If I am understanding this train of thought correctly, It's not just about the accumulated capital, goods, financial instruments... stuff. But it's also about a culture or society's "interaction" with said "stuff", which is in flux and requires "rethinking"??
??? Leigh Meyers leigh_m at sbcglobal.net <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk>
The way you put it represents the SSA/Regulation approach. This approach seeks to augment the "economic" aspects of accumulation (supposedly made of machines, goods and financial instruments) with the "social" aspects of accumulation (culture, politics, etc.).
Our claim is radically different.
We argue against the very notion that capital derives its pecuniary quantities from some "substantive" reality based on "stuff" (whether measured in utils or abstract labor). As we see it, capital is the numerical architecture of capitalism, the basic code of the "capitalist nomos". Marx's distinction between "real" and "fictitious" capital should be reversed. Finance is the only real form of capital. The notions that machines can have a "quantity" is the fiction.
Finance, or capitalization, represents the present value of expected feature earnings. The earnings and their discounting mechanism have nothing do with the quantity of any "stuff" such as machines, goods or services. Rather, they are the numerical representation of the power of exclusion. This power permeates the entire social process, from the assembly line, through formal politics, to religion, culture, consumption and what not. In that sense, capital represents the capitalization of power.
The argument is articulated in the two papers.
Jonathan Nitzan