Capital, the State, and the Monetary Mode of Power

A Review of Nitzan and Bichler's Capital as Power

Bibliographic Data

ID14899748
AuthorsJohn Hamilton Bradford (Mississippi Valley State University, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume24
Issue4
Pages643-661
Publication date2012-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueReview of Political Economy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0953-8259 • E-ISSN: 1465-3982
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09538259.2012.701932
OpenAlexW2153053680
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited16

In their recent book Capital as Power, Jonathan Nitzan & Shimshon Bichler depict capitalism as a mode of power rather than a mode of production, in which political and economic power are no longer distinct. In addition, they argue, contrary to neoclassical theory, that capital has nothing to do with productivity but instead represents power. I make three broad criticisms: first, their elimination of the distinction between economics and politics renders any empirical test of their ostensible integration impossible; second, they do not adequately define their main concepts, including capital, capitalization, capitalism, and power; and third, they do not acknowledge the possibility that the patterns they attribute to power may in fact be self-organized. This paper argues that money is a claim to wealth, not wealth itself, that it measures and distributes the power of payment, and that payments redistribute the power of ownership, including the ownership of money. Finally, I suggest that, in light of the global debt crisis, a theory of capital-as-power should examine the power of finance, which entails the privatization and concentration of the power to create money as debt

Economics · Keynesian economics · Macroeconomics · Monetary economics · Physics · Computer Science · Economic Theory and Policy · History · Mathematics · Political Economy and Marxism

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