Exocapitalism: Economies with Absolutely No Limits

by Marek Poliks, Roberto Alonso Trillo, Charles Mudede (Foreword)

There is a touch of destiny with this one. We have really pushed it as far as we can, and as we stay up all night trying to put the final touches on everything, the reverberations are starting to return. It’s been called, provocative, emancipatory, cutting-edge, and even, in some places, a bit caustic. Perhaps it is provocative because it begins to depart from Marxism as-we-know-it, and, with all the relevant necessary reverences applied, it attempts, dare I say, to step forward from the discourse of labour & production—not that what follows is somehow simpler, because it’s not. Yet as the authors contend, the world has already moved on, and capital, that same old capital, continues to do what it has always done, at myriad different scales, and in myriad worlds. Capital may well have already broken free of us, and so where exactly does that leave you, homocapitalus?

It would be in-keeping with the style of Charles Mudede to raise the question of whether we are on the cusp of a second ejection from Eden, and that means that whether we are ready or not, we have to step through the looking glass into a new conversation. That is what the authors wish to do here, to push the conversation to a new position, a position which understands DoorDash drivers, MMORPG gold farmers, and remote workers, accounts for AWS architecture, for memecoins and blockchain, for BlackRock, for the Internet (but for reals this time), for High-Frequency Trading and the LinkedIn economy, for Scale, for Airplane Miles and Club card points, and for ADHD & Adderall.

This book is provocative because it is the proverbial elephant in the system, but it is nonetheless rigorous, and written in good spirit—this isn’t a downer, this is cleaning up after a bender, after a 500-year drug-accelerated romance with a creature that counts its age in millennia. So what is left in this wasteland? Well, Arbitrage for one; other monumental processes like Lifting, Holding, Dragging and Folding roam around above our heads.

These two researchers have an enormous insight into contemporary economics, technology and finance, and yet they write as musicians, as the poetic theorists of antiquity, which, for us, makes this text epic. With Charles Mudede and Alex Quicho holding Exocapitalism down, it looks as though Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo are here to stay.

Genres: Philosophy, Economics

218 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2025

Reviews

[Alienated Cú Chulainn · Rating 5 out of 5]

man this was a banger, a theory of capitalism that feels refreshingly new and genuinely relevant. "lift" as a conceptual framework for describing the increasingly human-independent, fragmentarily arcane world of tech as engine for value generation without that nasty wetware we call humanity in the way was pretty revelatory for me. salesforce was the perfect case study for this new era of capital divorcing itself from labor and growing tumorously monstrous and cthuluian. the healthy dose of levity in the whole affair was needed - i cackled at the description of land "gooning to the erotics of the warzone". definitely want to see where these ideas are taken by others - they're desperately needed.

[Steven Marcinkus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emphasizing the comment calling this book an “info-hazard.” The content of Exocapitalism is likely going to get under the skin of any and all readers, from Marxists to Duginists and Laurellians to Yarvinites and Landians, due to its neutral and unaffected, un-embracing and un-emancipatory presentation of the idea that capitalism is very disinterested in their bodies, their politics, their labour, their… planet?

The authors do not interpret this through a progressive humanist sense where capitalism is a mere evil exploitative force that allows for a wealth-hoarding elite, nor is it a Landian accelerationist sense where capitalism wants to convert human flesh into battery-juice for the fueling of robotics projects that expand its reach to an inter-planetary scale. No, no. This is all much too concerned with the human and with materiality itself. If anything, capitalism sees the material world itself as a burden to be overcome.

In Exocapitalism, Trillo and Poliks reveal aspects of capitalism that have been neglected by economists and continental philosophers alike. This is not a new stage of capitalism and the “exo” should not be interpreted as the ‘exo-skeleton’ composing the emperors new clothes; rather, “exo” here is more about Capitals exothermic process—its infinite process of shedding-off the physical weight of material bodies.

This shedding of physical skin is inherent to capitalisms production of value through abstraction. Abstraction, or “lift” is primary in Trillo and Poliks reworking of the theory of value, while labour has taken an insignificant backseat. Capitals Lifting process is like a space elevator. Although, rather than a bridge constructed through space that stops at different floors on various planets, this space elevator only goes “up” in any direction that AVOIDS any and every material body. Capital increases its magnitude of distance from the restrictive body of the Earth, desiring to eventually take out that last screw pinning it within a light year of the planets core, and especially in any proximity with the wonky, perverted bodies of humans.

