[p2p-research] Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder:

[Michel Bauwens]

http://pensionpulse.blogspot.com/2009/09/imperialism-and-financialism-story-of_06.html

I had a chance to discuss the political economy with Jonathan Nitzan who is
an associate professor at York University. Jonathan told me to read his new
book, which he co-authored with his collaborator Shimshon Bichler, Capital
as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder <http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/>:

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'.

Jonathan also sent me a link to a new paper he co-authored with
Shimshon, Imperialism
and Financialism: A Story of a Nexus <http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/267/>:

Over the past century, Marxism has been radically transformed in line with
circumstances and fashion. Theses that once looked solid have depreciated
and fallen by the sideline; concepts that once were deemed crucial have been
abandoned; slogans that once sounded clear and meaningful have become fuzzy
and ineffectual.

But two key words seem to have survived the attrition and withstood the test
of time: imperialism and financialism.

Talk of imperialism and financialism – and particularly of the nexus between
them – remains as catchy as ever. Marxists of different colours – from
classical, to neo to post – find the two terms expedient, if not
indispensable. Radical anarchists, conservative Stalinists and distinguished
academics of various denominations all continue to use and debate them.

The views of course differ greatly, but there is a common thread: for most
Marxists, imperialism and financialism are prime causes of our worldly ills.
Their nexus is said to explain capitalist development and underdevelopment;
it underlies capitalist power and contradictions; and it drives capitalist
globalization, its regional realignment and local dynamics. It is a fit-all
logo for street demonstrators and a generic battle cry for armchair
analysts.

The secret behind this staying power is flexibility. Over the years, the
concepts of imperialism and financialism have changed more or less beyond
recognition, as a result of which the link between them nowadays connotes
something totally different from what it meant a century ago.

The purpose of this article is to outline this chameleon-like
transformation, to assess what is left of the nexus and to ask whether this
nexus is still worth keeping.

I urge you to carefully read the entire
paper<http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/267/01/20090900_bn_imperialism_and_financialism.pdf>and
I quote the following:

But the facts in Figure 4 (click on image above) seem to tell a different
story. According to the chart, the United Sates has not been leading the
process. If anything, it seems to have been ‘dragged’ into the process by
the rest of the world...

During the early 1970s, before the onset of systemic ‘financialization’, the
U.S. FIRE sector accounted for 6% of the total net profit of U.S.-listed
firms. At the time, the comparable figure for the rest of the world was 18%
– three times as high! From then on, the United States was merely playing
catch-up. Its pace of ‘financialization’ was faster than in the rest of the
world; but with the sole exception of a brief period in the late 1990s, its
level of ‘financialization’ was always lower. In other words, if we wish to
stick with the theory of a finance-fueled red giant that is slowly imploding
as its peripheral liquidity runs out, we should apply that theory not to the
United States, but to the rest of the world!

Indeed, even the most recent period of crisis seems at odds with the theory.
Ac-cording to the conventional creed, both left and right, the current
crisis is payback for the sins of excessive ‘financialization’ and improper
bubble blowing. In this Galtonean theory, deviations and distortions always
revert to mean, ensuring that the biggest sinners end up suffering the most.
And since the U.S. FIRE sector was supposedly the main culprit, it was also
the hardest hit.

The only problem is that, according to Figure 4, the U.S. wasn’t the main
culprit. On the eve of the crisis, the extent of ‘financialization’ was
greater in the rest of the world than in the U.S. And yet, although the
world’s financiers committed the greater sin, it was their U.S. counterparts
who paid the heftier price. The former saw their profit share decline mildly
from 37% to 25% of the total, while the latter watched their own share crash
from 32% to 10%.
The gods of finance must have their own sense of justice.

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Research:
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

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