“Today everything is “debt”, as twenty years ago everything was “capital”

Governance. After the eclipse of the “startup nation” and then the “whatever it takes” years, the amount of French public debt is back at the center of the political news. It exceeds 3,000 billion euros, or now 110% of gross domestic product (GDP). More worryingly, the cost of this debt requires financing equivalent to 2% of GDP each year, further increasing the debt.

Beyond the technical evaluations and nuances that can be obtained in this economic reality, the symbolic dimension of the debt sustains the idea of ​​French decline, even a concern about the future of our world.

In contrast, the 2000s, enlivened by financialization, optimistic lightness and marked by the ubiquity of the rhetoric of “capital”: human capital, social or relational capital, health capital or sleep capital… everything has been translated. In terms of capital. The vision was clearly speculative.

The future will produce innovations with such high returns that current debts will be mechanically wiped out by the increase in the market value of things. The constant rise in real estate prices was a clear sign of the triumph of capital. In the dominant neoliberal spirit, seeing oneself as “capital” made it possible to value oneself as a resource—provided, of course, that resource found a market.

Financial logic and political order

In the latter days of this euphoria, the anarchist thinker David Graeber (1961-2020) popularized the idea that the concept of debt is an expression of the power of the dominant over the dominated.debt. 5000 years of history, Actes Sud, 2016). According to him, financial logic serves a political order that places debtors in a position of servitude to creditors and imposes a legal obligation on them to pay whatever the cost. Acknowledging debt therefore means acknowledging the balance of power that favors the most fortunate.

Twenty years later, the speculative dream of an endless increase in wealth has faded into the background of the trivial reality of accumulating all kinds of loans. The rhetoric is updated but remains financial, shifting from equity to valuing debt: public debt, of course, but also household debt, social debt, environmental debt, climate debt, future generations’ debt, and so on. Everything is “debt” because everything was “equity”. The anticipation of a profitable tomorrow gives way to the anxiety of piling up taxes. Who will pay them and how?