The Logic of Global Capitalism

Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, then as Farce (London: Verso, 2009), p. 126:

There is something unique in today's constellation: many perspicuous analysts have noted that contemporary capitalism poses a problem to this logic of a resistance which persists. Brian Massumi, for example, has formulated clearly how contemporary capitalism overcame the logic of totalizing normality and adopted the logic of erratic excess. (See my In Defense of Lost Causes, London: Verso, p. 197) And one can supplement this analysis in many directions--the very process of subtracting oneself and creating "liberated territories" outside the domain of the state has been reappropriated by capital. Exemplary of the logic of global capitalism are the so-called "Special Economic Zones": geographical regions within a (usually Third World) state with economic laws which are more liberal than the state's standard economic laws (allowing for, e.g., lower import and export taxes, the free flow of capital, the limitation or direct prohibition of trade unions, no minimum working day, and so on) in order to increase foreign investments. The name itself covers a whole range of more specific zone types: Free Trade Zones, Export Processing Zones, Free Zones, etc. With their unique combination of "openness" (as a free space partially exempt from state sovereignty) and closure (enforcement of working conditions unencumbered by legally guaranteed freedoms), which renders possible heightened levels of exploitation, these zones are the structural counterparts to our celebrated communities of "intellectual labor"--they constitute a fourth term to be added to the tetrad of high-tech "intellectual labor," gated communities, and slums.