Book review: Portfolio society: on the capitalist modes of prediction

In Portfolio Society: On the Capitalist Modes of Prediction, Ivan Ascher argues that financial markets have reshaped the contemporary economy, extending Karl Marx’s theory of labour to consider how the abstraction and securitisation of risk in financial markets have profound influence on economic and social relations. The text adds to a growing body of critical literature from various disciplines – including Mariana Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything, Nick Silver’s Finance, Society and Sustainability and Daniel Cohen’s The Infinite Desire for Growth – that scrutinises the 2008 global financial crisis and the contradictions it revealed in the nature of our economies and financial systems.