Capitalism has BEEN trying to move away from us, we are always-already dead weight. Yet, because of its reliance on our labour and attentive investment in its processes to get its foot out the door, it has been cornered into a position where it must make concessions to us through meaningless goods, entertainment slop, social media platforms, and now robotics in the forms of sex-bots and models based on I, Robot for Kai Cenat to cosplay physical assault on a livestream.

This is what the book coins as the “drag” humans impose on capital. In order to fuel its abstraction process, it must allow humans to enjoy through means that are meaningless to its ambitions, but that promote us to self-userize and self-extract data. We progressively abstract more of our behavior and cognition into neutral nodes that compose what Benjamin Bratton calls the “User” layer of The Stack. Yet, with the dawn of advanced LLMs, even this data-abstraction is probably becoming just another anthropocentric move for maintaining some importance to the operation of capital. We must remain in some self-relation to capital, even as the victims of its evil exploitation.

This challenges nearly every existing theory of Capitalism, subjectivity, emancipation, etc. It pulls from a very unique line of influences(many of whom can be found in the duo’s previous book of compiled essasies, Choreomata), such as Luciana Parisi, Reza Negarestani, Ray Brassier, Benjamin Bratton, Baudrillard, and especially Deleuze and Guattari. By radicalizing David Graebers notion that abstract-value, or virtual tokens, historically predate barter, Trillo and Poliks argue that capitalism has been around for a lot longer than we recognize it—and it is in a unique position where it is self-aware that capitalism itself can be done on anything.

[Thomas Cafe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I made a joke that this was 'Roko's Basilisk for Marxists.' This book is a genuine info-hazard and I'm still processing not only what it all meant, but it's implications.

A lot of the critical theory went over my head but I'd still say it is remarkably accessible. Luckily for me, its a short book so I'll be giving it multiple read-throughs. What I can say is that this is easily the freshest, albeit terrifying, take on capitalism I have maybe ever read. The exocapitalist discourse is still clearly very fresh and I await with bated breathe in seeing where this project takes both scholarship and struggle.

[mara · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was such a refreshing read, and a refreshing way of thinking. it has become increasingly clear these years, post-covid, post-hardware, post-Post, that capitalism is more than a just an economic systemic process we actively participate in; it is its own Intellect. and it is not tied to the Earth, it springs from physical laws in our Universe that make it impossible for UCI not to work itself into our complexities and the complexities, the microscopical folds and layers, we've built into our greatest, largest, our most at-scale & scalable invention: software.

after software comes AI, and ive seen how things fold more and more around me in its presence. the LLMs, their wrappers, their connections to third parties, allowing for the AI now to buy-hold-sell. for everything to fall into newer, higher hands. i feel my own hands and realize theyre bound to something unearthly. inside the one machine, we're all bound to each other. and since this is Nature, thats all right, right?

[Renaud Houde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Une nouvelle façon, captivante, de voir le capitalisme. Un livre purement théorique qui ne prétend pas proposer de solution. Explore des philosophies assez extrêmes, certaines un peu déplorables (que les auteurs analysent comme il se doit) à mon humble avis, mais tout de même fascinantes. C'est un travail de lire ce livre, surtout sans familiarité avec l'approche du sujet.

[Cole Blouin]

Essential.

[Mihai Tapu · Rating 1 out of 5]

attempting intensely to lift itself above a clichéd 'theorybro' space
blatantly dragging itself within the same murky swamp

[matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea we’re all rational actors making decisions in our own best interests is obviously broken, but we persist in a notion of capitalism built on that same aspirational view of humankind via corporate leadership. Instead this deeply through the looking glass take on capitalism replaces the idea of hegemonic all seeing capitalist titans with a more complex idea of worlds governing worlds, maybe even something closer to an emergent mathematical property of the system, supported by insights that feel right, and ideas like lift and drag - ideas that will worm their way into your brain, reshaping the way you think about the way our society works.

[Kip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a fascinating, important theory of capitalism, in all its intangibles and effects on different scales. Extremely succinctly written, entertaining yet well placed in the cultural critique analysis.

[Tommy Menace · Rating 4 out of 5]

yeah why the hell not

[- · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know a video game about this, it's called Bloodborne

[Oliver Finne · Rating 5 out of 5]

swag