homogeneous labor time in political economy as the a priori precondition of the social world it purports merely to describe. 8. Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1978), 53; emphasis in original. 118 | CRITICAL HISTORICAL STUDIES SPRING 2020 It is worth stressing that this specific critique of capitalism is ultimately epistemological rather than moral. Moishe acknowledged that distributive injustice tends to follow from concealed domination, just as it does from overt domination. So, the absence of overt domination would not make capitalism prima facie just. But Moishe thought that to focus on the spurious legitimation of injustice as capitalism’s defining feature would to be assimilate it to noncapitalist social formations, such as feudalism in which domination is mediated by social relations and religious practices that affect the distribution, but also the interpretation, of wealth. It is thus the concealment of injustice (as epistemic problem), and not injustice itself, that is historically specific to capitalism. But even if we set our concern for social justice aside, Moishe’s idea of direct mediation is puzzling on its face. How could it bemediation if it is direct? And inwhat sense could Moishe mean it to be direct, other than to deny that the value form is mediated by money and thus dominated by finance? Moishe’s stress on the directness of social mediation in capitalist production does, I think, require a diminished stress on the role of financial intermediaries and money markets. But even allowing for his choice to emphasize production, Moishe’s philosophical view that mediation can be direct within this realm is not extensively explained in his major book on capitalism, nor is it more fully developed in later papers. Like Ben and Ed, I have few stakes in the concept of direct mediation. We see finance as a form of indirect mediation that is historically specific to our present stage of capitalism and need have no quarrel with his tendency to assume that of financial valuation is a form of mediated sociality. But we do no regard this as a knock-down argument because for us the concept of direct mediation could, perhaps, be important in understanding capitalism only to the extent that there are spheres in which finance is not important. Otherwise, direct mediation appears to be something of an oxymoron, implying at the same time as it denies the existence of a third, or mediating, term through which the relation between two other terms can be interpreted. In Peircean semiotics, for example, there is always a third, mediating, sign that refers to the relation between a signifier and the object that it signifies. The relation of the third sign to the signifier-object relation can be one of self-similarity (as in a metaphor) or contiguity (as in a metonym); it can be one of causation or of abstraction in Moishe’s sense; such abstraction can take the form of sy
在政治经济学中，同质劳动时间作为社会世界的先验前提，它只是试图描述。8. 《智力劳动和体力劳动:认识论批判》(大西洋高地，新泽西:人文学出版社，1978)，第53页;强调原文。值得强调的是，这种对资本主义的具体批判最终是认识论的，而不是道德的。Moishe承认，分配的不公正往往来自隐蔽的统治，就像它来自公开的统治一样。因此，没有公开的统治并不会使资本主义表面上是公正的。但Moishe认为，将不公正的虚假正当性作为资本主义的定义特征，将使其与非资本主义社会形态同化，例如封建主义，在封建主义中，统治是由影响财富分配和解释的社会关系和宗教实践来调解的。因此，资本主义历史上特有的是对不公正的隐藏(作为认识问题)，而不是不公正本身。但是，即使我们把对社会正义的关注放在一边，Moishe关于直接调解的想法从表面上看也是令人困惑的。如果它是直接的，它怎么能调解呢?除了否认价值形式以货币为中介，因而受金融支配之外，莫伊什还能在什么意义上说它是直接的呢?我认为，Moishe强调资本主义生产中社会中介的直接性，确实需要减少对金融中介和货币市场作用的强调。但是，即使允许他选择强调生产，Moishe的哲学观点，即调解可以直接在这个领域内进行，并没有在他关于资本主义的主要著作中得到广泛解释，也没有在后来的论文中得到更充分的发展。像Ben和Ed一样，我对直接调解的概念没有什么利害关系。我们认为金融是一种间接中介的形式，在历史上特定于我们当前的资本主义阶段，我们不需要争论他倾向于假设金融估值是一种中介社会的形式。