Publisher’s Weekly reviews Michel Feher’s Rated Agency: Investee Politics in a Speculative Age. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt appears below:

“Belgian philosopher Feher (Powerless by Design) argues that, though industrial capitalism once pitched employers’ interests against those of workers, in the present ‘financialized’ form of capitalism the conflict is between investors (those who decide when to extend credit) and “investees,” and activism must adjust accordingly. He begins by tracing neoliberal thought from its origins during the postwar era to its ‘third way’ manifestations near the turn of the millennium. He describes how not letting creditors fail has become the focus of governance, and how workers were ‘de-proletarianized’ by being encouraged to view themselves as entrepreneurs (and thereby not in conflict with the entrepreneurial class). Nowadays, ‘the pursuit of credit is the prevailing preoccupation” for corporations, governments, and individuals, and “the power of investors to select investees—to decide who and what is deemed creditworthy—has become a new site of social struggle.'”