I'm curious if you find this passage in the first chapter objectionable:
<quote> Marxists see things rather differently. Capital for them is not a material substance per se, but a social relation embedded in productive, material entities. In order to understand capital, they argue, we have to look behind the hedonic veneer of liberal ideology and examine the industrial essence of the system. From this viewpoint, the key issue is not the utility that the capital produces, but the social process by which capital itself gets produced. Consequently, the proper way to approach capital is not from the output side, as per the neoclassicists, but from the input side – the side of labour.
Marxists, too, count capital in universal units: the units of 'abstract labour'. This is the elementary particle of Marx's cosmology. Quantitatively, the dollar value of capital in the Marxist scheme is proportionate to its cost of production, and, specifically, to the amount of abstract labour socially necessary to produce that capital.4
Unfortunately, both explanations fail. In the end, neither the neoclassicists nor the Marxists are able to answer the question of what determines the magnitude of capital and its rate of accumulation. Many reasons conspire to produce this failure, but the most important one concerns the basic units of analysis. As we shall see, utils and abstract labour are deeply problematic categories. They cannot be observed directly with our senses, and they cannot be examined indirectly through intermediation. Their 'quantity' cannot be calculated, even theoretically. In fact, they are not even logically consistent entities. These shortcomings are very serious, and the last one potentially detrimental. </quote>
As for the power business, they explain that further as well:
<quote> The secret to understanding accumulation, this book argues, lies not in the narrow confines of production and consumption, but in the broader processes and institutions of power. Capital, we claim, is neither a material object nor a social relationship embedded in material entities. It is not 'augmented' by power. It is, in itself, a symbolic representation of power. The starting point is finance. As we shall see, Marx classified finance as 'fictitious' capital – in contrast to the 'actual' capital embedded in the means of production. This classification puts the world on its head. In fact, in the real world the quantum of capital exists as finance, and only as finance. This is the core of the capitalist regime.
...
This perspective is unlike that of conventional political economy. Liberal ideology likes to present capital and state as hostile, while Marxists think of them as complementary. But in both approaches, the two entities – although related – are distinctly instituted and organized. Our own view is very different. As we see it, the legal–organizational entity of the corporation and the network of institutions and organs that make up government are part and parcel of the same encompassing mode of power. We call this mode of power the state of capital, and it is the ongoing transformation of this state of capital that constitutes the accumulation of capital.
</quote>
Nitzan and Bichler should probably thank y'all. If you hadn't jumped in to criticize, I wouldn't have bothered to read. Now, I feel the need to order to book and read -- so I can continue to ignore the boring ass Postone! :)
shag