The Nature of Capital: Marx After Foucalt (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought, 20)

The Nature of Capital: Marx After Foucault overturns the received wisdom on the incompatibility of the thought of Marx and Foucault to develop an original synthesis based on a critical realist re-reading of their work, and to understanding the postmodern condition. Book Cover......Page 1 Half-Title......Page 2 Series......Page 3 Title......Page 6 Copyright......Page 7 Dedication......Page 8 Contents......Page 10 Figures......Page 11 Tables......Page 12 Acknowledgements......Page 13 Apologia......Page 15 Credits......Page 16 Part I Discovering what is real......Page 18 1 Marketing postmodernity......Page 20 2 Postmodernity and capital......Page 31 3 Retroduction and realism......Page 42 Part II Conclusions in search of a premise......Page 60 4 Beyond good and evil......Page 62 5 Everything pregnant with its contrary......Page 77 Part III The unknown masterpiece......Page 96 6 The inner connection......Page 98 7 The nature of capital......Page 122 Part IV Capital......Page 150 8 How labour is organized into a productive force......Page 152 9 The promised ‘connected whole’......Page 179 10 Working capital to the surface......Page 194 Notes......Page 205 Bibliography......Page 220 Index......Page 234 The synthesis of Marx and Foucault has traditionally been seen within the social sciences as deeply problematic. The author overturns this received wisdom by subjecting both thinkers to an original re-reading through the lens of the philosophy of critical realism. The result is an illuminating synthesis between Marx's social relations of production and Foucault's disciplinary power from which the author constructs a model of the material causes of our capacity to act. The laws of motion of a society and its microphysics are shown to be complementary parts of a theory of capital, society's genetic code. The Nature of Capital overturns traditional interpretations of Marx, presents an accessible and comprehensive account of the development of his model of capital and demonstrates its ability to explain modern societies. Original in conception and bold in its diagnosis, this work will be welcomed by students of, and researchers in, economics, social theory, Marx, Foucault and postmodernity Postmodernity and reengineering were the buzzwords of academia and business during the 1990s.