但我们并不认为这是一个彻底的论点，因为对我们来说，直接调解的概念可能在理解资本主义方面很重要，只是在某些领域金融不重要的情况下。否则，直接中介性就好象是一种矛盾修饰法，因为它同时暗示着否认有第三项或中介的存在，通过这第三项或中介的存在，可以解释另外两项之间的关系。例如，在皮尔森的符号学中，总是有第三个中介符号，它指的是能指和它所指代的对象之间的关系。第三个符号与能指-客体关系的关系可以是自相似(如隐喻)或邻近(如转喻);它可以是一种因果关系，也可以是Moishe意义上的抽象;这种抽象可以采取符号化的形式，可能也可能不包括通约化，就像金钱成为代理人和事物之间社会关系的符号和公分母一样。从符号学的角度来看，Moishe的核心抽象概念本身只是一种特殊形式的中介，它将生产解释为从马克思称之为使用价值的其他东西中创造财富(积累交换价值)。因此，符号学家保罗·考克曼(Paul Kockelman)将莫伊斯版本的马克思描述为“商品既是被研究的对象，又是研究的方法”。这样，最终以主客体二分法为基础的本体论是19世纪资本的观念反射之一;因此必须作为解释这种资本主义形式的理论工具与Moishe的“辩证”方法相反，Kockelman声称将“商品置于符号学中”。因此，它不是系统地展开了主体-客体二分法，而是系统地展开了符号-客体-解释三二分法。”在写《时间、劳动和社会统治》的时候，莫伊什对皮尔森的符号学非常了解——他当时正在与本和埃德讨论这个问题。但他们当时并没有研究金融衍生品，莫伊斯决定把重点放在抽象过程上，即Kockelman所说的“主体-客体二分法”，而不是“符号-客体-解释性三分法”，这必须被视为一种有意识的拒绝，拒绝他对社会表现的符号学解释，而后者是他非常熟悉的。我认为，这种拒绝的根源，深深植根于他观点的神学层面。一神论认为自己是宗教的第二种形式，基于对伴随多神崇拜形式的偶像崇拜的否定。 用莫伊肖恩的话说，一神论的批判是，偶像崇拜实际上是人类和神之间的一种间接中介形式，是由人类创造的人工制品本身作为神来崇拜的。反对意见不仅是偶像本身不是神，而且任何神的神性是由物质对象中介的，也是假的。相比之下，一个真正的上帝，将是一个超越的存在，通过一种独特的直接的方式与人类相遇。因此，直接启示是偶像崇拜的一神论替代品。通过这种方式所揭示的是，唯一的真神是社会和宗教形式的例外，这些形式是由物质对象中介的，也是皮尔斯符号-客体-解释的三重符号学的例外。一神论思想的核心是这样一个例外，如果可能的话，必须是唯一的和单一的:只有一个真正的上帝。在这里，只有上帝可以被神秘地体验，而不需要符号或物质神器的中介。但对上帝的神秘体验仍然不是直接的，因为即使在这样的时刻，对上帝的体验也是对自我之外的东西的体验。9. Paul Kockelman， <商品的符号学本体论>，《语言人类学杂志》，第16期。1(2006年6月):80。10. Jan Assmann，《一神论的代价》(斯坦福，加州:斯坦福大学出版社，2009)。120 bb0批判历史研究春季2020也不是抽象的。在一神论的一个传统中，神不是众神共有的普遍属性，而是每个能指所指的普遍所指。由此可见，任何事物都不能被赋予自己的名字，而不能被赋予创造它的上帝的名字。故此，独一的真神有万名，也无名。但是把上帝的名字归于上帝所创造的一切意味着上帝并不是通过抽象创造世界的。所以上帝的普遍名字不是一个可以通约所有事物的单一公分母，而是一个超越人类能力的终极现实，用任何单一的名字来命名它。在冷漠的一神论里，与上帝的直接关系不是抽象的思想，而是具体的经验。上帝的名字在这里不仅仅是代表上帝的符号，而是一个具体的宇宙，黑格尔和阿多诺将其描述为自我调解，从而与一神论的观点进行了世俗的类比，即上帝的自我创造是一种变得具体而不是抽象的方式。正如我稍后将解释的那样，莫伊什关于资本主义价值形式的概念与早期一神论对神名的描述有很强的相似之处。然而，现在这就足够了，在Moishe的假设中，价值形式中没有解释者，只有隐藏和直接的启示，这一冷漠的想法——没有上帝的中介——只是隐藏了一个普遍的能指——是核心。普遍能指和普遍所指之间的二分法，隐藏和直接启示之间的二分法，隐藏在Moishe所说的商品拜物教背后。他对商品拜物教的批判不同于对公开拜物教的一神论批判，比如对偶像的崇拜，认为偶像是解构的，是神圣的人类物体。与偶像崇拜不同的是，对商品的拜物教，正如Moishe所理解的那样，是商品商品化本身的一种隐藏的影响——金钱已经成为我们的上帝——对它的批判最接近于一神论对假一神论的批判。在这里，批判的不是拜物教本身，而是它被货币在商品交换中的作用所掩盖。一件物品之所以成为商品，是因为它可以兑换成货币。所以对于Moishe 11。伪狄奥尼修斯，《伪狄奥尼修斯:全集》，科尔姆·卢布海姆和保罗·罗莱姆主编(纽约:保罗出版社，1987年)。12. 这种自我关系，否定了任何他者的存在或差异，以一种较晚的，更发达的逻辑形式保留了存在的意义:它定义了某种简单存在的东西，被给予的，存在的，对自己有意义的，与他人无关。因此，具体的普遍性就是"中介性"，即构成特殊性的特殊性之间的关系，但它本身并不是"中介性的"。也就是说，它的存在或意义并不依赖于与他人的关系。它是‘积极的、同一的、普遍的’，是第二个直接的。”夏洛特·鲍曼，<阿多诺、黑格尔与具体的普遍性>，《哲学与社会批判》第37期，no。1(2011): 84。Moishe on Value and Wealth(价值与财富论)bbbb121揭示商品是一种恋物，这就是说，货币在资本主义中是一种
{"title":"Moishe on Value and Wealth","authors":"R. Meister","doi":"10.1086/708158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/708158","url":null,"abstract":"homogeneous labor time in political economy as the a priori precondition of the social world it purports merely to describe. 8. Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1978), 53; emphasis in original. 118 | CRITICAL HISTORICAL STUDIES SPRING 2020 It is worth stressing that this specific critique of capitalism is ultimately epistemological rather than moral. Moishe acknowledged that distributive injustice tends to follow from concealed domination, just as it does from overt domination. So, the absence of overt domination would not make capitalism prima facie just. But Moishe thought that to focus on the spurious legitimation of injustice as capitalism’s defining feature would to be assimilate it to noncapitalist social formations, such as feudalism in which domination is mediated by social relations and religious practices that affect the distribution, but also the interpretation, of wealth. It is thus the concealment of injustice (as epistemic problem), and not injustice itself, that is historically specific to capitalism. But even if we set our concern for social justice aside, Moishe’s idea of