Capital as power

A study of order and creorder


Jonathan Nitzan, Shimshon Bichler

39,90 €
Orthodox theories of capitalism are in crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists regard capital as an “economic” entity that can be accounted for in universal units of “utilities” or “abstract labor”. But these units are fictitious: no one has ever been able to observe or measure them. Because liberalism and Marxism are based on these units that do not exist, their theories float in a vacuum. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. Written in clear language and as accessible to laymen as to experts, this book offers a radical alternative: an original theory of “capital as power” and an untold story of the “capitalist mode of power”. For the authors, capital is not a simple economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. Capital, the authors argue, represents the organized power available to dominant capital groups to reshape – or reorder – their society.
The author

Jonathan Nitzan teaches political economy at the University of York (Toronto). Shimshon Bichler teaches political economy at various universities in Israel.

760 pages | ISBN: 9782315003501

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