securitization is not merely the lingua franca of contemporary finance; it is also the biopolitical imperative of financialization.

biopolitics, which he saw as reaching a new apogee in the emergence of a neoliberalism that increasingly subordinated social institutions to market imperatives in the name of freedom, democracy and individual rights

Drawing on Foucault’s notion of the biopolitics of neoliberalism, Maurizzio Lazzarato (2012, 89–114) has sought to define finance less as a breed of economic action and more as a weapon of power which, through the production of debt, exhorts economic actors (both individuals and whole nation-states) into a form of subjectivation aimed at market integration, towards what Foucault dubbed an entrepreneurialism of the self (2008, 226). From this perspective, the biopolitics of financialization is not merely repressive and oppressive; it creates a situation in which all forms of agency are encouraged to articulate themselves in financialized form, and where financial “freedom” and power are held to be the fullest expression of liberty and acumen (see also Mitropoulos 2012). Indeed, for Lazzarato, debt and finance are two sides of the same coin, one whose inscription might read “securitize or else”: embrace your inner financier, distil the ethereal future into a saleable present-day commodity, or suffer the consequences.

In many ways, this paradigm both reflects and goes well beyond the prognosis of Frankfurt Institute theorists like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1997). Writing in the lead-up to and the wake of the Second World War, these authors noted the way rationality, calculation, science and reason had been perverted into the means to circumscribe the possibilities of human liberation, both in the capitalist West and the (supposedly) Communist East. Financialization forces this insight to a new level. The financial system represents a phenomenal crucible of human rationality, creativity, imagination and collaboration (see Chapter 5). As we have seen, some of the most promising minds of a generation are groomed at elite universities to take up roles in the financial architecture; not only MBAs but also PhDs in fluid dynamics, theoretical physics and perhaps even literary and cultural criticism, who can aid their parent firms in developing hyper-complex models and machines to track and execute high-frequency financial exchanges on the sublimely complicated market (see Derman 2011). But, as with the systems and institutions that developed nuclear weapons, or the Nazis’ “final solution,” these are derivatives of Enlightenment cognition and epistemology that have been turned against human interests and have been used to entrench and exacerbate systemic inequality and a deeply profound insecurity. While, individually, all these manoeuvres calculate risk with almost unimaginable precision and technological acumen, they cannot and do not fathom that the sum of manoeuvres creates not only an extremely volatile financial market, but a horrifically volatile global economy. Largely, this volatility is “externalized” onto those who have little influence over the market. For instance, as speculative capital rushes into and out of cereal futures, basic soybean or banana growers pay the price (Russi 2013), and, as finance wreaks havoc with global currencies and government bonds, it is whole populations who must contend with this volatility.

Walmart’s integration into the world of finance is deeper than share prices; it represents a ubiquitous vector by which financialization, securitization and risk management are introduced and stitched into everyday life. For instance, the firm operates one of the world’s most populous investment funds, managing the savings of over 1.2 million employees (Fitch 2010). Given that Walmart insists on addressing its employees as “associates” with whom it enters into temporary, mutually beneficial economic relationships, it does not provide pensions. However, it does offer its “associates” access to a 401(k) fund to which they are welcome to contribute (managed by the investment bank Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America). In this way Walmart participates in a trend towards the securitization of retirement savings that, as Robin Blackburn (2006) illustrates, works against employees’ long-term interests. While these funds may offer a competitive rate of return, they do so by investing in firms and securities that are not in workers’ long-term (or, for that matter, shortterm) interests. Along with mutual funds and other large institutional investors, these funds are partly responsible for the drive for higher corporate profits year after year, which in turn has compelled firms to cut jobs, attack unions, globalize production and seek to undermine or circumvent regulatory frameworks. It is not at all unlikely that a Walmart worker’s investment in the company-operated fund could have been used to finance (and might have accrued value from) their own exploitative sub-prime mortgage. What is key here is that, just as Walmart denies the inherent class antagonisms of its empire by insisting employees see themselves as free-agent “associates,” so, too, does it tether the economic well-being of these associates to the same market forces that ultimately drive Walmart’s exploitative practices. It is notable how this approach is cloaked in the discourse of freedom and security: employees are encouraged to “secure” their futures through individualized forms of economic “freedom” and rational “choice” (participation in the fund is, of course, optional).

Were Walmart a state-run monopoly, rather than a staggeringly successful capitalist enterprise, its actions would likely be seen, in sum, as totalitarian. It blends crass populism with incredible material power, a culture of highly torqued securitization with a quasi-theocratic ethos. The fact that Walmart elicits so little resistance cannot simply be reduced to false consciousness, cognitive dissonance or lack of education. Rather, Walmart helps produce the subjects germane to its rule, securitizing souls who find in Walmart a temporary ally in a world of systemic and perpetual insecuritization.

[...] While Walmart offers itself (to employees, to consumers, to investors) as a shining example of security, it is, ironically, both benefiting from and driving a global paradigm whose ultimate effects are increased insecurity and precariousness. And it is here that we might look to the overarching cultural politics of Walmart’s idiom, a circuit within which capital is accumulated by externalizing insecurities and, conversely, security itself (or its simulacrum) is commodified. Recent and ongoing efforts to tame or scold Walmart for its hypocrisy or excesses will not and cannot answer the deeper, more paradigmatic question the firm’s success poses. Efforts to improve its working conditions or environmental behaviour, or to pass bylaws prohibiting its growth, will meet with only limited success. Should they be able to overcome the firm, its allies and the powerful lobbyists it employs (Lichtblau 2012), they can only hope to constrain the firm’s adaptability to fluctuating market signals, allowing another more efficient and voracious retailer, more adept at securitization, to come to the fore. Without the overturning of the paradigm of securitization as a whole, a paradigm that stretches from Bentonville to Wall Street to the Pentagon, Walmart will continue to be symptomatic of deeper problems, and efforts to save society from it merely palliative.

As such, Walmart offers an instructive case for cultural critics. To the extent that the ongoing financial crisis is both deeply rooted in and productive of a culture of insecurity, the politics of securitization are likely only to intensify through the emerging “age of austerity.” Certainly, right-wing and neoliberal forces have long leveraged the everyday material insecurities of capitalism into the political capital necessary to pursue increased military budgets, new policing and surveillance techniques, and increased corporate “freedoms” (Haiven 2014, 28–73). What the case of Walmart can teach us is that, in the financialized economy, the line between ideology and material relations is thinner than ever. In an age when we are all instructed to minimize risk and maximize the opportunities for future profitability, when securitization has become (among) the key cultural imperatives of capitalism, we cannot simply dismiss consumers’ “partnerships” with Walmart as the result of false consciousness or ideological confusion. Walmart offers itself as an ally of the sorts of consuming/investing securitized subjects it helps create. This is why efforts that limit themselves to revealing Walmart’s (many) evils will have only limited success. In order to confront and overcome securitizing capitalism, cultural critics and their allies will need to offer a vision of a plausible future that provides those things that securitization falsely promises.