Potentia of Poverty opposes to the surplus-value of capital a surplus-concept of life—of the worker, of the non-worker, of the poor, of the rich: an excess of being with the power to undo capital by using its own mechanism.

Antonio Negri writes in the preface that "The poor is the powerful, Pascucci tells us. She interprets Marx as a reader of Spinoza; however, maybe there is something more here than there is in Spinoza and Marx themselves. A further passage is necessary to grasp this "more": namely, to tie the experience of poverty to an ontology of "cupiditas" [desire], that is, of "amor" [love]".