Accounting, risk, and revolution

In response to the position of Steve Toms, this article argues that risk must be understood not as it has been posited by capital but rather as it might be taken up by labour. It uses Marx's socialization thesis to maintain that risk is a symptom of possibility for labour. Drawing on the work of Randy Martin the argument culminates in a consideration of the interanimation of capital in labour occasioned by the second helping of risk produced by its commoditisation. It concludes that far from being just what Michel Aglietta calls a social evaluation of private economic activity, risk offers the opportunity to develop an accounting not just to provoke capital's contradictions with its own tools but to develop an immanent accounting of socialized labour in revolution, an accounting to come.