over labour.”

“Privatisation, for example, was supposed to create efficient, profit-maximising private corporations out of inefficient public behemoths run by unaccountable bureaucrats. Instead, it simply transferred the governance of vital national infrastructure from the public sector to the oligopoly of quasi-public corporations, who’s profits were effectively guaranteed by the state. These sales were undertaken by small investors who were able to buy up the public assets on the cheap and sell them for private profit.”

as a professional creative, & being distinctly aware of the blacklisting & corruption in the arts industries, this book is jarringly relevant – & the malpractice & artificial outcomes by “furtive & favoured forces” that it depicts & documents so adeptly – are deeply familiar.

“The neoliberal vision for the capitalist world system should not be understood as one premised on the absence of planning, but as one premised on a different kind of planning: invisible planning in the service of capital.”

a remarkable work, & some of the best & most useful writing on the subject I have read to this date.

“Politicians and bureaucrats tend to implement regulations in the interests of those best able to influence them – the powerful corporations and the wealthy individuals that run them are those that spend the most time and effort on this influencing.”

Grace Blakeley, Bloomsbury, 2024, 295-pages.