direct mediation is puzzling on its face. How could it bemediation if it is direct? And inwhat sense could Moishe mean it to be direct, other than to deny that the value form is mediated by money and thus dominated by finance? Moishe’s stress on the directness of social mediation in capitalist production does, I think, require a diminished stress on the role of financial intermediaries and money markets. But even allowing for his choice to emphasize production, Moishe’s philosophical view that mediation can be direct within this realm is not extensively explained in his major book on capitalism, nor is it more fully developed in later papers. Like Ben and Ed, I have few stakes in the concept of direct mediation. We see finance as a form of indirect mediation that is historically specific to our present stage of capitalism and need have no quarrel with his tendency to assume that of financial valuation is a form of mediated sociality. But we do no regard this as a knock-down argument because for us the concept of direct mediation could, perhaps, be important in understanding capitalism only to the extent that there are spheres in which finance is not important. Otherwise, direct mediation appears to be something of an oxymoron, implying at the same time as it denies the existence of a third, or mediating, term through which the relation between two other terms can be interpreted. In Peircean semiotics, for example, there is always a third, mediating, sign that refers to the relation between a signifier and the object that it signifies. The relation of the third sign to the signifier-object relation can be one of self-similarity (as in a metaphor) or contiguity (as in a metonym); it can be one of causation or of abstraction in Moishe’s sense; such abstraction can take the form of sy","PeriodicalId":43410,"journal":{"name":"Critical Historical Studies","volume":"7 1","pages":"113 - 125"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/708158","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41389670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lacking a conception of the specific character of labor in capitalism, Critical Theory ascribed its consequences to labor per se. The frequently described shift of Critical Theory from the analysis of political economy to a critique of instrumental reason does not, then, signify that the theorists of the Frankfurt School simply abandoned the former in favor of the latter. Rather, that shift followed from, and was based upon, a particular analysis of political economy, more specifically, a traditional understanding of Marx’s critique of political economy. —Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination
{"title":"The Illusion of the Economic: Social Theory without Social Forms","authors":"Patrick Murray","doi":"10.1086/708005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/708005","url":null,"abstract":"Lacking a conception of the specific character of labor in capitalism, Critical Theory ascribed its consequences to labor per se. The frequently described shift of Critical Theory from the analysis of political economy to a critique of instrumental reason does not, then, signify that the theorists of the Frankfurt School simply abandoned the former in favor of the latter. Rather, that shift followed from, and was based upon, a particular analysis of political economy, more specifically, a traditional understanding of Marx’s critique of political economy. —Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination","PeriodicalId":43410,"journal":{"name":"Critical Historical