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This chapter argues that the dominant affect of late global capitalism is not egoism, as is commonly held, but envy. The social inequality inherent in capitalist accumulation in the global South (and North) breeds a mix of coveting and malice, so that it is not just that those on top of the social hierarchy must win but equally that those on the bottom must lose, generating enjoyment (jouissance) on both sides. The chapter focuses on two contemporary manifestations of such an envy-machine. The first is consumption, which exploits the urge to “keep up with the Joneses.” The second is corruption, born of socioeconomic resentment and aspiration. Each case involves enjoyment — both in envying and being envied — thus helping to reproduce capitalist development and social inequality.

This prologue ambitiously outlines how capitalist accumulation, class division, and racial hierarchy both attended and drove American imperial development during the era of westward continental expansion and then the colonial experiment in the Philippines. The chapter summarizes the key events of U.S. invasion of the Philippines in 1898, the rationales supporting and contesting US colonialism, and the establishment of a colonial government grounded in a semi-liberal constitutional scheme. Much attention is given to the continued violent repression of insurgent rebels (including Emilio Aguinaldo), the development of extensive counter-subversive operations, and key policies of land reform and legal development that proceeded in the subsequent decades. The section ends by highlighting the relaxing grip of the United States on the Philippines and transition to the ongoing imperial patron/client state relationship that persisted over most of the twentieth century.

This chapter examines the double game of relentless increases in efficiency. The notion that financial speculation is endowed with a special force, which justifies its economic functions, is echoed in the tension between thrilling speculation, on the one hand, and the hard work of everyday capitalist accumulation, on the other hand, as well as in the representation of super human speculators. They are rather part and parcel of the observation lens set in place by writers of investment manuals and stock exchange histories, a lens through which the individual actors of the exchange can be seen in their relationship with entities such as the state, the economy, and the society at large. While such a lens can and does include elements such as educational fiction it does not primarily claim esthetic autonomy. Its aim is not contemplation and reflection as such, but observation as a path to action. Debates and controversies around the status of financial speculation and of speculators evolve around topics set within the boundaries of finance, not by a neutral or adversarial instance, and certainly not by a contemplative, reflexive one.

This chapter reveals the invisible, unrecognized, and repressed logics that govern the understanding of corporate power in the present. It begins by discussing the position of law in the history of corporate sovereignty, followed by an analysis of the connection between the corporation’s powers and capitalist accumulation. As legal creations, law has been the primary mechanism for codifying corporate power in various iterations and for comprising a set of politico-legal arguments and concepts that transformed the religious image of the corporate body into the sacralized secular sovereign. The chapter concludes with suggestions on maintaining the corporation’s power to collectively improve life.

The chapter by Nigro offers a reconstruction of Foucault’s understanding of reason of state, and its central device of the coup d’Etat by reading Foucault’s lectures in the context of his complicated relation to Marxist thought and leftist politics in the 1970s. Nigro shows that Foucault approaches the state of exception from a perspective that is very different from the Schmittian defense of state sovereignty. Foucault does this is because, despite his severe criticism of Marxism–Leninism, he remains committed to the basic Marxist problem of understanding the conception of the state and of the law that was necessary for the primitive accumulation of capital.