[OPE] Capital as Power: Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism

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Subject: Capital as Power: Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism
From: "Jonathan Nitzan" <nitzan@yorku.ca>
Date:
Wed, December 16, 2009 1:43 pm
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Bichler, Shimshon, and Jonathan Nitzan. 2009. Capital as
Power: Toward a
New Cosmology of Capitalism. Paper read at New
Marxian Times, The
Seventh International Rethinking Marxism
Conference, November 5-8,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

ABSTRACT

As Marx tells us, the capitalist regime is
inextricably bound up with
its theories and ideologies. These
theories and ideologies, first
articulated by classical political
economy, are much more than a passive
attempt to explain, justify
and critique the so-called "economic
system." Instead,
they constitute an entire cosmology: a system of
thinking that is
both active and totalizing.

In ancient Greek, kosmeo has an
active connotation: it means "to order"
and "to
organize," and political economy does precisely that. It
explains, justifies and critiques the world, but it also actively makes

this world in the first place. And it pertains not to the narrow
"economy" as such, but to the entire social order, as well as
to the
natural universe in which this social order is embedded.

The presentation outlines an alternative cosmology &ndash; the
beginning of a
totally different framework for understanding
capitalism. It starts by
spelling out the hallmarks of the present
capitalist cosmology. It
continues by enumerating the reasons why,
over the past century, this
cosmology gradually disintegrated to the
point of being unable to
understand and recreate its world. And it
concludes by articulating key
themes of our own approach to
capitalism: the theory of "capital as power."

VIDEO,
AUDIO AND FULL TEXT: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/274/

***

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-- 
Jonathan Nitzan 
Political Science 
York University 
4700
Keele St. 
Toronto, Ontario, M3J-1P3 
Canada 
Voice: (416)
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Email: nitzan at
yorku.ca 
Website: http://bnarchives.net 
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