But don’t mistake me for adding to the chorus who feign surprise at the rise of what they dismiss as “anger” or “resentment” or “populism.” By revenge I mean not only a passing sentiment but a logic of retribution, what Francis Bacon called a “wild justice,” a ruptural claiming of unpayable debts. My goal is deeper than describing the political mood of our moment. I want to explore the notion that capitalism itself is a revenge economy: a system that appears to be taking needless, warrantless, and ultimately self-defeating (but, none the less, profitable for some) vengeance on the world. Revenge capitalism breeds revenge politics among the populations that reel from its impacts and lash back, though usually, tragically, at the wrong targets. I think it is long overdue for us to imagine what it would mean to avenge what it has done to us and to the planet. The line between revenge and avenging is subtle, both linguistically and conceptually. But whereas revenge fantasies fixate on retribution in the coin in which the original injury was dealt, and thereby risk perpetuating that economy, an avenging imaginary dreams of the abolition of the systemic source of that injury and the creation of new economies of peace and justice.