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Max Haiven (and company)Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in the Radica Author: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University, where he runs RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab Language: en Genres: Education Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Capitalism cheats: Three moments of normalized swindling, by Max Haiven
Tuesday, 6 January, 2026
This is an audio recording of an academic paper, "Capitalism cheats: Three moments of normalized swindling" by Max Haiven, forthcoming in the journal Finance & Society in 2026. You can read it at https://maxhaiven.com/capitalismcheats/ In a financialized world where we are all conscripted to be competitive players, the category of cheating takes on new political and cultural potency and has become key to reactionary ideology. This speculative essay moves beyond the conventional framing of cheating as the exceptional malfeasance of bad economic actors, as well as beyond the claim that capitalism’s drive to profit encourages dishonesty and manipulation (thought that is indeed true). Rather, it proposes we recognize cheating at capitalism’s ideological and operational core, not its periphery. By examining (1) imperialism’s ‘Great Game’, (2) the links between game theory and neoliberalism, and (3) the role of recursive rule-breaking in the history of finance, we can triangulate the normalization of cheating within the dominant economic paradigm. This essay approaches cheating as a discursive formation entangled with financial power. Such an approach can help us recognize some elements of the rise of reactionary, far-right, and fascistic sentiment and politics today. These in many cases revolve around a rhetoric of cheating that misrecognizes the culprits, targeting poor and precarious minorities rather than those at the commanding heights of the economy.
