[lbo-talk] CAPITAL AS POWER -- A new book by Nitzan & Bichler

[Alan Rudy]

At first blush, my sense was that this is a remarkably unfortunate and
inaccurate presentation of Marx's understanding of capital - think of
Ollman's presentation of the meaning and processes of the dialectics of the
materialist conception of history, for example - but, I've just gotten
through the fourth or fifth lecture in David Harvey's class on capital where
the argument is made perfectly clear that Nitzan and Bichler misunderstand
what Marx means by the term abstract - which has nothing to do with
non-existence and was not by any means ever limited to "economics", machines
or production lines - and that the particular characteristics of the power
of the capitalist class to reproduce the world in its image is a fundamental
part of Marx's definition of capital.

I don't know who taught Nitzan and Bichler their Marx and Marxism but it
certainly wasn't any of the Marxists who trained me - across a variety of
disciplines - or any of the many I regularly read.

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Jonathan Nitzan <nitzan at yorku.ca> wrote:


> 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).
> To unsubscribe, reply to this email with "unsubscribe" in the subject
> field.
>
> ***
>
> 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
>
>
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