Terms such as values, culture, humanism or citizenship enjoy the prestige of a public debate sometimes almost sacred. According to this book, the cult that is taxed at such concepts provides at least half of the material that capitalism need for future expansion. The other half will present a grimly disciplinary aspect, but should be supplemented by a cultural ideology of the challenge, experience and transgression, and an edifying moral rhetoric as self-satisfied.

Antonio Valdecantos argues that European universities have in recent years provided an excellent laboratory for comprehensive privatization of life that seems to lead to the first crisis of the twenty-first century capitalism. A teaching and research based on mobility, flexibility, innovation and dynamism, not to mention the homage rendered to so-called values​​-have provided the model for the kind of future ideology while, so turn less pleasant, the model of the university as a competitive and integrated market company has become the essence of higher education.

The book falls squarely in contemporary debates about the role of the humanities and thought not in line with any of the usual positions. The author argues that the notion of culture as crystallized in our days hinders understanding of the present and the past, and that the task of the arts, humanities and thought would rethought precisely from the removing that obstacle.