Abstract
The Making of the Indebted Man joins an already long list of sociological works criticizing ‘neoliberalism’. The author, Maurizio Lazzarato, believes that by advancing some theoretical statements, our knowledge about the mechanisms behind the emergence, advancement and consolidation of neoliberalism can be enhanced. In essence, Lazzarato argues that within neoliberalism debt is the archetype of social relations. In particular, the creditor–debtor relationship ‘shapes all social relations and neoliberal economies’ (p. 35). With this main thesis in mind, the core of the book is divided into two parts: (1) the genealogy of debt and debtor; and (2) the ascendancy of debt and neoliberalism.
In the first part, Lazzarato combines the works of Marx, Nietzsche, Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault in order to theoretically reclaim the importance of debt as both a social object of analysis by itself but, more important, as the element that constitutes neoliberalism. Although one would expect a more nuanced contrast among the ideas of these prominent authors, the author only reintroduces very basic concepts to claim that credit has been overlooked in the analysis of neoliberalism. Lazzarato argues that the creditor–debtor relationship is asymmetrical, and therefore in order to understand domination and the distribution of power one needs to acknowledge how this relationship has emerged and ossified in the past 30 years. His reading of Marx allows him to advance an alternative interpretation of contemporary society because the tension of capital–labour has been transcended by the creditor–debtor relationship. He particularly stresses that the ‘credit relation does not mobilize physical and intellectual abilities as labor does (material or immaterial, it makes no difference) but the morality of the debtor, his mode of existence (his “ethos”)’ (p. 55). This effort is important because Lazzarato unintentionally reminds the reader of the ambiguities of Marx’s concepts, but also suggests that neoliberalism is made of complexities and therefore any attempt to understand its dynamics should be fully acknowledged.
In the second part, he provides examples that could be located at both macro and micro levels of analysis: (1) at the macro level, how states have had to reorganize and restrict their policies because they had to follow ‘recommendations’ provided by the usual suspects (e.g. the International Monetary Fund and/or the World Bank) – debt in this case occupies the centre of his analysis because debtor countries are in weak positions to reject or renegotiate models of repayment; (2) at the micro level, how individuals have reorganized their lives in order to participate fully in neoliberal society. Debt becomes nothing more and nothing less than the mechanism of individual integration within contemporary neoliberal society. Nevertheless, according to Lazzarato, the materialization of the indebted man is only complete when individuals ‘are not expected to reimburse in actual money, but rather in conduct, attitudes, ways of behaving … the time used for conforming oneself to the criteria dictated by the market’ (p. 104).
Although the book is highly suggestive, and invites readers to reflect on debt processes at large, there are theoretical and empirical elements that severely weaken Lazzarato’s contribution. First, the author suggests that neoliberalism is simultaneously a policy, ideology, hegemony, economy, discourse, practice, paradigm and system. Thus, it is difficult to acknowledge what neoliberalism really is. Although this might seem a pedantic observation, deciphering something central to Lazzarato’s overall effort should not ultimately be the reader’s main work. Second, because the creditor–debtor relationship is what – at the ‘last instance’ – seems to characterize neoliberalism, Lazzarato is not faithful to his own sociological assumption that neoliberalism is a complex phenomenon. This option is costly because he ends up reifying a new dichotomous categorization whereby a researcher is forced to only observe those who offer credit and those who can take on debts. One also really wonders why Lazzarato’s analysis did not consider the work of Max Weber. As a matter of fact, Weber, in his postscript ‘The concepts of status groups and classes’, acknowledges the creditor–debtor relationship to be one of the few cases where a conflict might lead to a revolutionary struggle: ‘[T]he only cases in which conflict of property classes may lead to revolutionary struggle are those in which either landowners are ranged against the declasses, or creditors against debtors’ (Weber and Runciman, 1978: 58). The latter actually best represents the prescriptive tone that Lazzarato carefully introduces at the end of his book: The resumption of the class struggle in the right place, that is, where it is the most effective, must recapture this ‘second innocence’ with respect to debt. A second innocence no longer toward divine debt, but toward mundane debt, the debt that weighs in our wallets and forms and formats our subjectivities. This not only means annulling debts or calling for default … but leaving behind debt morality and the discourse in which it hold us hostage. (p. 164)
Lazzarato’s book enters a field that has been heavily researched empirically, and therefore the oversimplification of the creditor–debtor categorization that Lazzarato applies in the second part of the book is problematic. He does not consider cases where countries have successfully resisted the debtor role, and therefore the category itself needs an urgent revision. Nor does he acknowledge the different trajectories that the IMF or the World Bank have followed in the past 30 years – his critical period of analysis – and therefore uniformity when engaging with debtors cannot be suggested to be the rule. At the micro-level, his creditor–debtor analysis imposes a homogeneous taste and therefore elements such as race, gender, age and immigration, or even time, are simply overlooked. Granted, his effort aims at recapturing debt as a decisive category of analysis. Nonetheless, debt is not evenly distributed within any population, and it is there that a more precise theoretical effort is needed if criticizing neoliberalism is at the core of any research agenda. In the latter case, two examples merit consideration: in the United States, the fixing of interest loan rates regardless of economic class or educational level of the individuals is more abusive the darker the skin is. In Canada, recent immigrants, unlike what Lazzarato ultimately suggests, face countless problems trying to be integrated into what he calls the financing market. In both examples, the creditor–debtor relationship seems to paradoxically have a stronger effect once notions of privileges temper the analysis, or rather when more ‘nuances’ have been added to understand ‘neoliberalism’.
Unfortunately, in what is actually a very important sociological effort to revive debt as a core analytical device to carry out sociological theoretical and empirical research, Lazzarato’s argument fades and hides the uneven market practices whereby both unintended and intended privileges have coexisted beyond the recent emergence of ‘neoliberalism’.