Abstract

The inflation which is endemic to late capitalism does not exempt concepts and theories; if inflated money seeks to overcome the falling rate of profit, inflated concepts seek to overcome the falling rate of intelligence. Within left and radical thought this assumes a particular form: an increase in revolutionary face value. Today every theory is more revolutionary than the previous one, or so it claims. Such an increase is a response to a depreciation, as it were, in the critical substance and categories of the theories; as silver coins are now fabricated with copper, revolutionary theories are constructed with conformist and establishment concepts. The result is inflation.