The Spell of Capital

The Spell of Capital
Author: Johan F. Hartle
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2017-03-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9048527058

The Timeliness of Western Marxism reconstructs the tradition, impact, and contemporary relevance of two key concepts of critical cultural analysis. It thus emphasizes the continuity of a specific tradition of Western Marxism, in which the concepts of 'reification' and 'spectacle' were originally coined: the Lukács-Debord axis. The contemporary relevance of these two thinkers is at once highly dubious and more than obvious: in analytical or descriptive terms the concepts of 'reification' and 'spectacle' are often invoked - more often than not without any direct reference to their original theoretical context. The Lukács-Debord axis represents a whole tradition of Marxist cultural critique. In light of the analyses of this book, the theoretical insights and conceptual contributions of Lukács and Debord are not only inseparable from the key ambitions of so-called 'Western Marxism' but even define its very core. The aim of this book is to provide a fundamental understanding of the history of Western Marxism to revisit discussions of the importance of its methodology for a materialist phenomenology of contemporary society.

Representing Capital

Representing Capital
Author: Fredric Jameson
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2014-01-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1781681570

Representing Capital, Fredric Jameson’s first book-length engagement with Marx’s magnum opus, is a unique work of scholarship that records the progression of Marx’s thought as if it were a musical score. The textual landscape that emerges is the setting for paradoxes and contradictions that struggle toward resolution, giving rise to new antinomies and a new forward movement. These immense segments overlap each other to combine and develop on new levels in the same way that capital itself does, stumbling against obstacles that it overcomes by progressive expansions, which are in themselves so many leaps into the unknown.

Capitalism without Capital

Capitalism without Capital
Author: Jonathan Haskel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2018-10-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691183295

Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success. But this is not just a familiar story of the so-called new economy. Capitalism without Capital shows that the growing importance of intangible assets has also played a role in some of the larger economic changes of the past decade, including the growth in economic inequality and the stagnation of productivity. Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake explore the unusual economic characteristics of intangible investment and discuss how an economy rich in intangibles is fundamentally different from one based on tangibles. Capitalism without Capital concludes by outlining how managers, investors, and policymakers can exploit the characteristics of an intangible age to grow their businesses, portfolios, and economies.

Capital as Power

Capital as Power
Author: Jonathan Nitzan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 853
Release: 2009-06-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134022298

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’.

Hegel's Ontology of Power

Hegel's Ontology of Power
Author: Arash Abazari
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2020-07-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 110889030X

Recent attempts to revitalize Hegel's social and political philosophy have tended to be doubly constrained: firstly, by their focus on Hegel's Philosophy of Right; and secondly, by their broadly liberal interpretive framework. Challenging that trend, Arash Abazari shows that the locus of Hegel's genuine critical social theory is to be sought in his ontology – specifically in the 'logic of essence' of the Science of Logic. Mobilizing ideas from Marx and Adorno, Abazari unveils the hidden critical import of Hegel's logic. He argues that social domination in capitalism obtains by virtue of the illusion of equality and freedom; shows how relations of opposition underlie the seeming pluralism in capitalism; and elaborates on the deepest ground of domination, i.e. the totality of capitalist social relations. Overall, his book demonstrates that Hegel's logic can and should be read politically.

The Code of Capital

The Code of Capital
Author: Katharina Pistor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2020-11-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691208603

"Capital is the defining feature of modern economies, yet most people have no idea where it actually comes from. What is it, exactly, that transforms mere wealth into an asset that automatically creates more wealth? The Code of Capital explains how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else. In this revealing book, Katharina Pistor argues that the law selectively "codes" certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth. With the right legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be turned into capital - and lawyers are the keepers of the code. Pistor describes how they pick and choose among different legal systems and legal devices for the ones that best serve their clients' needs, and how techniques that were first perfected centuries ago to code landholdings as capital are being used today to code stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations--assets that exist only in law. A powerful new way of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time, The Code of Capital explores the different ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are coded to give financial advantage to their holders. This provocative book paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it."--Provided by publisher.

Capitalist Sorcery

Capitalist Sorcery
Author: P. Pignarre
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-03-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780230237629

Capitalist Sorcery neither sets out a new political programme nor offers a new theory. Rather, it aims to encourage all those who are resistant to resignation and inertia, whose stories of partial successes must be told, celebrated and shared.

Learning to Spell: A Manual for Teachers Using the Aldine Speller

Learning to Spell: A Manual for Teachers Using the Aldine Speller
Author: Catherine T. Bryce
Publisher: Good Press
Total Pages: 69
Release: 2021-11-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Originally intended as a guide for teachers, this fascinating look at teaching spelling in schools is an interesting commentary on the modern education system. It looks at the history of spelling in schools, looking at teaching standards, word difficulty, why we teach spelling and the best ways to teach spelling. It is educational and informative, not only for teaching spelling but also to see how times change and generational changes.

Portfolio Society

Portfolio Society
Author: Ivan Ascher
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2016-09-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1935408747

A bold extension of Marx's Capital for the twenty-first century: at once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell. As financial markets expand and continue to refashion the world in their own image, the wealth of capitalist societies no longer presents itself, as it did to Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, as a “monstrous collection of commodities.” Instead, it appears as an equally monstrous collection of financial securities, and the critique of political economy must proceed accordingly. But what would it mean to write Capital in the twenty-first century? Are we really to believe that risk, rather than labor, is now regarded as the true fount of economic value? Can it truly be the case that the credit relation—at least in the global North—has replaced the wage relation as the key site of exploitation and political struggle? And finally, if precarity is indeed the name of today's proletarian condition, what possible future does it actually portend, what analysis does it require? Through a series of creative substitutions, in Portfolio Society Ivan Ascherextends Marx's critical project in bold and unexpected ways. Ascher not only explains some of the often mystifying processes of contemporary finance, he also invites us to consider what becomes of capitalism itself in those places where the relation of capital to its own future is now mediated by financial markets. In the end, we may find that much has changed and much has not; relations of domination endure, and mystifications abound, but the devil is in the details, and that is where Ascher directs our attention. At once a critique of modern finance and of the societies under its spell, Portfolio Society succeeds in revealing the potential limits of Capital, while reveling still in its limitless potential.