Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/157978.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Capital Accumulation: Breaking the Dualism of "Economics" and "Politics"

Author

Listed:
  • Nitzan, Jonathan
  • Bichler, Shimshon
Abstract
This chapter outlines the main problems of capital theory, key issues which need to be resolved, and the way in which an alternative concept of capital may affect the future evolution of IPE. Briefly, existing theories of capital can be classified into three groups, based on their relationship to production. The neoclassical paradigm makes output a function of factor inputs (the amount of the different factors of production – labour, raw materials and capital goods – used to produce that output). Capital, perceived as one of these factors, is counted in its own technical units. Marxists view production as a socio-material transformation in which capital changes its skin from money, to commodities, to more money. The engine of this transformation is the labour process, in which living labour power is converted into “dead labour” embedded in commodities. Capital, growing directly from this process, is measured in labour time. For the institutionalists, production is a complex societal process, whose qualitative intricacies cannot be easily deciphered, let alone quantified. In this latter framework, capital is neither a productive input nor a material output, but rather a symbolic pecuniary crystallization of the power controlling the process. Seen in that way, capital can be measured only in differential terms, relative to other capitals. Conceptually, neoclassical and Marxist theories are built from the bottom up, deriving accumulation from the underlying process of production. The institutionalist view, on the other hand, is constructed from the top down, with production subjugated to accumulation. The troubled history of capital theory suggests that bottom-up explanations are logically vulnerable if not impossible. The top-down view, although largely unexplored, is unlikely to face the same problems. Indeed, by focusing directly on power and on the way it shapes societal reproduction, this route not only bypasses the intractable “input-output structure” of industry, but also offers a way of integrating politics into our very conceptualization of capital.

Suggested Citation

  • Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2000. "Capital Accumulation: Breaking the Dualism of "Economics" and "Politics"," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 67-88.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:157978
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/157978/1/bna-019_000101NB_Capital_accumulation_Breaking_the_dualism.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2014. "Nonlinearities of the Sabotage-Redistribution Process," EconStor Preprints 157856, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    2. Jonathan Nitzan & Shimshon Bichler, 2001. "Going global: differential accumulation and the great U-turn in South Africa and Israel," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 21-55, March.
    3. McMahon, James, 2015. "What Makes Hollywood Run? Capitalist Power, Risk and the Control of Social Creativity," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 157994, September.
    4. Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2014. "Can Capitalists Afford Recovery? Three Views on Economic Policy in Times of Crisis," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(1), pages 110-155.
    5. Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2006. "New Imperialism or New Capitalism?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 0(1), pages 1-86.
    6. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "The Limits of Capitalized Power. A 2020 U.S. Update," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2020/06, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    7. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "Growing through Sabotage: Energizing Hierarchical Power," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(5), pages 1-78.
    8. Kristijan Kotarski & Luka Brkic, 2017. "Political Economy of Banking and Debt Crisis in the EU: Rising Financialization and its Ramifications," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 49(3), pages 430-455, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:157978. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.