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The Enduring Power of GE
Get PDFGeneral Electric (GE) has demonstrated extraordinary longevity in the upper echelon of U.S. corporations. From 1925 to 2013, the company has never fallen below 10th in the rankings of firms by market capitalization. The only other firm to match this feat is the oil giant ExxonMobil. GE’s durability is remarkable given the political, cultural, and technological tumult of the 20th century. In this presentation, I will consider possible reasons for GE’s dominance. This study of GE is part of an effort to develop a new field of Accumulation Studies.
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D.T. Cochrane. PhD student at the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, York University ([email protected])
This presentation is the fourth in the Second Speaker Series on the Capitalist Mode of Power, organized by capitalaspower.com and sponsored by the York Department of Political Science and the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought.
Refreshments will be served and all are welcome.
WHEN: Tuesday, November 17, 2015, 3:00-5:00 pm
WHERE: Verney Room, 674 South Ross, Keele Campus of York Universit
The CasP Project: Past, Present, Future
Get PDFThe study of capital as power (CasP) began when we were students in the 1980s and has since expanded into a broader project involving a growing number of researchers and new areas of inquiry. This paper provides a bird’s-eye view of the CasP journey. It explores what we have learned so far, reviews ongoing research, and suggests future trajectories – including the coevolution of Concepts of Power–Modes of Power (COP-MOPs); the origins of capitalized power; the state of capital; finance as the symbolic creordering of capitalism; the role of labour, production and waste; the capitalized environment; and the need for post-capitalist accounting
Globalization and Capitalist Geopolitics. Sovereignty and State Power in a Multipolar World
Get PDFFROM THE BACK COVER: Globalization and Capitalist Geopolitics is concerned with the growth of transnational corporate power against the backdrop of the decline of the West and the struggle by non-Western states to challenge and overcome domination of the rest of the world by the West. At the centre of the study is the problematic status of the US as guarantor of global security and imperial nation in decline. The declining power of America in a multipolar world places a question mark under the future of Western leadership of globalization.
Woodley interrogates the structure of contemporary world order and examines competing approaches to globalization and global capitalism in international relations and international political economy. He engages with key scholars in the field, and provides an authoritative yet accessible commentary on debates on globalization and geopolitics in the wake of the global financial crisis.
In a period of increasing geopolitical insecurity and geoeconomic transition, this book is a major contribution to the debate on globalization. It is a key resource for students and scholars seeking a deeper understanding of the historical and economic determinants of neoliberal capitalism, the impact of global economic convergence for Western economies, and the implications of globalization for the reconstruction of contemporary world order.
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NOTICE: This book is available on OAPEN: http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=625755. It is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 International (AT-NC-ND): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcod
Political Economy of Capital Accumulation (YorkU, LAPS/POLS 4292 6.0, Undergraduate, Fall Term, 2015-16)
No full textCapital is the central power institution of capitalism: it is the main force underlying the relentless transformation of power relations in capitalist societies. The course explores the accumulation of capital from three interrelated perspectives: conceptual, historical and empirical. At the conceptual level, the course examines the evolution of different orthodox and critical theories of value and how these theories serve to explain and justify contending notions of accumulation. At the historical level, it traces the development of capital from its humble pre-capitalist origins to its present world dominance. At the empirical level, it studies and juxtaposes the qualitative and quantitative aspects of capital accumulation and study what they mean for the contemporary political economy. In parallel to these explorations, the course introduces students to the art and science of empirical research. By the end of the course, students are expected to be able to develop and integrate theoretical arguments with their own empirical work
The 1% and the Rest of Us. A Political Economy of Dominant Ownership
No full textWhile the Occupy movement faces many strategic and organizational challenges, one of its major accomplishments has been to draw global attention to the massive disparity of income, wealth and privilege held by 1% of the population in nations across the world. In The 1% and the Rest of Us, Tim Di Muzio explores what it means to be part of a socio-economic order presided over by the super-rich and their political servants. Incorporating provocative and original arguments about philanthropy, social wealth and the political role of the super-rich, Di Muzio reveals how the 1% are creating a world unto themselves in which the accumulation of ever more money is really a symbolic drive to control society and the natural environment
