---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: CAPITAL AS POWER -- A new book by Nitzan & Bichler
From: "Jonathan Nitzan" <nitzan@yorku.ca>
Date:
Tue, May 19, 2009 2:59 pm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CAPITAL AS POWER: A STUDY OF ORDER AND CREORDER
Jonathan
Nitzan & Shimshon Bichler
RIPE Series in Global Political
Economy | Routledge | May 2009
464 pages | Pbk. $39.95 | Hbk.
$140.00
***
FRONT MATTER & CHAPTER 1: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/
ORDER THE BOOK:
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/04/20090526_nb_cap_buy_review_web.htm
***
FROM THE BACK COVER:
Conventional
theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after
centuries
of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is.
Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an 'economic' entity that
they count in universal units of 'utils' or 'abstract labour',
respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever
been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they
don’t
exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these
non-existing units,
their theories hang in suspension. They cannot
explain the process that
matters most – the accumulation of
capital.
This book offers a radical alternative. According to
the authors,
capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic
quantification
of power. It has little to do with utility or
abstract labour, and it
extends far beyond machines and production
lines. Capital, the authors
claim, represents the organized power of
dominant capital groups to
reshape – or creorder – their
society.
Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers
and experts alike,
the book develops a novel political economy. It
takes the reader through
the history, assumptions and limitations of
mainstream economics and its
associated theories of politics. It
examines the evolution of Marxist
thinking on accumulation and the
state. And it articulates an innovative
theory of 'capital as power'
and a new history of the 'capitalist mode
of power'.
***
Free to repost and circulate with due attribution under the
Creative
Commons License (attribution-noncommercial-no derivative).
***
Jonathan Nitzan
Political Science
York
University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, Ontario, M3J-1P3
Canada
Voice: (416) 736-2100, ext. 88822
Fax: (416) 736-5686
Email: nitzan at yorku.ca
Website: http://bnarchives.net
_______________________________________________
ope mailing list
ope@lists.csuchico.edu
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
Received on Tue May 19 17:38:25 2009
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Sun May 31 2009 - 00:00:03 EDT