Studies","volume":"7 1","pages":"19 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/708005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43078432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A growing focus on inequality has given renewed relevance to both Keynesian political economy and its critics on the left. Cowritten by Marxian economists Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (1966) is one of the most comprehensive—and neglected—left critiques of Keynesianism. Monopoly Capital was written through hundreds of letters exchanged between 1955–64. Though inaccessible to historians for 50 years, this correspondence has recently been made available, and reveals Baran and Sweezy to be both methodologically ecumenical and engaged in the sort of cultural analysis normally associated with the critical theorists whom Perry Anderson and others have labeled “Western Marxists.” In offering an immanent critique of Keynesianism rather than a priori rejecting it for being insufficiently Marxist, Baran and Sweezy reveal a central paradox of the Keynesian vision: that the implementation of liberal-Keynesian economic policies in times of peace is impossible without socialist politics.
{"title":"A Capital for the Age of Growth: Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, and the Critique of Keynesian Civilization","authors":"Benjamin Feldman","doi":"10.1086/705368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/705368","url":null,"abstract":"A growing focus on inequality has given renewed relevance to both Keynesian political economy and its critics on the left. Cowritten by Marxian economists Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (1966) is one of the most comprehensive—and neglected—left critiques of Keynesianism. Monopoly Capital was written through hundreds of letters exchanged between 1955–64. Though inaccessible to historians for 50 years, this correspondence has recently been made available, and reveals Baran and Sweezy to be both methodologically ecumenical and engaged in the sort of cultural analysis normally associated with the critical theorists whom Perry Anderson and others have labeled “Western Marxists.” In offering an immanent critique of Keynesianism rather than a priori rejecting it for being insufficiently Marxist, Baran and Sweezy reveal a central paradox of the Keynesian vision: that the implementation of liberal-Keynesian economic policies in times of peace is impossible without socialist politics.","PeriodicalId":43410,"journal":{"name":"Critical Historical Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"195 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/705368","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42175635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
With rentier dynamics playing an increasingly central role in the economy across much of the advanced capitalist world, critiques of rent, the rentier, and rentierism have been gathering a head of steam. For the majority of critics of rentierism, it appears that the central problem of rent, and the reason we should be critical of it, is that it represents “unearned” income. In this critical reflection, I question this critique and, in its place, advance an alternative conceptualization of the problem of rent, centered not on the degree to which rent is or is not “earned” but rather on the monopoly power that the rentier, by her nature, enjoys, and which, I argue, substantially accounts for two of rentier capitalism’s negative features: low levels of innovation and high levels of worker exploitation.
