Understanding *finance* as a Code — a social programming language — allows us to recognize its performative dimension. Like any other language (musical language, architectural language, or written language) financial language makes possible the emergence of new forms of interaction between individuals. The blueprints of architects and the scores of musicians have no interest in representing reality: rather, they tell humans how to intervene on it.
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One can describe how people work together to effect change consistent with their Ideals.
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They are ‘only’ signs on a piece of paper (or lights on a screen). However, they make it possible for large groups of human beings to coordinate with a precision and on a scale that would be unattainable if that language did not exist. These signs add an irreducible difference to the set of social practices in which they are involved.
The same applies to financial signs. Just as architectural blueprints are not ‘fictitious houses’, and musical scores are not ‘imaginary symphonies’, capitalization (contrary to Marx’s belief) is not the creation of a ‘fictitious capital’, for the simple reason that capitalization is not a ‘portrait’ of a state of affairs, but the blueprint of a social process. Capitalization makes it possible for large groups of human beings — the capitalist class — to coordinate with a precision and on a scale that would be unattainable if that language did not exist.
To summarize, nominal entities constitute an emergent property of social reality. Their existence generates unique and irreducible Dynamics. Finance does not produce the world, but it does organize the world of those who inhabit it: it provides the Code in which capitalists plan and execute the process of capital accumulation; the code through which capitalists command and workers obey; it organizes productive processes under the double imperative of accumulating capital and retaining control over society. As true Marxists, financial signs do not merely interpret the world, they change it.
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Suaste Cherizola, „From Commodities to Assets“.