ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Marxian conceptualisation of the social power of money in such a way so as to facilitate a more complete understanding of credit and its extension to the surplus population. The social power of credit money and the continual dispossession leveraged through the poverty industry has facilitated an increase in the power of capitalists over the regulation and mediation of surplus workers. When credit money circulates as fictitious capital it is destined to enter the production process and create surplus value, or what becomes profit. The chapter reveals that solutions based on credit money are inherently paradoxical in nature. It analyses the nature and role of credit money as a response to the tensions in capital accumulation by elaborating on its similarities and its differences regarding money. Finally, the chapter explores how and why capitalists have employed consumer credit to exploit this ever-growing reserve of labour power in neoliberalism.