{"title":"The Problem of Rent","authors":"Brett Christophers","doi":"10.1086/705396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/705396","url":null,"abstract":"With rentier dynamics playing an increasingly central role in the economy across much of the advanced capitalist world, critiques of rent, the rentier, and rentierism have been gathering a head of steam. For the majority of critics of rentierism, it appears that the central problem of rent, and the reason we should be critical of it, is that it represents “unearned” income. In this critical reflection, I question this critique and, in its place, advance an alternative conceptualization of the problem of rent, centered not on the degree to which rent is or is not “earned” but rather on the monopoly power that the rentier, by her nature, enjoys, and which, I argue, substantially accounts for two of rentier capitalism’s negative features: low levels of innovation and high levels of worker exploitation.","PeriodicalId":43410,"journal":{"name":"Critical Historical Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"303 - 323"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/705396","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49279611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nineteenth-century France was host to a vigorous public debate on how real property—land and buildings—should function in the marketplace. Proponents of what was called the mobilization of land sought to enhance the circulation of real property, whereas its opponents aimed to prevent the dissipation of durable patrimonies in the unreliable world of commerce and finance. This article analyzes the articulation of the mobilization question by jurists, politicians, and political economists in early nineteenth-century France and argues for its importance—and the centrality of real property relations—to understanding the imaginative and institutional construction of modern capitalism. Focusing on contentious innovations in the financial life of real property of the 1789 and 1848 revolutions, it reconstructs the repetitive character of mobilization programs and argues that this mimetic quality stems from a persistent and enduring misapprehension regarding nature and the material as sources of economic value.
{"title":"The Double Life of Property: Mobilizing Land and Making Capitalism in Modern France","authors":"Alexia M. Yates","doi":"10.1086/705369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/705369","url":null,"abstract":"Nineteenth-century France was host to a vigorous public debate on how real property—land and buildings—should function in the marketplace. Proponents of what was called the mobilization of land sought to enhance the circulation of real property, whereas its opponents aimed to prevent the dissipation of durable patrimonies in the unreliable world of commerce and finance. This article analyzes the articulation of the mobilization question by jurists, politicians, and political economists in early nineteenth-century France and argues for its importance—and the centrality of real property relations—to understanding the imaginative and institutional construction of modern capitalism. Focusing on contentious innovations in the financial life of real property of the 1789 and 1848 revolutions, it reconstructs the repetitive character of mobilization programs and argues that this mimetic quality stems from a persistent and enduring misapprehension regarding nature and the material as sources of economic value.","PeriodicalId":43410,"journal":{"name":"Critical Historical Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"247 - 278"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/705369","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47212012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sicilian sulfur was an important commodity for the Industrial Revolution (1750–1840). It was used for the finishing of textiles: Innovations in finishing were essential for the textile industry so that the productivity increases in spinning and weaving as well as in cotton plantations did not encounter a bottleneck. Eventually, it gave occasion to a spin-off, the chemical industry as a separate branch of production. These developments rested on the appropriation of uncommodified labor force and nature in Sicily. Such processes unfolded in a trajectory determined by value relations, in which the investment in fixed capital in Britain was tied to the supply of cheap circulating capital (raw material) in the commodity frontier. When necessary to guarantee the supply of cheap sulfur against price and supply regulation, the British mobilized their Royal Navy. It is argued that the Sicilian frontier should be incorporated into the history of the Industrial Revolution.
{"title":"The Frontier of Hell: Sicily, Sulfur, and the Rise of the British Chemical Industry, 1750–1840","authors":"D. Cunha","doi":"10.1086/705370","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/705370","url":null,"abstract":"Sicilian sulfur was an important commodity for the Industrial Revolution (1750–1840). It was used for the finishing of textiles: Innovations in finishing were essential for the textile industry so that the productivity increases in spinning and weaving as well as in cotton plantations did not encounter a bottleneck. Eventually, it gave occasion to a spin-off, the chemical industry as a separate branch of production. These developments rested on the appropriation of uncommodified labor force and nature in Sicily. Such processes unfolded in a trajectory determined by value relations, in which the investment in fixed capital in Britain was tied to the supply of cheap circulating capital (raw material) in the commodity frontier. When necessary to guarantee the supply of cheap sulfur against price and supply regulation, the British mobilized their Royal Navy. It is argued that the Sicilian frontier should be incorporated into the history of the Industrial Revolution.","PeriodicalId":43410,"journal":{"name":"Critical Historical Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"279 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/705370","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46544641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although the dynamics of capital are various, one dynamic is inescapably psychical. In this article, I argue in favor of a concept of what I call “primal capital,” in which capital is not only a “factor of production” but also consists of psychical processes. I proceed by way of reconstructing John Maynard Keynes’s account in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) of the owner of capital’s “propensity to hoard.” Keynes presents a model of psychical conflict under epistemic conditions of uncertainty, in which the owners of capital are perpetually torn between hoarding capital in the money form and long-term investment in wealth-generating economic production. To develop the psychical content of capital, I explore resonances between Keynes’s account of hoarding and Freud’s account of obsessional neurosis.