What’s Love Got to Do with It? Diamonds and the Accumulation of De Beers, 1935-55
Get PDFWhat is accumulation? Visibly, accumulation is a quantitative process, demarcated in financial quantities. However, what is the meaning of those quantities? This question has been the subject of great debate within political economic thought. A new theory of accumulation, capital as power (CasP), argues that the financial quantities of accumulation express the distribution of power among the owners of capital over the qualitatively diverse, complex and mutating social order. With this dissertation, I explore the relationship between the quantities and qualities of accumulation by examining the De Beers diamond cartel, focusing on the period 1935-55. What does it mean to say ‘capital is power’ in the specific setting of the global diamond assemblage? Research and analysis led me to focus on four important relationships that De Beers had to establish, maintain and transform in its struggle for differential accumulation: with diamonds themselves; with potential and actual diamond buyers; with governments; and, with families, especially the Oppenheimer family that controlled De Beers for over 80 years
From Power Over Creation to the Power of Creation: Cornelius Castoriadis on Democratic Cultural Creation and the Case of Hollywood
Get PDFThis article is a critical investigation and application of the aesthetic theory of Cornelius Castoriadis, one of the most important 20th-century theorists of radical democracy. We outline Castoriadis’s thoughts on autonomy, the social-historical nature of Being, and creation -- key elements that inform his model of democratic culture. We then develop a Castoriadian critique of culture produced by capitalist institutions. By also drawing on the political economic thought of Thorstein Veblen, Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, our critique focuses on one sector of contemporary culture: Hollywood film. We show how Hollywood, as a business enterprise, uses techniques of sabotage and capitalization to control and occult the social-historical nature of creation. Lastly, by way of conclusion, we gesture toward a mode of artistic production that is able to affirm the democratic values that organize Castoriadis’s thought
The 1% and the Rest of Us -- An Interview with Tim Di Muzio
No full textTim DiMuzio is a lecturer in International Relations and Public Policy at the University of Wollongong in Australia. His book, 'The 1% and the Rest of Us: A Political Economy of Dominant Ownership', examines the insular lives of the global super rich, the socio-economic system they head, and their restless drive to dominate society and nature. NLP's Tom Mills spoke to him about the book, its approach to political economy and the consequences for left political strategy
Petrodollars and Profit: Rethinking Political Economy through the Middle East (Review of Bichler & Nitzan's "The Scientist and the Church")
Get PDFFROM THE REVIEW: What if oil prices are not received, but made? What if cartels raise prices by constricting supply, and use war, legal chicanery, and international property deeds to do so? Such questions led Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, two political economists, to examine the production, distribution, and political structure of the oil business. They derived from these patterns a theory of prices and power distinct from orthodox and heterodox worldviews alike. They see prices as the result of social processes, “a symbolic quantification of power.” One of them is sabotage, or the strategic disruption of production. Power, then, is the ability to create and order the world to ensure just the right mix of sabotage and supply in order to ensure profit rates beat out those of your competitors. It is this novel, fascinating, brash, and contested theory of capitalism which they lay out in a new book, The Scientist and the Church
Debt as Power
Get PDFFROM THE EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: In Debt as Power, Di Muzio and Robbins present a historical account of the modern origins of capitalist debt by looking at how commercial money is produced as debt in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They expertly demonstrate their key contention -- that debt is a technology of power -- and identify the ways in which the control, production, and distribution of money, as interest-bearing debt, are used to discipline populations. Their sharp analysis brings together histories of the development of the Bank of England and the establishment of permanent national debt with the intensification and expansion of debt, as a “technology of power”, under colonialism in a global context. The latter part of the book addresses the consequences of modern regimes of debt and puts forward proposals of what needs to be done, politically, to reverse the problems generated by debt-based economies. The final chapter presents a convincing case for the 99% to use the power of debt to challenge present inequalities and outlines a platform for action suggesting possible alternatives