{"title":"Primal Capital","authors":"Jonathan Levy","doi":"10.1086/705295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/705295","url":null,"abstract":"Although the dynamics of capital are various, one dynamic is inescapably psychical. In this article, I argue in favor of a concept of what I call “primal capital,” in which capital is not only a “factor of production” but also consists of psychical processes. I proceed by way of reconstructing John Maynard Keynes’s account in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) of the owner of capital’s “propensity to hoard.” Keynes presents a model of psychical conflict under epistemic conditions of uncertainty, in which the owners of capital are perpetually torn between hoarding capital in the money form and long-term investment in wealth-generating economic production. To develop the psychical content of capital, I explore resonances between Keynes’s account of hoarding and Freud’s account of obsessional neurosis.","PeriodicalId":43410,"journal":{"name":"Critical Historical Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"161 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/705295","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43671170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article argues that the change that opened the door to a capitalist world, one dominated by capitalist norms, was the alteration to the boundary between economic and public power that followed the era of the democratic revolution and in particular the French Revolution. There is consensus of the institutional creativity fostered by the resistance to Louis XIV. The role of the French Revolution and the Congress settlement in fostering capitalist innovation has not attracted the same attention. This article advances the view that the Congress settlement transposed the political universalism of the Revolution into an economic register. The article focuses on the evolution of the international legal regime regulating trade on the Rhine to illuminate the genealogy of capitalist universalism.
{"title":"An Alternative Genealogy for Global Capitalism: The Rhine Becomes an Inland Sea, 1792–1815","authors":"J. Livesey","doi":"10.1086/705297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/705297","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that the change that opened the door to a capitalist world, one dominated by capitalist norms, was the alteration to the boundary between economic and public power that followed the era of the democratic revolution and in particular the French Revolution. There is consensus of the institutional creativity fostered by the resistance to Louis XIV. The role of the French Revolution and the Congress settlement in fostering capitalist innovation has not attracted the same attention. This article advances the view that the Congress settlement transposed the political universalism of the Revolution into an economic register. The article focuses on the evolution of the international legal regime regulating trade on the Rhine to illuminate the genealogy of capitalist universalism.","PeriodicalId":43410,"journal":{"name":"Critical Historical Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"223 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/705297","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46666861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article studies the role of entrepreneurial techniques in the capitalization of early industrial ventures. It focuses on the preparation and circulation of project proposals by the Du Pont de Nemours family, ahead of their transplantation to the United States: father Pierre Samuel’s 1797 plan for an agricultural colony and his son Irénée’s 1800 project for a gunpowder manufactory. The two men and the types of projects they proposed did not enjoy the same amount of credit in investor circles, leading them to rely on different territorialization techniques in their proposals. The father located the proposed colony in the geographical space of the United States to narrate a single and hesitant path into the future. The son relied on accounting simulations to prove that profits would ensue, whatever the circumstances, in the calculable space of American markets. His project was assigned not just a destination but also a destiny.
{"title":"The Predestination of Capital: Projecting E. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company into the New World","authors":"M. Giraudeau","doi":"10.1086/702607","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/702607","url":null,"abstract":"The article studies the role of entrepreneurial techniques in the capitalization of early industrial ventures. It focuses on the preparation and circulation of project proposals by the Du Pont de Nemours family, ahead of their transplantation to the United States: father Pierre Samuel’s 1797 plan for an agricultural colony and his son Irénée’s 1800 project for a gunpowder manufactory. The two men and the types of projects they proposed did not enjoy the same amount of credit in investor circles, leading them to rely on different territorialization techniques in their proposals. The father located the proposed colony in the geographical space of the United States to narrate a single and hesitant path into the future. The son relied on accounting simulations to prove that profits would ensue, whatever the circumstances, in the calculable space of American markets. His project was assigned not just a destination but also a destiny.","PeriodicalId":43410,"journal":{"name":"Critical Historical Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":"33 - 62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/702607","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45840778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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